My apologies if (when) this turns into a rant.

 
OK...Where to begin?

I just watched this thing on TV about a bloke named David Irving who is a Holocaust denier. Yes, that means what you think it does -- he believes he has evidence for the argument that the Holocaust not only never happened, but that all of the survivors are liars. He believes that there never were any gas chambers at Auschwitz while it was operating as a camp, but there were some built post-war by the Poles. I'm not sure what he thinks happened to the 6.5 million Jews (not to speak of the millions of other disfavoured people) who were killed...Perhaps he believes that they were thoughtfully relocated to other parts of Europe and the world, or maybe they were abducted en masse by aliens. Who knows? Maybe he thinks they just disappeared. His only stable evidence seems to be that there has never been a document found with Hitler's signature on it. It is no surprise that he is unapologetically right-wing, supportive of Neo-Nazism and a racist who firmly believes that people should never date/marry outside their own race. On this show I watched Irving said that the white women who dated outside their race were women who were rejected by white men ("fat and unattractive", I believe he said).

I'm really not sure what to be deeply offended by first. 

There is no wonder that this man has been banned from entire countries and violently protested against. I am all for freedom of speech (which sometimes has its downsides), but one must take responsibility for the things they say and write. As Dr. Phil says (I can't believe I'm about to quote Dr. Phil. I'm sorry), "If you choose the actions, then you choose the consequences". The millions of people who oppose him and the millions of people who died in the Holocaust can't all be wrong. Unless you're David Irving, in which case, they can.

This guy has said things like: "Ridicule alone isn't enough, you've got to be tasteless about it. You've got to say things like 'More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.' Now you think that's tasteless, what about this? I'm forming an association especially dedicated to all these liars, the ones who try and kid people that they were in these concentration camps, it's called the Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust and other Liars, A-S-S-H-O-L-E-S. Can't get more tasteless than that, but you've got to be tasteless because these people deserve our contempt."

And he made up a little "ditty" for his young daughter in the '90s: 
"I am a Baby Aryan
Not Jewish or Sectarian
I have no plans to marry an
Ape or Rastafarian."

The only thing more hurtful and dangerous that spitting on the lives of the millions of people who were needlessly slaughtered during WWII is poisoning the very young and impressionable mind of a child. 

I'm not an easily offended person and I will fight to the death for peoples' freedom of speech, but some people genuinely make my heart hurt.