Bullies and Banzhaf

I haven't yet mentioned Brian Monteith's book The Bully State, which is a rollicking good read. I reviewed it in the current Spiked Review of Books:

Readers who have not visited Britain for several years may be shocked by the lurch towards authoritarianism described in this book. Those who have witnessed the creep of the bully state first hand will be enraged, amused and informed in equal measure. Californian politicians can simply use it as an instruction manual.

Go have a look. And speaking of bullies...

Chubby ambulance-chaser John Banzhaf has called on e-cigarette users to sue e-cigarette makers. In a typically narcissistic press release, the ASH founder invites vapers to "possibly share in any damages awarded to users of this new product which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has declared 'illegal'."

Smokles provides an accurate character assessment of the litigious lard-ass:

I can think of no other example where the signatory of the letter refers to himself in the third person so many times and so magnificently. (In nine out of the thirteen paragraphs of his release, he refers to himself at least once, and even bestows upon himself a title: the Dean of Public Interest Lawyers).

You just have to wonder how this blowhard survived grade school.

Since nearly all e-cigarette users are very happy to be vaping rather than smoking, Banzhaf is once again displaying a certain detachment from reality with this press release. Judging by some of the comments at the e-cigarette forum, the ASH founder is going to struggle to find many takers:

Yeah, i'm sure we are going to turn on the hand that feeds us ... not.

That may be in his repetoire, being the disgusting turncoat sell-out pork belly that he obviously is, but it sure as diddly isn't in the most decent people's plans.

Similar sentiments are on display on the Tobacco Facts website which hosts the press release:

I wish these anti-smoking fanatics realized that by attacking e-cigarettes they’re actually supporting big tobacco.

They might be supporting big tobacco. They're certainly supporting the pharmaceutical industry, as Michael Siegel points out:

Interestingly, ASH is not promoting lawsuits against the pharmaceutical companies who market nicotine replacement products without informing their customers that these products contain detectable levels of carcinogens. Why this double standard?

Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that ASH is heavily funded by Big Pharma.

ASH is funded heavily by Big Pharma (specifically, by Pfizer - the maker of Chantix). If e-cigarettes really take off, they represent a huge threat to the profits of pharmaceutical companies, and in turn, they represent a threat to future funding of ASH. This conflict of interest is significant, but ASH has failed to disclose it in any of its statements about the dangers of electronic cigarettes, or in its propaganda designed to encourage vapers to sue e-cigarette companies.

Indeed ASH is funded by Pfizer (makers of Chantix, Nicorette etc.). It received $50,000 from the company in 2006 and is currently sharing the spoils of a $47 million grant made to various anti-smoking organisations. 

Banzhaf himself does very nicely as head of his charity, pocketing $226,000 in the last year their accounts were published. And although the FDA has concluded that Pfizer's stop-smoking drug Chantix is linked to suicide, Banzhaf is not involved in any of the lawsuits against Pfizer, nor will you find the word Chantix anywhere on ASH's website. 

Funny, that.

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Where do these numbers come from?

The last time I commented on a Radio 5 show, the presenter read it and left a comment, so I shall be careful what I say about Richard Bacon's debate about outdoor smoking bans last night. I have no idea where Bacon stands on the smoking issue. Like most people, he probably has no strong view either way. Still, he makes quite the devil's advocate, generally making the opposing view rather more forcefully than the person invited to do it themselves.

You can listen to the show here for 7 days if you're in the UK. A few things struck me about it...

Firstly, of all the people who called in, only two supported banning smoking outdoors, and they were both tobacco control professionals. One worked for a charity which, I must confess, I have never heard of - Heart Research UK - and the second only owned up to working in tobacco control after he had been on the line for several minutes. 

Secondly, the passive smoking theory has been well and truly discarded in favour of overt paternalism and the tyranny of the majority. The Heart Research UK spokeswoman was openly prohibitionist in a way that no one would have dared before July 2007.

Thirdly, the BBC have titled this show 'Should smoking be banned in all public places?' How quickly definitions of 'public places' shift and slide.

Finally, and most importantly, I was amazed by the mangling of the basic facts. Perhaps those of us who follow these issues closely assume too much of the media but it was repeatedly said - by the presenter - that the smoking ban has made a million people give up smoking. I have never heard this figure even from ASH or the Department of Health. 

I read this in The Independent in June 2008:

The nationwide smoking ban has triggered the biggest fall in smoking ever seen in England, a report says today.

More than two billion fewer cigarettes were smoked and 400,000 people quit the habit since the ban was introduced a year ago, which researchers say will prevent 40,000 deaths over the next 10 years.

But then I read this in the Daily Mail earlier this year:

The ban on smoking in public has failed to increase the number of people quitting, a report revealed yesterday.

And then earlier this year:

The number of smokers giving up has barely increased since the ban, despite a hike in the amount spent by the NHS on quitting services.

Figures show that nearly a quarter fewer smokers gave up the habit between April and September last year compared to 2007 - the year the ban on smoking in public places was brought in.

I don't know how many people have stopped smoking since the ban but it certainly isn't anything like a million. The most reliable source is usually the Office of National Statistics, which said - in March 2009 - that adult smoking prevalence was 21%, down from 22% before the ban. Since there were 9.5 million smokers before the ban (although estimates differ) that reduction equates to around 432,000 successful quitters. 

A 1% drop in smoking prevalence over two years is very much in line with the long-term decline so it is tenuous to say that this drop was attributable to the smoking ban at all. In time, we may even see the Irish phenomenon happen here and have many more people smoking.

The other statistic cited was that smokers cost the NHS £10 billion. Again, I've never heard this figure before. I've remember the old £1.5 billion well. I'm aware that there is now a £2.7 billion figure being bandied around (which began circulating, strangely enough, after the anti-alcohol lobby started saying that booze was costing The Health £2.7 billion). But never £10 billion. Even a Google search failed to unearth a single internet crank giving that number, so where on earth did it come from?

I ask this as a serious question. The number of people who check their facts on government websites and medical journals is tiny compared to the listenership of the average radio show. Regular readers will know that I quibble with official statistics from time to time - and I realise that I'm whistling in the wind by doing so - but even the official sources must wonder why they bother when they hear numbers being plucked out of thin air on national radio.

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Leeches

Via the Tobacco Harm Reduction blog, Smokles, I find an article of glorious common sense written by the editor of the irreplaceable STATS.org, Trevor Butterworth.

For two millennia, leeches were used to balance the humors--or to drain the patient of "excess" blood and other substances thought to be the cause of most of humanity's physical and mental ailments. 

In a similar vein, some doctors and public health advocates are turning to a modern equivalent of the leech--taxes--in order to draw "excess" money from going to "unhealthy" activities, thereby reducing disease and balancing health care spending.

Regular readers will greet the latest public health ruse with a familiar sigh:

Now the latest advice for "leeching" America comes from Dr. Lloyd I. Sederer, medical director for the New York State Office of Mental Health, and Dr. Eric Goplerud, director of the Center for Integrated Behavioral Health Policy at George Washington University. 

Writing in the Washington Post, they argue that imposing heavy taxes on alcohol would both reduce the harmful effects of heavy drinking and help pay for health reform. The logic is that if teens drink less, they'll have less unprotected sex, reducing their exposure to sexually transmitted diseases.

These people are deadly serious and - behold! - they come clutching research and a spurious statistic:

They claim that a tax increase of "3 cents per beer would cut youth gonorrhea by 9%"

So why not raise tax by 33 cents and reduce gonorrhea by 99%? Hell, why not go the extra cent and eradicate it entirely? Because, as Butterworth shows in delicious detail, this statistic is completely bogus. It comes from a 2000 paper published in the Journal of Law and Economics which noted that cases of gonorrhea fell between 1981 and 1991, at a time when beer tax had doubled.

What more evidence could anyone ask for?! Why, it's almost as compelling as the well known association between rock music and oil production:

Using the classic junk science tactic of cherry-picking, and making the classic mistake of confusing correlation with causation, the authors stated that this association is "consistent with the assertion that alcohol tax increases can reduce STD rates". 

Consistent, perhaps, but utterly wrong. Rates of STDs had been falling before the tax rise and they continued to fall afterwards. Between 1992 and 1996 - with no rise in beer tax - there was a decline in rates of STDs that was almost as sharp as that seen in the previous years.

So what really happened? A far more convincing reason for the fall in STD rates during the late 1980s and early 1990s is AIDS awareness and the corresponding upsurge in condom use. 

It is far from unreasonable to conclude that the steepest decline in gonorrhea rates between 1991 and 1993 had more to do with increased awareness of the dangers of unprotected sex than the sobering effects of an extra 2.7 cents on 12 ounces of beer.

This, surely, is the real reason. But this logical explanation offers no excuse for the forces of public health to tax, tax and tax. Consequently, it is ignored and replaced with junk science. The only wonder is that it has taken them nearly ten years to catch on to the potential for extortion that lay dormant in the 2000 study.

Will it ever end? And as Smokles says, wouldn't it be simpler if we just gave the state all our disposable income and let the politicians and health groups decide what it gets spent on? 

*Thanks to Dick Puddlecote for the graph.

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Liverpool votes against lunacy

From the BBC (follow that link because you will never find the story if you go to the main news page at http://news.bbc.co.uk):

Proposals to give automatic 18 ratings to films shown in Liverpool which feature smoking characters have been rejected by councillors.

Oh dear. With minimum pricing of alcohol being rejected in Scotland, it's been a bad few days for the puritans.

A public consultation found little support for the idea and cinema owners felt it would affect business...

73% of young people asked about the policy opposed the idea. Officials found that 65% of adults questioned also opposed the idea.

Interesting that young people are even more opposed to this hare-brained scheme than adults, particularly since Colin Eldridge claimed that it was young people who were demanding it. But then since these teenagers were effectively being asked "Shall we treat you like idiots and prevent you from seeing a whole bunch of films?" their reluctance to say 'yes' isn't so surprising.

With so little apparent public support, Liverpool's Licensing Committee will almost certainly have to abandon the idea. But don't expect to hear the last of it, as the Committee has also offered some advice to the anti-smokers:

The licensing committee advised the PCT to consider lobbying at national level, or commission further Liverpool-based research to back the idea.

An interesting choice of words, don't you think? Not "to see if the policy will be effective or popular", but "to back the idea". A pretty clear case of commissioning evidence to support a pre-ordained conclusion. 

Watch this space for that 'evidence' to appear. One thing's for sure - they won't be troubling the general public for their views again.

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Political credibility vs. scientific credibility

I was reminded of the following story by Michael Siegel who mentioned it today on his blog. I was going to include it in Velvet Glove, Iron Fist but left it out for reasons of space. It is an interesting example of how the anti-smoking movement responds to criticism.

In 1998, Robert Levy and Rosalind Marimont wrote an article questioning the oft-cited estimate of 400,000 smoking-related deaths per annum in the USA. Levy and Marimont gave several reasons why they believed this to be an exaggerated figure.  

Only nine years earlier, the Surgeon General's estimate had been 335,600. The US population had increased during that period but nowhere near as sharply as the supposed number of tobacco deaths; a number which was based entirely on estimates rather than death certificates. Over the same period, it was claimed that one quarter, then one third, then one half, of all smokers died as a result of their habit.

Levy and Marimont evaluated the figures from the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and the National Centre for Health Statistics and concluded that: 

"To be blunt, there is no credible evidence that 400,000 deaths per year - or any number remotely close to 400,000 - are caused by tobacco."

This was not the kind of talk that gladdenned the hearts of anti-smoking activists, nor did Levy & Marimont's assertion that "the campaign against cigarettes is not entirely honest" make them any friends in tobacco control. 

But by the 1990s, ad hominem attacks on anyone who did not toe the anti-smoking line were the first line of defence for Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights (ANR) and, in a counter-attack, Dr Michael Siegel - a senior member of the ANR - wrote an article which included the following statement:

"Robert Levy and Rosalind Marimont released a report (issued by the CATO Institute) attacking the CDC and its estimate that smoking causes 400,000 deaths each year. All of these authors have strong connections to the tobacco industry... Robert Levy works for the Cato Institute, which receives financial support from the tobacco industry and Rosalind Marimont is with the National Smokers Alliance which also receives tobacco industry financial support. 

(Note: Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights can provide copies of tobacco industry documents which reveal the details of these authors' ties to the tobacco industry.)"

Levy did indeed worked for the Cato Institute which, like a number of libertarian organisations, had been given tobacco industry grants in the past. But neither Levy nor Marimont had ever personally received any money from the tobacco industry and Levy replied to Siegel:

Dr. Michael Siegel,

Yes, I accept your offer to "provide copies of tobacco industry documents which reveal the details of [my] ties to the tobacco industry." I'm not aware of any such document(s) but, considering the legal exposure if your allegation is without foundation, I'm sure you'll be able to substantiate what you have written and broadly disseminated over the Internet.

I look forward to your prompt response.

Robert A. Levy

Michael Siegel replied:

Dear Mr. Levy:

I did not intend to make any personal allegations about your ties to the tobacco industry, and certainly did not ask you to provide copies of any documents. (I'm not sure who made such a request - perhaps it came from Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights). The only statement that I made was that the Cato Institute has received funds from the tobacco industry. This was information that was provided to me (with what I believe is adequate documentation) by Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights.

Nevertheless, I will not disseminate inaccurate information. Please let me know if it is not true that the Cato Institute has received funds from tobacco companies, because if that statement is not correct, I will have it corrected immediately.

Sincerely,
Michael Siegel

This response did not satisfy Levy who replied:

Dr. Siegel,

You did indeed make personal allegations about my ties to the tobacco industry. In your recent article, in the very next sentence after you mentioned me and Ms. Marimont, you noted that "Americans for Nonsmokers Rights can provide copies of tobacco industry documents which reveal the details of these authors' ties to the tobacco industry." That verbatim statement couldn't be clearer; it says, explicitly, that I have personal ties to the industry and you can prove it.

Now I insist that you forward a copy of the relevant documents. I'm afraid that your e-mail has it backwards. It is you that must provide supporting documents to me, not vice versa.

I await your documents, or a published retraction and apology.

Robert A. Levy

Siegel replied:

Dear Mr. Levy,

By stating that the authors mentioned in the article had ties to the tobacco industry, I did not mean to suggest that you had a personal affiliation with the tobacco industry. I simply meant to suggest that you have ties to the industry in the sense that the organization you work for has received funding from the tobacco industry. However, I can now see how misleading my statement was.

I realize now that the way in which I wrote the article was very misleading, and could have been misinterpreted. I therefore wish to apologize to you and to publicly retract the statement that I made that could have implied a personal tie between you and the tobacco industry in some way other than the receipt of funds from the industry by your organization.

I have therefore asked Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights to post on the internet site the following retraction and apology:

Retraction and Apology
Re: "Responding to Tobacco Industry Attacks on the Scientific Evidence Linking Secondhand Smoke to Disease and Death"
Michael Siegel, MD, MPH
August 27, 1999

In a column dated July 19 and entitled "Responding to Tobacco industry Attacks on the Scientific Evidence Linking Secondhand Smoke to Disease and Death," I unintendedly suggested that Robert Levy (who works for the Cato Institute and issued a report regarding CDC's estimate of smoking-attributable mortality) has a personal tie to the tobacco industry.  

I did not intend to imply any kind of personal tie between Mr. Levy and the tobacco industry, other than the fact that he works for the Cato Institute, which according to Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, has received tobacco industry funds. I can see how my statement could have been misinterpreted to imply some sort of personal affiliation between Mr. Levy and the tobacco industry.

In particular, I had stated that "Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights can provide copies of tobacco industry documents which reveal the details of these authors' ties to the tobacco industry." With respect to Mr. Levy, I intended to imply only that ANR has documents showing that the Cato Institute received tobacco industry funds. However, I can see how what I actually stated may imply a personal connection. I regret this and I publicly retract the statement.

In addition to publicly retracting any suggestion of a personal tie between Mr. Levy and the tobacco industry, I also publicly apologize to Mr. Levy for making the statement. In the future, I will be more careful in my writing when making any kind of statement that could be interpreted as a personal allegation. Again, my profound apology to Mr. Levy."

In addition, I have asked Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights to remove the article from their website and to discontinue any further distribution of the article.

Again, my profound apology. I can only assure you that I will never make this type of mistake again.

Sincerely,
Michael Siegel

Satisfied with this retraction Levy agreed to drop the matter:

Dr. Siegel:

Thank you for your prompt response.

Your "Retraction and Apology" is fair and reasonable and I accept your offer to have it published. Assuming that Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights does indeed comply with your request to, first, post the "Retraction and Apology"; second, cease distribution of the underlying article; and third, remove that article from their Website, I will consider the matter closed.

Unless I hear otherwise, I will expect your "Retraction and Apology" to be posted within a week. Meanwhile, I will leave it to Ms. Marimont, who is copied on this e-mail, to contact you if she requires additional language in order to resolve her similar and equally justified grievance.

Perhaps we can continue the tobacco debate by focusing on substantive issues -- even though you have advised your colleagues that impugning the character of their opponents is the safer and more effective course of action.

Robert A. Levy

That would have been the end of the matter were it not for the subsequent involvement of Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, who viewed any retraction as a sign of weakness in the face of what it considered to be tobacco interests. They denied Siegel's request to have the offending article removed from their website and, powerless to do any more, Siegel sent Levy the response he had received from Pete Hanauer, who had co-founded the group with Stanton Glantz:

Mr. Levy,

Per your request, this is the email I received from ANR refusing to post my retraction and apology.

Michael Siegel

From: "Hanauer, Pete"
To: "'mbsiegel@bu.edu'"
Cc: "'juliac@no-smoke.org'"
Subject: Levy, et al
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 13:58:51

Mike:

After further discussion with Julia and receipt of more input from other Board members, we have concluded that the possible "clarification" that you and I discussed is simply not feasible. There is a strong concensus [sic] that we do not want to post ANYTHING on our web page that can be construed as an apology or as backtracking from the position taken in the paper you wrote. 

More specifically, Julia has convinced me that, given Levy's long history of attacking ETS science, it would be a mistake to state anything that would give him credence. So, we have decided to remove your name from the paper, as you originally stated to me that you wanted to do, and we will post an addendum to the effect that an attempt was made to censor it. Julia will be sending you a copy of that. I realize that your views on the matter are heart-felt and sincere, and that mere removal of your name from the paper, without more, will not be entirely satisfactory to you. 

But at this point ANR must put its political credibility ahead of what you consider to be your scientific credibility. As I stated to you earlier, you are being much too hard on yourself and perhaps after some time passes you will feel more comfortable with the notion that the paper was accurate and that you really had nothing to apologize for. You have done far too much good on this issue to let this one incident deter you from further strong advocacy, and I hope you will continue to be a valuable asset to the movement.

Of course, if you wish to discuss this further, I would be happy to talk to you.

Pete

The attack on Levy and Marimont's work remained on the ANR's website with the following appendum:

Robert Levy, one of the authors mentioned in the article below, has attempted to censor this article by making a veiled threat of legal action against the original author. While we have acceded to the author's request to have his name removed from the article, ANR stands by the full content of this article, which remains as originally written.

We have the utmost respect for the truth and no respect for bullies, and will not stop speaking one to appease the other.

Levy then made another request to ANR, asking to see the supposed documents that linked him to the tobacco industry. ANR's executive director Julia Carol replied:

"We provide documentation as a courtesy to the public, reporters, policy makers, etc. We do not extend this courtesy to the tobacco industry or [its] allies...

If you find [what we have said about you] to be the least bit offensive then I suggest you change the work you do."

References:

'Lies, damned lies and 400,000 smoking related deaths', Levy & Marimont, Cato, 1998 [PDF]

'Show me the documents', Robert Levy, Reason, April 2000

'Anti-tobacco activists admit politics more important than science', www.junkscience.com

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What have the Balkans ever done for us?

Blimey, how did this slip past The Observer's editor?*

A whirl of tutus in a Zagreb cafe-bar during a break in ballet rehearsals: poise, and skin, and fabulous discs of swan-white tuile, and yet what are our eyes drawn towards? Exactly. A little paper tube, being happily smoked.

The smell will be of black Balkan tobacco, yes; but it is also the smell of rebellion and the first successful example of people-power since the idea of smoking bans began sweeping the developed world. It's only 18 years or so since the notion first captured the imaginations of thoughtful caring responsible/interfering self-righteous killjoy (insert own prejudice here) authorities. California went first: 37 US states have now followed. In Europe, smokers sneered: at the surf-dude health-fascists over there and at the more, shall we say, organised continental countries – Norway, Austria (of course) so swift to follow – and laughed that it would never happen here. [nb. Austria wasn't swift to follow at all. Even today it only has a partial smoking ban - Chris]

The surprise was not that it did happen in Britain – the idea of another ban, particularly on anything fun, was obviously very catnip to this government – but that it was accepted so meekly. In Ulster, the free spirits, all those broths of boys so full of the rebel songs, lined up to smoke in the soft, soft rain. The thrawn, torn-faced Scots embraced the ban with hacking Calvinist fervour. England and Wales made angry noises, then succumbed: smokers through all these isles, for all our fine words, gave in like meek, coughing lambs.

What have the Balkans ever done for us? Until I saw this picture, I would have said pretty bloody little. Anger, wars, vampires, evil food, poisoned rivers, dictators, distrust, revenge and fear and it still features the only part of the world – mad northern Albania – where I've been offered a handgun for protection in a hotel because they'd lost the bedroom key. But Croatia rebelled against its bar/cafe smoking ban and simply kept on smoking. The ban has now been revoked. Plucky little Balkans. There is hope.

* I'm being a little unfair. Although The Observer's editorial stance is firmly pro-ban, it is also the journalistic home of Barbara "banning smoking in pubs was a really terrible idea" Ellen and Victoria "I'd have shoved her off the platform myself" Coren. 

The piece above was written by Euan Ferguson who also has form for criticising smoking bans.

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Glorifying communism shouldn't be a crime

Having just finished reading Anne Applebaum's superb history of the Gulag, I'm inclined to welcome anything that reminds people of the horrors of Soviet communism. Still, I'm rather uncomfortable about this:

Up to two years in jail await anyone glorifying communism according to an amendment to Article 256 of the Polish criminal code — the race-hate article — which is likely to come into force next year. The ban outlaws “the production, distribution, sale or possession ... in print, recordings or other means of fascist, communist or other symbols of totalitarianism”

No, no, no. Poland, you don't need to do that censorship stuff any more. You're free. And that includes being free to glorify communism if you are stupid enough to want to do so.

“Communism was a terrible, murderous system that took millions of lives,” said the Polish historian Wojciech Roszkowski. “It was similar to National Socialism and there is no reason to treat these two systems, and their symbols, differently.”

Quite right. Poland's new law is a well-meaning attempt to show that communism was every bit as vile as fascism. This holds a certain allure for many, even for those who, like Tim Worstall, believe in free speech:

Well, actually, such limitations on free speech aren’t really desirable at all. But putting the two great murderous ideologies of the 20th century on an equal footing certainly appeals.

True, but I would argue (and I think Tim would do too) that Holocaust denial shouldn't be a crime at all. It is in Poland, of course, and in another 12 countries. It isn't in Britain but that didn't prevent British historian David Irving from getting banged up in Austria for "trivialising the Holocaust".

One of the main arguments against making Holocaust denial a crime is that the censorship won't end there. And that's exactly what's happened in Poland. There is a logical progression from banning the Swastika to banning the hammer and sickle. There is no reason to allow Gulag denial whilst Holocaust denial is a crime.

But then why not prohibit 'moon landing denial' as well? Ah, but the moon landing didn't kill millions of people. Alright then, what about climate change denial? Global warming will - according to many - kill more than Stalin and Hitler combined, and some people do indeed want to see its 'denial' made illegal.

David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial. Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence - it is a crime against humanity after all.

Another argument is that such laws are difficult to interpret and problematic to enforce. The banning of historic "symbols" is not as easy as it sounds, particularly in countries where such symbols were produced in their millions. What about antiques? Does a bust of Karl Marx count? Do war medals or books count? Again, the question is where does it end? As The Times reports:

The European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that a similar Hungarian ban on wearing “symbols of tyranny” was too broad and indiscriminate.

Britain faces the same problem with its ill-considered and badly written laws against "inciting religious hatred" and "glorifying terrorism". They are open to wide interpretation. Do Glaswegian football chants "incite religious hatred"? Would a biopic of Nelson Mandela's life "glorify terrorism"?

But the most compelling argument against denial laws (apart from the obvious issue of free speech) is that you can't keep track of the loonies and the cranks if you drive them underground. Historians have nothing to fear from Holocaust or Gulag deniers. As Anne Applebaum says in her book:

Our tolerance for the odd 'Gulag denier' in our universities will not destroy the moral fabric of our society.

The "deniers" are few in number and their claims can be easily refuted. David Irving is a fool and can be shown to be a fool, but I don't think he is a danger to anybody. And even if there are a million Communist "glorifiers" in Poland, their repression will only feed their anger and sense of injustice. That, in fact, is precisely what happened to Hitler and Stalin when they were imprisoned for their political views. Didn't exactly hold them back though, did it? And banning free speech and political "symbols" is exactly the kind of thing they did when they got into power.

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