Thoughts on David Irving

I'm intrigued by the case against David Irving. Here is a very controversial figure who is going to jail, if I understand correctly, for simply stating that he doesn't believe Hitler ordered the holocaust and many facts commonly accepted by the public about the holocaust are not true.

I don't think something like this would happen in the United States. Either because 1) Somebody that scholarly would never hit the mainstream media and probably wouldn't attract that much attention or 2) because our legal interpretation of the 1st Amendment is such that an American citizen would only face the public indictment of his peers and escape the any repercussions of the legal arena.

Either way, not to say he speaks the truth or he is lying, I've never been to any of the concentration camps, I've never been to Auschwitz - how do I know they really exist? I know that seems a bit far fetched, but stop and think about all of the things we commonly accept based on convention and not evidence.