Melinda Jones argues (against Peter Singer) that laws criminalizing Holocaust denial are justified, free speech principles notwithstanding. I've already written at length about this (see here and follow the links back), so I'll try to be brief; I think Jones's argument is confused.
Referring to Mill's famous case for freedom of opinion, she faults Mill for assuming a 'market place' of ideas and failing to understand that the players there aren't equal - there are 'stronger parties and weaker parties, more powerful actors and less powerful actors'. Jones then goes on to say that free speech principles have to be compatible with 'a society in which all people are treated with equal concern, dignity and respect'. From this it follows, for her, that 'Irving was rightly jailed in Austria'.
It should be noted, first, that there are two different arguments at work: one is for limits on free speech that protect the weak from the strong; the other is for limits that ensure 'equal concern, dignity and respect'. Taking the second argument first, in the form stated by Melinda Jones it is a recipe for very unfree speech. Just think about never being able to say anything that implied an unequal concern for different people. Or: may one never mock anybody, even in mild satirizing forms, because mockery can involve disrespect? I would say that Mill's own principle - of preventing harm to others - is a better basis on which to rule out hate speech, incitement to violence and the like, than are notions of concern and respect. It implies some threshold of relative seriousness.
However that may be, the other argument - that speech must be curtailed to protect the weak - won't necessarily rule out hate speech. It will depend on the distribution of power and influence between those who utter it and those who are its targets. This will also mean that some hate speech is OK and other hate speech isn't. It's also not clear to me that the following judgement can be sustained:
Holocaust deniers such as David Irving are powerful players who effectively silence the voices of the less powerful, by encouraging hatred and by legitimising antisemitism.Irving's stuff is odious, but as things are, he and his ilk aren't powerful, and the stuff they put about doesn't silence anyone. Holocaust denial does encourage hatred and anti-Semitism, being a form of it, but that is something different.