A while back now the Devil's Kitchen wrote a couple of posts about how the EU wanted to make holocaust denial a criminal offence and essentially lock down free speech. This morning he's posted with more details and the fact that the Financial Times has now commented on it.
As Iain rightly said, people who deny the holocaust are batty as fruitcakes, but the act of doing so should not be something that is restricted. If you want to say the world is made of orange peel and the leaders are all lizards then you should be free to do so. This is not something that should even come close to be passed into law, however obtuse someone's words may be they should free to say them.
6 comments:
Mmmmm. Well, it depends I suppose whether in doing so the party breaks any other laws. protocols or orders? Like using Holocaust Denial as a means to stir up racial hatred, to incite violence or destruction of property, or to intimidate a community. But that is already against the law anyway. And defamation, and wasting police time, and so on.
This is the bloody Krauts being holier-than-thou; like reformed 60 a day chain smokers, they're wholly in the forefront of anti-holocaustism. We're already getting the message "It was them Nazis what done it - nothing to do wiv us Huns, guv, honest!" from across the Rhine. Now they want a mandatory 3 year prison sentence for mentalists like David Irving, who is better treated with a condescending smile and a reminder that opinions are like arseholes than bird in Belmarsh.
chris paul: you sound a bit equivocal about the need for a specific law. I thing you then go on to point out why it is unnecessary. Incitement is the issue. If ones' rantings result in little more than you being labelled an idiot, (and helping editors fill column inches on a slow day) then what is the harm? I think raedwald is right: it’s kinda like a pendulum swing in attitude due to guilt. Shit, every country is guilty of something in its past. And present: WMD as an excuse to start a war, anyone? Even if they fucking existed, why start a fucking war over it?
Are not the muslims into holocaust
denial.
And the turks into another massacdre denial.
Where will it all end?
Anyway in the end the english are bound to be blamed for most things.
Holocaust Denial laws are not really about 'free speech' but about not lying.
In Germany, every stupid kid that is poisoned with this nonsense is a serious headache for everyone around them. That is why talking crap about history is verboten in Germany, because once you start, the entire flat earth society crawl out of the woodwork and wants Uncle Adolf back. You could argue that you should be able to educate and convince, and in theory that is correct, in practice, you're dealing with people whose horizon is somewhat limited to remain in the shade of the undergrowth...
Let's leave the Holocaust Denial laws to be a local solution to a local problem -- no-one in Europe other than a few nations have those issues and those that do should deal with those themselves in whichever way they see fit.
There is a very logical (but complex) reasoning to those laws (and oher laws hat guarantee democracy and freedom in Germany) which came out of the complete wreck that Germany was after the war. It is an interesting thing to consider because German is also a very modern democracy that was burnt badly, so safeguards were attempted to prevent any recurrence. In contrast, the UK has no constitution like Germany that would make it hard to turn into a dictatorship, and there exists no mechanism for the system itself to defend from vandalism. For example, in Germany you cannot become a civil servant if you are a member of a club/society that is known to be against the German constitutions(Grundgesetz).
It is also possible to prohibit societies/clubs if they are contrary to the Grundgesetz. Is it a good solution? I'm not sure but at least it puts a sane limit to tolerance, making it mandatory to adhere to a set of basic universal rules and rights for the citizens of Germany.
The HD laws very much have this flavour of thinking as a background, and for anyone not German this is not so easy to understand either, it is interesting to see someone naive of the complications discuss it -- I agree, on the face of it, the British classic arguments should be valid, but once you add in all the complex bits, a compromise is needed. Have you considered what the effect would be if Germany didn't ban HD, glorification, wearing of uniforms, greeting Hitler style etc? In the UK, you don't have a problem with it (unless you work for the Daily Express IIRC) but in Germany it would open up a world of pain. If you think a deluded SWP hippie is a handful to try and discuss with, try convincing a German Lonsdale kiddie that other humans are people too. You will quickly see why Germans made this particular kind of stupidity illegal ;-)
WHO'S BEHIND 'HATE' LAWS ?
To find out, Yahoo "The Earliest 'Hate' Criminals." (It is still legal in America to read it.) Marge
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