The laws banning denial of the Holocaust clearly arose from political fear, fear that fascist parties would use anti-Semitism—which served them so well before—to help fuel a return. There may also have been some guilt, on the part of some European countries, and a desire to show unequivocally that they accepted that this event had occurred. “See, we’re taking this seriously and so don’t go on blaming us and hating us.”
But having the laws hasn’t stopped the rise of neo-Nazis in Europe, coalescing around anti-immigrant sentiment among other issues. Nor have the laws stopped some people from denying the Holocaust: how many individuals is a modern democratic country willing to bring to court, try, and jail for thought crimes, speech crimes? Won’t the trial of David Irving simply harden the beliefs of neo-Nazis, giving them something real to feel persecuted about?
In addition, the advent of the Internet has in effect made it foolish for a country to attempt to keep its citizens from hearing a certain viewpoint.
These laws are not only unenforceable, they are counter-productive. A democracy wants it to appear that its citizens have the basic freedoms: of speech, press, religion and assembly, of travel and job choice, of non-discriminatory access to the services of the nation such as health care, education, legal protection. There are generally recognized exceptions to free speech/free press rights: slander/libel, violent overthrow of the government, persuading others to imminent violence against the persons or property of others. Fencing off new “no-free-speech” topics suggests that the government is less than free and encourages charges of favoritism. Over the last few months the Muslims have certainly used the laws against denial of the Holocaust as obvious proof that European governments protect Jews and persecute Muslims.
It is high time for Euopean nations to repeal these laws and go back to the basic free speech position: where ideas are freely debated, in the public arena of speech and newspapers and books, in that circumstance allow even the most repugnant positions to be asserted and then face whatever arguments an educated populace can raise (or perhaps just face their derision, an even more unpleasant fate for demagogues!).
On the other hand, countries may prevent someone in publicly-supported schools from teaching twelve-year-olds that the Holocaust never happened: Public schools are on the other side of a line, for the US and I presume for most other countries. You can maintain nearly any lunatic assertion you care to when speaking to adults or informally to children, but what is taught to captive young minds by authority figures (teachers) must meet different standards. What is taught should represent the consensus of the authorities in that particular subject matter, or at least be considered a theory that is respectable though unproven. That category does not include assertions such as “the earth is flat,” “the Holocaust was a fake, just like the moon landing,” “All living creatures were made by God in 6 days,” or “All living creatures originally lived inside the earth, until Kang the Great Master and Lord of All Life helped them all to climb up a great tree and emerge on the outer surface of the earth [Bushman creation story].”
European nations with Holocaust-denial laws must urgently move to repeal these unenforceable and damaging laws, because—in addition to the intrinsic harm in such laws—they now give cover to Islamists urging us to censor our media’s treatment of Islam and Islamic culture. Muslims are correct in seeing the Holocaust laws as hypocritical on the part of countries claiming to support freedom of expression. Either the laws are repealed or they provide another weapon for rolling back freedom of speech in the West.
Comments