I'd be much happier if the man were recanting because he had seen the light -- not because he wanted a lighter sentence. As it is, it doesn't mean much. If anything.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:So? That has very little with what I'm saying.
So what ARE you saying? What, specifically, about saying that the Holocaust never happened is likely to produce Nazis?
Frankly, it seems the counterargument -- that making the Holocaust into unquestionable and obviously propagandistic doctrine will ultimately wind up producing Nazis -- has more going for it.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Would someone mind telling me exactly what his thesis is? It sounds in this thread like everyone is assuming he has denied the holocaust ever happened. The article made it sound like he was saying that fewer died in gas chambers than is generally assumed.
I think there's a huge gulf between the two propositions.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I think its important to understand why Holocaust denial is illegal in Austria.
Following WWII, the allied forces that occupied Austria and Germany pushed laws which made Facism/National Socialism illegal. Its not illegal for private citizens to hold these views, but it is illegal for public figures to endorse Nazi ideals. Political parties which support Nazi views can not receive legal recognition nor hold positions in the parlement. These laws were put in place because Hitler rose to power in part, by denying that Germany and Austria had really lost WWI. Both the Allied forces and the citizens of Germany and Austria didn't want that history to be repeated.
During the 60s and 70s, in both West Germany and Austria there was a very intense national dialogue as the the post WWII generation demanded that there parents speak openly and honestly about Germany's Nazi past. What arose out of that dialogue is a very fiercely held belief that complete honesty about Germany's Nazi history and anti-semetic past is essential to their democracy and their hopes for an ethical future.
Wolfgang Benz, who heads the Center for Anti-Semitism Research in Berlin. explains it this way
quote:Everyone has gotten it: The Holocaust took place, the genocide existed. And it wrought horrible consequences that we continue to suffer from today . . .
It (the Law against Holocaust denial) affects the agitator who claims the Jews prey on the German people, that they invented the Holocaust for that purpose, that foreigners should all be thrown out and that the discussion should finally be over with," "He must be punished because he engages in incitement of the masses, because he slanders the memory of those murdered, because he slanders our fellow citizens."
In the US, we have laws against slander. We believe that even in a society that views free speech as a fundamental human right, people should be punished for publically repeating lies that injure others. In Austria and Germany, Holocaust denial is viewed as a form of slander, a lie that hurts the whole society.
Austria and Germany lost their democracies once because of the lies and distortions told by facists. Is it any wonder that they consider such lies as a threat to their democracies today?
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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To be honest, I don't care whether they're locking him for saying that no Jews anywhere were ever killed, or just that a few hundred Jews were killed. Either way, they shouldn't be locking him up for saying it.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Weird guy. There are websites with info showing that he has no academic credentials and claims none, that he has fabricated evidence, lied under oath, etc., etc.
then there are websites claiming that he is among the greatest living historians.
So far, I still can't find anything that he's actually said. His own website purports to have copies of his speeches, but I can't find them there.
quote:at, specifically, about saying that the Holocaust never happened is likely to produce Nazis?
No one is likely to become a Nazi as long as they believe that the Nazi's were evil incarnate. The first step to promoting Nazi beliefs is to pursuade people that the Nazi's (and Hitler in particular) have been unfairly maligned by history. This is a key feature of most neo-Nazi groups and very central to Irvings writings.
The aim of most of Irving's writings is not merely to deny the Holocaust, but to paint the major Nazi war criminals (Goebbels, Himmler, Eichmann, etc.) as heros. Denying the holocaust is a central part of that because if you can pursuade people that these men have been unfairly charged with mass murder of the most egregious kind -- they go from being villains to being sympathetic victims.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I'm with Kwea on this one. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of censorship of free speech at this level, but I'm not willing to say a different society is obviously wrong because they put different priorities on something like this.
Nazism is bad. They are taking steps to prevent it's taking root in their society and are putting a higher priority on that then what I would value. I'm not going to then say that this comes from the same place as Nazis, especially as I know quite a bit about where things like Nazism comes from.
I remember a conversation a little while back wherein people where mocking Great Britian because they were debating banning long pointed kitchen knives and I'm thinking "Yeah, Great Britian puts a high value on keeping dangerous weapons away from people who may use them. So, for example, their murder rate is much, much lower than ours. I don't know that this is necessarily something to mock."
I'm not sure I've ever disagreed more intensely with you, S-Quizzle.
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
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We had a person like this in my building in NYC. She used to xerox her materials and hand them out to people at random on the streets around Columbia. Eventually she learned to ask people if they were Jewish before handing the stuff to her. I think some people got pretty upset about it. Eventually, they found out her husband was using university resources (a copy machine) to generate the garbage for her, so they fired him. That got them out of University housing. I felt bad for their son. He was an apparently well adjusted kid, from what I saw.
I saw him last walking his girlfriend home from high school. They made a cute couple. Him all Aryan looking. She very dark complected.
It restored my faith in humanity. Seriously, this poor kid grew up with a mom who was a serious nut job. And a father who was basically an enabler. And sure, he may have just been rebelling or something, but he was pretty darned "normal" as far as I could tell. And he didn't buy into his nutty parent's diseased mental ramblings.
My point is this -- while I might sympathize with some European countries' hoping to come to grips with their legacy, warts and all, attempting to stifle loons who spew garbage is not the right tactic, it seems to me. Ultimately, all you do is feed their little conspiracy theories and give them ammunition/publicity.
I say let 'em ramble. Educate the people and let 'em laugh.
Turning this fool into a martyr is a mistake.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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