Posted on 02/15/2007 10:57:59 PM PST by Muentzer2005
A German neo-Nazi publisher was yesterday sentenced to five years in prison for inciting racial hatred and denying that the Nazis murdered six million Jews.
Ernst Zündel, who was extradited from Canada to face trial in Germany in 2005, received the maximum sentence available for the crime of Holocaust denial after being found guilty on 14 counts ...
"You might as well argue that the sun rises in the west, but you cannot change that the Holocaust has been proven," he said, referring to Zündel's work Did Six Million Really Die? The prosecution accused him of using "pseudo-scientific methods" in an attempt to overturn the accepted facts on the Holocaust.
But campaigners for Zündel, 67, said he was a peaceful advocate of the right to free speech who was being denied that right. His supporters filled the courtroom.
At the close of the trial Zündel - who also wrote The Hitler We Loved and Why, and has described Hitler as "a decent and very peaceful man" - asked the court in Mannheim to set up an international commission of historians to explore the Holocaust. He said he wanted "hard facts" and not just witness statements, and that if the commission could prove Jews were gassed he would "hold a press conference at which I would publicly apologise to Jews, Israelis and the world".
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Baubau never said Zundel is being punished for uttering the truth. He/she said that some species of truth utterance have been criminalised. Surely you know this. There is a principle at stake here.
Anyway, he's off to jail. :)
And whom might that be? Ernst Zundel is a German citizen.
Recently, some fundamentalist preachers have been hauled before the Canadian Tribunal for quoting the Bible in public
Could you document that ?
If you're wrong about that, we'll win the War on Islamo-fascism by continuing to silence martyrs.
Very simplistic answer.
What you call "martyrs" are merely foot soldiers.
If you are going to kill somebody, it is far more effective to kill the radical cleric than poisons a thousand young minds or prove him a fool to his followers than to wait ten years to kill the product of such a poison.
The poison has already been unleashed by this man's arguments and future generations will see that your response was neither to kill him nor prove him wrong but to merely prohibit even bringing up the subject.
To put it less simplistically, most people recognize and reject epistemological relativism. Most people know the difference between an Islamo-fascist and an average American who would not want our nation to become a theocracy.
So a violent, Islamo-fascist propagandist will gather a few abnormal, unhealthy followers within a given amount of time. Give him more time, and he'll gather more losers. Give him enough time, and he might gather enough to perpetrate much violence. But if we shut him away from being able to propagandize to others and humiliate him, he won't be able to gather more prideful followers.
Liars don't need martyrs. Because if they set out to propagandize murder of whole ethnic groups, the same liars tend to fabricate histories of martyrs. Regardless of (and partly because of) their tactics, we win wars against them. Perpetrators of the big lie tend to be vain--blind to the fact that most educated others see them for what they are.
It appears Europeans are not the only ones who need lessons in free speech. Free speech means allowing speech we do not agree with, and in many cases find repugnant. Holocaust denial falls into these categories. There are some forms of speech which are not permissible, i.e. yelling fire in a crowded theater and inciting criminal behavior, but they do relate to the free expression of ideas and opinions. Natan Sharansky calls it the "Town Square Test".
When you get on the slippery slope of outlawing speech with the reasoning you outline, who will be the arbiter? Who will decide what is allowable or not? The irony is that engaging in such government regulated speech control, i.e. censorship, leads to the very thing that the Germans wish to avoid once the wrong people get control of the government.
Personally, I would rather have people with such opinions out in the open, where they can be refuted and repudiated.
I will stand by my original statement that Europe, and the rest of the world have much to learn from the USA about freedom of speech. And freedom of religion as well.
Agreed.
It is ironic that the German government should make a civil rights martyr out of the man.
yes, I am serious... he is retired as a published and has not published any books for years. I mentioned his website. I agree it is odious. That does not make it right that free speech should be somehow less free. When we allow the governments to start defining free speech to suit any group, and criminalizing speech they disagree with, they WILL expand their definition.
And you tell me that Germany is a totalitarian state??
According to Zundel, his Visa expired but he was awaiting a hearing. The government claimed to have moved the hearing date forward and Zundel did not attend, having attended numerous previous hearings. He, his wife and his attorney all claim that they were not notified of the change in hearing dates.
Veronica, I think I need to repeat myself.
The real problem is what comes AFTER.
After these holocaust deniers nuts ... who else is going to be put in jail?
I'm thinking about accusations of 'xenophobia' or 'islamophobia', for example.
A political culture that is in denial about a serious social problem will condemn those who seek to discuss it, and try its best to silence them. For a long time now the European political class has been in denial about the problems posed by the large-scale immigration of people who do not enter into the European way of life. It has turned angrily on those who have warned against the disruption that might follow, or who have affirmed the right of indigenous communities to refuse admission to people who cannot or will not assimilate. And one of the weapons that the élite has used, in order to ensure that it is never troubled by the truths that it denies, is to accuse those who wish to discuss the problem of ‘racism and xenophobia’. That is the problem.
Soon you'll see headlines like, "Global Warming Denier Given Five Years in Prison."
I haven't yet read all the replies on this thread so I may be repeating but I'll risk it...
Would you use the "free speech" argument to defend a person who yelled: "FIRE", in a crowded theatre, when there was none?
I ask because it seems that you, and many here, believe that a person's right to "free speech" extends even to the point of harm to others.
It would be very interesting to see how different the reaction of many, who would have no limits on free speech, would be if their favorite web site, and its membership, were slandered (or libeled, if you prefer) with the obvious intent of causing it, and them, irreparable harm.
I said nothing about Germany being a totalitarian state. I merely questioned the wisdom of prohibiting debate as opposed to proving a fool wrong.
Thia came out in France and it was signed by mainstream (and mostly on the left and Jewish) historians.
France: Call by 19 Historians for the Repeal of Several Statutory Clauses
Agence France Presse release of December 12, 2005
Paris — In a text sent today to the AFP headed “Liberté pour l’histoire!” (Freedom for history!), nineteen leading historians have come out for the repeal of several statutory clauses concerning “events of the past”, legislation that, according to them, is “unworthy of a democratic regime”.
They refer to articles of the laws of July 13, 1990 (editor’s note: aiming to punish any racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic act, ) January 29, 2001 (editor’s note: relating to the acknowledgement of the 1915 Armenian genocide), May 21, 2001 (editor’s note: aiming to acknowledge the slave trade as a crime against humanity) and February 23, 2005.
The last mentioned law’s controversial article 4 (in favour of repatriated French citizens) stipulates that “the school curricula shall recognise in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, notably in North Africa”.
The text is signed by Jean-Pierre Azéma, Elisabeth Badinter, Jean-Jacques Becker, Françoise Chandernagor, Alain Decaux, Marc Ferro, Jacques Julliard, Jean Leclant, Pierre Milza, Pierre Nora, Mona Ozouf, Jean-Claude Perrot, Antoine Prost, René Rémond, Maurice Vaïsse, Jean-Pierre Vernant, Paul Veyne, Pierre Vidal-Naquet and Michel Winock.
“Moved by the ever more frequent political interventions in the assessment of events of the past and by the legal proceedings affecting historians and thinkers, we see fit to recall the following principles”, they write.
According to them, “history is not a religion. The historian accepts no dogma, respects no prohibition, knows no taboos. History is not morality. The historian’s role is not to exalt or to condemn: he explains. History is not the slave of current affairs. The historian does not stick contemporary ideological outlines onto the past and does not bring today’s sensitivity into the events of former times”.
“History is not remembrance”, they continue. “The historian, in a scientific procedure, collects people’s memories, compares them with each other, confronts them with documents, objects, traces, and establishes the facts. History takes remembrance into account, it does not amount merely to remembrance. History is not a juridical object. The State’s policy, albeit motivated by the best intentions, is not the policy of history”.
“It is in violation of these principles that clauses of successive laws — notably those of July 13, 1990, January 29, 2001, May 21, 2001 and February 23, 2005 — have restricted the historian’s freedom, have told him, on pain of sanctions, what he must look for and what he must find, have prescribed him his methods and set down limits. We call for the repeal of these legislative provisions that are unworthy of a democratic regime”, they conclude.
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