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 ...
FReepers are wrongfully looking at this from an American viewpoint.
Nazism, WWII and the Holocaust have been by far Germany's worst moment in their history. They are rightfully, willing to do whatever it takes to make sure those times never set upon them again. By the end of World War II their country laid in ruins and they are willing to jail anyone who hints at bringing an ideology that could once again be destructive to their country.
Free speech brings personal responsibility with it. Holocaust denial is in many ways not free speech. Free speech means you can have an opinion, but not necessarily that you can deny a horrible fact and in doing so you in fact advocate another genocide since you do not even recognize the first one.
"Death and life are in the power of the tongue". Proverbs 18:21
America is fundamentally different from Europe - even from England. Our Founders believed in free speech - even freedom for unpopular and stupid speech, in fact ESPECIALLY for unpopular and stupid speech. Nothing has changed - we're still different from Europe, we still have freedoms that they don't have. THANK GOD. In Europe, they'll soon be imprisoning Christians who counsel against homosexuality. The First Amendment will make that harder to do in America (not that the liberals won't try)
It's a slippery slope towards an Orwellian government.
I agree with you that ideas have consequences.
However, History is not a juridical object. In a free country, it is the job neither of Parliament nor of the judicial authorities to define the historical truth.
That's what democracy looks like. Theirs won't look like ours. Turkey has restrictions on speech and religion that we as Americans would find onerous, but they've helped maintain the only stable, secular democracy in the Muslim world.
Ernst Zündel is a vile creep. That said, I don't think anyone should be jailed for expressing an opinion. But that said, he knew the law and knowingly broke it. If intentionally breaking an unjust law is an admirable act of civil disobedience, part of that process is taking the punishment.
The problem with being willing to imprison somebody because he says bad or nasty things is that the same power - the power of government to imprison for speech - could be used against you if the government doesn't like what you say or believe. You'll be setting the precedent that Hillary will use against you and me to jail us for our views. I prefer the First Amendment to the authoritarianism that Germany is showing by jailing this nut.
It's even worse. I know something about this case.
The US Government ALSO cooperated.
I once met Ernst Zundel, a naturalized Canadian citizen, because he is married to the mother (an American Citizen) of a mentally retarded man who's computer I kept running until last year when he moved from California to his mother's home.
I also disagree with Zundel's position on the Holocaust and vociferously argued with him about his opinions, but he was certainly denied his civil rights both in the United States and Canada. In actual fact, Zundel did not write the books they mention in the article. He was merely the Canadian publisher of books written in Canada and the United States.
He has been convicted in Germany of "thought crimes" that occurred outside the jurisdiction where he has been tried and convicted: books published years ago in Canada.
Part of what he was accused of was running a "holocaust denial website"... which happens to be based in the United States and is blocked in Germany. Again, the jurisdiction of the courts that convicted him is very questionable... the crimes were not committed in German jurisdiction.
Zundel had been quietly living in the United States for several years with his wife, when he was arrested and deported to Canada for missing an immigration hearing that neither he nor his attorney were notified of.
Eight armed immigration officers arrested him at his house at gunpoint and then kept him incommunicado, not even allowed a phone call, for several days and moved from jail to jail in several states before being summarily taken across the Canadian border and handed to Canadian authorities for trial before their Human Rights Tribunal for "hate crimes" for publishing the books. During the entire trial, he was kept solitary confinement as a "terrorist." (One of the interesting rulings by the Tribunal, when Zundel's Canadian attorney presented evidence that Zundel had not written the words he was being accused of saying was "The truth is not a defense in this court."
In his German trial, his defense attorneys were repeatedly warned that they could not say anything that might be interpreted as denying the holocaust or they too would be arrested and tried. Twice, his defense attorneys were fired by the prosecutor and he had to start over with newly appointed (by the prosecutor) attorneys.
Be very fearful for the freedom of speech. This is the third check point on the slippery slope that passage of "hate crime" legislation has put us on.
Slander is a CIVIL matter... they should have sued him for damages.
Everything requires balance. At one time, in America, ones exercise of free speech could, and sometimes did, result in a duel. Today, such matters are supposed to be settled by the courts but obtaining justice is slow and expensive.
The result is that things have evolved to the point where even our media seems to feel free to say just about anything it wishes.
Such abuses present a greater threat to the freedom of speech than the action of the German court, in this case.
It takes a Nazi to jail someone for simply disagreeing on what crimes a Nazi committed.
Its ironic really. If the German government will imprison you for having improper thoughts and writing them down...imagine what they will do to people who have an improper heritage.
Essentially, the German government facistist acts here, prove they are are quite capable of doing what this writer denies.
It seems that the seeds of the next totalitarian German government are quite healthy.
"FReepers are wrongfully looking at this from an American viewpoint. "
The American viewpoint is what put an end to those attrocities.
During WW II, Americans were ALSO "looking at this from an American viewpoint. ". View from a German viewpoint in WW II, Americans would have been considered wrong.
Simply, this is a case where we are right, and they are wrong.
Ernst Zundel was a publisher in Canada over 30 years ago. He's been retired for years. He paints pictures. When he published the books, it was NOT AGAINST THE LAW IN CANADA... he has never published anything in Germany.
Canada changed its laws several years ago and created the new category of "hate crimes" and included writing things the government did not approve... they used this law to deport a CANADIAN CITIZEN to Germany. Incidentally, Hate crimes such as this are tried before an appointed "Tribunal" and not a jury of one's peers. There is no appeal from the Tribunal's decision.
Recently, some fundamentalist preachers have been hauled before the Canadian Tribunal for quoting the Bible in public.
To paraphrase Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller: "When they came for Ernst Zundel, I didn't say anything because I was not a Holocaust denier..."
No, many countries in Europe just have different free speech laws than the U.S. It doesn't make one or the other more right or more wrong. Europeans would say that the US has much to learn from them about the sanctity of life, since we still put people to death.
I've covered American and European free speech laws in my (graduate school) classes here in France and most students see no problem with the prohibitions on denying the Holocaust or the Nazi Party. They're usually a bit appalled when I show pictures of neo-Nazis or the KKK parading in the US.
The Holocaust happened here, on their soil, at the hand of their people against their people. I think that makes a difference in the way normal, sane people think about it. My students were opposed to a proposed French law imposing criminal penalties for denying the Armenian genocide, because they found that to be an undue burden on free speech. The Armenian genocide didn't occur in France and didn't involve French people, so they thought that France didn't have enough interest in the matter to penalize speech.
I personally prefer the American approach to free speech, but just because we do it one way in our country doesn't mean the rest of the world is wrong for not doing it our way. That is the typical arrogant attitude some people find so annoying about Americans.
Germans didn't learn anything from sending Hitler to jail?
Holocaust denial may be nuts, but criminal ? It's the kind of thing that makes otherwise insignificant people into martyrs for an unjust cause.
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.
How soon might we see the German government demand the extradition of Iran's little runt, the mini-fuehrer Ahmadinejad?
He's been denying the Holocaust for years, and just held his F-the-Jews Festival in Tehran, how about that, eh?
You mention Islam. We are all aware that some adherents to that religion commit murder and suicide because of things written by their prophet. Would you defend his writing as the exercise of free speech?
I would not ban the Coran if that is what you asking me, no.
Ideas are defeated, ridiculed, marginalized, not banned.
(it only increases their allure)
He should be allowed to write that Martians killed Jews if he wants to. Sending someone to prison for their beliefs is far more outrageous than any opinion he holds.
Sorry, that first paragraph was truncated. Mohammed preached what I view as a violent and dangerous religion, but you, me, the President, the Pope, or anyone else is empowered to decide which religions should be tolerated and which shouldn't, then there IS no freedom of religion.
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