European Holocaust Denial Law Scuppered
Germany's attempts to use the EU presidency to persuade all 27 member states to criminalise any dissent from Germany's official "Holocaust" narrative looks set to be be scuppered. Whilst Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, Romania and Spain have various denial laws vis-à-vis acts of genocide committed during the Third Reich, and all member states endorsed the UN Grand assembly resolution passed this Friday, which unreservedly rejects "any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part, or any activities to this end", they are unlikely to endorse "denial laws", which most member states view as draconian and in conflict with the European Convention on Human Rights. This Friday, the Italian Parliament rejected such legislation, after it was adamantly opposed by some 200 historians upon the grounds of suppression of academic debate and infringement of freedom of speech.
It is well that this is being resisted: the Holocaust is a conflation of the certain with the uncertain; the rational with the irrational; the subjective with the objective. There never was a "Holocaust" - the Holocaust is an illusory moral and religious interpretation of acts of genocide committed during the Third Reich. Holocaust denial laws are not concerned with the historical episode; they are concerened with State mythology.
11 comments:
It far more important to French society that France addresses it's own dubious genocidial past in Algeria but it doesn't have any denial laws about that genocide. The only reason France has Holocaust denial laws is because of the Zionist lobby.
Quite. My next post raises the same point.
No, the purpose of Holocaust denial laws is not to promote Zionism, but to ensure that Nazism can never rise again.
(I still don't really see the point of laws against Holocaust denial. Holocaust deniers are simply liars, and should be countered with the truth rather than silenced with the law.)
"I still don't really see the point of laws against Holocaust denial.
That's because you're wrong about their motive, of course they're not about preventing the rise of Nazism. How would preventing people denying the Holocaust do that?
And who says that the majority of far right groups don't believe in the Holocaust? The BNP and Le Pen's national front don't deny the Holocaust.
George, the Holocaust is ostensibly commemorated to prevent another genocide, a Nazi resurgence and of course to remember the dead. Yet it certainly has not prevented other genocides, in fact it is often used to justify them. Nor does it have the slightest capacity to prevent a Nazi resurgence.
The reality is that Holocaust memorial day is seen as an attempt to justify the existence of the Jewish state by a good many people. There is wide support for a genocide memorial day that does not just focus on Jewish suffering.
The most important aspect of this commemoration is remembering the dead for those who lost family members and friends. However this genocide has no particular significance for the majority of the World.
Whether it is remembered or forgotten is of no significance - like most genocides it will pass into insignificance in time.
That's because you're wrong about their motive, of course they're not about preventing the rise of Nazism. How would preventing people denying the Holocaust do that?
Currently, Nazi ideology is seen as beyond the pale by most Westerners because of the dreadful genocides that the Nazis committed.
Neo-Nazis seem to believe that if they acquit the original German Nazis of the Jewish Holocaust, they can rehabilitate Nazism itself. I think there are two reasons why the focus on the Jewish Holocaust:
1. Because the Jewish Holocaust is the most infamous of the Nazi genocides (both because it came closer to completion than the other genocides planned by the Nazis, and also because the Zionist lobby have emphasized it for their own ends).
2. Because of the senseless of the Jewish Holocaust. Other genocides have given considerable direct benefits to their perpetrators:
* Free land: American Indian Wars, Rwandan Genocide
* Elimination of a disloyal ethnicity: Destruction of the Iberian Muslims, Armenian Genocide
* Revenge against a past oppressor: Expulsion of eastern Germans in 1945, genocide of Bosnian Muslims (identified by the Serbs with the Ottoman Turks)
The Jewish Holocaust by contrast actually hurt the Germans by tying up rail capacity which could have been used to supply the soldiers at the front line.
"Neo-Nazis seem to believe that if they acquit the original German Nazis of the Jewish Holocaust, they can rehabilitate Nazism itself."
Steph has already remarked, "The BNP and Le Pen's national front don't deny the Holocaust"; a fact that is also true of the genuine European neo-Nazis political parties.
There is no linkage between Holocaust denial laws and detering the rise of Nazism: there is however, a linkage between Holocaust denial laws and detering anti Zionism.
I don't see how criminalizing Holocaust denial would hurt anti-Zionists (unless said anti-Zionists really did want to exterminate the Israeli Jews).
I do see though that criminalizing Nakba denial would hurt pro-Zionists.
George said - "I don't see how criminalizing Holocaust denial would hurt anti-Zionists (unless said anti-Zionists really did want to exterminate the Israeli Jews)."
Because they use it as a stick to beat everyone with i.e. Holocaust was the defining moment of the C20th if you don't agree you're an anti-Semite, Jews have a right to Israel because of the Holocaust if you don't agree you're an anti-Semite, Jews have a right to kill Arabs because of the Holocaust if you don't agree you're an anti-Semite, Israel has a right to a nuclear bomb if you don't agree you're an anti-Semite, and if question the Holocaust, you want to commit genocide against the Jews.
What do you think of the suggestion in this article that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict should be solved by means of a two-state solution based on the 1949 ceasefire lines, plus a second Palestinian state carved out of Germany (because the German Nazis set in motion the chain of events which led to the Nakba) where the 1948 refugees can be resettled.
The article borrows a lot from Ahmadinejad argument vis-a-vis the repatriation of European Jews to Germany.
The article however fails to acknowledge that German Zionists were as culpable as the Nazis in the ethnic cleansing and genocide of millions of European Jews; and that the majority of Jews that arrived in Palestine under the British mandate were immigrants from the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc, not DPs or refugees from Nazi occupied Europe.
It is my view that the link between Israel and Nazi Germany is overblown and that the Holocaust is an ex post facto justification, which seeks to exonerate British and US colonialism in the Middle East. However Rob and Steph are more knowledgeable on Palestine than I.
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