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.
5 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.
"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.
"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.
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