[lit-ideas] Re: Ernst Zuendel sentenced

I agree with you, Ursula. I've never understood the principle on which so many of the European countries enacted their holocaust denial or race hate speech laws. As loathsome as such speech is, unless it is incitement to violence, it seems to me preferable to allow it so that such thoughts can be countered with evidence than to push it underground. I have no problem, am supportive in fact of governmental programs furthering the rebuttal of such speech, but to criminalize the expression of any thought seems self-defeating for humankind. I tried to google up the history of holocaust denial laws, but had little luck. I did find an article in the Telegraph that the EU plans on a much more far reaching 'genocide denial' law: "The draft text states: "Each member state shall take the measures necessary to ensure that the following intentional conduct is punishable: 'publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes as defined in'... the Statute of the ICC." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/02/weu02.xml 

In that vein, I'm sure Kansas would like to make Genesis-denial a crime.
I'll try more diligently to dig out the history of genocide-denial laws later, I think they started in Austria in 1947, but what legal underpinnings were used to support it interests me. Perhaps one of the listers is familiar with his and can inform me. On what principle are such laws based? 

Mike Geary
Memphis
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ursula Stange" <Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx> 
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2007 8:04 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Ernst Zuendel sentenced
This whole hate crime business leaves a bad taste in the mouth though. Why should it be a crime to say that the holocaust did not happen? Why not just ignore it? Why not just ridicule it? How is a law against holocaust denial any different than a law against denying Mohammed? 
What would we say if Muslim countries had laws against crusade denial?
Unless someone is also inciting to crime, which I don't think was proved in Zuendel's Canadian case (but going by memory here), I don't see that the denial itself should be a criminal matter at all. Ursula 
basking in the sun
(through double-glazed windows -- baby it's cold outside --39 C w/wind chill) 

Chris Bruce wrote:
Members of this list will be undoubtedly interested (I deliberately use a rather 'neutral' term here - the reader may substitute others as s/he wishes) to learn that Ernst Zuendel has just been sentenced by a German court to a 5-year prison term (the stiifest possible sentence under current German law) for Holocaust denial.
For several years Zuendel spread the poison of his anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in my native Canada and in the U.S. He was finally extradited from Canada to Germany in the Spring of 2005.
(Zuendel also co-authored a book which put forth the theory that supposed UFO's which people reported sighting were in fact secret nazi weapons emerging from a hollow earth through a hole somewhere in the Antarctic - perhaps the best illustration of the seriousness with which material put forth by supporters of Holocaust denial and revisionism should be taken. It is comforting to note that the ridiculous of the claims is in no way seen as mitigating the seriousness of the crime.) 

Chris Bruce
Kiel, Germany



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