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| blackhole89 Posts: 369/427 |
9/11 happened, and I will not speculate as to whether it were the CIA, the freemasons or the more probably hypothesis of a bunch of islamist nuts with knives.
Under the Nazis, it can be taken for granted there was an incident when a jew shot the German ambassador in Paris as well. (edit: link) Go figure what my point is. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Ziff Posts: 1477/1800 |
Well, yeah. I guess 9/11 is nothing more than a pamphlet sent out by the Russian intelligence agency in the late 19th century... | ||||||||||||||||||||
| blackhole89 Posts: 368/427 |
The decrease in count of regimes we call totalitarian is just because of the natural relativity of our point of view. Most of the western world is approaching a police state situation at a speed faster than Osama could speak on a hate video.
Though I'd like to open up a separate thread for that... since this one already reached the state of plentiful Nazi comparisons and touched the topic, I'll just go ahead and state that the current model of "international terrorism" is very well comparable in credibility, evidence, way of being used, scale and purpose to the "Jewish conspiracy" model under the Nazis. Both seemed perfectly plausible from an unsuspecting citizen in the respective system point of view too. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Ziff Posts: 1475/1800 |
Well, even in countries where there aren't laws pertaining to Holocaust denial...these people are still underground and out of the public eye. Why do you say? Because to be in the public eye with such extreme views and propensity towards violence and agitation...Well, you don't need hate crime laws to be charged with that stuff. Hate crime laws are a good thing (tm) because they keep these people cornered, boxed in, and make it more difficult to spread their ideology.
Although, in all honesty. Equating absolute freedom to democracy is absolutely preposterous. Although I'd say that the world at this point is back-sliding from totalitarianism. I'd really like to see you prove such an increase in such regimes around the world. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Dr_Death16 Posts: 731/970 |
All that I have to say about this would be that I'm against suppressing any opinion in an accepted "free speech" country. No matter how wrong, immoral, or disturbing one may think a certain opinion is, these "crazy" opinions exist for a good reason in general; they present a sharp contrast to the "true" or accepted opinions, thereby strengthening those "truths" in society, and also, freedom of these opinions keeps them out in the open where they can be openly scrutinized and debated as opposed to them being "underground" and out of the public eye. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| blackhole89 Posts: 367/427 |
Assuming the first instance of the word "issue" is supposed to say "comparison"... I drew a comparison between the issuers of those two laws, yes. Not because I wanted to point and say that our "current authorities are as bad as the Nazis", but because I wanted to point and say they are using the same methods to ensure a one-opinion system. And again, in the end, it's not multiple parties that make up a working democracy - it's multiple opinions.
In a society that considers itself a vessel of liberty and free speech in an increasingly radicalized and totalitarian world, you should be able to say that one plus one is three, the Romans invented the Internet or the Holocaust didn't occur without fearing to be put behind bars for it. (And yes, my actual point was to draw a "superfluous and questionable" comparison between saying the Holocaust didn't occur and any other absurd statement) | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Ziff Posts: 1474/1800 |
That didn't. lead to world war 2. But you decided to draw a superflous and questionable issue between the issue of the laws surrounding Holocaust denial and the actual perpetuators of the said atrocity. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| blackhole89 Posts: 366/427 |
To repeat my point which apparently didn't come over clearly enough, hate crime laws exist either way, and I don't object to those. I do, however, object to the ban on questioning the occurance of the holocaust because, in my eyes, it's an unjustifiable limitation of freedom of expression.
If you still want to say that's not the same thing for the reasons given, please tell me how the WWII Nazi freedom of expression limitation concept of "disrupture of the people's morale" which basically put a ban on any speech questioning the Nazi party or their ideology under punishment per se lead to any minorities being beaten up, Jews being wiped out or wars being waged. edit- since you were so quick with your reply, tell me how your concept of "liberty by lack thereof" is not schizophrenic. Democracy means allowing all opinions to be voiced, even if you don't like them. Even if most people don't like them. Even if you know for yourself they are wrong. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Ziff Posts: 1473/1800 |
Yeah, you see. I just can't see many similarities or parallels between the two. The liberal-democratic idea of liberty being a series of limitations of freedom to ensure the best for the most of the population isn't exactly equatable with the NAZI ideology of nihilistic, radical sociali-darwinism. The NAZIs were the most bizarre of all the denizens of Cloud Kukoo Kukoo Land. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Silvershield Posts: 494/587 |
Originally posted by Plus Sign AbominationWell, the similarity would be in principle, but obviously not magnitude. If such a similarity exists. Edit: ...which I'm not sure it does. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Ziff Posts: 1472/1800 |
Limiting the fact that you can't say "Fucking | blackhole89 |
Posts: 365/427 Originally posted by Jomb As far as I know, most countries already do have laws against violent agitation. Yet, for some reason, those are regarded as not enough in some countries. In my opinion, people who try to justify laws making holocaust denial punishable are ignorant to the fact that makes them, from the freedom of expression point of view, not much better than the Nazis. Abstractly said, it's just banning the expression of opinions contrary to the accepted model of "truth" in both cases. Originally posted by Jomb The latter would force governments to build whole new prisons to handle the influx of knuck-style quasireligious weeaboo to-be jailbirds who have a stronger belief in Japan's "superiority" (vocable (C) the aforementioned) alone than the whole creationist front of the USA has in the USA being god's chosen country taken together.  Jomb |
Posts: 423/448 I'm still against making an idea, ANY idea, illegal. Just as I'm against making a thought, ANY thought illegal. It's understandable that the Holocaust can cause people to get extremely upset, very understandable, but locking people up for simply disagreeing is not going to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. I think that everyone should be made to watch Schindler's List in school, and be taught about the Holocaust. But using laws to prevent people from questioning things is wrong-headed. And if we start down the slippery slope of illegalizing ideas, why stop at the Holocaust? Every single genocide or major human tragedy should be given equal protection. It should also be illegal to say that the Spanish Inquisition never happened, or to question how the Japanese treated the Chinese during WW2. Then why would we stop there? Maybe it should be illegal to question whether or not people convicted of crime did it or not? Because maybe we are hurting the victim/family of the victim to question whether or not the person charged is really the actual murderer or rapist. But then maybe lets take it further, maybe if you are an American and you question whether or not we should be in Iraq, you are hurting the troops by lowering morale, potentially causing people to die, so that should be outlawed to.
| Instead of making Holocaust denial illegal, lets make advocating violence illegal. That way someone who is innocently questioning history and honestly looking for evidence will not be jailed over it, while the hate groups you want to target can still be prevented from trying to organize another genocide. Intent and actions are more important than simply questioning the Holocaust or any other tragedy. On an unrelated tangent, I saw hannity & Colmes a few days agao and there was a Jewish Rabi on there who attended the Holocaust Deniers Convention in Iran, and is a Holocaust Denier. I thought that was very strange. beneficii |
Posts: 291/310 OK y'all, I'm closing this. Give y'all some time to cool down. |  Silvershield |
Posts: 493/587 Originally posted by ArwonYou must be paying off the refs, then, because I am not personally a fan of the "no blood, no foul" rule. (I can make basketball metaphors too!  )Arwon |
Posts: 535/631 Well, now you get the point, so it was apparently effective. Anyways, I'm playing the ball, not the man (albeit aggressively). | Silvershield |
Posts: 492/587 Originally posted by ArwonWhy take such a tone? I did everything I could to muster the most non-confrontational voice I was possibly able to muster, and you're getting bent out of shape.  Arwon |
Posts: 534/631 How about the fact that Holocaust denial is an organised, actual, existing movement? It's not a consequence of trivialising the genocidal history of colonialism or whatever or giving the Jews special treatment, it's a conseuqnece of the fact that HOLOCAUST DENIAL EXISTS AND THE OTHER THINGS YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT DON'T. Holocaust denial is a crime in about a half dozen European countries and Israel, and that's because these are places which have specific social and historical imperatives compelling them to want to severely repress anything smacking of resurgent anti-Semitism and Nazism. THAT separates Holocaust denial from other ideas. The implicit, automatic association with hategroups and Nazism. There are groups which more or less think that Jews are evil society-destroying parasites, and Holocaust denial is for them an important part of their hateful ideas. THAT makes it different. Practically speaking, Holocaust denial is always associated with hate-speech. Practically speaking, based on what happens in the real world, the Holocaust is a different ballgame.
| No such equivalent hate/denial groups exist around any other ethnic group or any other massacre, and that's why there's not denialist movements surrounding them. There's no reason in Europe, to deny that say, the Native Americans, were given smallpox blankeys because there's no anti-Amerindian Nazis who want to deny that in order to deny them sympathy or whatever. It's partly also because of the previously discussed different nature of the Holocaust versus other massacres (as a gratuitious, industrialised, rational genocide). The Holocaust strikes closer to home, and so there's higher stakes for those denying it. Moreover, it could simply be a matter of different legal codes. Civil versus Common Law. Civil Law systems, of which continental European countries are examples, can be much more specific and proscriptive in their legal systems than can Common Law systems of the Anglo variety. The fact that Holocaust denial is the only idea of its kind that specifically needs combatting means that they might as well just make a law specifically saying that, to avoid confusion. If your hypothetical made-up hate-group denialist movements actually did exist and were problems, well they'd pass a law against them, too. Simple. Talking in the abstract about denial of random other massacres is meaningless, because these other ideas don't really exist for various historical and social reasons. If they did, and if there were hate-groups for whom denial of these things was an essential plank of perpetuating their own hateful ideas about other groups, then we could begin to discuss equivalency, but until then, Holocaust denial occupies a special place because there are organised hate groups who push the idea as part of their general hateful anti-Semetic agenda. With NO other group is this true, especially of the societies which, you know, HAVE anti-denial laws in addition to regular hate-speech laws. edit: 'blankeys' was a typo but I'm leaving it in. Silvershield |
Posts: 491/587 Originally posted by ArwonAbsolutely correct, but wouldn't the equivalent of saying "Genocide X was not as bad as the Holocaust, but was still terrible" be to enforce some sort of restrictions on speaking about Genocide X, though having those restrictions fall short of the absolute ban on Holocaust denial? What I mean is, at the moment, the Holocaust is the single example with any sort of restrictions whatsoever, whereas every other example has no restrictions whatsoever; does that send the message that the Holocaust is really the only one that should be taken seriously? (Of course, that is not the conscious message being sent, but is it a consequential message that is somehow implied?) Arwon |
Posts: 533/631 They're different categories of thing. The Holocaust was the Holocaust, and I can't think of another organised industrialised deliberate extermination that can be set alongside it. By contrast, I think it's illustrative that no one colonial atrocity can be singled out, they're better understood as all falling under the grim and complex banner of "colonialism". I hesitate to call them genocides, but that's a matter of much historiographical debate. You don't need to know about the Tasmanian aboriginals specifically because that's just one of the more extreme examples of a process that repeated itself throughout the world over a period of 3 or 4 hundred years. You don't need to be aware of every specific battle, massacre, failed uprising, in every corner of the world, to be aware of the nature of Colonialism as a whole.
| A few examples: Did you know that a century after Columbus made landfall in Hispaniola, the natives of that island were virtually extinct? Ever notice that Argentines seem a great deal more European than other Latin Americans, and if so, did you know it's because the native populace of that area was virtually wiped out? What about the Germans in South West Africa (modern Namibia) who actually, rarely for a European colonial power in Africa, set out to wipe out entire groups of natives? The thing is, though, A LOT of the miseries of the natives of the Americas, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific, were part of the general dynamic of one society claiming the territory and resources of another. Colonialism SUCKED. It continues to be the biggest shaping influences, usually for the worse, in most parts of the world. While horrible, these atrocities weren't really of a different kind than earlier periods of human history. It was still just stronger societies fighting wars of aggression to subjugate other groups of people, take their resources, increase their own power, etcetera. These still strike me as different than the Holocaust, which was a singularly abysmal event and easily the worst crime committed in human history. I baulk at attempts to equate it with colonial atrocities, because the sum total of colonialism just feels different to what Hitler attempted to orchestrate. In terms of cruelty, deliberateness, cool rationality, and so forth, the colonial question still pales compared to what the Holocaust demonstrated modern industrial societies are capable of doing to people. But here's perhaps the key point: just by saying that something wasn't as bad as the Holocaust, the worst crime in history, doesn't mean you're trivialising it. I just don't think it's terribly useful to try to equate colonialism with the Holocaust, because they're better understood as different things. This is a long thread. Click here to view it. | | |||||
