Originally posted by amfirst
There's no tolorance for dumb people in the US.

Not at all off-topic, but have you looked at (or better yet, listened to) POTUS in the last seven years?

Or Anne Coulter?

Godservant at first I was repulsed by the question in your heading, but then after thinking more on the issue I read your first post. To prevent getting bogged down by all the intervening posts I just want to answer your first post.

Yes I take your point about people being jailed as holocaust deniers. I think one risks arresting people for examining and legitimately questioning the historical accuracy of information. That is wrong.

On the one hand I think David Irving was meticulous in his research and very careful what he said. I do believe it was wrong to attack scholarly research of the facts by an author as say compared with the rantings of a neo-Nazi.

It occurs to me there are two questions. Not just one.

First there was undeniable barbarity towards the Jews in WW2. At one level the answer to your question is that it is not even about the Jews. It could be about how the Serbs treat the Bosnian muslims.

In fact it does not even have to be about ethnic or cultural differences. It is just plain and simple about man's inhumanity to man. If we as individuals turn our back on that degree of cruelty, then we have no right to complain at injustices in our own lives. All of humanity is like a stack of dominos.

If you tolerate injustice anywhere you tolerate injustice everywhere and that is why denial of the holocaust is so offensive.

On the other hand I take your point that it should not be such a holy grail that nobody is allowed to ask scholarly questions and examine the accuracy of the historical record.

For most people however it is enough to accept that there were horrific cruelties and it does not matter if the figure was 6 million or one million. One act of barbaric cruelty ought to be enough to condemn the holocaust.

Originally posted by sy.gunsonOn the one hand I think David Irving was meticulous in his research and very careful what he said. I do believe it was wrong to attack scholarly research of the facts by an author as say compared with the rantings of a neo-Nazi.

While I do agree with the general thrust of your post, I have to disagree there. Irving's research was shoddy, as the evidence from his libel trial shows. Lets put it this way...if I had used footnotes and sources in the way he did, I would deserve to be kicked off my degree course.

To be sure, one should not be sued for wishing to investigate the past, or even for holding repulsive viewpoints. That is the sort of totalitarianism I could do without. But presenting a biased piece of research, which expressly ignores historical evidence to the contrary of the hypothesis, well suggests an agenda to me. A fundamentally dishonest agenda that plays into the hands of racists and neo-Fascists.

What I don't get is why these fractions of extreme-right are at one point saying how much they want to extreminate these specific groups of people and at the other point say that the holocaust never happened.
Shouldn't they be "proud" of it?

But hey, since when are we not amazed by the narrow and twisted mind of the nazi?

I get the impression, from reading through these posts, that what governs the creednece of holocaust facts are not what is real and provable. Rather how opposition to consensus make people feel. I'm a bit stoic in these matters, so I tend to disagree to all this emotional bias. Someone made an analogy where one would state to a black american that slavery never existed, and then gauge the emotional reponse. This is were evil ol' me differ from many of you - i love the truth, no matter how ugly.

I'd like to see someone in a UFO-thread get this high up on a horse -"Are you guys CRAZY? No... REALLY? I'm disgusted by this... Are you seriously saying that STILL LIVING eye witnesses are LYING?"

Would the response not be - "I'm sorry, i CANNOT take somebodys word for it, i tend to think that overwhelming physical evidence is the only way we will ever know. I WANT to believe."...?

It is interesting to see all these sceptic, avant garde folks suddenly subordinate to consensus.

Hitler was a bad man, m'kay? the Nazi party and their sponsors in England and USA were bad people, m'kay? But the information about the camps, still considered valid today, were gathered in WARTIME by the allies and the Russians. Could they possibly have lied in some respects? I know, it's almost a rhetorical question. And if these factual lies were emotionally explosive, changing peoples paradigm and dissolving and building old and new power-structures, would some folks in the know not fight to supress their old lies?

I cannot understand why critical, enlightened people think that one should keep a lid on this subject.

Here's a thing. Freedom of speech, this "human right" that so many people get so pompous about, is not a given. It is an extremely precious and hard-earned commodity. It is not enjoyed by everyone on the planet, unfortunately. It is not something you have at birth so much as something you are very fortunate to be born into. It should be appreciated as such.

With such a precious gift as freedom of speech should come responsibility. Used with responsibility, freedom of speech is among the world's most powerful weapons. Abused, freedom of speech can be among the world's most dangerous weapons.

Another fundamental human right is, or ought to be, the right not to be persecuted for any particular religious belief or point of view. That right is no more or less important than freedom of speech. The truth is we have to achieve a balance. In other words, if your use of freedom of speech threatens another person or group of people's right not to be persecuted, you are abusing that freedom. Freedom of speech is not the be all and end all of society - it is part of what at times is an extremely delicate structure. It does not and should not override all other human rights.

I'm not going to go into whether there is anything wrong with "holocaust denial", partly because this topic has been dealt with at length in other threads and there is nothing new in anything posted above, and partly because the biggest and most obvious thing wrong with "holocaust denial" is, and has been demonstrated to be, the theory itself. All I would say in direct response to the OP is that, if questioning the historical facts of the holocaust and its legacy is done purely in a spirit of enquiry, nothing should stop that study being done. If those questions are asked to create controversy, to court attention, or inspired by a prejudice against or dislike for any particular race of people, it is moronic abuse of a human right you do not any longer deserve. There are people in other countries fighting for the right to freedom of speech that would regard that waste with bewilderment and horror.

Thanks

LW