Goat wrote:
Brahm_K wrote:
To be honest, I'm going to go against you folks and say that holocaust denial should be illegal. Normally I'm against enforcing any historical interpretation as law, but the holocaust is awful enough that I think it merits it. More importantly, since 99.8% holocaust denial is tied to serious racism, I think it's important to nip that shit in the bud and give deniers as little room as possible to discuss their views. Especially because for 99.8% of their minds would never be changed by things like "evidence" and arguments.
Trouble is, if you make denying that illegal why not make denying all genocides illegal? Case in point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HolodomorThe minimum estimate for dead there is 6 to 7 million, caused by Soviet food policies. Up until the eighties and even since, Russians have denied that this happened. If denying the Holocaust isn't allowed on anti-racist grounds, the same should apply here and to the Armenian genocides, and to Britain's actions in Africa, India, and Ireland, and so on, and so forth.
I appreciate the complexities of the issue, but I do kind of believe that more countries should be forced to deal with the fact that they've done some fucked up shit. This will never happen though, and you guys are probably right.
Quote:
Denial of freedom of speech and the ability to share ones view in spit of lack of historical evidence to back it up.
I would like to think of your statement as 'unamerican' as it can get, even if a person's views are 'extreme' at least grant them the ability to speak them.
This I'm still against though. If you want to go against the historical record, fine, but the fact that 99.5% of the time holocaust denial is tied to extreme racism, I think there is an incentive to place some restriction on free speech. But, as you guys have pointed out, this sort of thing is impossible to put in place; I'm definitely not reccomending that we imprison every person who denies the holocaust. Ach, I'm not expressing myself clearly. Enough to say, I guess, that action should be taken against public figures and leaders who deny the holocaust and genocides, where possible. For example, a politician recently ran at the provincial level here in Quebec who denied the Rwandan genocide; personally, I think he should have been barred from running.
And hey, if thinking that people shouldn't be able to say racist and idiotic things makes me un-American, so be it. As Trapt pointed out, I'm Canadian.