Je suis Vincent?

DEFTLEFTHAND · 01-03-2015 04:58AM

It's always good to be free to debate history, I don't understand why people who question the consensus can be jailed. For instance any Law student studying the Nuremberg Trials transcripts may raise an eye to the actions or maybe inactions of the token defence counsels.

Amazingfun · 01-03-2015 05:14AM

Irving did indeed change his tune, at least for a while.

So what? He's a threat to who? Where's the great "victory"?

If he wants to continue to do it and live like that, he can do so.

He doesn't "want" to live like a dog. He wants to speak without suppression and threats. He is opposing unjust laws and is sacrificing much in so doing.
He appears to have bigger balls than most men and I hope he lives to see these shameful laws abolished.

osarusan · 01-03-2015 05:22AM

Amazingfun wrote: »

So what? He's a threat to who? Where's the great "victory"?

He doesn't "want" to live like a dog. He wants to speak without suppression and threats. He is opposing unjust laws and is sacrificing much in so doing.
He appears to have bigger balls than most men and I hope he lives to see these shameful laws abolished.

I never used the word victory so I don't know why you put it in quotation marks. It was you who used that term.

You asked about what putting Holocaust Deniers/Revisionists in prison would accomplish. I gave you an example of perhaps the most well-known revisionist in the world changing his position on the Holocaust (publicly, at least) as a result of his trial and imprisonment. I would say that his trial and imprisonment therefore accomplished something.

Amazingfun wrote: »

He doesn't "want" to live like a dog. He wants to speak without suppression and threats. He is opposing unjust laws and is sacrificing much in so doing.
He appears to have bigger balls than most men and I hope he lives to see these shameful laws abolished.

His sacrifice and big balls only become admirable if you believe the laws are horribly and shamefully unjust, which is not an opinion I share.

Amazingfun · 01-03-2015 05:42AM

You asked about what putting Holocaust Deniers/Revisionists in prison would accomplish. I gave you an example of perhaps the most well-known revisionist in the world changing his position on the Holocaust (publicly, at least) as a result of his trial and imprisonment. I would say that his trial and imprisonment therefore accomplished something.

:pac: so bullying and the full force of the State and its deep pockets (plus the threat of being locked up longer) forced an old man to briefly change his tune? And you consider this an "accomplishment"?? It's an embarrassment!

My use of the term "victory" was to emphasize that there has been none nor anything to feel proud of given the methods used . The massive force used against men who seem to be threats to absolutely no one ought to give anyone witnessing this activity great pause.

osarusan · 01-03-2015 05:51AM

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. We have a fairly fundamental difference of opinion.

Tony EH · 01-03-2015 08:12AM

osarusan wrote: »

You asked about what putting Holocaust Deniers/Revisionists in prison would accomplish. I gave you an example of perhaps the most well-known revisionist in the world changing his position on the Holocaust (publicly, at least) as a result of his trial and imprisonment. I would say that his trial and imprisonment therefore accomplished something.

But Irving changed his views of his own accord. In fact, his views change all the time. He's constantly revising his position on a great many aspects of WWII, not just the holocaust.

He's actually one of the few writers that does numerous revisions of his own books on a constant basis.

Locking Irving up did nothing at all. If anything it bought him more attention than would otherwise have been the case.

I certainly wouldn't agree with a great many things that Irving says, but I absolutely agree with his right to say what he wants regarding WWII, whether I or others agree with it or not.

In any case Irving is "holocaust denial" lite, if ever there was such a thing. Besides his stance that Hitler wasn't that interested in the holocaust (and there's evidence that he wasn't) and that he isn't entirely convinced about gas chambers in Auschwitz, there isn't that much to be worried about. I don't think he's ever said that the holocaust never happened full stop. For instance he maintains that the Germans killed about a million Jews using the Einsatzkommando on the eastern front and that millions were worked to death and died from disease and abuse in the camps.

Hardly what one would call "denying" the holocaust.

K4t · 01-03-2015 01:26PM

osarusan wrote: »

His sacrifice and big balls only become admirable if you believe the laws are horribly and shamefully unjust, which isnot an opinion I share.

This line says it all to be honest. You'd happily live under totalitarianism rule, as long as all you shared all the opinions held by the state! You really can't see the wider picture here.

Amazingfun · 03-03-2015 05:46PM

Sylvia Stolz has been jailed again for speech that apparently hurts certain group's feelings:

A former German attorney with well-known links to the far right has been convicted of Holocaust denial and sentenced to 20 months in prison.

Munich state court spokeswoman Andrea Titz said 51-year-old Sylvia Stolz was convicted of inciting racial hatred for denying the Holocaust in a 2012 speech. She argued during her trial that she was exercising her right to free speech.

Stolz already served time for Holocaust denial after a 2008 conviction related to her defense of notorious Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, who was convicted himself of the crime in Mannheim in 2007.

Zundel's initial Mannheim trial collapsed after Stolz was banned from the proceedings on grounds she was trying to sabotage them. During the trial, she repeatedly denied the Holocaust and ended a legal document with "Heil Hitler."

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.644197

Skullface McGubbin · 03-03-2015 06:53PM

Denial of the Armenian genocide = no punishment

Denial of the Nanking massacre = no punishment

Meanwhile denial of the Holocaust can get you into a lot of trouble. The special treatment the Holocaust gets in comparison to other atrocities only emboldens Holocaust deniers and Nazi sympathisers. Denying the existence of any genocide shouldn't be met with a jail sentence. A person shouldn't be jailed for expressing an opinion, no matter how dodgy or offensive that opinion may be.

Lollipops23 · 03-03-2015 07:02PM

Surely denying the Holocaust happened etc. shouldn't be illegal and the sheer mockery that person will (and should) be subjected to is enough? Someone being an absolute idiot is, alas, not a crime. If it were the prison systems would be snowed under.

Amazingfun · 03-03-2015 07:18PM

Lollipops23 wrote: »

Surely denying the Holocaust happened etc. shouldn't be illegal and the sheer mockery that person will (and should) be subjected to is enough? Someone being an absolute idiot is, alas, not a crime. If it were the prison systems would be snowed under.

This is the puzzle. Why prison? What does putting these people in prison accomplish? The answer so far is a pretty whopping nothing much apart from making everyone else quite curious as to why those who keep putting them there feel so threatened.
Things that make you go "hmmmmmm"......

Je suis Vincent?

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