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Holocaustian Leader Seeks Jail for Holocaust Deniers

By David Kelsey / December 14, 2009

Where is the communal Jewish outrage?

The JTA reports that Elie Wiesel spoke last week,

 

 … at a "Jewish Hungarian Solidarity Symposium" of Hungarian political and Jewish leaders held at Parliament. […] He added, "I ask you, why don’t you follow the example of France and Germany and declare Holocaust denial not only indecent but illegal? In those countries, Holocaust deniers go to jail.

 

While I do not seek to jail Wiesel for what he said, I would note that this policy is (or at least, should be considered) contrary to the American Jewish community’s position. There are many reasons why jailing Holocaust deniers is a very bad idea. For instance, it breeds conspiracy theory, inviting less unreasonable people to question why there is such a peculiar and specific law.

But it is also morally wrong to do so, if you happen to believe in free speech.

Novelists should anyway not be elevated to the status of political leaders. They usually are not. This was a form of affirmative action. Wiesel is not a political leader because of what he did, but rather, because of his flair for detailing what was done to him.

But his ways are not our ways. And still he is allowed to speak for us.

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  • By Disco_Stu 12/19/09 at 2:29 p.m. UTC

    Making Holocaust denial a crime is particular to Europe because of their unique role in the Holocaust, they perpetrated it, and quite willfully (despite the myths of having no choice). It’s not just Holocaust denial that is banned in parts of Europe, but anything related to Nazism. And there are obvious reasons for that. Nazism did not die out in Europe because people grew tired of it. It only ended because the Germans were forced into an unconditional surrender. They and the Austrians had banishment of Nazism forced on them, and when the post-Nazis generation came to power they understood just how popular Nazism still was in its homeland, so they maintained the measure; call it a wartime emergency suspension of civil liberties. These days there may not be an actual danger of Nazi return to power in these countries, but it is still extraordinarily embarrassing for countries like Germany and Austria who prefer not to think about their Nazism to have to be reminded of it.

    So, for obvious reasons, Holocaust denial is outlawed in much of continental Europe. It’s because Nazism actually took hold there and had millions of followers, from CEOs and PhDs all the way down to farmers, and in all countries, not just Germany and Austria. They all collaborated. This reality is simply not relevant to America.

    As for Britain, while they also don’t have the same legacy as continental Europe, their subjective decisions about hate speech and war crimes is not something anyone should want to emulate. Once you start outlawing Holocaust denial in Britain, how long until Zionism itself becomes a crime against humanity?…..As anyone who pays attention knows, in some vocal circles in Britain, Israel is the new Nazi Germany.

    So, I don’t think there’s anything we need to emulate about Europe. 

     

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