The Student Room Group

should holocaust denial be a crime ???

just yes or no and why

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No. It's hurtful but freedom of speech.....innit. As long as those people don't mind us using our freedom of speech to call them the ****ing morons that they are.
If it is a crime, it is only one so people don't ever discover the truth I suspect. Whatever that truth may be. Why else criminalise a thought crime?


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Reply 3
Why should be a crime to speak the truth?


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I've moved this into Society. :smile:

Original post by Foo.mp3
Naw, it's ludicrous enough for people to pay it no mind. Plus it's not incitement of anything really, so from a freedom of speech standpoint it cannot really be justified. The answer to it is education, not legislation


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This post covers it really. You undermine freedom of speech if you silence those with controversial opinions. As long as there's no incitement of hatred and it remains just an opinion, there's no legal reason to prevent them from expressing themselves.
Original post by jim2190
just yes or no and why


Only if you want to create an Orwellian state where disallowed thoughts, facts and investigations are banned. Investigation of the facts of Nazi German camps and the commonly believed stories are massively at odds with each other. Any person of average intelligence only has to do a little digging and just scratch the surface discover that. The problem is that labels such as Holocaust denier discourage them from doing this.



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(edited 9 years ago)
Reply 6
[video="youtube;kIqRnLQ2GCY"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIqRnLQ2GCY[/video]

"The trials that generated the evidence on which the extermination claimsare based took place in a prostrate, starving Germany whose people were in noposition to do anything but that which the occupying powers wished. This wasthe political reality of the situation. By the record, the “Zionist International”organized the specific extermination claims that were made, which were givenno credence by high and knowledgeable Washington officials. The leadingpersonality in setting up the legal system of the war crimes trials was noneother than the American prosecutor at the IMT trial. At that trial the judgeshad previously expressed themselves on the obvious guilt of the defendants,and the findings of the trial were formal legal constraints on subsequent trials.The most important of the subsequent trials were those organized by the arch-Zionist David Marcus, future hero of Israel, and then head of the US WarCrimes Branch, an agency that had engaged in torture of witnesses in connec-tion with certain trials. "
professor arthur a butz of electrical engineering at northwestern university evanston illinois
author of the hoax of the twenteith century
http://archive.adl.org/learn/ext_us/butz.html
(edited 9 years ago)
Original post by thunder_chunky
No. It's hurtful but freedom of speech.....innit. As long as those people don't mind us using our freedom of speech to call them the ****ing morons that they are.


Yes wow it's so hurtful to question information. I should be called a moron for questioning and trying to find the truth on a given subject.
A lot of ideas considered to be 'Holocaust denial' are in fact just alternative theories rather than outright denial that it ever happened. E.g. Some believe that the 6 million figure is greatly exaggerated, or that the majority of prisoners died from a typhoid outbreak rather than being gassed.
I'm not saying I believe those theories or that I'm supportive of Holocaust deniers, but I believe in the right to question anything in search for absolute truth.
(edited 9 years ago)
It just sounds silly. What would happen if one day you said you believed it happened then the next announce that you deny the holocaust only to change back the next day? How do you quantify this against proper crime, like an attack on someone or robbery? Denying the holocaust is a state of mind. It's stupid, but it's not something that can be measured like proper crimes.

The closest that makes sense is if you bully someone affected by the holocaust using the holocaust denial rhetoric, such as "hey why did your family lie about being gassed? Biggest. Scam. Evar!" but despite that it still doesn't seem like a crime on it's own, you have to attack use it to attack someone.

The hilarity of the concept of denying the holocaust could be explored here:



In the video, the guy is an atheist and is denying the holy spirit as part of a blasphemy challenge. It seems a similar sort of action, i.e. denying a concept but also trying to turn that denial into an action that could be seen and measured, like picking up an apple or making a cup of tea.

It's this quantifying the denial into a physical action that I think of when someone talks about holocaust denial being a crime or illegal.
(edited 9 years ago)
No it should not be and it isn't.


At the same time, Holocaust deniers need to stop acting as if they are the victims or that their views are somehow repressed.
No, as long as they're willing to be mocked and ostracised by the rest of society.
I believe in the holocaust. But WW2 is a lie, a hoax.
no

i'd rather see our (already overcrowded) prisons filled with dangerous offenders over a harmless bunch of idiots
No

1) silencing controversial opinions because they are they are controversial simply defeats the point of freedom of speech

2) if it restrict to the denial of holocaust alone then it simply appears to be an attempt to make up for the holocaust itself/not intervening soon enough.

3) who decides what is denial and what is legitimate questioning.

4) by letting them speak it gives others the opportunity to demonstrate fault with their arguments and further allows people to criticise it. In effect keeping it legal is an effective method at preventing it spread. Its like banning books if you loudly burn said books you simply raise awareness to their existence and end up causing people to read them.
Those who are afraid of other viewpoints, or arguments which counter their own, are evidently not confident that their beliefs equate to a truthful reality, in which case steps must be undertaken to either 1) find and make logical criticisms of new evidence that opposes the original view or 2) change one's shaky beliefs.
Anyone who denies the holocaust immediately loses all respect from others, that is enough punishment I believe. Its like if you took a dump in the middle of the street, don't expect respect from those around you.
Reply 17
No:

Noam Chomsky Freedom of Expression.jpg

"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." - Noam Chomsky
(edited 9 years ago)
Reply 18
No. Even if there is overwhelming evidence to support a historical fact, you shouldn't be forced to believe it happened. Holocaust denial borders that dangerous territory between freedom of speech and freedom of thought.
Freedom of expression....so no it shouldnt.

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