Finland to criminalise Holocaust denial
Let's say better late than never.
https://yle.fi/a/74-20162044Open linkView original on lemmy.ml1269
Comments170https://yle.fi/a/74-20162044Open linkView original on lemmy.mlhttps://yle.fi/a/74-20162044Open linkView original on lemmy.ml
I’m so used to bad news I read that as decriminalize
Fucking GOOD.
Hopefully we'll also have laws against denying the holocaust israel is inflicting on palestine TOO.
Maybe 50+ years after every palestinian is murdered.
That's a conflict of interests.
Good, but add Armenian and Gaza genocide denial to the list too. Or make it genocide denial in general.
Armenian and Gaza is fully confirmed, but human rights violations of Xinjiang not so much, it's semantics at that much, like calling the modern Turkish state genocidal for destroying the culture of Kurds in northern Syria, when it was not explicitly to destroy the people itself
Fair enough, but the term genocide is far too inclusive, I've heard people use cultural genocide instead.
No, "cultural genocide" is not genocide. There is a pretty clear legal definition:
Culture is a part of ethnicity, however.
It's pretty hilarious how tankies suddenly start quibbling over definitions once China is mentioned.
Where's that definition from?
From that wiki page, and I appreciate the just barely academically masked sass about why it’s such a narrow definition
So is regime change to bring about a liberal democratic government also considered cultural genocide? Like if I'm working against the Saudi monarchy and Wahhabi religious order of laws (which is their long term culture) am I guilty of genocide?
Was the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan cultural genocide? Is forced rendition or even "nation building" genocide? Guantanamo? Rendition?
Are Starbucks and McDonalds guilty of genocide for spreading their "franchises" (Temples of a neoliberal globalist culture really) everywhere?
Is the "culture war" against the institutional racism in the USA a cultural genocide? After all it's a culture of racism... are the atheists really conducting a cultural genocide with their War on Christmas!? Oh God! Are we the baddies???
If you're in Finland, don't deny any of this! It's illegal now!
PS: Sorry this is a late reply, and obviously it's argued to absurdity.
I'd swear that there is a message group specifically for .ml users to jump in whenever any criticism is leveled at China.
You can swallow this Sinophobic garbage if you like
why do you think this is a useful thing to say
I return the question?
I thought I might gain a deep forbidden insight and transcend this earthly plane.
Criticism of China? Sinophobia.
Criticism of Israel? Antisemitism.
Where does it end, Yurophobia next?
When did China relentlessly bomb a population and starved them to death?
What is this even in relation to?
sure toootally the same
Well one is way more recent
please tell me when the Chinese carpet bombed a population and let them starve to death?
My guy, what does this have to do with my comment
The difference is that the US did actual genocide against the natives of America
I fucking love Finland.
I need people to pay attention to the popularity of denial of the mass killings by Nazis of transgender people. One of the doctors who performed the first vaginoplasty, on Dora Richter, did also go on to participate in brutal abuses in a concentration camp. Like a dung beetle, a group is rolling around this tiny kernel of truth, coalescing in a ball of shit that ends up like this.
There’s something so vile about this. It has to be deliberate.
DuckDuckGo and Google have always had at least one denialist result in every single Google search I have made about the Holocaust. Back in 2010 - in high school, I remember reading half of a book online which seemed to be the memoirs of an American World War 2 soldier, than abruptly realizing that he was starting to say some really strange things. Never anything quite wrong, but off. I did a little googling, a bit more research, and then started running into names like David Irving.
It’s just such a damn difficult problem to fix. They are insidious. Deniers know that the Holocaust happened. They know that trans people were brutalized and massacred by the Nazis, whether you feel like the “purpose” of the mass killings makes it a genocide or not.
They don’t care. They want stupid people to believe it, because then you can get the stupid people to look the other way. To laugh at people pointing out the patterns.
TIL, design of the freezing experiments and he later wrote on them. Worked at the Charité at the time of doing the vaginaplasty, from what I can tell seems to have been a star surgeon. Surgery attracts psychopaths, he probably could not give less of a fuck about the ethics of anything but was interested in the technical aspects. Dora Richter's surgery was a joint effort with Ludwig Levy-Lenz, generally credited as the father of sex reassignment surgery and working at the Hirschfeld Institute itself. Not terribly surprising they collaborated with the Charité on a novel procedure, it was and is one of the very best hospitals in the world. Not indicted in the Doctor's trials, you probably do not want to read up on what those people did. I'm serious.
JD Vance will be pissed.
All holocausts?
https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/26868-finland-moves-to-ban-holocaust-denial-under-new-criminal-law.html
Interested to see how this plays out.
Prohibiting Holocaust denial is relatively easy, because we have the benefit of it being history, and we have an ample historical record and a clear consensus among historians. Plus, no one can credibly claim that the legislatures were not thinking of the Holocaust when they wrote the law.
However, how are they planning on applying the law to contemporary international crimes? People make accusations of them all the time. And the other side always denied them. And the actual facts are generally obscured by a massive fog of war that can take years to see through, if ever.
There is also plenty of history where the answer is less clear. Do we really want courts involved in determining if the 15th century conquest of the Canary Islands counts as a genocide. Or if some unnamed mass grave an archeologists unearths was caused by an invading army killing all of a city's adult males, or simply a burial site for fallen soldiers?
What about the book of Esther. Taken literally, it ends with what is arguably a genocide committed by the Jews against the Persians. However, outside of some Israeli hardliners reinterpreting that ending for contemporary political purposes, it is widely understood that that ending is a literary device, not a literal telling of events. Did my Hebrew school teachers violate this law when they told me we didn't actually kill 75,000 Persians? [0].
What about the ongoing genocide against white Afrikaners going on in South Africa today? Am I violating the law when I say that genocide is not real, and just something the rightwing in the US invented for domestic political purposes. If the US has such a law, could Trump use it to jail his political opponents who criticized his recent stunt of accepting 60 Afrikaner refugees?
Do we defer to an international body like the ICC or ICJ? In that case, you have just outlawed disagreeing with those bodies.
The UN has repeatedly found it to be a massive human rights violation. Does disagreeing with those findings violate this new law?
[0] As an aside, secular historians generally consider all of Esther to be fiction.
Well the way German law works out that it comes down to established historical fact. As in, the professional consensus of historians, heard as expert witnesses. The wording of the law is (paraphrased) "Acts committed by the NS regime that fulfil the UN definition of genocide", the historians decide what happened, who did it, judges decide whether it fits the definition. Invoking precedence, in German law, is like invoking someone's doctoral thesis on a matter of law: It's a piece of reasoning judges will have to take into account because it's an argument before court but it's by no means binding. As such having an ICJ judgement will be helpful, but it does need to be up to standards.
How many have there been? As far as I know it's "The Holocaust".
Pretty sure they were talking about genocide in general, not just one genocide.
Genocide is a constant, ongoing foundation of capitalism, colonialism, etc. Sometimes it happens in Europe, sometimes in Palestine... Sometimes they genocide almost all of the inhabitants of USA, Australia, etc.
I'm confused by this comment. Can you explain what you mean by "Genocide is a constant, ongoing foundation of capitalism, colonialism"?
I don't understand what you mean, and my attempts to interpret it lead me to silly conclusions which I doubt are what you're trying to communicate here.
From what I understand, "genocide" refers to the eradication of a people or culture. This includes things like killing all Jews/Palestinians (e.g. Nazis and Israelis), imprisoning and "re-educating" an entire ethnic group (like the Chinese are doing to the Uyghurs), and much more.
Colonialism very easily falls into that definition, but I struggle to see how captialism does.
Capitalism is just the modern label for the same systems that made colonialism tick. The same exploitation is still going on, people are still dying for the same reasons, and the same elite is sitting on top profiting from all of it.
The whole idea of a free and competitive market where good ideas thrive and people that work hard are rewarded is a sham. It's the same BS idea the elite has always sold us.
There are no great men.
Ok, I see now that my silly conclusions were on point lol
"everything I don't like is capitalism" is not a good philosophy to have if you want to be taken seriously.
When your politics is nothing but shouting thought terminating cliches
I don't think you know what genocide is or have a grasp on reality.
They're not wrong. The deaths of Indians from the Americas and the aborigines from Australia far surpass the technical definition of genocide. Throw in banana republics and other nation building and it is totally arguable that the US has been complicit in many other genocides, for instance.
Sorry, quick nitpick for non-Australians. It's never "aborigines", if you're going to use the term it's "Aboriginals" (and the capitalisation is important).
Aborigines is kinda like calling Asians Orientals.
well - there's an ongoing major genocide happening in Gaza that unfortunately no longer pales in comparison. It's not up there yet, and let's hope it never gets there, but I definitely see the point of the question of the previous comment.
Holocaust is the name of a particular genocide.
All thumbs are fingers but not all fingers are thumbs kind of situation.
I'm not sure they're really comparable. The Holocaust was industrialized murder on racial grounds. Gaza and the West Bank are more like the genocide of the Native Americans. A sort of "Give us the land you're sitting on, or die. I don't care where you go" as opposed to "I'm going to kill you. No there's nothing you can do. You are the wrong race and must die"
I don’t even think that’s as much of a distinction as you think.
In 1930s Germany, the Nazi platform was “We’re going to relocate these Jews. We’ll make some kind of settlement for them, or shift them to other nations, who knows.”
Maybe at the end of the war the Holocaust - their “final solution” for the relocation problem was made clear, but even then anyone could have raised questions about where there were going.
Political excuses like “Relocation” are extremely common for Genocide.
The tail end of that sentence was “…was made clear.” Up until then, the narrative seen to the world and the German public was different.
I’m not even claiming that Germany had a perfect veil of secrecy over it; just that they would use propaganda to push just enough plausible excuses over the “missing people”, the smokestacks, that the world wasn’t convinced until the end of the war that systematic execution was really going on.
And yes, deportation was an early public part of Germany’s plans, in part because that’s more publically digestible. They canceled plans to move many Jews to France after colonizing it - referred to as the Madagascar Plan - because of a blockade.
Of course, one major aspect of deportation is that people become sight-unseen at many destinations. The gestapo can easily execute people with gunfire en masse once they’re in a place no one can access them. So, saying “They only wanted to deport them” is not a compliment to the “decency” of old Nazis. It’s a word of caution about the new ones.
The 'relocation' wasn't based on anything the Jews had that the Nazis wanted though, not in terms of physical land anyway. Wealth, sure, but the Nazis weren't going after Jews because they had money. The Slavs were gone after for land, definitely, because the Nazis wanted all the land to the east and were happy to just murder anyone and everyone living on it, but even that was based on genetics because the Nazis believed the Slavs to be an inferior species.
Again, what Israel is doing is definitely genocide, there's no arguments there, but it's not the same as the Holocaust. There's a reason the Holocaust is seen as more evil than the Holodomor, and it's because of the sheer industrial evil of it all. A systematic extermination of a people based purely on genetics has some extra weight to it.
That's not entirely matching what I learned from history books. The German Nazis absolutely commit robber/murders. They just extended their murder spree to those of the same ethnicity and other "out-groups" who didn't own anything to steal.
No argument there, note my original wording "it no longer pales in comparison". The Gaza genocide already has millions of victims and tens of thousands of murdered palestinians. That's unfortunately starting to become visible even on a scale that takes the Holocaust as reference.
It wasn't "Those people have money, therefore we shall rob them" though. It was "Those people are Jews, therefore they deserve to get robbed". They were an acceptable target because they were Jewish, not because they had any money.
Imagine believing this is a reasonable distinction.
Nobody said it's reasonable. It is a distinction, tho.
It's a really important distinction if you're not a moron. The Nazis rounded up undesireables and killed them. There was no 'loyalty', there was nothing those undesireables could have done that would have changed what, in the eyes of the Nazi regime, should have happened to them. They were rounded up, shipped off to camps and exterminated, based purely on their genetics or even perceived genetics.
What Israel is doing is genocide, but it's not the same as The Holocaust. Israel has a Palestinian population inside its borders, they have voting rights, they have seats in their Parliament. The Nazi Regime would have never allowed ANY of their chosen undesireables to have any representation, because the entire purpose of the undesireables was to be killed.
Now, compare what Israel is doing to Palestinians to what the US Colonies did to the Native Americans, and suddenly it's a lot more comparable. The Colonists showed up, took land, forced the Native Americans out, and if the Natives resisted in any way, they were murdered. Any attacks on Colonists by Natives were met with overwhelming force and wholesale massacres of Native populations. Sounds a bit similar to Gaza, doesn't it? Americans just don't like to make the comparison because then it suddenly puts them in the genocidal hot seat.
If the Israelis truly didn't care where the Palestinians went, they wouldn't be confining them to a 25-mile long open air prison. Extermination is the goal.
You're ignoring the West Bank. Palestine is not just Gaza.
What's your point?
Palestinians in Gaza are not allowed to freely travel to the West Bank.
You're making a lot of claims about what's going on in Gaza and making huge, sweeping statements that attempt to correlate Palestinians' experience with others in history. I recommend you read about what is actually going on in Gaza before continuing. You seem ignorant about some of their most basic and fundamental struggles.
My point is the genocide of the Palestinians is more than just Gaza. The bombing of Gazans is a war crime, yes, but that in and of itself is not genocide. The settlements in the West Bank and overall encroachment on Palestinian territory is genocide, and that's been going on for decades. If Israel and Egypt suddenly allowed people to leave Gaza and go to the West Bank, it wouldn't stop the genocide, nor would stopping the bombing or the killings in Gaza, because the fact that Israel is allowing their colonists to displace Palestinians at all is enough to say that their intent is genocidal in nature.
You're so caught up in the emotive rhetoric about Gaza that you're ignoring the actual issue at hand. It's like if the bombings weren't happening at all, you wouldn't actually give a shit.
Yeah let's ask Egypt if they would take them
Lots.
A holocaust is a religious animal sacrifice that is completely consumed by fire.
The Holocaust occurred in WW2.
Good, now criminalise Genocide denial.
They did. This is unequivocally a good thing
https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/26868-finland-moves-to-ban-holocaust-denial-under-new-criminal-law.html
It should be illegal everywhere. Germany knows how to deal with Nazis (well, unless they're part of a party)
Germany considers criticising Israel antisemitism.
all criticism?
Meaningful criticism.
lol, on all topics?
Others were the ones who dealt with Nazis not Germany.
Let's not whitewash the forced compliance of Germany with what was imposed on them by the nations which had to fight them to stop them as some kind of achievement of Germany.
Germany kept most of the Nazis around - not the "upper management" but certainly the "middle management" and below - doing the jobs in the State appartus that they did before.
Probably explains both the rise of the AfD and how still now after Israel has been for over a year fully and unashamedly acting in a way painfully similar to Nazism - just with different ubermenschen and untermenschen (or as Israeli politicians say it, "chosen people" and "human animals") - almost the entirety of the German political class continues to unwaveringly support them, overtly because of the dominant ethnicity of that nation, a purely Racist rationale.
Change from the inside changes mindsets, change imposed from the outside mainly changes the visible expressions of the mindsets rather than the mindsets themselves.
The far- right has been on the rise all over Europe, not just Germany.
Over a year? Are you fucking kidding me? They've been acting that way for decades.
I don't think that what Israel did before was at the level of being "painfully similar to Nazism".
Before the last year and a half they were acting as an Apartheid state, but they weren't actually working hard at making a XXI century version of the Holocaust happen as they are right now.
Before it was bad, but now it has reached the level of Evil.
They've been systematically eradicating palestinians for a long time. It just wasn't legally recognized as a genocide by many. Fun things they've been doing before that is stuff like forceful relocations, murder, and denying water and medicine to civilians
Common nordic W
you will apply this law with the same rigour to every genocide right? right?
Based! Fuck Nazis
W Finland
It's too bad we can't make being a fucking idiot illegal, but then there wouldn't be anywhere near enough prisons.
Curb your fascism.
Excuse me? My definition of idiot includes fascists. Curb your kneejerk.
Ok, curb your enthusiasm for fascism.
Ok troll.
This is coming from a currently far-right + hard capitalist government so I'm wary of how truthful this news is
Always trust Finland!
Censorship just hides it. Better would be to educate them. Make them meet with survivors, send them to the remaining concentration camps.
I don't know if this is really censorship in that way. Like yeah don't hide the genocide, hide the denial, because it doesn't deserve a platform. Holocaust denial has no basis in reality, especially considering it's one of the most well documented genocides of all time.
Don't censor history, teach the children about all the bad shit humans have done.
Holocaust denialism is censorship. It's an attempt to hide reality itself by controlling the narrative. If anything, outlawing holocaust denialism is anti-censorship, as it's helping ensure that Nazis won't be able to suppress the truth about what happened.
Someone claiming that outlawing holocaust denialism is censorship is trying to flip the script and overwrite reality (or just repeating someone else who is doing so, I guess). It's like saying "Hey! Stop censoring my attempt to censor others! This is censorship!" It's a mind game, an attempt at manipulation through deception. Look up the term DARVO: Deny, Accuse, Reverse Victim and Offender. That's what saying "Outlawing holocaust denialism is censorship!" is: Reversing the Victim and Offender.
Lies and misinformation and other attempts to deceive and suppress the truth are not a form of free speech. Quite the opposite, they're what results when free speech remains unprotected.
Exactly
There aren't that many survivors left, but you wouldn't know judging by the noise some jewish.groups make while clamoring for reparation.
This is effective censorship – of a bad thing, but still censorship.
Education is the way, don't let people forget history, remind them of all the horrors the nazi regime inflicted on gays, gypsies, political dissidents, criples, ... Remind them genocides are still occurring: in Palestine and elsewhere.
Yeah they won't use this to evil ends....
Fuck israel
I seriously believe that in an adult society you can set one or two historically damaging things aside from “freedom of speech.” I believe it was Trevor Noah who explained that when black people took back South Africa from its apartheid masters, they didn’t burn those people at the stake or prosecute them out of existence or even steal all their property. They just said you won’t be ruling this country like that anymore OH and that ONE WORD… you don’t get to say that ONE WORD ever again.
There are about 2,500 Sudanese immigrants in Finland. Why not have a law criminalizing the Darfur genocide too? Or better yet, how about a law against denying any genocide in the furtherance of hate speech?
Unfortunately, I think I know the answer to these questions. I suspect it's related to the fact that Finland does not recognize the Palestinian state, unlike their neighbors in Norway, Sweden, and Iceland. A law criminalizing the denial of any genocide in the furtherance of hate speech would end up legally including the genocide in Palestine as soon as a case lands in a Finnish court. At that point, it would be really hard to defend their one-sided support of Israel, and lack of Palestinian state recognition.
I'm sure they have problems like everywhere else, but I would emigrate there in a heartbeat if I could afford it and if they'd let me.
Oof, get outta there if you can
No, we're not. There's a lot of good, and definitely very good in comparison to a lot of other, or even most other countries, but I daresay there are certain problems of our own.
While the systems are all great on paper, reality doesn't always conform.
I was abused by the police in a manner that I think actually would reach the bar of international crime, as they even cut off my water at one point. I was denied my prescription medication and went psychotic for days on end in a jail cell, while "under supervision for my safety". I was literally drawing on the walls with my own blood. I didn't eat. They didn't care. Now whatever the motivation, the conditions I was kept in and the treatment I got would, I argue, constitute an international crime.
I've yet to find a single Finn who doesn't immediately challenge me when I say that, and then I show proof, they deny it, and I have not gotten a single person to explain to me how on Earth it would be possible for me to self-harm so badly while "under supervision" and why I was not given my medications and fucking urgent medical assistance? I still have scars on my arms and fingers and that was several years ago. Even just according to the Finnish laws, permanent physical harm would constitute a grievous assault, when done on another person. And since I wouldn't have done that if I weren't being treated that way (in a cell without a single word to anyone, no knowledge of my rights, which I have a right to hold a physical copy all the time during detainment, lights on all the time, no mattress, no bed, no blanket). The guard even taunted me several times over the radio.
Finns will deny this, just like all the Finnish authorities did. And thus if I can manage to prove that it was actually internationally criminal, then anyone denying it would be a criminal under this law, which sounds kinda nice.
Anyway, the point is that we're not a utopian democracy, we're a somewhat socially secure bureaucracy. Like yeah we don't really have anyone living on the streets, people usually get enough to eat, so "can't complain", but that's just it. Having some things be well doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive to improve the things which aren't.
Personally, Finland is a great country, but all countries are flawed in one way or another. There's no utopia anywhere.
Also the thing about Finns being introverts is not even an exaggeration. It'd be a massive understatement to say we're emotionally reserved and generally avoidant.
Here's one who doesn't challenge. The police do a lot of bastard shit here. At least this one whistleblower blog ended up in the news but nothing is being done to fix that system.
Yeah, exactly, nothing is being done. And people are actively ignoring it, which only perpetuates the situation.
Thanks for the link though I might email those HS reporters
1000% more supportive than any Finn I've ever met, including my family.
So yeah, compared to them you're a fucking master, mate.
That is very meaningful to me, thank you a lot. People ignoring it is what really gets me, not the personal experience. (It's not the first time I've been in a psychosis due to insomnia/other factors, but when I've my meds at home, I don't end up eating myself.)
I am doing better, yes. Maybe not exactly well yet, but ..
Seeing as I'm 36 and yet to find such a creature who I'm not paying hundreds an hour to listen to me trauma dump... I'd like to politely advice you to not use any definite sentence on what I will or will not find.
I would love a dog, I've had many as a kid. None from pup to gone though. My grandmas sofa wasn't older than me, then when we got our own dog when I was 12, he got ran over by a truck (and I saw it very close, and picked him up after he was driven over by a full semi tire). Then our next dog was done which was a sort of rescue, but from a trainer. He was my best friend ever.
I've cried more over my dead dogs than I ever have for any relatives.
So yeah, I'd like to get a dog, but as I live in a bedsit and am kinda depressed, I don't know whether I'd be justified in taking a dog... There's better homes for pups to go to.
Thank for the empathy. I can't overstate just how meaningful even a slightly empathic message can be. I'm grateful.
Honestly, like had the guards had 1% of that empathy, I would've never been abused like I was. And Finland wouldn't be as ass if the general population did as well.
Edit who the fuck is downvoting you lol
Will they punish communism glorification as well? I'm thinking anything nazi is shit but most of the people here are shitty tankies so Hitler bad Stalin good yet both were monsters... different types but monsters and no one criminalizes the glorification of Stalinism.
More solutions: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Genocide_denial&oldid=1288600616#Prevention
I must be mistaken. I thought the EU had made it illegal. Finland is part of the EU last I checked.
Is this tacked on with a bunch of other laws related to criticism of Zionism also being against the law?
Tons of laws Israel is trying to get passed in western countries to associate anti Zionism with Antisemitism.
I doubt this is the only part of the law.
No this law only outlaws denying recognized genocides by the international court and in a hateful way.
They probably mean anti-genocide and pissrahell criticism with it.
Every slope is a slip and slide when you're dealing with the "freeze peach" crowd.
Oh, except when they're suppressing speech they don't like...then suddenly the "freeze peach" absolutism just doesn't apply and we all living on a flat plane.
It's not "late". They're doing this in support of the current genocide.
Can you back this claim with evidence please?
This is a dumb law
I mean, the holocaust definitely happened, was horrific, and people who deny it either deny history happened at all of are conspiracy theorists, but I don't like the precedent set by the government specifying what opinions are allowed to have - it doesn't sound like something we should be celebrating, and anyway, banning opinions just drives them underground, if you want to regulate people's thoughts you have to legalise them.
which means fewer people will find them and engage with them.
You're going to get more people turning to Nazis if it's just out and about in the open. If YouTube was running ads for nazisim, they'd get converts. If the only nazi stuff you see is scribbled on the bathroom walls, it has less legitimacy and thus fewer converts.
hug
Sometimes I forget decent people with common sense still exist. Sometimes it doesn't feel that way...
But it's not an opinion. It's a fact. It should be illegal for me to claim I'm disabled when I'm not or that bleach cures autism. Misinformation should be illegal.
Disinformation is spreading misinformation on purpose, knowing that it is incorrect.
Spreading misinformation should (in my opinion) not be illegal in itself, people should in many cases be given the benefit of the doubt. It might be ignorance.
A judge/jury should decide if it is done knowingly.
As long as the punishment is fair and not unduly harsh, I don't see any real problem with criminalising misinformation in general. It's already illegal to lie about facts in a great many contexts (e.g. fraud, perjury), and reasonable people don't have a hugely difficult time distinguishing a fact from an opinion.
As a trivial example: "This is mine and you can have it for a dollar" is not an opinion someone can be entitled to, it is a statement of fact that is either true or not.
I am not sure. I don't think we should punish someone that acted in good faith.
There is a possibility (not likely) of someone not learning about the holocaust by the age of 15. In Norway you can be punished from that age and up. Maybe the person had nutjobs for parents etc. I think I learned about it at 13-14. There is a lot about it in the Norwegian curriculum, so you have to really be unlucky to not learn anything about it.
Anyways, it is ethically wrong to punish a person that was unfortunate and did not get a proper education and parenting. How to handle those cases is difficult though. Holocaust is a pretty obvious case of something EVERYONE is exposed to a lot. There are however lots of other historical facts that a person might not know. Is thst fair to punish someone for?
Wait....bleach doesn't cure autism? Should I stop drinking it?
Since you're asking that on the internet, I should probably say "no". Specifically the second question, that is.
(Yes I know he's joking, so am I.)
The fact you need to (disclaim) that is just... weird... the net was way better in the 90s.
I too enjoyed the internet more before the normies joined.
Although, to be fair, there's was a lot less of it.
Are you a Bleach Boy?
Agreed. People imagine the best case scenario for these kinds of bans, like calls to criminalize "misinformation" but what happens when the government is headed by Donald "Fake News" Trump and suddenly what you know to be fact is labelled "misinformation"? People were getting cancelled for speaking out against the invasion of Iraq, now imagine if it became a crime to deny that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
Your argument only works if you assume that this sets some precedence for fascists to use. It doesn't, fascists like Trump will implement fake news laws anyway. In fact Holocaust denial is illegal in quite a lot of countries for quite a while now, most of them democracies (in number, not necessarily km²). Obviously you have to be reeeeally careful with any legislation that somehow restricts any freedom (like freedom of speech), but since every freedom requires boundaries to ensure other freedoms (like the freedom to live in peace and safety) and this is a historical, culture-defining fact and not some political agenda, we are absolutely fine.
That seems like an ad populum fallacy.
Too many here mistake progressivism for removing fundamental rights to express (illiberal) ideas they oppose. Safeguarding fundamental rights unconditionally to deter legal challenges & protect free society is paramount to progressivism. Testing integrity by trying to provoke society to weaken its legal protections enough to punish offensive exercise of fundamental rights is a classic challenge illiberals pose to lure society to attack free society. Progressives before would recognize the challenge & not fall for it. It seems too many "progressives" today are failing these challenges (maybe some weak rationalizations or stupidity).
Imposition of government penalty/force over peaceful (even if detestable/false) expression is difficult to justify. What does it achieve & why is this type of government penalty/force necessary to achieve it? Pretty much everyone knows their falsehoods are false. Legal compulsion can't convince people of the truth, and it doesn't deter people from disagreeing or speaking & organizing privately. It does deter people openly revealing their problematic ideas so we can openly challenge & deradicalize them. Taking them underground makes them harder to track.
What peace and safety is gained with the law exactly?
Direct harm (eg, incitement, defamation) is a firmer, narrow boundary worked out generations ago. A looser boundary requiring more judgement makes legal protections more vulnerable to poor judgement. Weakening legal integrity of fundamental rights threatens free society.
When I look at the bigger picture, this looks like a loss of integrity in fundamental principles protecting free society for a cheap "win" (ironically, a loss). I'm less clear what good was gained here, but I'm absolutely clear what good was lost.
I agree that fascists will try to force through what they can, but there is a wide range on the political spectrum outside of fascism, and they wouldn't force through fake news laws like fascists, but they will take advantage of legal tools provided to them. A domestic mass surveillance program, the likes of which a fascist would want, was instituted by Bush and then continued and expanded by Obama. The justification was to combat terrorism, which would seem like a worthwhile goal, but I'd argue the negatives far outweigh any supposed positives.
Additionally, having these tools laying around only makes the job of fascists easier. Fascists still have to work within the legal framework set up before them, at least initially. Sure, they can try to ignore and force through measures, but the courts have legal backing to challenge them. A blanket misinformation law would make it so much easier for fascists to label something as misinformation and the courts can't do anything about it.
In this case, it's specifically about outlawing Holocaust denial, so I can't imagine it being abused, but at the same time, I can't imagine it doing much to stop fascism. It's such a highly specific law, it even causes some to think "why only outlaw Holocaust denial and not the denial of other atrocities?" and that's where the opportunity for a more general law comes in, which increases the potential for abuse.
Well, it combats the most obvious ones, but I don't think it's the main goal of such a law to work wonders against fascism (after all they could've also banned the original logo (the fasces), however that one is rarely used (except in some really bad places). It's more of a clear statement and moral boost to democracy, probably. Given it's so highly specific about symbolism that defined western history in a negative way the dangers of it being abused as some kind of excuse to ban even more are really, really low. Given the rise of extremism all over the place a law like this can do wonder for the sense of safety and participation of endangered social groups (in this case most obviously jews, but also LGBT and anyone else hated by western fascists). I mean, that's pretty much how it ended up here.
I'd also like to point out that the argument you're using can also be somewhat of a slippery slope. Some people went way too far down that road and ended up somewhere where they feel suppressed because they can't use the N-word or other slurs anymore due to anti-discrimination laws, and start screaming about their "freedom of speech". What I want to say with this is that we absolutely should not stop to use our democratic institutions so society can regulate itself. We managed to wander towards a cliff due to a false understanding of freedom, liberty and tolerance as absolutes, while it's actually a social contract. Without those rules (or with bad rules set up one-sided, i.e. corruption and lobbyism) extremism will take hold.
I do like your vigilance though.
You mean Fox News?
First off, I am a bit torn here, but will take the opposing side for arguments sake.
This is not an opinion. The holocaust happened, that makes it a fact.
I get your point, but should disinformation (as in deliberate misinformation) be allowed? How much harm should we accept from people spreading disinformation before we do something? The harm here being antisemitism.
Antisemitism is growing because people do not differentiate Israel and Jewish people. Many jews report that they do not feel safe in otherwise safe countries.
This is a hard question. Not sure what I think.. Might be side effects that are hard to foresee
This is also why definitions of antisemitism that include anything about Israel are extremely damaging. The term "antisemitism" should only be applicable when talking about people and never about governments.
Broadening the definition doesn't help anyone, except for the state of Israel. But it does so at great expense to Jewish people.
This has nothing to do with opinions and everything to do with facts.
Edit: I see someone made a similar reply at the same times as me. I didn't mean to spam reply the same thing as someone else.
No no, I think it's good that you replied. In this case pushing back against misinformation is a great use for repitition.
Not all opinions have to be around the table to debate. It's a false idea of democracy. Your freedom of opinion has limits and one fundamental is humanity. Denying a crime against humanity isn't an opinion.
I respectfully disagree. Note that we are talking about holocaust denialism, not holocaust support. The first is just very dumb, whereas the latter is morally despicable.
In other words: Supporting a crime against humanity is never an option. Denying a crime against humanity is always an option.
I don't think that perspective is consistent with facts or evidence. Do you have anything tangible to back it up, or is it just your assumption?Suppressing things and pushing them out of the mainstream can be quite effective, and that's exactly why it's dangerous - if it wasn't effective, there's be no real reason to fear a ban.
Imo it's good so long as it's constrained to just the Holocaust. Slippery slopes can exist but not everything is one, and in this case it's likely that they intend to just stop there. There's overwhelming agreement among historians and everyone who's not a Nazi on this and this alone, there is nothing to be gained from debating or rehashing it and virtually everyone trying to is acting in bad faith. This isn't necessarily true of all claims of genocide, and there are always going to be edge cases where there's room for reasonable disagreement.
How TF can you have an opinion on a fact?
The holocaust happened. Why do you want to deny it and what do you feel that achieves?
But the holocaust actually happened. What does denying it achieve? I don’t think that this is the best example of being anti-censorship.
Free speech != Hate speech. Holocaust denial is hate speech. End of the story.
Just like in Canada, you're free to say as you please as long as it doesn't harm or hinder someone else freedom of expression. Hate speech is (often) not an acceptable use.
Surely this won't ever be abused to silence/punish Palestinian supporters or anyone critical of Isreal. That never happens.
If you're not able to critizice Israël without deniying Holocaust happened I don't really care you are silenced. There's plenty of ppl capable of doing the first without the latter and these are the people I want to hear not some confusionist bullshit
That's not at all what I'm saying. No holocaust denial is necessary if those in power abuse the law.
No holocaust denial is necessary. Period.
For sure!
I'msorry, but legally speaking that is not the case. In the US, which specifies freedom speech 'as is' (cited)
the Supreme court decided that hate speech is, in most cases protected (see Imminent Lawless Action test, Brandenburg V Ohio)
Of course, all nations aren't the US and for instance my country, Czech rep, allows limiting free speech, but it outlines this specific reasoning in its Bill of Rights, specifically §17(4) of 2/1993 Coll. Said Article says that 'For the reason of protecting democracy, the law can limit free speech..' and I assume the Finnish Constitution has a similar clause.
But the plain expression 'freedom of speech' does protect hate speech. That being said, even the afformentioned US limits free speech as it allows individuals to sue for libel and defamation and allows the state to prosecute someone for meaningful threats.
that court (in its present composition) is a bunch of fucked up privileged racist monsters.
Yeah, that's true. Generally, I think the Constitution needs a lot of revision as it fails to properly protect the civil rights of its citizens so a bunch of corrupt assholes (looking at you Clarence Thomas) cannot just disappear them in a whim.
Also the decision was made in the 60s by the liberal Warren court (the one that, among others, ended institutionalized segregation in the public sphere (Brown V BoE))
Oh cool, too bad the US government has decided your laws don't hold concrete merit and the constitution is worth as much as toilet paper.
That decision was made in the 60's, not today. I was trying to write analysis as neutral as possible, not to say which side is morally correct. And while the political situation in the US is dire and the incumbent admin absolutely blatantly violated, among others, freedom of speech (Perkins Coie LLC V DOJ, a case under which hundred of amici signed in support of the Plaintiff) and it is true that Brandenburg, actual KKK leader, was a piece of shit on another level, the decision still stands.
Hate speech is how my country's democracy fell in part. Hate was let go rampant, and people had to accept far-right propaganda, otherwise they were accused of discrediting the trauma of victims of crimes commited by minorities.
You American? Sounds like what's happening there.
I'm Hungarian, and pretty much the same thing happened here too.
Russia really loves hate speech from what I've heard.
You make a persuasive case that free speech, by your definition, isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Why would you want to be hateful?!
Because I hate Nazis
I think hate can be self-destructive. If you're going to punch a Nazi, do it from a place of love. But also, more power to your elbow.
Stating you hate nazi is a thing. Creating a political party and actively stating you want to kill whoever you include in your nazi definition are two differents things.
This is why it is ultimately at the judge to determine if it fall under hate speech and promoting violence or is just a random anarchkiddo on the web saying 'I wAnT tO kIlL nAZi' from his mama home
So you're all for freedom of speech, but the moment someone exercises it you'd like them to up sticks to another country? Riiight. You sound unhinged.
Oh look, the dumbass can't even answer a single question.
You aren't allowed to shout "Fire!" in a packed theatre. Is it censorship?
Honestly, yes. It's justified censorship, but still censorship
"You are really dumbfuck"
Oh, the irony.
The amount of times you call other people stupid tells a lot about you. You know for the stupid, everybody else is stupid.
Imagine being this dense.
You're right, you win: can't imagine being as stupid as you. I think it would require some brain damage, though who knows since maybe the universal healthcare we have would prevent it from getting that bad.
You speak from experience?
Spot the American! Dumbfuck over here doesn't understand what free speech is!
Not placing reasonable limits on hate speech is what ends free speech (and other freedoms in general). It should always be done carefully, but one only needs to open a history book to see why not limiting hate speech out of a dogmatic view that all speech is equal is a terrible idea.