Still it seems like a good middle ground.
[1]: https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Entscheid...
I’ve heard this joked about like this: “it’s a fact so true you’re put in prison for denying it”
There is no other “conclusion” to be drawn from the overwhelming physical evidence of these crimes.
Might we start rounding up all those who claim otherwise?
> Whosoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or downplays an act committed under the rule of National Socialism of the kind indicated in section 6 (1) of the Code of International Criminal Law, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace shall be liable to imprisonment not exceeding five years or a fine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Holocaust_denial#G...
Now, it doesn't mean that disputing or discussing the finer details of what has happened is outright outlawed and a prosecutable crime. If that were the case, historical research, remembrance and reflection wouldn't be possible. One needs to be able to discuss what happened, re-interpret what has happened, be able to dispute what has happened in order to come to new insights.
The key provision is this:
> in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace
The German law very much looks at the intent with which you approach history. If you publicly proclaim revisionist history with the express aim of inciting ethnic, religious or political tensions, then you will very much get prosecuted.
Whether you do it by publishing a pamphlet, a book, starting a non-profit, an online forum, a political party, a protest march,... The format doesn't matter: it's your intent that makes all the difference.
Freedom of speech is often touted as an absolute right. You should be free to express anything, including denial of the Holocaust. To many, it's an acceptable trade off since any limits put forward by a government are perceived as a slippery slope to authoritarianism.
The events of last week demonstrate the inherent paradox in the line of thinking. Allowing anything to go unchecked, culminated in a downright insurrection aiming to disrupt a constitutionally enshrined legal process. It wasn't just storming a building, it was very much storming the foundational framework that governs how people organize themselves in the United States... and this includes threatening that very same unchecked free speech right.
It was basically a demonstration of Karl Popper's famous paradox of free speech. See, free speech is an equitable right. Free speech doesn't exist if the humanity of certain groups in society is denied through legal policies which are founded in racial, gender, origin, religious, political or other types of discrimination.
In order for free speech to be truly free, society has to be intolerant towards such discrimination.
That's what laws such as in Germany are about. They aren't intended to curb free speech. They are intended to protect it. You can say and promote whatever you want. You just can't promote ideas with the express intent of curbing free speech rights based on discrimination.
An often heard argument is that such frameworks are a form of discrimination itself. But that's just a rephrasing of the paradox with the express goal of derailing the discussion into a circular argument.
The best response to that argument would be: "Well, sure, punishing revisionism is a form of discrimination. But would you rather have people freely rewrite history with the express intent of disrupting society based on a framework of free, open, equal and democratic values?"
See, when confronted with revisionism, a sensible approach is never "Well, they are wrong, and we need to fact check their claims." It's always a set of questions you have to ask yourself first: "Who are they? What do they want? Why should we even listen to them? And why should we allow them to disrupt the peace?"
The whole point of protecting what we _know_ is true now, is that if we don't scholars in 100 years will not be able to discern fact from fiction because there will be more fake versions of history than any true records. At best we'll be able to say "we don't know".
You see this all the time when discussing with, say, antivaxxers when a sufficient argument for them is to say "I read an article somewhere where a doctor said..." but when you try to raise your argument they suddenly need a whole lot of undeniable evidence + an ELI5 explanation of all biology.
Maybe it's a slippery slope when platforms start arbitrating the truth, but at the same time not doing anything or doing little is a free fall and we are already in it.
Having a scientific truth commission be the deciding authority about climate change, for example, is great until it gets stacked with oil industry representatives.
Read up on your Orwell. Controlling “truth” is the autocrats playbook. If having some nutjobs voicing scientifically illiterate nonsense is the price to pay for liberty, then so be it.
The proper response is not to ban free expression of ideas deemed “wrong”, but to provide better education, mental health, and a social safety net free of charge. Rob the anti-intellectual virus of it’s host by treating the underlying causes.
However measures are taken only against those particular, clean-cut issues.
In general I’m not fond of slippery slope arguments because the fact that even getting to arbitrate those basic facts is proof that the system is working.
A few people yelling nonsense is a non issue, half of the country though, is a danger to democracy.
I agree with your solution, however that is a decades long plan. We need to survive until then and also have government that could potentially pass laws to make this possible.
And then some politician claims ancestry from Holocaust survivors to score political points, but the details seem questionable... only you’re not allowed to question whether this person’s story is real.
These issues are never, ever clear cut enough to make all discussion of truth illegal.
It's funny how such arguments of protecting truth only come when the lie be emotionally sensitive, nay, they come just as easily when the truth be so sensitive.
It has nothing to do with veracity an everything with emotional sensitivity. The holocaust's occurrence could have been as false as the sun orbiting around the earth, but provided it'd be as sensitive as it now is, it would have been just as illegal.
Which is also why it's in particular Germany that bans it — the holocaust is no more or less true in different places of course, but the denial thereof is far more sensitive in Germany.
Rewriting history doesn't just mean hiding undesirable facts, it can also include perpetuating false histories - Consider Kim Jong Il's famous round of golf.
The holocaust may have happened, but there's no reason a genocide attributed to the enemy couldn't be invented and written in the history books of any particular nation.
Once you carve out a category of thing, recreating that thing is as easy as adding to that category; or in this case (banning falsehoods), expanding the list.
Of course, some falsehoods are easily spoken and unpunished, such as the claims by many a religion.
It does not solve the issue that sensitive falsehoods are more easily censored that those the public has no particular emotional investment in.
Even on the subject of genocides, denying that the Armenian genocide happened, or even denying that the genocides of the Third Reich against the Slavs and the Gypsies happened seems to be quite legal in Germany.
Another example on the flip side that another commenter pointed out, is that Galileo was prosecuted because he didn't accept the 'fact' that the earth was flat. People across all of history have been killed because they said they supported the 'wrong' god.
It is a common, and unfortunate myth that learned scholarship in Europe ever believed The Earth to be flat.
The Dutch government has only recently taken a public stance on admitting it. Prior, they purposefully avoided talking of the issue as to placate Turkey and soothe diplomatic relations therewith.