Today’s Crikey asks a rather rude question:
An Australian citizen currently languishes in jail in a foreign country, having been seized from an aircraft on the basis of an arrest warrant issued in a third country. The crime alleged to have been committed by the man relates only to the fact that he has repeatedly expressed views deemed unacceptable by that country.
Yet to date no one, not even the usual conservative suspects, has spoken out about the treatment of Frederick Toben, arrested at Heathrow while en route from the US to Dubai on a German warrant for Holocaust denial. Toben’s only supporters have been the appalling David Irving and the grotesque Lady Michele Renouf, a sort of Mitford-style far-right socialite.
Crikey is right. Toben (Wikipedia has some background on him) is not only wrong, he is highly offensive. He insults the memory of the millions of people that died as a result of one of history’s vilest crimes, and the integrity of the thousands that miraculously survived to tell the truth. As far as I am aware, however, there is no evidence that he has advocated violence against anyone. Furthermore, merely being grossly insulting and wrong about an ethnic or religious group is not a sufficient basis to apply the criminal law, potentially facing up to five years in jail. Furthermore, the circumstances under which Toben were arrested are extremely disturbing. He has been arrested in the UK, under a German arrest warrant, for alleged crimes that didn’t occur in either country.
Interestingly, Amnesty International doesn’t seem to have anything to say about Toben either, which is disappointing. If you’re serious about principles, you have to defend them even when it means defending worms like Toben, just like opposing the death penalty means opposing the executions of the likes of Amrozi and Muklas.
Shades of Pinochet?
Yes and no.
Toben, as Merkel says, is an obnoxious crank ( yet an educated man- doctorates don’t come out of Rice Bubbles packets! ). However five years jail is a bit stiff for being no more than one ( a crank, that is).
But then again, we could think of our own country and some of the stuff going on with the immigration/and anti “terrism”/sedition laws and consider the plight of Benbrika and a couple of his mates, likely canned for up to decades for no more than hot-airing as well.
I thought exactly the same thing when I saw this reported on the news. I just couldn’t understand how this worked legally. What right does Germany have to request extradition for crimes not committed on German soil, that has not directly harmed or incited harm on any German nationals, and that aren’t illegal in the country where they were performed. As odious as his personal views are, there doesn’t seem to be any justice in this whatsoever, unless I am misunderstanding something fundamental in this case. If we extend this precedent to its logical conclusion, am I to assume Iran will now start extraditing foreign adulterers from around the world to be tried and stoned?
I agree. Much of the commentary on blogs and MSM ignores the fact that human rights and legal process are not just meant to apply to people who are personable, likeable or whose views you agree with.
Have his writings been published in Germany? Are they available through the internet? A [somewhat] similar problem occurred in a defamation case (material posted on a website) a few years ago.
Yes, his material has been published on the internet – google the “Adelaide Institute” if you can bear to wade through it.
In any case, I strongly believe Germany should repeal its criminal sanctions for Holocaust denial. They’re an anachronism that may, arguably have been appropriate in 1948. In 2008? They do more harm than good.
I was under the impression it was material published on the internet, which meant it was available in Germany where it is illegal. My opinion is that if Germany wants to disallow content on the internet, it is up to them to censor it rather than relying on every website in the world to indulge in self-censorship.
Agree. How much of an audience have the likes of Irving and Toben acquired as a result of the publicity arising from attempts to ban their work and criminally sanction them? The sensible and principled course is to make the positive effort to maintain a high level of historical knowledge and understanding of the events of the 20th century including the Holocaust, and leave these people to the obscurity they deserve.
I doubt that this chap intends to “self censor” !!
I’m with Daniel #6
Someone in Adelaide posted on a website some crackpot theories about historical events?
Germany petulantly blubbers about how they don’t like this? (their privelige, but they can go & root a boot) BUT Britain drags this fellow off an airliner & is seriously considering sending him to Germany to face charges in a German court for actions which occurred in Adelaide, involving no more interaction between this fellow & a keyboard?
Britain can go & root a boot also.
Let me get this right, satp, are you seriously suggesting both the Germans and British should put boots in the soil, in the (vain) hope they’ll somehow take root?? Boots are not meant for that, satp. It won’t bloody work, mate. Even if you bury a bull’s horn & manure at the right moon phase, a la Rudolf Bloody Steiner. Not going to work. Get back to pulling beers, steve. Keep yer hands above the bar, OK?
A question: If I suggest that China should reform its political system, will the British arrest me?
What if I claim Burma’s military dictatorship is oppressing Burmese civilians? Or Mugabe needs to go?
Publicly expressing these views could get me into trouble in the respective countries, but if I say such things in Australia, surely that’s ok. But apparently not if I then decide to travel to the UK!
The Brits are allowing a principle of least freedom to take root. This needs to be taken up by the various defenders of freedom and liberty. Amnesty seems the most likely candidate since they worry all the time about freedom of expression in China. If they don’t take this up, you can bet I wont continue funding them.
update: If they don’t take this up, or provide good reason for not doing so…
H.L. Mencken used to say some dreadful things about teachers, but I’m prepared to forgive him on the basis of this one piece of wisdom:
Once we start compromising on who we choose to defend based on how ‘nice’ they are, we start to undermine the whole principle on which justice is based. It’s dead easy to be opposed to injustices when they’re visited upon nice people with doey eyes who play well on current affairs shows.
I can get that Amnesty may feel that their resources are better devoted to those more ‘deserving’ people whose suffering is worse than that of Toben. Still, it still behooves them as a body set up to defend against injustice not-only-for-nice-people make some comment on this.
This is a criminal case we had to have. It brings to boil all sorts of questions viz current trends in governance eroding the rule of law, the tangle of jurisdictions involved in the difficulty of negotiating the laws of sovereign states, the jurisdiction of regional bodies politics in this case the EU and the application of law in a an era of instantaneously global communication.
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I’m not endorsing Peter Hitchens outright as the man displays many of the errors of knee-jerk conservatism. But he does make the valid point in his latest book, The End of Liberty that the common law system in Britain is at odds with the Napoleonic code law of the rest of the EU. As Hitchens correctly points out, the British system has traditionally protected liberty more effectively than the European systems.
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Here we’ve got the absurd situation where a law instituted in Germany to prevent a Nazi revision of recent history is being used to silence an erratic polemicist who is easily discredited by massive evidence. Because of the, as Robert says, odious nature of the speech, no-one apart from his few allies (and Robert) is supporting him. That’s very dangerous. The precedent by which one country will arrest a man for breaking the law in another for an act ‘committed’ on the other side of the world has obvious implications for free speech and any other kinds of liberty. The rights to free speech entrenched in one jurisdiction will be eroded by their non-existence in another. If I write a polemic criticizing the People’s Republic of China here will I face arrest in, say, Burma?
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Amnesty International has wavered from its strictly non-partisan stance in the past. Many people of the left didn’t say much because they were glad to have George Bush implicated as an enemy of freedom (for good reason). However when such an organization crosses the boundary from protecting civil liberties to taking sides in struggle, and I think it’s fair to say they have, you get this: We won’t hassle the Brits and the Germans for this quasi-fascist activity because the liability is being suffered by a fascist.
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That doesn’t matter. What matters is the precedent. And next time it might be used to prosecute someone not quite so odious.
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The regime of civil liberty that we in the West have taken for granted these decades past is under threat – from the very jurisdictions that’ve traditionally been avatars of it. The spectacle of anti-sedition laws here and a full range of legal manouvres by the Blair and Brown governments flagrantly disregarding the rule-of-law, civil liberty, habeas corpus and the rest of the Anglospherical legal apparatus (that these same people beat their chests about so chauvanistically) testify to this point. And let’s not even mention Mr Bush’s nastiness.
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Unfortunately the populations of English speaking worlds are dimly aware of the structures that guarantee their freedoms and’ve displayed a willingness to let them slide out of fear and/or hostility to the ‘threats’ posed by such as David Hicks. We live in interesting times.
The thing is, people like Toben are best dealt with by allowing them to express their opinions, then publicly ridiculing them to within an inch of their lives. Locking them up only makes them look like martyrs.
I believe Toben was arrested under an EU warrant. He has already served time in Germany in 1999 for anti-Semitic and historical revisionist actions. I see no problems at all with criminalising Holocaust denial; after all, few people are sufficiently deranged to be subject to such a law, and it acts as some constraint on those who seek to commercialise their malicious insanity, despite the small value of their ’cause’ in attracting defense funds. Maintaining a ‘..high level of historical knowledge and understanding of the events of the 20th Century including the Holocaust..’,as has actually been the case in parallel with anti-denialist/Nazi laws, may work for rational folk, but has had no obscuring effect on the Tobens and Irvings of this world. I’d argue it has the inverse effect, as the more detailed and voluminous the historical reality, the more fervent the denialist nuttery…after all, if there had been no Holocaust, Toben would have been denying pogroms way back into the distant past.
The trouble is banning things like holocaust denial leaves the door open to criminalizing all sorts of other offensive but non-harmful speech / behaviour. I can see the reasoning behind arresting people for speeches which incite violence or other criminal acts, but where is the harm in denying something happened, however awful that thing may have been. The appropriate response is ridicule and scorn, not criminal proceedings.
I mean, where do you draw the line? Should it be a criminal offense to deny any past mass murder, or just particularly famous ones? If we’re going to start jailing people for saying things the government doesn’t like, why not go all the way and institute lèse majesté style laws, so we can jail political malcontents whenever it suits us.
Haiku-no san : “I see no problems… with criminalising Holocaust denial”.
Surely not to the point of a five year jail sentence?
I remember a couple of years ago in Adelaide a group of young eastern suburbs gentlemen due to be installed as undergraduates at Adelaide Uni being hauled before court for applying their designer footwear to the head of another, lone person, to the extent that that individual received permanent and greivous brain damage.
Result: suspended sentences.
Now, if an advanced justice system reckons a bond for brutally mainming someone, what actual penalty for hot-airing against the Holocaust?
If you spare the confected outrage for someone like Toben, the real thing will have more force when you apply it in favour of someone who needs it.
I’m against the death penalty, but fuck Amrozi. There’s no contradiction here: Nguyen, the guy who was hanged in Singapore, was deserving of my sympathy and got it. I can only do so much and so can you. There are people being sentenced to death all over the world: what adds force to a campaign against the death penalty is to say but this one’s different, and why, and act on that basis. If we have enough cases like this we might get better-targeted laws: punishment for those who deserve it and not for those who don’t.
Toben is not being put to death. He knew that denying the Holocaust came with this risk, and in his braver moments he has actively courted this kind of reaction. If he had the moral courage of a Gandhi, he would have marched down Kurfuerstendamm with a loadhailer proclaiming his views and demanding the maximum sentence. If he was as verbally tricky as Baudrillard, he could have written The holocaust did not take place to broad acclaim. He lacks both qualities, which will make it hard for the far right to make him a martyr. Being imprisoned largely broke David Irving.
I don’t give a monkey’s what happens to Toben, standing up for him is more trouble than it’s worth.
Haiku – but has had no obscuring effect on the Tobens and Irvings of this world. I’d argue it has the inverse effect, as the more detailed and voluminous the historical reality, the more fervent the denialist nuttery…after all, if there had been no Holocaust, Toben would have been denying pogroms way back into the distant past.
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So what?
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Free speech works on the basis that you can say what you like unless such speech is likely to precipitate immediate harm. Hence, as JS MIll illustrated well, it’s fine to write newspaper articles decrying the existence of private property but should one do so addressing an angry mob outside a well-to-do person’s house: that’s different – the cry of ‘fir’ in a theatre principle.
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You can say all sorts of things that doesn’t make them so. The Holocaust denial laws may have had a certain legitimate function in Germany in the years after the war. But they were an anomaly whose time has gone. The likes of Mr Irving et al cannot succeed in the face of overwhelming evidence except with those who choose to be obtuse about it.
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Again so what?
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No direct harm comes of Toben’s bullshit. But the entanglements of jurisdictions and the resultant erosion of clear rules of law does. We face a much bigger totalitarian threat from the activities of the authorities in this case then from Toben’s desperate attempts to revise clear historical events.
In any case, I strongly believe Germany should repeal its criminal sanctions for Holocaust denial. They’re an anachronism that may, arguably have been appropriate in 1948. In 2008? They do more harm than good.
I agree RM, but it would be sweet if I’m a dinner jacket ever visited the UK, and the Germans were to apply for extradition.
Peter: While he’s carrying a diplomatic passport, he won’t be extradited.
Sorry Andrew E, I couldn’t disagree more strongly.
Standing for absolute principles means standing up for the unsympathetic cases too, not the emotionally easy ones.
I also believe in absolute principles, but there’s things I struggle with here.
I believe Holcaust deniers should be able to stand on street corners and spew their idiocy. But what happens if they do so outside a synagogue on a Saturday or a Holocaust Museum? Do I stand be my absolutes then? I’m really not sure. How does context work in all this? How would we have felt, for instance, if there had been a Stolen Generation denial demo outside Parliament House on Sorry Day?
What is the effect on those directly damaged by such things? Isn’t that a form of violence as well?
But what happens if they do so outside a synagogue on a Saturday or a Holocaust Museum? Do I stand be my absolutes then? I’m really not sure.
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Yes. The classic and definitive text on civil freedom was written by John Stuart Mill: On Liberty. In it he states categorically that that is exactly where you draw the line.
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BTW I challenge anyone to do what you hypothesize and get thru the next five minutes without sustaining bodily injury. Particularly in Melbourne.
That’s probably true as well, Adrien.
Sorry Robert, as Adrien, Fine and JS Mill point out, what you call an absolute principle is actually a relative one. You do more damage to your principles – relative, absolute or otherwise – by sticking up for Toben than sitting this one out.
You do more damage to your principles – relative, absolute or otherwise – by sticking up for Toben than sitting this one out.
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Nonsense.
Adrien, deliberately spouting holocaust denialism outside a synagogue is not attempting to usefully engage in debate so as to understand the other side’s view. You’re either deliberately provoking violence, or attempting to inflict some sort of pyschological harm on your audience. There would seem to be quite reasonable grounds for outlawing such behaviour.
However I can’t see any justification for banning publication of a website that take a controversial position sheerly because it’s seen as disrespecting a certain class of individuals.
The principle is that “saying things that are wrong, hurtful and offensive is insufficient grounds for throwing the speaker into the clink”.
Pretty absolute to me.
#29 – Wizofaus. Yeah?
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You seem to be arguing with me and yet agreeing with me 100% at the same time.
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As I’ve said, Mr Mill illustrates where the line between free speech and harmful speech occurs. Spouting Protocols of the Elders of Zion type bollocks outside a synagogue qualifies as the latter. But websites saying whatever are of the former.
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If we choose to ban certain things because they challenge our notions of historical truth where do we stop? Who is to decide where we should stop? And how does one do that without prohibiting people from creating new knowledge? If such laws were in effect in the 19th century we’d still be under the impression that the Earth is only 6000 years old. Some of us still are.
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Talking of which, did you know that we’re being lied to? Apparently the Earth is not round at all. It’s flat and Antarctica is a great big Ice Wall.
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It’s a conspiracy.
There’s two issues being confused here:
(1) are anti-denier laws are a Good Thing in Germany? I agree with Robert that they’re not, but that’s not the big worry in this particular case.
(2) should such laws should be applicable outside Germany? This is the big issue here. Giving such laws extraterritoriality is a rotten precedent – as others have pointed out, what’s to stop the Chinese demanding the arrest of “Free Tibet” agitators here? We’ve already seen an Australian citizen extradited for breaches of US anti music piracy committed here. On this trend, we’ll end up with the most illiberal laws applying universally.
Adrien, sorry, I guess I thought your “Yes” response to Fine indicated that you felt that people should be able to spew holocaust revisionism outside a Synanogue and Fine should stand by his absolutist principles in supporting that that right.
It’s too long ago that I read Mill to remember exactly at which point where he thought “harmful speech” became an issue.
I agree with Robert and the majority here: extraditing people and jailing them for words they write on a website sets an awful precedent. DD’s para (2) basically nails the issue.
To take another example, would we be happy to extradict someone to Thailand to face imprisonment, because they had written something nasty on a website about the Thai monarch? I hope not. (And for the sake of any Thai authorities who might be reading this, my example is purely hypothetical: your King is the embodiment of all human virtue, and a shining example to the human race.)
As for Adrien’s ‘standing outside the synagogue’ example, there is an element of harassment there, complicating the free speech argument.
A real-life example is the charming Fred Phelps (Mr ‘God Hates Fags’), who stages protests at funerals. Several US states have now enacted special laws to deal with him. His mob can still protest, but they just have to keep 500 feet away from the funeral at all times. Seems like a fair compromise to me.
Not by us. By the British. It is their EU Treaty on Extradition that is being applied here. Not our laws. We have no part in this. While Toben stayed in Australia he was immune from extradition to Germany because Holocaust denial is not an offence in Australia and our extradition laws require that for an extradition to occur from Australia there must be a comparable crime on our statutes with that with which the person has been charged by the country seeking extradition.
It seems there’s every chance that this extradition will not succeed given that he has committed no offense under UK law. I can only hope that, as a man of principle, Toben is willing to voluntarily take his argument to Germany.
Seriously though, Toben feeds off this stuff; this law has been shaped by and for his kind of madness, and by one particular era which saw a communal psychosis in which systematic humiliation,theft, dispossession,and enslavement become everyday events under law. That preceded the genocide. Anti-denialist laws honour that reality. They are carefully proscribed; I don’t see any open doors for restrictions on freedom of speech in any broader sense because of their presence. Governments and private groups around the world restrict freedom of expression without feeling the need to cite Germany’s anti-revisionist laws as precedent. As has been said, the real fight is everywhere else. Toben is guaranteed a transparent process.
I’d also suggest that a sizeable extreme right in Germany makes these laws less of an anachronism than RM thinks.
I read that Toben, feeling he’s the victim of a “legal ambush”, will not return to the UK…on principle.
Let me get this right. Toben writes articles; ‘I’m a dinner jacket’ plans nuclear attacks on the Jewish State. Is that roughly right?
Well, Mr Plod should be chasing the guy with the nuclear reactors, before he arrests the guy with the keyboard.
Mmm, so, Haiku-no San, give me a list of things that it should be against the law to deny.
Which genocides should be on the no-denial list? Some people have suggested that Stalin did not kill as many people as previously thought. I’m certainly no Stalin apologist, but should that be illegal?
Turks say there was no Armenian genocide. While I think that is utter bullshit, I wouldn’t argue for a denialist Turkish historian to be extradicted to Armenia and jailed.
Palestinians say that what happened to them in 1948 constituted a genocide. Israelis say it wasn’t. Without getting into the argument over that, would you extradite to Syria an Israeli historian to face imprisonment or execution?
Alternatively, we could just have a guiding principle that anyone can believe and say whatever they want about the past, without fear of legal retribution. Seems the sensible option to me.
Tobin is RWDB. And obviously a bit of a nutter. He is best ignored, not given publicity. People who believe his rubbish would have a diapositrion to do so even before they clicked onto his ridiculous website. First rule of Apologetics: You can’t argue against prejudice, so don’t waste your breath trying.
It’s great to read such a vigorous defence of freedom of speech. I must admit I didn’t expect it on LP, especially with regards to someone like Toben. If we permit open debate then who knows what else the left and right might be able to agree on…….well, probably not taxpayer funded parental leave, but who knows!
Disgusting. That one should have to defend one who defends fascism, from fascism itself! Why, I might just lose my fresh-faced 20-year-old boyish idealism in this climate.
Agree with Daniel at number 6. The rest of the world can do what it wants, even if this does mean holocaust denial. It does less damage than the erosion of free speech.
What I’m interested in are the details of the warrant. If it was an EU-wide warrant, as Haiku said, the arrest seems more legitimate. The implication here being that if one travels into the EU, with a warrant from (EU country) against one, then one is at risk of arrest – and should understand that full well, assuming one knows that (EU country) has a warrant out against one. one1one.
I swear I had Toben as a relief teacher at high school in Adelaide in 1994. He spent the entire lesson talking to me for some reason. I seem to recall a debate on the merits of mandatory school uniforms, which my school had. Years later I recognised him when some of his holocaust denialism got media attention. Small world.
As for this case, derrida derider@32 nailed it. The answers are very probably no and no. I would generally stand up for free speech to the point of disagreeing with most anti-defamation laws (both on principle and because I think they’re counter-productive), but then I don’t know the details of the neo-Nazi types in Germany. Is there some post-WW2 history to these laws?
That Britain should not extradite him under such circumstances seems fairly plain – it’s a slippery slope indeed.
@ 37
You don’t think that the British state is spending vastly more time and energy thinking about Iran than in arresting Australian Holocaust deniers?
Just had a look at the “Adelaide Institute” web site. Ugh, certainly odious, and as usual with these sites, the design makes the baby Jesus cry. I remember having a look at it back in the 90s sometime where it featured a picture of Toben; from the picture it appeared that the “Institute” was his kitchen table. Sad, really.
With regards to Dinnerjacket, he’s not a nice guy. But Iran is not a one-man band.
OT, but I trust that the IAEA, Britain, the UN, etc are paying full and very close attention to Dinnerjacket. Nuclear weapons are today’s gas chambers, if I may be offensive.
Andrew E:
Couldn’t agree more. In a world of millions of people starving in poverty, rape victims being lashed or hanged for adultery, political activists disappearing in the night, glaciers melting, species on the edge of extinction, I also have no time or energy to give a rat’s arse about this idiot. Or for that matter, Amrozi.
Oh, I say fuck Amrozi too. But wishing he’d drop dead is not the same as supporting the death penalty for him, on the principle that the death penalty is harmful to the wider society. As for the argument that there are many greater evils in the world than Indonesia shooting him, so what? You oppose evils that you can influence wherever you can, whether they’re big or small. All that varies is the amount of your time and energy spent on such opposition.
Back on topic, I’d reckon the Germans will argue that the “comparable crime” for extradition is the UK hate speech legislation. That’s asuming the EU extradition agreement requires that principle be applied (if it doesn’t, it’s a truly arrogant piece of treaty making of the sort that justifies some of the UK Europhobe’s concerns).
Andrew E. said
“I’m against the death penalty, but fuck Amrozi. There’s no contradiction here: Nguyen, the guy who was hanged in Singapore, was deserving of my sympathy and got it. I can only do so much and so can you. There are people being sentenced to death all over the world: what adds force to a campaign against the death penalty is to say but this one’s different, and why, and act on that basis. If we have enough cases like this we might get better-targeted laws: punishment for those who deserve it and not for those who don’t.”
You might be interested to know that Van Nguyen’s lawyers were very much against this sort of idea and felt their argument in Singapore was damaged by the government’s cherry-picking of capital punishment cases. This is because you can’t go to a foreign government and say we think it’s wrong to execute this person because we don’t think it’s that bad. The Singapore’s counter argument was that we think drug traffiking is just as bad blowing up people and you can’t really lecture us when you’re being inconsistent with your principles.
Opposing the death penalty demands absolute fidelity to that principle if you want your argument to succeed.
Various versions of the argument that Entity A does not deserve to live, however compelling, are simply not sufficient to decide whether Entity B should be allowed to kill Entity A.
The principle that one should not kill has a few loopholes, whose justifications vary in strength from self-defence through to increasingly specious utilitarian ones. None of them is sufficient to exculpate the ethical monster that is state-sanctioned murder.
Likewise, arguments against state-sanctioned murder – valid though they may be – around the execution of the innocent, lack of evidence for effective deterrence, etc miss the point in a similar way.
It’s a principle, people.
FDB:
And I absolutely agree with the principle and I have supported the principle in my own small ways both in general and in specific cases. But thousands of people are executed every year. I can’t campaign for all so I have to prioritise. Amrozi and his mates are at the bottom of my prioritised list. They are there because there’s something particularly cold-blooded about killing strangers. And because the possibility of a groundswell of public opinion in their favour is nil. And because their reported subsequent involvement in Bali Bombings II makes their execution akin to self defence.
It’s quite simple, Jenny. Nobody is asking you to ‘campaign’ for anyone, but you either support the death penalty or you don’t. If you believe that it is wrong for the state to kill an individual, that principle must stand irrespective of the crimes that may have been committed by that person.
Once you start making exceptions the principle itself is lost.
“And because their reported subsequent involvement in Bali Bombings II makes their execution akin to self defence.”
which pre-emptive jailing for life would also achieve. If you could guarantee there’d never be a Presidential pardon, or a successful appeal.
Never will I be crossing international borders with lots of herion strappdc to my torso. Thus I hold no empathy whatsoever for Van Nguyen.
Never will be I planting bombs in nightclubs. Thus I hold no empathy whatsoever for Amrozi.
I am able to hold some empathy for Toben. He wrote (in Adelaide) something on a website which the German government dislikes. I and many others here are quite likely to write something which gets on the goat of any of a number of foreign governments. eg, We may sling off at the Thai King (as mentioned above) we may insult Islam by saying the Danish cartoons were nothing to gripe about, we may say the Kurdish rebels have a case, we may recognise the Armenian genocide, we may support the partition of Bosnia, oppose the return of the Elgin Marbles, or whatever.
Being dragged out of the transit lounge in a third country, and extradited to face charges in a kangaroo court for posting any of the above statements on this site, is a horrid thought.
I’m with Toben.
So, steve at the pub, is your empathy so limited that you can only empathise with actions that you would take? Can’t you imaginatively put yourself in the position of a person who did something you would never do and understand why they’ve done it?
I’d never smuggled drugs either, but I can easily imagine why Van did it.
And why is your empathy meter any test as to why a person should be executed, or not?
It could be that Steve is no longer talking about the death penalty, which is fair enough IMHO as it’s not exactly the topic of the post.
I notice a bit of Amrozi- bashing. Lets remember that from the point of view of many poverty-stricken people in Indonesia, these people ( poor, poorly educated and susceptible in their misery to demagogues ) are regarded as “resistance”, rather as some Jews admire the Irgun and Stern Gang for its campaign in Palestine in the late ‘forties.
Hard tho it may be to beleive, it is just possible that these people feel they were doing the moral equivalent to what we were doing along the Kokoda Trail in the early forties- defending their world from godless and barbaric invaders and exploiters, responsible for much threat.
Haiko: yes, I am aware of the German – and Austrian – extreme right. Nasty pieces of work, certainly. But, to put it bluntly, their current targets are not Jewish – as I understand it, it’s recent immigrants. Holocaust denial laws are therefore irrelevant to their current activities.
Fine, a hint for you: “empathy” is not a synonym for “sympathy”.
I’m prepared to take a minority position on this, even within the libertarian-socialist left where Noam Chomsky is a world famous defender of known fascists.
The argument goes like this – the right to free-speech is not absolute as you will quickly find out if you start a stampede in bad faith.
Then its generally accepted that the community has a right to defend itself against any incitements to violence where there is a clear and direct link between the speech and the violence. Case in point hate speech such as holocaust denial.
Now I know these sort of laws have been abused and twisted 180′ degrees by corrupt police nevertheless I do believe its worth persisting with them with the following caveats.
That they be universal – that they include other genocides such as the various Holodomors that killed more and in worse ways than even the Shoah and that – most importantly for all anarchists – that the overall size and power of the state be decreased to compensate for these new anti-violence, anti-fascist laws.
So long as we have the net I believe this compensates. Also the jury system is vital here – there must be community input on every particular case.
No Euro style courts unless agreed by the accused who retains natural justice rights at all times.
I don’t accept free speech rights for any hate speech that leads to violence – such as the Danish cartoon incident so I remain a minority arguing all this.
Its conditional and its provisional but then in the long run we are all dead and until then we might introduce sunset clauses on all new legislation.
Yes, steve I know. And I was using it the sense of putting yourself in another’s place.
If you wish to stretch definitions that far Fine, I would be able to empathise with Amrozi & Van Nguyen, sympathise… NEVER.
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I am. I’m asking you and everyone else here to campaign for the free speech right to produce and broadcast a new reality TV show: Let’s Hunt and Kill Billy Ray Cyrus.
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You know it’s the right thing to do.
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I would be able to empathise with Amrozi & Van Nguyen, sympathise… NEVER.
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I sympathize, with Ngyuen. He was just trying to get his arsehole brother out of debt. His arsehole brother was the one that should’ve dropped (not that I support the death penalty). Amrozi is a religious psycho dickhead. I’m allergic to them sorry. Fuck him.
I much prefer the ridicule approach towards the likes of Toben and, especially, Irving. And Amrozi etc by the way. Personally, I’d far rather that (caution: potential Godwin’s law breach ahead) more top Nazis had been gaoled, like Speer, than executed, so that they could at least potentially have witnessed how wrong they were. Probably wouldn’t have made a difference to them, but maybe it would’ve. Which means, as already pointed out, that we must protest and protect our freedoms by supporting loathsome toads. C’est la vie.
The long standing bans on Irving’s entry into Australia should be rescinded: I’d happily go protest any appearance he may want to make. Maybe buy a ticket and a whistle. Or a fart machine.
And how can anyone take the current policy of prtesting the death penalty against Australians only? It’s only worth protesting if it’s applied to all, otherwise it’s only whitey exceptionalism.
As a potential German lawbreaker (if I ever get any of those model Luftwaffe planes put together they’ll be carrying the banned Hakenkreuz) I am already aware of Germany’s extrateritorial laws (try and buy a model Bf109 that comes with swastika decals). Enough.
Robert Merkel and All:
I was reluctant to comment here in case I ever had to go back to Germany. I didn’t fancy being arrested for “encouraging a Holocaust Denier” upon entering the country. Still, now that the Depression/Economic Meltdown has hit like a tsunami, there’s no chance I will ever get back there.
If Toben’s views are wrong and ridiculous then the German government should treat them as such …. and attack them with verifiable factual information and with scorn and ridicule. Merely arresting and then imprisoning someone because they shoot their mouths off and try to incite ignorance is about as counter-productive as you can get. It is not Toben who is being silly, it is the German government …. and I say that in having Toben arrested, they have have strengthened, not weakened, the cause of Holocaust Deniers.
If the German government still insists in detaining Toben then instead of chucking him in prison, why the hell don’t they take him on a fully-escorted personal tour of the relics of his precious Nazi regime. Not just to the concentration camps but force him to meet and listen to Germans who had to carry out the orders of the Nazi regime AND to meet Germans who had been victims of that regime.
It’s high time the German government took a more sober and practical stand on that relatively brief and deeply troubling part of their national history. Not to diminish or to forget, in any way, the terrible things that happened back then but to place it in a more rational context …. and while they are on the job, how about remembering all the terrible evil that was done from one end of Germany to the other in the Thirty Years War. If evil is forgotten then there is a risk that it will emege again ….
My personal inclinations are towards wider free speech, so my sentiments are those of the majority opinion above. (See groupthink works, even if not always with the predictable result
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I think DDs two questions are apposite. However even in regards to question 2) I don’t think it is all that simple.
I disagree with the notion that internet publication should be subject to prosecution only in the country of origin, and should be subject to national filters outside that country. I am actually comfortable with the idea that posting on the internet means publishing internationally with all of the consequences.
Now that does mean that nearly every internet poster in the world is potentially subject to prosecution under bad laws in other countries. I don’t think that should be the case, and so would hope that my home courts have robust enough extradition hearings to prevent it.
However I certainly don’t oppose extradition entirely, even under laws that do not exist in the jurisdiction from which extradition is sought.
So after a groupthink, I’m going to have a fence-sit. I don’t think that either “the internet should be totally free” or “no extradition” are adequate. For me it comes down to whether the law is a bad one or not, and despite my free-speech inclinations, in this case I really am not sure.