{"id":202410,"date":"2020-02-14T08:20:59","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T08:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=202410"},"modified":"2020-02-18T07:53:28","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T07:53:28","slug":"holocaust-denial-should-be-illegal-in-america-say-many-on-the-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=202410","title":{"rendered":"Holocaust Denial Should be Illegal in America, Say Many on the Left"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Cole \u2013 Russia Insider Feb 12, 2020<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
Editor’s Note: <\/em><\/strong>The author is Jewish, and has argued elsewhere that the ‘Holocaust’ did in fact happen, killing about 2 million Jews.<\/em><\/h5>\n
When did we become so deathly afraid of speech? And why is it oddly appropriate that the recent 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz coincides with ramped-up efforts to curb free-speech rights in the U.S.?<\/h5>\n
Let\u2019s use a fake Indian as a scout to begin our journey toward the answer.<\/h5>\n
\"\"<\/a>

Sen Elizabeth Warren. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Last week, Elizabeth Warren announced a \u201cplan of action\u201d to curb \u201cdigital disinformation.\u201d The\u00a0plan<\/span><\/a>\u00a0features \u201ccivil and criminal penalties\u201d for \u201cknowingly disseminating\u201d content that \u201chas the explicit purpose of undermining the basic right to vote.\u201d Any speech that might \u201cdepress voter turnout\u201d would be criminalized.<\/h5>\n
Warren\u2019s plan follows months of drumbeating by mainstream journalists in the service of criminalizing political speech. \u201cWhy America Needs a Hate Speech Law\u201d was the title of an October WaPo\u00a0piece<\/a><\/span>\u00a0by Richard Stengel, an Obama administration official\u2013turned\u2013editor of\u00a0Time<\/em>\u00a0magazine. Similar essays have appeared in dozens of mainstream media organs (including\u00a0Bloomberg<\/span><\/a>). A December Vox\u00a0survey<\/a><\/span>\u00a0found that the majority of Democrat presidential candidates favor criminalizing or otherwise suppressing speech that\u2019s deemed \u201chateful\u201d or \u201cfalse.\u201d<\/h5>\n
Warren, though, is the first Democrat to codify those proscriptions into a proposed law, one she\u2019s pledged to pursue as president.<\/h5>\n
So where does the Holocaust come in? Well, most of Europe\u2019s hate-speech laws were initially crafted to imprison Holocaust revisionists and deniers. In Canada, the government\u2019s recently announced\u00a0regulation<\/span><\/a>\u00a0of \u201cfake news\u201d has its roots in the \u201cfalse news\u201d laws that were used in the \u201980s to prosecute revisionists and deniers. And here in the U.S., Warren\u2019s and Stengel\u2019s proposed laws evolved from the 1988 Hofstra Law School \u201cmodel statute\u201d drafted to criminalize hateful and false speech (the statute, discussed in greater detail\u00a0here<\/a><\/span>, was tested in moot court against a hypothetical Holocaust denier).<\/h5>\n
Indeed, the Holocaust serves as the spark for the spirit as well as the letter of modern-day speech criminalization laws. Would-be censors, left and right alike, have always feared speech. But it was the fear of what \u201ctoo much speech\u201d would do to Holocaust history, and how it could harm the feelings of Holocaust survivors, that prompted the codification of anti-speech paranoia into today\u2019s legal statutes. Arguing in favor of Warren\u2019s curbs on speech, congressional Punjabi (and affirmative-action asterisk law professor) Ro Khanna\u00a0tweeted<\/span><\/a>, \u201cFalsity has never been part of our 1st Amendment tradition.\u201d In fact, that\u2019s 100% ass backwards; James Madison specifically\u00a0stated<\/a><\/span>\u00a0that the \u201cmisuse\u201d of speech is an inevitable and tolerable aspect of our First Amendment rights.<\/h5>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t overcome the Western tradition of free speech and open debate overnight.\u201d<\/h5>\n
If Khanna had an ounce of honesty coursing through his curry-caked arteries, he\u2019d admit that the current war against speech \u201cfalsity\u201d originated not with our Founders, but with Jews arguing that \u201cfalse speech\u201d endangers the memory of the Holocaust and pours salt on the wounds of survivors. We forget the Holocaustian origins of European, Canadian, and (proposed) American anti-speech laws, because these days those laws have metastasized to include protections for every nonwhite non-Christian non-straight non-male \u201cvictim group.\u201d But go back to the roots of those laws, and you\u2019ll find Jews humbly beseeching gentile society to curb\u00a0just a little<\/em>\u00a0speech, just for them.<\/h5>\n
There\u2019s an irony from my youth\u2014the \u201cheyday\u201d of Holocaust revisionism\u2014that I\u2019m only now able to fully appreciate. The way that revisionists responded to Holocaust anti-speech laws inadvertently assisted in their expansion. We would scoff, \u201cTypical Jews\u2014demanding special protection for\u00a0their<\/em>\u00a0interests, acting like only\u00a0their<\/em>\u00a0suffering matters and only\u00a0their<\/em>\u00a0feelings deserve coddling under cover of law.\u201d<\/h5>\n
We fell into a finely laid trap. Yes, the plan was to make people look at the laws that protected Holocaust history from \u201cfalse news\u201d and Holocaust survivors from \u201coffensive speech\u201d and say, \u201cFuckin\u2019 Jews, why do only\u00a0they<\/em>\u00a0get such special consideration? Why not\u00a0other<\/em>\u00a0people who\u2019ve suffered?\u201d<\/h5>\n
Exactly what the speech suppressors wanted us to say.<\/h5>\n
Those anti-revisionist laws were a trial balloon, a \u201cphase one.\u201d You can\u2019t overcome the Western tradition of free speech and open debate overnight. You start by establishing acceptance of censorship regarding an issue that\u2019s on most people\u2019s periphery. Something distant from and unimportant to their daily lives. The laws that criminalized Holocaust revisionism and denial affected a ridiculously small number of people. That was the\u00a0point<\/em>. Folks got used to the presence of those laws while not being touched by them personally. As Westerners grew comfortable with the notion that yes, Holocaust survivors\u00a0should<\/em>\u00a0be shielded from speech that offends, and yes, the history of the Holocaust\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0strengthened by restrictions on how it can be debated and discussed, it became easier and easier to expand those \u201cspecial protections\u201d in more invasive ways.<\/h5>\n
Whites became accustomed to the idea that some things fall outside the realm of free speech and open debate, and nonwhites (and other assorted \u201cvictims\u201d) began clamoring to have\u00a0their<\/em>\u00a0causes and feelings added to the list of things about which one must never speak ill. The Holocaust laws primed the public for the eventual expansion of protected topics and peoples. They were a point of entry for leftists (Jews and non-Jews alike) who understood the value of speech restrictions, and the\u00a0necessity<\/em>\u00a0of them, in the fight to dismantle the traditional West. Like Bontshe the Silent reluctantly asking the angels for a hot roll and schmear of butter, it started with humble old Jews, their hands outstretched, weepily entreating, \u201cJust censor a little speech in this one particular instance,\u201d and it led to where we are today. \u201cBad speech threatens Holocaust history\u201d has become \u201cBad speech threatens democracy itself.\u201d \u201cJust censor Holocaust skeptics because their words offend weak old survivors who deserve to live out their final years in peace\u201d has become \u201cCensor all facts about basic biology because mentally ill men in dresses might get upset.\u201d<\/h5>\n
All current attempts to stifle speech in the name of protecting feelings, and all current scare campaigns about how unregulated speech inevitably leads to bad and destructive outcomes, owe their existence to the acceptance by Western whites of a set of \u201cspecial circumstances\u201d whereby traditional notions of \u201cfight speech with more speech\u201d and \u201clet truth and falsehood battle it out\u201d and \u201csticks and stones may break my bones but words\u2019ll never hurt me\u201d don\u2019t apply to Holocaust history and Holocaust survivors.<\/h5>\n
Back in the early \u201990s when I was mouthing off about how you can\u2019t gas people in rooms where the doors lock from the inside, or where the doors open into the room, or where there are plate glass windows in the wall, I was routinely told by non-Jews who had no emotional connection to the Holocaust, \u201cLook, maybe what you\u2019re saying is true, but why say it? Why cause such pain to the poor survivors?\u201d More often than not, my work was banned and censored by people who, though not personally offended by it, nevertheless felt compelled to uphold the \u201cspecial circumstance\u201d protections granted to Holocaust-related speech.<\/h5>\n
Back then, a small number of people understood that, in fact, unregulated speech actually made Holocaust history\u00a0better<\/em>,\u00a0sounder<\/em>. Christopher Hitchens, the\u00a0New York Post<\/em>\u2019s Eric Breindel, and seminal Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg all conceded that the challenges posed by Holocaust revisionists and even outright deniers actually forced mainstream Holocaust historians to be better at their job; that being confronted with criticism and opposing theories compels historians to bolster their theses (to be fair, Hilberg only admitted this under cross-examination during the trial of denier Ernst Zundel in Toronto in 1985).<\/h5>\n
But Hitchens, Breindel, and Hilberg are dead now, as is the simple understanding that truth is only strengthened by having to compete with falsehood.<\/h5>\n
For anyone in the present day who\u2019s been \u201ccanceled\u201d for stating a fact or making a simple commonsense observation, well, welcome to the world of my youth. Don\u2019t forget that mainstream conservatives allied with liberals when it came to \u201cprotecting\u201d Holocaust history from the reasonable observations of revisionists like me. And now conservatives bitch that they get banned from social media for making factual observations like \u201cThere are only two genders.\u201d Too bad. Your Holocaust \u201cspecial circumstances\u201d are claimed by trannies now. And blacks. And \u201cimmigrants.\u201d And everyone else with an ax to grind against Western civ. Shoulda killed that beast in utero thirty years ago. By acquiescing to what was done to revisionists back then, you guys paved the path to where we\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0are now.<\/h5>\n
One additional point: The more dangerous it became back in the \u201990s to challenge Holocaust orthodoxy, the more the revisionist side of the debate fell to the extremists. The penalties and punishments chased away everyone with a career or a reputation to preserve. What remained were the nuts, the brawlers who welcomed the fight and enjoyed being branded as Nazis. Since at least the early 2000s, rational Holocaust revisionism has fallen to the irrational deniers, dimwit extremist ideologues who have no interest in historical research and documentation. They just want to \u201cfight the Jews.\u201d The fight, not the historiography, is what appeals to them.<\/h5>\n
Another irony, this one totally predictable: As rational revisionists were attacked and chased away as Nazis, the field was ceded to actual Nazis.<\/h5>\n
This is the end result of speech criminalization. Rational voices go silent, because rational people\u2014capable as they are of weighing actions and consequences\u2014do the math and realize that it\u2019s more prudent to pull back and shut up, when speaking freely might cost them their livelihood or freedom. What happened with Holocaust history will soon happen with topics like male\/female biology and IQ inheritability. Anyone with anything to lose will think twice before challenging the left\u2019s orthodoxy on those topics. That\u2019s what speech penalties do; they scare away exactly the people with the intellectual capacity to best make the case that the penalizers don\u2019t want made. And once a field is abandoned to crackpots who spout nonsense, the public becomes even more welcoming of speech proscriptions, due to the general loathsomeness of those being silenced.<\/h5>\n
Right now in the West, we\u2019re scared to death of speech. The fact that a presidential candidate for a major U.S. political party could run on a platform of curbing speech in order to \u201csave democracy\u201d shows just how bad things are. And it all started with the Holocaust. Holocaust history is precious and \u201ctoo much speech\u201d poses a threat to it. Therefore, limit speech to \u201csave\u201d Holocaust history. Democracy is precious and \u201ctoo much speech\u201d poses a threat to it. Therefore, limit speech to \u201csave\u201d democracy. Acceptance of the first precept led to acceptance of the second.<\/h5>\n
Thirty years ago, sane people had a chance to stop the madness. But they allowed themselves to be emotionally blackmailed into accepting the belief that in \u201ccertain circumstances\u201d free speech and open debate are harmful and should be curbed. They assumed that those circumstances would remain special. They\u2019re now the norm.<\/h5>\n
You got played, folks. And like any gullible mark who falls prey to a sob story in the service of a long con, in the end you have nobody to blame but yourselves.<\/h5>\n
Russia Insider Tip Jar – Keep truth alive! Paypal<\/span><\/a> or Patreon<\/span><\/a>.<\/h5>\n
<\/h5>\n
Originally posted at Taki’s Magazine<\/a><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fact that a presidential candidate for a major U.S. party can call for the of curbing of open debate in order to \u201csave democracy\u201d shows just how bad things are <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-controlling-the-news-andor-the-free-exchange-of-ideas-and-information","category-Hidden_and_Revisionist_History"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=202410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":202457,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202410\/revisions\/202457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=202410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=202410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=202410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}