Free Speech Does Not Apply to The Holocaust

Exactly.

At least you admit it, you enjoy it when people are punished for disagreeing with your opinion.

If the guy disagrees with your opinion he is an asshat, because you are the judge of who is an asshat.

According to you, it's funny to see asshats suffer.

Right?

Nope.

Once you get out of the false dillema fallacy, we can move on.

Tell me which options I left out.

You said it's funny to see asshats suffer in reference to this story, right?

You said you are the judge of who is acting like an asshat. In this case the guy disagrees with your interpretation of the events of WWII. His opinion of the facts are contrary to your opinion of the facts. That means he is acting like an asshat. Or perhaps his standing up to the majority makes him an asshat in your view. Or any other reason you say he is an asshat. Therefore, your personal judgement (your opinion) is the deciding factor of who you feel should suffer. The law be damned.

Oops, I almost forgot the disclaimer, you are against the law, but find it so funny someone suffers under that law. Because they are an asshat to deny what the majority says is fact.

Are we together so far?

If by "we" you mean the multiplicity of comically invalid propositions you can hold simultaneously, I think "maybe".

If by "we" you mean "yourself and other sentient beings" I'd be inclined to answer "not outside of a revival tent".

Reitsuki, I do hope you're enjoying this un-dialog; otherwise, might I suggest that arguing with stones may be more productive?

(lots of smileys to denote that I didn't intend for anyone to be irritated regarding the above)

Smiley faces do not give you a pass to be rude and condescending.

Gladly, maybe we can work together to overcome this continued problem.



Yup.



Yup. If they can decide what is history, I can decide what makes an asshat. Seems only fair to me.



Wrong, and wrong.

His racist views are an opinion I disagree with, they make him an asshole.

His Nazi Appologist view makes him an even bigger asshole, but are still his opinion.

His outright denial of the events of the holocaust is the result of either ignorance or delusion, and make him an asshat.

Remember, I reject your definition of "opinion" in favor of the more common one. We already discussed that.



Basicly, yes, though I have no problem with standing up to a majority. But ultimatly, yes, it's my call.



Yup. Who I feel should suffer being the operative words. Do you only have State Sponsored(TM) opinions?



Nope. I find it funny when they suffer. Under the law or not is irrelivent. I'd prefer they suffered in a more just way, but that's not going to happen. After all, if he's right, he shouldn't mind spending a month or two in Auschwitz all that much.



Partially.

However:



is a false dillema. The choice is not "agree with me or be judged an asshat", and never has been.

And I would have gotten away with it if not for those meddling kids!

Read my forum signature and judge for yourself.

I think we have made our points. I believe I understand you, though I absolutely disagree with you in every possible way in this matter. I support your right to believe as you will, no matter how offensive it may be to me. And I think everyone reading is clear on what we believe regarding this matter. So I'll leave it at that. Nice chatting

Implying that someone is an wrong-headed, offensive asshat is not redeemed by a smiley.

For those of you saying this is a free speech issue, what would you rather have done about people denying known historical and proveable facts and attempting to teach an incorrect version of history?

Currently we jail them. Would you prefer couseling?

Re-education?

And if those fail, at what point do we determine they are being a threat to factual context of history? And at what level of punishment would you like if counseling and re-education fails?

I'm not sure in which country you reside, but in America we don't jail people for denying anything, proven fact or not. We also don't jail people for teaching anything incorrectly.

We certainly don't force them to agree with us.

If the history is so feeble it can't stand up to people questioning it, it isn't a very strong history, and therefore shouldn't be accepted as factual history.

As far as I'm concerned, all history should be questioned. I never accept "facts" just because they are in a book. I always question authority and the "correct version" of events. Unless I was there to witness it, I don't assume I know the whole truth of the events.

No, but unfortunatly, some of us don't even seem to have a problem with it anymore.



Because it's impossible. Nobody can be forced to agree with something.



True, to a point. It's a question of tone and intent, however.



Actually, ultimatly you do accept facts "just because they are in a book". It's just a question of which souce you choose to believe. For all you know, everything could be fake. Descartes is a good read on this subject.

The alternative is to reject everything. If you accept anything, at all, you can't say you reject everything. So it becomes a matter of personal choice what you choose to accept, and if your choice is to not accept something, that is no more an informed choice than any other.

Ever heard of perjury?

Or giving an officer of the law false or misleading information intentionally?

Trading insider info on the stock market?

All jailable offenses.

Our freedom of speech here in the US has never been completely "free". You just don't notice it, because you live it every day.

Edit to add - I do not think that this asshat should have gone to jail, and that the law is archaic and needs to be repealed - but, he is an asshat in my eyes as well.

So what you're saying is, you wish to commit a hate crime. I'll keep that in mind next time I'm in NY.

And, no, I don't speak Iranian-in fact no one does. As another poster pointed out, the Iranians speak Farsi and other dialects. And while I do not, I have some friends who do and they all agree that the Iranian president is an asshole.

-Kiamat Dusk

I agree with you here. It's true I make judgements as to what I believe. I weigh the evidence and choose. That's part of questioning authority. I don't accept "facts" only because they are in a book, though I accept some "facts" that happen to be written in a book.

It would be nice if we all knew we are accepting information by believing it, and not suggest we are choosing between proven fact and air.

I think the biggest problem is that the majority feel it's okay to dictate what is fact. Even to the point of jailing those who disagree with said fact in a case such as this.

Reitsuki, I hereby present you with the Orca award.

Because ultimatly anything else is destructive to a society. If everyone has the right to preach anything they want as fact, you never get anywhere. We have to accept certain things as truth or else we spend all our time arguing about a certain few things instead of moving on, or worse, we never even bother and just let everyone believe whatever with no regard for accuracy.

Further, you have the issue of validity. There's a reason I pay an acredited university to teach me about history, for example, rather than the bum on the street.

Perjury (lying under sworn oath) and inside trading (illegally manipulating the market) isn't protected speech. Personal opinions about anything you believe is not even comparable. You can't even commit perjury by stating something you believe to be true, even if it's wrong. And you can't be convicted of inside trading unless you commit the crime of manipulating American markets illegally.

I'll admit this confuses me!

I've not read the entire thread, so my apologies if I'm redundant here.

People who would deny the holocaust happened (or that humans landed on the moon for a less flammable topic) do so not because they are strictly interested in the denied topic but because it fits better with other more important beliefs. For example, the non-moon-landing proponents don't care so much about Armstrong and friends as they do that "the government lies to us, and here is another example". You can "re-educate" or counsel such people about the moon all you like, but it doesn't work because you are treating an effect, not the cause and that cause is probably pretty well immune to revision.

As far as US free speech, I'm all in favor of having private citizens being allowed to put their opinons into the marketplace of ideas because I believe that a) dissenting opinions are good ferment for society and b) that truly absurd opinions are their own counter-argument and c) that I'd far rather know there is a racist bigot living next to me than have him hold his meetings in secret.

For those who would attempt to teach counterfactual ideas under "state color" as in public schools, I think the flat-earthers, non-moon-landing, holocaust-denying teachers ought be removed from position. Alas, in practice, this is more difficult than one might wish. Even American History textbooks; for example, paint a rather rosy and false picture of the European invasion of the americas. I'm not sure if this was long enough ago to matter or not.

You said "currently we jail [holocaust-revisionists]" which leads me to believe you are German or near Germany. Of the couple of Germans I have spoken to on the subject, I get a profound sense of national embarassment and the feeling that supression of historic revisionism is justified for the present. Sitting on the other side of the earth, I think that perhaps it may be time to remand those laws for the reason (c) I noted above; if someone is going to carry abhorent hatred, better that they should be able to show their colors. I do however, understand the fear that neo-Nazi propoganda could be fanned into a fourth reich. But I simultaneously believe that just because it could happen in 1940 doesn't mean it could happen today. In the US, for example, there was a time when lynching of blacks was too common and the KKK prominent and scary. Now, most of society tends to find the KKK laughable, and I don't think we are in danger of returning to our worst segregation.

As I noted at the start, this doesn't mean that lynchings never, ever happen, but similarly, I don't think you could prevent them without totalitarianism. I recall a particularly horrific incident - sometime in the last decade - of a man chained to truck and dragged for miles until dead. The killers were brought to justice, but I don't think it could have been prevented. The motivation - if memory serves - was an angry feeling of disinfranchisement and that coimbined with bad ideology caused those assholes to kill an innocent unknown to them because of the color of his skin. Can you purge the bad ideology? Tens of thousands of years of history would suggest that it is, unfortunately, part of our genetic heritage (xenophobia). Can you prevent the triggering disenfranchisement? Probably not, but I think that a course more likely to prove fruitful.

That's ok, I didn't read your entire post!