Friday, November 13, 2009

Defending the free speech for deniers

Orac posts a defense of free speech for the Holocaust deniers, and I can't fail to link to it. As much as I despise the phenomenon and its followers, I think it should not be illegal - even in Germany. There are all kinds of both ethical and practical arguments to be made for this proposition.

I also fully understand that there are some good arguments that can be made for the opposite thesis, and I respect that. There will always be some limits on the free speech, and where one stops is quite subjective. I, for one, support the limited ban on Nazi symbols (depending on the intent of their display), while Orac argues against that too.

In the age of the Internet it is useless to ban Holocaust deniers' writings. It is much more effective to debunk them, to show that they're based on lies, misinterpretations, misrepresentations, omissions, stupidity and bigotry.

5 comments:

  1. I regret I can't write in English as much as I understand that language. Anyway, can we have a debate about the holocaust, Romanov? Roberto Muehlenkamp can help – he speaks portuguese.

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  2. RODOH is a good place for such a debate. Personally, I don't have much time now, although in principle I'm open or suggestions.

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  3. Your old friend ASMarques left some garbage at Orac's post, and for some reason, some of his associates followed the slime in.

    By the way, I can't help noticing that this is the first time in 3 years that you guys mentioned anything of Orac's, and that you don't post there too often anymore, why's that?

    I refuse to take a stand for or against Deniers' free speech, btw. I'll say this though, it's fun seeing guys like you and Orac tear them down :)

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  4. p.s

    It's worth noting that we may be experiencing a re surge of Holocaust Deniers, as shown by some of the pollution in Orac's post.

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  5. Nathaniel, you may notice that Orac is on the top of our favorite links, even though his is not a Holocaust-denial-related blog. :)

    As for the links - I was absent, and the other guys don't pay much attention to the blogosphere. For this reason we haven't been in any carnivals lately, etc.

    I will be posting more, so there will be more links to Orac (not that it really matters, as he has incomparably more readers than us for obvious reasons; but his postings on this topic are just worth reading).

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