Holocaust denial ‘pub talk’ legal – sometimes

[The Northerner]

Germany’s Constitutional Court has ruled in favour of a Nazi who denied the Holocaust in his neighbourhood pub, because he did so “as part of an attempt to argue” that Germany was not the aggressor in World War II.

The ruling, made last November but released on Thursday, stems from a case brought in the eastern German state of Thuringia, where an 82-year-old man walked into a pub and began complaining about a documentary on World War II that was running on a TV there.

He questioned what he called the “lies” about the origins of the war, and the role that Jews supposedly played in altering the historical record afterwards.

He then returned two days later, began another argument and gave the landlord several neo-Nazi pamphlets. One of these, entitled “The historical lie of the so-called attack on Poland in 1939,” claimed that no gas chambers were used in the Third Reich.

The landlord kept the fascist pamphlets and later pressed charges against the man, who was convicted of hate crime through distributing literature in two Thuringia courts in June 2006 and April 2007. The man – who believed his freedom of speech had been violated – then appealed to the constitutional court, who ruled in his favour.

Read more: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20120223-40933.html

[Behind the Aegis]

1. Always good to see assholes getting the right to be ahistorical assholes.

Holocaust deniers are scum.

[Courtesy Flush]

4. Maybe so, but I don't like that law.

It's a slippery slope. If we had such a law in America, it would be used as a precedent to justify laws against denying Jesus. As a Jesus Denier myself, I don't want to go down that road.

[digonswine]

6. I agree-

but for a different reason.

I think laws prohibiting disagreement with historical fact are not right. It is like they just want to whitewash their past, and pretend that the whole populace has moved beyond the concept of Aryan right of domination. WE have not moved beyond it and neither have they--completely.

We need reminders of why we need to move forward and divest ourselves from the disgusting concepts promulgated by important historical figures from our own past.

[hughee99]

2. Talk about your uphill battles...

Imagine being on a debate team and being assigned to argue that Germany was NOT the aggressor in WWII.

[CTyankee]

3. The guy could have been drunk on his ass.

I don't know about Germany, but I just can't stand going to bars here in the U.S. I have nothing against drinking at all, but I refuse to go to bars because I can't stand people who get really nasty and argumentative after they've had a snootful in a bar. I know that's a pretty overarching condemnation about bars, but I find them to be unpleasant on the occasions where I have seen these behaviors...which I realize can take place anywhere there is alcohol served. But it seems to be a more pronounced behavior in bars...so shoot me...

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. The Nazis actually devised quite the series of rationales

to "demonstrate" to their own people that the Polish government was supporting "terrorists" waging a border war and attacking ethnic Germans within the Polish borders. Most Germans actually believed this at the time, too. It's shocking today, yes, but the record is fairly clear. So, this guy was nine years old at the time, grew up through the war, and then lived under the second authoritarian regime of the DDR for most of his life. It's not at all surprising to me that he actually believes this. It's probably a secretly harbored belief among many Germans his age. Nine years old is an interesting age: you remember shit clearly, but you don't have a really developed sense of context.