NineBerry wrote:epepke wrote:That "public peace" idea that has been attributed to German law, for instance. It seems to amount to saying that it's to prevent speech that makes anybody feel unsafe or unsettled. That's what offensive speech does, makes people anxious. I'm not convinced that this is a bad thing. As an atheist, the pan-Christian impulse makes me feel unsafe. I think that's a good thing, because knowing about it enables me to make choices.
No, you still don't understand the concept.
I understand the concept. I just don't see that evidence is there to support it, or that evidence has been presented.
Public peace means that no one has the objectively correct impression that they don't get equal protection of their rights by the state.
The German state accepts that holocaust denial is not merely an academical opinion, but that it is most often used as a means to incite hatred against Jews.
This is an
assertion. It clearly implies the assumption that there is a monotonic, causal relationship between
permitting holocaust denial and incitement of hatred against Jews. Therefore, if you make holocaust denial illegal, it necessarily reduces hatred of Jews.
I see that assumption, and I understand what it is. I just doubt its accuracy. I haven't even seen attempts at arguments in favor of its accuracy.
This disturbance of public peace could indeed be seen in reality. I have linked to a thread on RDF where I have shown opposition to right-wing extremisms in the German public in the mid 90ies. There were widespread protests, anti-rightwing pop songs and so forth. All evidence to the fact that the state failed to protect the rights of Jews and other immigrants in the eyes of the public. The issue of holocaust denial was a big topic in public discourse and it was seen as "the state is blind on its right eye" that there was not more done to prevent holocaust denial.
What you haven't shown, and I don't think you or anybody else has tried to show, is whether such actions
actually in fact reduce attitudes of the kinds that
led to the holocaust in the first place. The laws made some people
shut the fuck up. I am not doubting that, at all. But did it have a positive effect on the underlying problem of Judenhass?
I left a six-figure job in Atlanta and went into penury, from which I haven't recovered in 10 years, in part because of intense racism. It's a special kind of racism that is just under the surface and nobody admits to but is much more dangerous because of that fact. Atlanta is like a sheet of tempered glass. You can hit it with a hammer, and it will probably not break, but nick it with a chisel and the tension is released, and the whole thing shatters, as happened during the Rodney King riots.
Even on a daily basis, there's a huge amount of racially-motivated violence in Atlanta. It's just that people don't talk about it. The racism is there, but it's sugar-coated, and it's much more dangerous because it is sugar-coated.
Now, superficially, Atlanta seems great and free of racial tensions. I wouldn't have known how bad the racism was if I hadn't lived there for two years, nor would I have known if I didn't have a rather unusual conception of race. I never perceived it when I visited for conferences and conventions. I'm sure that the pretense surrounding racism in Atlanta is sufficient for most White people to pat themselves on the back and tell themselves that the problem of racism has been solved. It hasn't. It's just been made more dangerous and destructive, being hidden.
One anecdote. At the Bluepointe bar, a very ritzy, superficial place I liked to go to because it was convenient to work, I met a guy who had a consulting firm. He was chuffed because he had made $50,000 in a single day, which I doubt that I'll ever do. He kept buying me drinks because, as he said, he wanted to see if they would have an effect. (It is extremely difficult to get me drunk, which I ascribe to my Bavarian liver.) By the end of the evening, he was in tears. He told me how he had to tell clients that he was the "regional manager" of his firm. When I talked about some of the things I had done, such as collaborate with another scientist to do studies of communication patterns in disaster situations, at first he refused to believe me, so strong was his conviction that people of different colors could work together like that. It was all because he was Black.
Now, I'm not Black, but I am a Jew, albeit a completely non-religious one with a tall, broad-shouldered Germanic physique who could easily pass. When I go to Germany, it doesn't take my living there for a time to see under the surface. I feel it immediately. Given that, if I'm with someone, or even in the same country with someone, I would far, far rather know that they are a holocaust denier because they feel free to talk about it than blithely pretend that everything is Nu-Perfect because nobody is permitted to express their bigotry under law.
I'm sure that you can come up with reasons to fail to understand the "Atlanta analogy," while telling me that I'm the one who doesn't understand.
I'm also sure that the prohibition on holocaust denial makes Germans feel smug and morally superior, but then again, so did the holocaust in the first place. Let's face it. If the Allies had not seen fit to bomb Germany into rubble, the Germans would be dancing the Shueblaten on Hitler's birthday today, except in the North, where they'd be dancing all stiff in black leather trousers. Hitler didn't lose. He won, and the reason he won was that's what most people wanted, not only in Germany, but in huge swaths of Europe and the US. This doesn't change in 70 years. It doesn't change in 50,000 years.
It probably won't be Jews next time, unless the ostensible band-aid of preventing holocaust denial lulls enough Jews into a false sense of security so that there are enough to make it easy and fun. It might be Roma or Muslims or Serbs or Estonians or people with narrow nostrils or hazel eyes or people who prefer dogs to cats or something. I don't know. All I can predict is that it will be done by people who are more enlightened and educated than their neighbors, and when other people get sick of it and make it stop by killing them, they'll pretend their shit doesn't stink. Both of which apply to Germany.
Though this idea makes me vomit a little in my mouth, I think it's true. I can't hate Germans, because I am one, and this is a basic feature of human psychology. It doesn't belong to any nationality, religion, race, or sex. This is what people do when they get into power. They hurt people, and then they pretend it's all better.
All I can hope is that the tendrils of influence by corporations will slow this process down, divert the nastiness of greed to something slightly less dramatic, and enable people's doing the great and wonderful things they are also capable of.