rationalskepticism.org

Holocaust denial ‘pub talk’ legal – sometimes

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Germany’s highest court, based in the western town of Karlsruhe, said that the man’s arguments counted as freedom of speech, and were thus protected by article five of the German constitution. The ruling also said the man, who one judge described as “even today a zealous proponent of National Socialist ideology and historical forgery,” had not committed hate crimes, because he had only passed on the literature to one other person.

“Even the dissemination of National Socialist ideas as a radical questioning of the status quo” is not necessarily outside the protection of article five, the court said.

Holocaust denial remains illegal in Germany, the court underlined, saying the Holocaust was “a historically-proven fact that normally does not come under the protection of the freedom of speech.”

But the court decided that this was not the decisive point of the man’s arguments. He was simply using the denial as an “introductory attempt at an explanation” to deny Germany’s guilt for World War II in general.

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