Holocaust deniers deserve free speech, too
Raymond Spiotta
Issue date: 2/26/09 Section: Opinion
Adolf Hitler once wrote that "it is always more difficult to fight against faith than knowledge." The past few weeks have proved him right.
For about a month, ever since Pope Benedict lifted his predecessor's "excommunication" of the four bishops of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), both he and one of those four have been running the gauntlet of a hostile media. No sooner had the Pope rehabilitated the bishops than the story broke of an interview with SSPX Bishop Williamson (conducted six months earlier!) wherein that bishop claimed that the 6 million figure of Jews supposedly murdered in the "Holocaust" represents, in fact, an irresponsible inflation. Ee gads, a Holocaust-denier!
Liberal Catholics and Jews of all sects sallied out in force to smear the bellicose bishop for his "criminal" and "anti-Semitic" denial, and the gentle Pope for his supposed complicity. More seriously, the government of Germany is already prosecuting this outspoken Catholic. Yes, in many European nations, to deny that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust guarantees you five years in the slammer.
I'm not concerned here to deal with how many Jews died in World War II; the reader can weigh that debate for himself. What concerns me rather is the ironclad dogmatism of a public, of a media and of governments so swift to write-off, blacklist and silence. Go to Germany; deny the near extinction in Russia of the Orthodox priesthood at the hands of the Bolsheviks, deny the existence of God, deny that the sky is blue: Legally, you'll be OK.
Suggest, however, that historical evidence militates against salient tenets of the received Holocaust tradition, and you're looking at jail time and ineradicable stigmatization at the hands of people who have never paused to examine the factual basis for that dogma of theirs which is blasphemy to question.
As a history major, I can only covet the certainty most people have about this 6 million statistical totem. If there's anything I've learned at Hillsdale, it's that dogmatism has no place in history, that a good historian is always a skeptic and often a revisionist. Needless to say, the thought-police in Germany didn't matriculate from Hillsdales, and don't consider - as we do here - that the freedom of the press is something worth preserving.
For about a month, ever since Pope Benedict lifted his predecessor's "excommunication" of the four bishops of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), both he and one of those four have been running the gauntlet of a hostile media. No sooner had the Pope rehabilitated the bishops than the story broke of an interview with SSPX Bishop Williamson (conducted six months earlier!) wherein that bishop claimed that the 6 million figure of Jews supposedly murdered in the "Holocaust" represents, in fact, an irresponsible inflation. Ee gads, a Holocaust-denier!
Liberal Catholics and Jews of all sects sallied out in force to smear the bellicose bishop for his "criminal" and "anti-Semitic" denial, and the gentle Pope for his supposed complicity. More seriously, the government of Germany is already prosecuting this outspoken Catholic. Yes, in many European nations, to deny that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust guarantees you five years in the slammer.
I'm not concerned here to deal with how many Jews died in World War II; the reader can weigh that debate for himself. What concerns me rather is the ironclad dogmatism of a public, of a media and of governments so swift to write-off, blacklist and silence. Go to Germany; deny the near extinction in Russia of the Orthodox priesthood at the hands of the Bolsheviks, deny the existence of God, deny that the sky is blue: Legally, you'll be OK.
Suggest, however, that historical evidence militates against salient tenets of the received Holocaust tradition, and you're looking at jail time and ineradicable stigmatization at the hands of people who have never paused to examine the factual basis for that dogma of theirs which is blasphemy to question.
As a history major, I can only covet the certainty most people have about this 6 million statistical totem. If there's anything I've learned at Hillsdale, it's that dogmatism has no place in history, that a good historian is always a skeptic and often a revisionist. Needless to say, the thought-police in Germany didn't matriculate from Hillsdales, and don't consider - as we do here - that the freedom of the press is something worth preserving.
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