What do we mean by Free Speech

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Discussion

xjsdriver

1,071 posts

120 months

Sunday 26th April 2015
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TTwiggy said:
My understanding though is that the law extends to any doubts being cast about any area of the Holocaust. Hence that British historian (I forget his name) can't travel to Germany because he has questioned the numbers of deaths resulting from the Holocaust, rather than the veracity of the event itself.
Would that be David Irving, by any chance? He also can't travel to Canada and Austria either for similar reasons (and did 3 years in an Austrian jail).

CrutyRammers

13,735 posts

197 months

Sunday 26th April 2015
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Milliband once again showing himself to be merely the most prominent turd atop a massive pile of turds. There should be no special treatment for any group, particularly religious ones.

Mojocvh

16,837 posts

261 months

Sunday 26th April 2015
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redtwin said:
onomatopoeia said:
h8tax said:
One of the (few) things I admire about our American cousins is that their right to free speech is pretty much absolute - take the antics of the Westboro Baptist Church as an example.
Except that they don't. The US has plenty of laws that directly contradict "free speech". Libel, defamation, copyright are easy ones. Then one might also ask Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden about their right to free speech as guaranteed by the first amendment.

Americans only have a right to free speech until it becomes inconvenient for the US Government.
And when that happens the US Gov't response can be very disturbing.


Indeed.



cardigankid

8,849 posts

211 months

Thursday 4th January 2018
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xjsdriver said:
TTwiggy said:
My understanding though is that the law extends to any doubts being cast about any area of the Holocaust. Hence that British historian (I forget his name) can't travel to Germany because he has questioned the numbers of deaths resulting from the Holocaust, rather than the veracity of the event itself.
Would that be David Irving, by any chance? He also can't travel to Canada and Austria either for similar reasons (and did 3 years in an Austrian jail).
My understanding is that he was jailed in Austria because he might have denied the holocaust though in the end he didn’t speak. He wrote an interesting little book called Banged Up about that experience which is worth a read. I also believe that he is not ‘denying the holocaust’ but saying that it did not take place at Auschwitz. It seems to be accepted that the building presented today to visitors as the gas chamber was in fact built by the Polish government in 1948. However to make that statement in Germany would get you a heavy fine and a spell in jail whether it is true or not. Being told what to think and threatened with jail for questioning it makes me very uncomfortable. His principal thesis seems to be that while the mass murder of Jews (and of course others) did happen, Hitler was unaware of it. That seems unlikely to say the least but if he feels that he can argue the case surely we are entitled to read it and make up our own minds.

anonymous-user

53 months

Friday 5th January 2018
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cardigankid said:
My understanding is that he was jailed in Austria because he might have denied the holocaust though in the end he didn’t speak. He wrote an interesting little book called Banged Up about that experience which is worth a read. I also believe that he is not ‘denying the holocaust’ but saying that it did not take place at Auschwitz. It seems to be accepted that the building presented today to visitors as the gas chamber was in fact built by the Polish government in 1948. However to make that statement in Germany would get you a heavy fine and a spell in jail whether it is true or not. Being told what to think and threatened with jail for questioning it makes me very uncomfortable. His principal thesis seems to be that while the mass murder of Jews (and of course others) did happen, Hitler was unaware of it. That seems unlikely to say the least but if he feels that he can argue the case surely we are entitled to read it and make up our own minds.
Do me a favour ffs, this type of thinly veiled anti-semitism has got a bit long in the tooth now.

amusingduck

9,396 posts

135 months

Friday 5th January 2018
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Raygun said:
cardigankid said:
My understanding is that he was jailed in Austria because he might have denied the holocaust though in the end he didn’t speak. He wrote an interesting little book called Banged Up about that experience which is worth a read. I also believe that he is not ‘denying the holocaust’ but saying that it did not take place at Auschwitz. It seems to be accepted that the building presented today to visitors as the gas chamber was in fact built by the Polish government in 1948. However to make that statement in Germany would get you a heavy fine and a spell in jail whether it is true or not. Being told what to think and threatened with jail for questioning it makes me very uncomfortable. His principal thesis seems to be that while the mass murder of Jews (and of course others) did happen, Hitler was unaware of it. That seems unlikely to say the least but if he feels that he can argue the case surely we are entitled to read it and make up our own minds.
Do me a favour ffs, this type of thinly veiled anti-semitism has got a bit long in the tooth now.
confused

cardigankid

8,849 posts

211 months

Friday 5th January 2018
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Anti-semite (along with holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist) are easy and cheap abusive terms which have the effect of closing down criticism without addressing any of the arguments. This is not an acceptable response to anything. Who seriously believes today that Oswald killed JFK? This is about free speech. You cannot trust governments to tell you the truth. You have to exercise your own discretion - in my view most of us have the intelligence to judge for ourselves whether a book is misleading or inaccurate, provided that we are given access to the materials. We generally think that we have the benefit of free speech and free thought (unlike Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia) but there are limits to that freedom which we are not allowed to challenge. That is something which we should constantly resist. Therefore I make a point of reading all of the books I can lay my hands on which are perceived as dangerous or unacceptable - this has included in the past the Communist Manifesto, the Little Red Book and Mein Kampf, of which I have to say that only fragments of the Communist Manifesto seemed to me to make much sense.

As for long in the tooth, actually, I agree with that. Progress moves forwards, not backwards, and it is the suppression of the truth now and in the future which matters.



Edited by cardigankid on Friday 5th January 10:34

Biker 1

7,690 posts

118 months

Friday 5th January 2018
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Why not read a jolly good novel for a change? Might cheer you up...

Goaty Bill 2

3,393 posts

118 months

Friday 5th January 2018
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cardigankid said:
Anti-semite (along with holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist) are easy and cheap abusive terms which have the effect of closing down criticism without addressing any of the arguments. This is not an acceptable response to anything. Who seriously believes today that Oswald killed JFK? This is about free speech. You cannot trust governments to tell you the truth. You have to exercise your own discretion - in my view most of us have the intelligence to judge for ourselves whether a book is misleading or inaccurate, provided that we are given access to the materials. We generally think that we have the benefit of free speech and free thought (unlike Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia) but there are limits to that freedom which we are not allowed to challenge. That is something which we should constantly resist. Therefore I make a point of reading all of the books I can lay my hands on which are perceived as dangerous or unacceptable - this has included in the past the Communist Manifesto, the Little Red Book and Mein Kampf, of which I have to say that only fragments of the Communist Manifesto seemed to me to make much sense.

As for long in the tooth, actually, I agree with that. Progress moves forwards, not backwards, and it is the suppression of the truth now and in the future which matters.
Pretty much sums up much of my default position on the subject.

The more any group or government wants to stop us from reading something, the more likely it seems that there may be something they wish to remain hidden.
Often times this will not be the case of course, but without the light of day being shone upon 'it', it will only strengthen the view that something is being hidden for a reason.
And the more likely it is that people will confuse a Hollywood film with history.

The trend for attaching 'hate speech' and 'hate crime' labels to as much as possible is a worrying trend.

Think not of the thing that you are not allowed to do, say or read today, when a law is passed to prevent it, but think how that law may be used to prevent needful truth from being done, read or heard in the future.


jurbie

2,339 posts

200 months

Friday 5th January 2018
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cardigankid said:
It seems to be accepted that the building presented today to visitors as the gas chamber was in fact built by the Polish government in 1948.
Accepted by whom? This is the first I've heard of it. You are aware that there was more than one gas chamber at Auschwitz? The one at Auschwitz 1 is still standing, which may be the one you're referring to, whilst the ones at Birkenau were destroyed but the rubble is still there and at one time you could still walk down the steps into them.


cardigankid

8,849 posts

211 months

Saturday 6th January 2018
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I like to holiday in Europe and avail myself of the autobahn, so I do not wish to get myself flung in the slammer for rehearsing a tranche of revisionist documents. I do not know exactly where the boundary is between what you can and cannot say before qualifying yourself for a complimentary stay in a German or Austrian Youth Hostel, which is the worrying thing. However, I have no doubt that you can access the relevant information using Google. Hopefully it is not a crime to say that the basic proposition is contained in an article by Eric Conan in L’Express in January 1995, and my understanding is that the Auschwitz Museum authorities now accept this. For myself I feel that a memorial to the Holocaust is the more effective for being truthful.

This however is a diversion. The importance, to me, of David Irving’s books is not his defence of Hitler. It is the light he shines on the politics and politicians of the time, Churchill and Roosevelt for example. There is a tendency, particularly in America, to regard WW2 as ‘the last Good War’. This is used to justify future wars. There is no such thing as a Good War. Not Vietnam, Iraq, Libya or Syria and certainly not Iran or Russia, who we are obliged (by whom?) to impose economic sanctions. I happen to regard it as a proven fact that Lyndon Johnson authorised the murder of John Kennedy on behalf of powerful interests who wished the USA to go to war in SE Asia. How many Americans died in that conflict and for what? That the US Government is incapable of admitting this even today is a clear measure of the extent to which we live in a free society. I am not prepared to think what I am told to think.

Future wars are different - as we are now experiencing - it is less about our brave heroes being sent out to fight in far flung places ostensibly on our behalf and remembered in highly choreographed services on Remembrance Day, and more about terror on our streets. We are all on the front line now, and at risk from both nuclear attack and explosive vests, and we are not volunteers. Therefore we have to investigate and challenge our politicians at every possible opportunity.

Edited by cardigankid on Saturday 6th January 11:46

Justayellowbadge

37,057 posts

241 months

Saturday 6th January 2018
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There's a big difference between claiming it was 'built' in 1948 and what appears to be accepted - that it was restored then. It had been converted to an air raid shelter and they simply put it back to how it was in 1941/2.

cardigankid

8,849 posts

211 months

Saturday 6th January 2018
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It’s either real or it’s not, all the stuff is on the net, I don’t think it is for me to rehearse the detail here for the reasons given. However, as Raygun says, this is all ‘long in the tooth’. No one is going to rehabilitate Hitler. What matters is not falling for politicians lies in the future.

Bradgate

2,819 posts

146 months

Saturday 6th January 2018
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My freedom to swing my fist ends where your face begins.

anonymous-user

53 months

Saturday 6th January 2018
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cardigankid said:
It’s either real or it’s not, all the stuff is on the net, I don’t think it is for me to rehearse the detail here for the reasons given. However, as Raygun says, this is all ‘long in the tooth’. No one is going to rehabilitate Hitler. What matters is not falling for politicians lies in the future.
Don't try and bend it!! 'long in the tooth' bit was aimed at weirdos like you who spend every waking day trawling the internet hoping to find someone with the same warped view of history as you.

rscott

14,690 posts

190 months

Saturday 6th January 2018
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cardigankid said:
It’s either real or it’s not, all the stuff is on the net, I don’t think it is for me to rehearse the detail here for the reasons given. However, as Raygun says, this is all ‘long in the tooth’. No one is going to rehabilitate Hitler. What matters is not falling for politicians lies in the future.
Lots of things are "on the net" , from claims that the royal family are lizards to evidence the world is flat. Not accepting them all at face value, but reading supporting evidence is somewhat useful.

There's plenty of convincing evidence that the chamber was converted back from air raid shelter, rather than being a complete fake as some claim.
Eg https://www.hdot.org/debunking-denial/ab10-gas-cha...
https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/au...

These also contain the interesting snippet that Irving hasn't even visited the camps he claims are fake. Strange that..

anonymous-user

53 months

Saturday 6th January 2018
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cardigankid said:
It’s either real or it’s not, all the stuff is on the net, I don’t think it is for me to rehearse the detail here for the reasons given. However, as Raygun says, this is all ‘long in the tooth’. No one is going to rehabilitate Hitler. What matters is not falling for politicians lies in the future.
It's a real gas chamber, as it was when it was used as a gas chamber in 1941/42, minus the steady flow of dead bodies of course.

9/11 wasn't a demolition job, WTC 7 was on fire, a plane hit the pentagon, we have been to the moon.

Just in case there was anything else you needed some clarity on.

citizensm1th

8,371 posts

136 months

Sunday 7th January 2018
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wsurfa said:
cardigankid said:
It’s either real or it’s not, all the stuff is on the net, I don’t think it is for me to rehearse the detail here for the reasons given. However, as Raygun says, this is all ‘long in the tooth’. No one is going to rehabilitate Hitler. What matters is not falling for politicians lies in the future.
It's a real gas chamber, as it was when it was used as a gas chamber in 1941/42, minus the steady flow of dead bodies of course.

9/11 wasn't a demolition job, WTC 7 was on fire, a plane hit the pentagon, we have been to the moon.

Just in case there was anything else you needed some clarity on.
You forgot the JFK conspiracy wibble as well

cardigankid

8,849 posts

211 months

Sunday 7th January 2018
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Bradgate said:
My freedom to swing my fist ends where your face begins.
Thanks for your intellectual and other contributions. So far as Auschwitz is concerned you may be right, I don’t know. My point is that you can be jailed for just having the debate. Bradgate raises another interesting aspect of this, he is offering to punch my head in for raising the question. I’d like him to explain what his reasoning is for this. I’m also a bit surprised at Citizen Smith’s keenness to accept the official government line on anything.