Austria Holds Holocaust Denier

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Oops! I thought the post was about Dinners instead of Deniers.

There have always been Hitlers. Throughout history. But that still doesn't make the Jewish Holocaust any less horrific. But there are/were many more horrific happenings like it in other times and places, too.

But it is a shame that the other holocausts are forgotten, the pain of those peoples, while mostly just the Jewish holocaust is remembered. NONE of them should be forgotten.

Well said Sophist.

The past allows us to make a better future. We must not let such things be repeated.

And yet we do.
Repeatedly. Especially in Africa.
We didn't notice genocide in the Sudan until they started a second one at the same time.
The Congo? Nope.
Constant genocides in Africa.
Do we do anything about Myanmar? Nahh, we like them.
We suppoted Suharto, Hussein, Pinochet, and others.

None on the scale of Nazi Germany/Soviet Russia/Mao, but that's in large part because all of these countries are so small.

And small scale makes genocide no less evil.

"One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic." - attributed to Stalin

That Stalin quote has always chilled me to my bones.

To me, One death is a tragedy. One million deaths are one million tragedies.

We live in these self contained universes where such events seem distant. A group of people being tortured and murdered are now just images on a screen to most. I know I don't have all the answers and I've never enforced or tried to sell my beliefs to others in any way, but I think such changes start in the home that you live in, the school that you go to and the place that you work at. It shouldn't be seen as a PR battle either. It, to me, seems to be a case of realising that this is the world that you live in. Are you satisfied with it and your actions with in it? Or do you want to continue to keep your eyes and mind shut?

I don't expect anybody to understand where I'm coming from with this, I'm not the most eloquent of speakers.

I certainly hope that if people were more decent in general, towards their families and neighbours, it would make them more tolerant towards the rest of the world. But I may be wrong.

Atrocities occuring in other parts of the world should be prevented. But it always seems to become complicated. If a 1st world country tried to intefere in Africa, the people committing the atrocities - and no doubt large parts of the international community - would say that as non-Africans, they don't understand the situation; that they must have an ulterior motive, etc etc...

Getting rid of Saddam was a good thing, but I'm not sure it was done the best way. He should probably be tried in an international court. The current situation in Iraq is just further deaths, and therefore further tragedy.

Sorry for my off topic ramblings. The whole thing depresses me.

i just watched a movie called Zero Day and i never look at DVD covers that carefully so as to avoid spoilers so i didn't know much anything about the movie... i honestly thought it must be a real documentary. but it wasn't, it's a movie. and it really drove in the point that humans are capable of staging anything.

i believe the holocaust happened. i'm not that sure about the first moonlanding though.

BUT, they're arresting people for not believing in the holocaust...that goes blatantly against freedom of speech and freedom of thought and freedom of honesty. if someone honestly doesn't believe it happened then they have that right and they have a right to say so. i doubt making thought and opinion illegal is going to keep future holocausts at bay, in fact, i think censorship at this level might cause a whole other kinda mountain-of-sh*t problem. freedom of speech is a double-edged sword but it's incredibly important to have.

and i doubt anything is going to keep something like the holocaust from happening again, there will always be more adolf hitlers, and those who support them...and those who follow in blindness or in fear. the fact that someone chooses not to believe in the holocaust isn't the real problem here, the problem is that people might forget. which is why it's important to keep reminding. and of all the horrors, not just the holocaust. and we do, people make movies, write books etc etc. hopefully all that will help... but if some choose to not believe, it's their right. and i doubt entire nationfuls of neo-hitlers will form just because we don't arrest everyone who doesn't believe in the holocaust. i think that's serious paranoia right there.

but it's not the problem with those people that they don't believe in the holocaust, what is the problem is that they believe that blacks, jews, mexicans etc are inferior and should be killed. why is noone doing anything about the neo nazis if freedom of speech is not important to the law? it seems to me the police is just letting them run wild while arresting whatever people for their thoughts on the holocaust. are they doing something about the neo nazis in general? are they throwing every bald white guy with racist tattoos in jail?

There's also Sheri S Tepper's view, as she expressed it in one of her books - constantly exposing people to horror desensitises them. The more gory pictures there are in the news, the less their power to shock. Fictional horror movies can do the same.

Holocaust denial is only a crime in some countries. In Britain it's free speech (unless it's combined with hate speech, of course - which is a crime). Having states police people this way does look a bit suspicous; I'd prefer it if they left these people to the mercy of good debates which would easily show how idiotic their ideas are.

I agree. Unfortunately the Internet is pretty much impossible to police; I was thinking of white nationalist websites I've come across - which I won't link to here because they're despicable; they contain enough invective to make anyone feel sick.

The Ku Klux Klan still exists, though, doesn't it? What does that say about tolerance in the southern states?

i think that was very eloquently said. and i'd like to add to that something a wise friend of mine said, but i have a crappy memory and less eloquence and lots of crisscrossing over-flowing thoughts so i'll try to paraphrase it somehow and weave it into whatever i'm trying to say. if that makes sense.

before planes, cars, trains, all that modern crap, and especially before globalization, people lived in small tribes/villages... basically you'd know everyone around you. just enough people so you could care about them all to a degree. people could trust each other better, they would help each other more willingly...
now these days the whole world is there staring at us in the face, cars swooping by with strangers in them, you go to the grocery store every day of your life and possibly the only people you ever meet there more than once are the clerks. you walk on the street, new faces every time. you meet someone you know, it's a frickin miracle. you can't possibly care about all of those people around you, just blurry faces after blurry faces... more people on the news, tragedies everywhere, happening to people you never knew existed. desensitization, on two levels. too many people, and too many tragedies. plus all the gore you see on tv. yes you can still understand when it's "not just a movie", but your mind can't tell the difference between the news gore and the movie gore... and they are all people you have no ties to.
and this happens to us everyday everywhere. outside, on tv, online, in the papers... can you really blame people for not being able to properly mourn for all the holocaust victims? when i saw the mini-series about Anne Frank, yes, i bawled my eyes out. but to think of it all... it's too vast to grasp on an emotional level and even if you could grasp it, that much sorrow would kill you. a million Anne Frank stories would bring us all into such depression we'd just commit mass-suicide. it's not our job to mourn for everyone lost, what we can and should do, though, is just realize the importance of keeping it from happening again. and personal stories like Anne's are a good way to remind people because they touch us as well as inform us, and they make us see it from their perspective.

it shouldn't be about PR or guilting everyone or forcing people... we can't change people's minds for them. we can only try to remind those who will listen and make laws that respect people's rights on this earth and hope it's enough.




i don't really get how it's so impossible to police the net. i mean, i've seen many pro-ana messageboards vanish into thin air but still you keep hearing about kiddieporn this and KKK that online... why can't they do anything about that?? i don't understand how it's so impossible for the police to track down those sites and their owners. or for the hosts to shut them down. granted i'm no pooter whiz but you'd think the police would have a few of those at their disposal.

Just because they still exist doesn't mean they are popular. It's not like the '70 anymore where they were involved with the Memphis PD enough to have Martin Luther King assassinated.


I know for a fact that there are not enough computer in law enforcment to do what you suggest. Such computer experts exist, but get offered about twice as much money to work for large corporations than what any government will pay. Thus, only the really big computer-related cases get prosecuted. It's not uncommon for people busted for child pornography to walk before ever getting a preliminary hearing in front of a judge because the county can't properly compile evidence for the case. If they can't even do that, then they definitely aren't going to try to tamper with somene's first ammendment rights no matter how unpopular the group. The KKK can legally advocate anything they want unless they blatantly encourage violence against anyone- and pictures and information on past lynchings doesn't count because that can be argued that it's history.

Don't try to censor people for having extremely distasteful and unpopular views. If you take away their right to say what they want, that lack of liberty could just as easily be used to silence you.

i agree that people shouldn't be censored. but kiddieporn isn't about censorship and it should be dealt with. just because hackers get paid more somewhere else, i don't see why they couldn't do some damn pro bono work for such an important issue. as for the KKK websites...meh is all i can say about that. their sole purpose is to advocate hate. but you can't take their freedom of speech without risking everyone elses.

To the best of my knowledge, pro bono work is not offered to computer experts. It's not a bad idea, but it would likely require legislation to authorize them to work with the power of law enforcement and allocate funding accordingly.

but how is working for free not allowed? you'd think the police would welcome anyone who was willing...