SHOULD STUPID THOUGHTS BE CRIMES?
By Michael Dickinson
CounterPunch, CA
Dec 25 2006
Deny Santa If You Wish, But You Can’t Deny This
Earlier this week a junior school in England was forced to apologize
after a teacher used a worksheet with a class of ten year olds
revealing that Santa Claus was a myth. The students had to make up
replies from mail staff to children’s letters to Santa asking for
presents, explaining why they couldn’t have them.
One parent said: "My wife and I made a special effort to keep the
belief in Santa in our daughter’s mind. What gives the school the
right to decide when children should know the truth, when knowing
the truth does take away that little bit of magic?"
The headmistress of the school said the choice of worksheet had
been a sad mistake and it would never be used again. "As a school
we delight in the magic of childhood and believe that Christmas is
a special time."
The Hamilton Trust, which produced the worksheet, didn’t think it
would come as much of a shock to children of that age, claiming that
by the age of 10 children tend to know that Santa does not exist.
And yet millions of parents in the West persist in feeding the lie
of Father Christmas to their innocent trusting children for as long
as possible, until they realize they’re being punked, and maybe I
shouldn’t trust mommy and daddy so much any more? It’s an accepted
acceptable untruth. Santa deniers are killjoys and spoilsports,
not to be listened to. They have the right to deny, of course. One
wouldn’t dream of jailing them for simply stating their opinion.
After all, aren’t we in the West entitled to freedom of speech and
belief? You may not agree with me, but I have the right to say what
I think — don’t I?
Denial of something more serious than Santa has been making news of
late. A Holocaust Denial conference held last week in Iran, which
called into question the systematic murder of six million European
Jews by Nazi Germany, suggesting that the history of the genocide has
been falsified to justify the foundation of Israel, was described
by British Prime Minister Tony Blair as "shocking beyond belief",
and by the White House as "an affront to the entire civilized world."
So what is this Holocaust denial, and why is it so bad? Isn’t it just
like a Conspiracy Theory? Like, you can believe that the American
government masterminded the 9/11 attacks on the twin towers in order
to spark Armaggedon, and tell other people what you think, without
fear of being arrested in the United States, where freedom of speech
is protected in the first amendment. A lot of people might call you
a crank. We want proof. Give us the evidence.
But if you’re living in Europe, and you suggest that some facts and
figures were rigged in the historic presentation of the Second World
War in order gain guilty sympathy for, and facilitate the exodus
of European Jews to the then newly born state of Israel — you are
likely to find yourself in prison for your views, cranky or no. You
are guilty of the crime of ‘Holocaust denial’.
Apart from being a crime in Israel itself, Holocaust denial is a penal
offence in Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland and several other
European countries, one of them being Austria, from where British
historian David Irving was released this week, after having served 13
months of a three-year sentence in an Austrian prison for denying the
Holocaust. Lord Janner, president of the Holocaust Educational Trust,
said Mr. Irving’s release was "unwarranted", and Lord Foulkes of the
Labour Friends of Israel, said he should be watched closely by the
police since his return to England.
So what do Holocaust deniers (who actually prefer to be known as
‘Holocaust revisionists’) actually say, that causes such offence?
They don’t, of course, deny the death of a huge number of Jews,
but they dispute the number, claiming the figure of 5-6 million is
exaggerated, saying that many emigrated or escaped. They claim that
gas chambers were not used to mass murder Jews, nor were cremation
ovens used to dispose of millions of extermination victims. They say
that most of the photos and film shown after the war were manufactured
propaganda by the Allies against the Nazis; that Jews as a group were
not in particular singled out from other persecuted people such as
Romanies, gays or Communists, and that the Holocaust in general is
nothing more than an elaborate Zionist hoax.
I’m sure there are many who hold stranger and uglier views, (and
those who stir up antagonism on the basis of either race or religion
should be accountable to the law), but like the ‘Conspiracy Theory’
it resembles, Holocaust denial should not be an imprisonable offence.
I don’t like David Irving. He supported apartheid in South Africa,
describes himself as ‘a mild fascist,’ but he should not have been
jailed for his views. As Voltaire put it: "I disapprove of what you
say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
There are many other examples of genocidal denials around the world.
In Turkey for instance, it’s a crime to refuse to deny the alleged
Armenian atrocity, and we have yet to hear an American President
stand up and apologize for his white countrymen’s ancestors for
extinguishing numberless tribes of indigenous people in the land they
came to conquer which they named America.
Whether the Holocaust happened or not, there is no denying that
people can be very cruel to other people, especially when they are
in the position of power, now and in the past. The world is full of
examples, everywhere. The Jews certainly suffered terribly under the
Nazi regime, and those Jews in power now years later in their own State
of Israel certainly seem to have learned a few tricks from their former
overlords. The harsh conditions to which they subject the Palestinian
people resembles the way the Jews themselves were treated under Hitler,
putting thems into prison camp getthoes, creating an apartheid system,
stealing their land, destroying their homes and fields, imprisoning
thousands, and causing the deaths of countless innocent people and
children in bombings and shellings, all of this is really "shocking
beyond belief", and "an affront to the entire civilized world."
Deny Santa if you wish. You may even deny the Holocaust. It’s your
right. But you can’t deny this affront. It’s happening now.
Michael Dickinson is an English teacher who lives and works in
Istanbul.