German grandmother sentenced to prison for Holocaust denial

This is ridiculous:

"A German grandmother aged 87 has been sentenced to ten months in jail for denying the Holocaust and saying Auschwitz was 'just a labour camp'.  

Ursula Haverbeck, who is a friend of Gudrun Burwitz - elderly daughter of Nazi S.S. chief Heinrich Himmler - was sentenced in a court in Hamburg for sedition over an interview she gave to a TV station denying that Jews were murdered in extermination camps.

In the interview with the ARD network she claimed the death camp of Auschwitz in Nazi occupied Poland, where at least 1.1 million people were murdered, was 'nothing more than a labour camp.'"

Maybe I'm a First Amendment absolutist but I value freedom of speech above all other civil rights - even the freedom to speak nonsense - even to deny the Holocaust.  What good does it do to lock up Ursula Haverbeck and make her a martyr to all of her neo-Nazi fans? 

In Die Zeit, Thomas Fischer makes an elegant argument for criminalizing Holocaust denial:

Deshalb ist es richtig, die "Auschwitzlüge" zu bestrafen. Man sollte den Tatbestand in der Wirklichkeit auch tatsächlich anwenden und sich auf das übliche Gerede der Täter nicht einlassen. Und wenn ein liberaler Strafrechtler behauptet, da werde mit dem Strafrecht ein "Tabu" geschützt: Ja, stimmt. Das Grundrecht der Meinungsfreiheit steht dem nicht entgegen. Niemand hat ein aus dem Mensch-Sein entspringendes "Grundrecht", Mord und Völkermord gutzuheißen. Denn das "Leugnen" ist hier ja viel mehr als ein vergangenheitsbezogenes Bestreiten einer behaupteten Wahrheit. Die es öffentlich tun, meinen damit immer auch die Gegenwart und ihre düsteren Träume von einer Zukunft. 

Of course, advocating violence against a group or an individual does not fall under protected speech, even in the United States. 

Very lively and interesting comments in the readers' forum to Fischer's essay.  This one, I think, hits the target:

Aus US-Amerikanischer Sicht ist die deutsche Meinungsfreiheit ein Witz, weil sie nur so lange gilt, so lange man keine allzu unbequeme Meinung hat. Es handelt sich also um eine Schönwetter-Meinungsfreiheit. Schönwetter und/oder Mainstream Meinungen bedürfen aber keines besonderen Abwehrrechtes gegenüber dem Staat.

(From an American standpoint German freedom of expression is a joke, since only applies to inoffensive opinions.  It is a "fair weather" freedom of expression. But fair-weather or consensus opinions don't require any special protections from the state.")

Anyone interested can also check out Ursula Haverbeck's Web site where she is already positioning herself as a martyr. 

Comments

[sol1]

I prefer another comment (#13)

"Wer am Holocaust heruminterpretiert, der tut dies ja nie in einem irgendwie freien, unschuldigen Raum der wahrheitsverpflichtenden Meinungsbildung bzw. Realitätsannäherung, sondern in klar erkennbarer, weitreichend destruktiver Absicht."

"Whoever keeps on misconstruing the holocaust, doesn't do it in some kind of free and innocent context of truth-obliging opinion forming or reality approaching, but with clearly recognizable, all-out destructive intent."

And this can be seen in the wikipedia entry for Ursula Haverbeck:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Haverbeck

Her threats against Charlotte Knobloch amount to "there was no holocaust, and if you jews don't keep quiet, you'll be the victims of the next one".

So this is a fundamental difference (at least in Germany) between holocaust denial and the myriads of other stupid ideas on history.

[David]

Agreed, disgusting and hateful speech, but protected under the First Amendment.

Good book on the subject: "Freedom for the Thought We Hate" by Anthony Lewis.

http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Thought-That-Hate-Biography/dp/046501819X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1447895177&sr=1-1&keywords=first+amendment

[koogleschreiber]

Meanwhile, the smart nazis know well how to deal with the German "fair weather" freedom of expression. It is just a game of words, up to their intellect. They go as far as they can possibly go and then make a grinding halt short before the limits set by German laws: Then, the unspoken becomes the unmistakable. Only stupids will go to jail because of hate speech, Holocaust denials etc. today.
"Achten Sie darauf, was Sie sagen, sonst erteile ich Ihnen eine Arschwitzrüge!" So geht das, nämlich.

[David]

@koogelschreiber,

Excellent point. The laws against incitement are worthless, since everyone understands the "dog whistles".

When Ken Jebsen and the Pegida speakers shout about the "amerikanische Ostküste" everyone knows they are attacking Jews.

[Argus Cronus]

Why do you say that "at least 1.1 million Jews were killed" at Aschwitz when this lie has already been proven wrong. Even the International Red Cross has said that, AT MOST (and this is the maximum possible), 275k Jews died (not murdered; died) in all of Nazi Germany, during WWII.

[David]

@Argus - yes, and the Apollo Moon Landing was staged in Hollywood.

Take your Nazi lies elsewhere!