yes, absolutely. I think that that particular book is banned and should be if it isn't. It is hate literature plain and simple.
It is also, however, a historical document. Properly contextualised - that is, annotated and given a foreword that explains its origins, it provides a valuable insight into a part of European history. Banning it may prevent it from being used as propaganda, but it will also airbrush it from our historical consciousness.
and as for Holocaust revisionists, I think Holocaust deniers should face bans on their freedom of speech. To say that the Holocaust never happened is clearly hate speech.
Why?
I can see that a case can be made that Germany and Austria might want to ban Nazi parties and the associated expression and paraphernalia. Certainly, such measures were necessary sixty years ago. And while, personally, I think that the justification wears increasingly thin as the years go by, I am not sufficiently conversant with the state of German de-nazification to conclusively state that such laws are obsolescent.
But that is Germany and Austria. Those countries have a very specific historical reason to take heavy-handed legal measures against anti-semitism. It is not clear that the same is true for other countries, nor is it clear that there are similarly powerful justifications for indulging in the same kind of heavy-handed measures aimed against islamophobia.
On the other hand, he is also known to be a hate-mongerer on other issues related to Jews. Although he should not be imprisoned for this (unless he advocates and incites violence against a minority), his freedom of speech should also be curtailed.
So, how do you propose to curtail someone's freedom of speech if you're not willing to imprison him? Impose fines? They'd have to be pretty hefty to shut him up.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
every country should be careful of this for the sake of social harmony and protection of its citizens
in France and other countries, there has been the recall of magazines and books which have been deemed offensive. this turns out to be quite costly to the publisher and one or two incidents would be useful deterrents.
Or, shorter version: I don't buy your causal chain. You're engaging in a slippery slope fallacy.
And on the subject of "social harmony and the protection of its citizens," one might just as easily argue that a syndicalist agitator promoting strikes and blockades as means to achieve higher wages is disrupting the "social harmony" and that citizens need to be "protected" from him.
Lastly, I notice that you keep conflating offencive speech with hate speech. Do you think that the two are the same? If so, who determines what is offencive?
so union busters would only be using hate speech if they were trying to bust up a union of Santa's elves. ;-)
