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posted by martyb on Tuesday November 13 2018, @12:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the Room-101-dept dept.

As the days go by our hard won freedoms and liberty are slowly being eroded. In Europe a crushing blow has been made to freedom of speech with a European Court of Human Rights upholding a conviction for saying that the person known as Muhammad ten centuries ago was technically a paedophile based on information in historical texts. The statement was made in reference to Muhammad's marriage to a six year old child name called Aisha. The court found that “Presenting objects of religious worship in a provocative way capable of hurting the feelings of the followers of that religion could be conceived as a malicious violation of the spirit of tolerance, which was one of the bases of a democratic society.”. In giving its ruling that "Muhammad was not a worthy subject of worship" the court has additionally demonstrated a complete misunderstanding as to the religion involved which worships "Allah", a word meaning 'God', not 'Muhammad' who claimed to be a prophet of this god. Freedom of speech is dying.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Tuesday November 13 2018, @01:15PM (16 children)

    by pkrasimirov (3358) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 13 2018, @01:15PM (#761261)

    For me this was when I decided speech is not free in Europe:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial [wikipedia.org]

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  • (Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @01:59PM (15 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @01:59PM (#761277)

    Why, do you feel the need to deny the holocaust ?

    • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @02:02PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @02:02PM (#761281)

      Why, do you feel the need to deny the holocaust ?

      Some people don't like to live in "reality".

      • (Score: 2, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @09:55PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @09:55PM (#761459)

        The very fact of making "holocaust denial" illegal goes a long way to convincing many people that the holocaust didn't happen.

        If the holocaust happened, then any denials can simply be countered with the truth.

        If the holocaust didn't happen, then it would explain why governments are so desperate to conceal and prohibit the truth. Only lies need such protection.

        Yes, I realize that whether something is made illegal or not is no proof one way or the other whether the holocaust is true. But most people don't realize it, and making discussion of historical events illegal makes most people very suspicious, which only gives the deniers more fuel.

    • (Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @02:09PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @02:09PM (#761287)

      Defenders of free speech are frequently accosted by individuals who have formed in their minds the notion that if you are defending the right to speech, then surely you must be advocating or agreeing with the speech that is being presented.

      Free speech means I must defend this vile, disgusting woman from the marginally more repulsive people who want to kill her

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Pino P on Tuesday November 13 2018, @05:45PM

        by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday November 13 2018, @05:45PM (#761385) Journal

        Remind these individuals of what Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote in The Friends of Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

      • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday November 14 2018, @12:01AM

        by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday November 14 2018, @12:01AM (#761511) Homepage Journal

        Web Communications at first, then later WebCom. It was the world's first commercial hosting service, and Zündel was one of our customers.

        The two owners, Thomas Leavitt and Chris Scheffler is as left as they come. Thomas was later sued by right-wing radio host Michael Savage for his Savage Stupidity website, on the basis was Thomas was cutting into Savage's ad revenue.

        Thomas won.

        The entire nation of Germany blocked our IP address. Some of our customers were German, many of our customers had good reason to reach German users.

        But Thomas and Chris stood firm - and all us employees agreed with him.

        This was in late 1997 or early '98, I don't clearly recall.

        --
        Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 13 2018, @02:12PM (1 child)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday November 13 2018, @02:12PM (#761290) Homepage Journal

      Feeling that need isn't required. Never letting your government decide that an idea must be outlawed is all that's required. It's an absolute guarantee that if you allow it this power, it will eventually be used against you.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @02:47PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @02:47PM (#761300)

        I guess this should be one of those two times a day right!

    • (Score: 0, Troll) by loonycyborg on Tuesday November 13 2018, @02:28PM (4 children)

      by loonycyborg (6905) on Tuesday November 13 2018, @02:28PM (#761296)

      Nobody would feel a need to deny objective truth. If Holocaust is such a truth then laws against its denial are as dumb as, say, a law against denial of second law of thermodynamics. Very existence of such law gives more power to any remaining fascist elements painting them as a repressed minority.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @11:00PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @11:00PM (#761492)

        Nobody would feel a need to deny objective truth.

        So, in True Scotsman fashion, the following items [wikipedia.org] must not be objective truths then:

        - the planned systematic genocide of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I
        - the Nazi authorities' usage of extermination camps and gas chambers to mass murder Jews
        - the killing of 8,000 women and children in Srebrenica
        - the Tiananmen Square protests
        - the genocide of the Tutsi's in Rwanda

        From that link, quoting George Orwell on denialism:

        The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. [..] In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one's own mind.

        The reason for outlawing denialism has nothing to do with curbing free speech: the goal is to force people to deal with ugly truths, and not letting them put their fingers in their ears and scream "la la la can't hear you".

        Moreover, as you can note from the list above, most of the denialism is perpretrated by governments themselves. Are you now going to argue that those governments (Turkey, China, Serbia) are pinnacles of free speech for supporting denialism?

        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Sulla on Wednesday November 14 2018, @02:40AM

          by Sulla (5173) on Wednesday November 14 2018, @02:40AM (#761564) Journal

          You brought up some good examples of what was said above. Turkey's continued denial of the genocide they committed and repression of speech saying that it happened makes people question the official story and want to investigate the truth behind it. People don't like being told what they should and shouldn't think, so some people will question whether or not the holocaust happened simply because the government says you cannot talk about it, in the same way people question what Turkey and China did just because they repress speech saying that bad things happened.

          I am unaware of anyone, no matter how racist, who denies that slavery existed as an institution in America's past. If the US was to ban saying slavery never happened or ban saying it did happen it would have the opposite result. Through propaganda you can enforce an idea but by banning you can be sure that people will investigate it.

          How many of us read the anarchists cookbook, brave new world, of mice and men, etc just because they were either banned for a time or there were attempts to do so?

          --
          Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
        • (Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday November 14 2018, @08:21AM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 14 2018, @08:21AM (#761654) Journal

          The reason for outlawing denialism has nothing to do with curbing free speech: the goal is to force people to deal with ugly truths, and not letting them put their fingers in their ears and scream "la la la can't hear you".

          Sorry, that goal should be illegal in a democratic society. It is in the US, which gets it right via the First Amendment. "Ugly truths" are extremely subjective. We already have an example in this very story where such a truth has been suppressed instead.

      • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday November 14 2018, @05:31AM

        by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday November 14 2018, @05:31AM (#761617)

        If Holocaust is such a truth then laws against its denial are as dumb as, say, a law against denial of second law of thermodynamics.

        Don't worry, we Aussies have you covered [newscientist.com] on that front.

    • (Score: 1, Troll) by unauthorized on Tuesday November 13 2018, @03:49PM (2 children)

      by unauthorized (3776) on Tuesday November 13 2018, @03:49PM (#761334)

      Afraid you can't win an argument against someone stupid enough to believe holocaust denial?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @10:23PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 13 2018, @10:23PM (#761472)

        Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

        • (Score: 2) by unauthorized on Wednesday November 14 2018, @02:47AM

          by unauthorized (3776) on Wednesday November 14 2018, @02:47AM (#761568)

          Oh dear, it seems that I forgot to add the <satire> tags. My bad.