The human kind history has thrown several thousands of millions of litres of ink, on people who sacrificed their life for us to be free. Many nations succeeded and gained their freedom through time, others are still struggling. The very foundation of every basic human right is freedom. In ancient Greece, freedom was noted as “The Ultimate Virtue“. Without freedom no other basic human virtue such as love, compassion, creation, happiness, affection or others can take place and grow. Freedom applies to everything. People needs freedom in order to choose a partner, a lifestyle, a religion, a hobby, a computer, a party, etc.
Freedom as a term, has no limits. According to Sophists, the ultimate expression of freedom for a human being is to follow the instincts that nature has implant on him. Hence satisfying all his desires by any means, would be the ultimate form of freedom. This is what happens in nature, they argued. This is not true though. Nature has many forms of communities and even the most savage of beasts, must follow some kind of code if he wants to be accepted by his species. This code is not written or chosen, but enforced.
The humans being supreme beings, formed such codes in order to live in societies. The notion of freedom in a society was polished by adding the idea that “One’s freedom stops where freedom of others begin“. Which means that we can’t invade the space of others by imposing behaviours of our like. With the raise of democratic governments, this notion of democracy became widely accepted and as of today, based on the principle that “all humans are equal“, we believe that is just.
In order to form a society a set of rules that will act as general behaviour guidelines, are essential. Platoo in his “Politeia” argues that in a perfect republic would be a quorum of philosophers. This specific republic, if could ever be turned into reality, would not need “laws” to survive because the virtue of philosophers is so great that, every dispute will be solved by the interested parties on an argument. Note that a philosopher according to Socrates and Platoo respectively, has virtuous motives for all of his actions, words and never stops seeking for knowledge.
In human societies we can hardly support the notion of everyone being a philosopher. The laws are needed, there’s no one to argue against. Even anarchism contrary to popular belief is based on common sense, for the establishing of an order that will allow people live in groups or societies. As stated before, in every group, society, organisation, ecosystem or whatever you want to call it, a behaviour code – implicitly or explicitly imposed – is of crucial importance.
Democracy as a social system is far from mature. In order for it to be evolved, some freedoms need to be protected by any means. One of the those is the “Freedom of speech“. Even for the most sinister advocate, the freedom of expression is a basic human right. In countries like Germany and France this kind of arguments should be considered cliché with predisposed answers taken by the French Revolution, in the past centuries. Instead, I’ve read that Germany ruled jail for Horst Mahler.
The holocaust, as a subject constitutes a headache even for people with common sense in Germany. The Second World War and the holocaust specifically, is the reason for Germans to be ashamed. You can understand this by walking in to Berlin’s Madam Tissot museum. While every other wax statue is put in place for pictures, Hitler’s statue is closed in a locked closet with glass and the text goes something like: “Due to the pain that have caused to millions of people we forbid pictures with Adolf Hitler“. In the same city you can find the Europe’s largest Jewish cemetery, the known Weißensee Cemetery.
No matter how much ashamed is a nation about the caused damage, it’s no justification for a main European nation, home of 21st century philosophers and contemporary artists, to rule the holocaust denial as a crime. Apart from the Jewish propaganda theories, which are not uncommon belief by many people worldwide, the holocaust is a drama that better not to forget. That’s all there is to it though. It’s an unfortunate event that took place decades ago, the movies and modern literature gave the deserved credit to the dramatic events so far, there is no need censor the denial. It’s quite absurd actually.
A person who wants to believe otherwise or mislead others to do so, by advocating lies, distorting reality and facts will accept the reception he deserves by his colleagues, his friends and family. On the other hand, people who have a tendency to discard the facts related to the holocaust, will find another voice to give them a reason to believe whatever they want. That’s a minority anyway. Punishing a man for not paying respect into one of the most atrocious tragedies in recent years, by denying him of his own opinion, no matter how outrageous or ridiculous it may be, is really one of the worst kind of censorships. Reminds of the very own state of things that this man stands for: The Nazi.How does this make sense?
Benjamin Franklin said: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety“. Is Germany trying to protect itself from another right-wing government that could repeat history? If it is going to happen, you can’t prevent it, no matter what. This is a bad example of democracy and civil rights by all means.
The holocaust is of such importance that even the European Union had many disputes on the matter . While Germany was pressing for further sentences all over Europe, finally Britain in 2001 draws a line because of the need to balance the restrictions on voicing racist opinions against the freedom of expression (speech). Same goes for other genocide cases also.
We as a society have in freedom the dearest of our rights. Freedom of speech, absolute freedom of speech, should not be negotiable by any government, society and especially democracy. It constitutes the very foundation of democracy. We should be able to listen to the other side, no matter how outrageous, to question our selves, to understand the benefits of democracy against military Junta!
Under this aspect, after all these years, Germany still remains a narrow minded state. Even after experiencing the horror of a totalitarian state, the cruelty of censorship, apparently it failed to learn from the past mistakes. While it would gain nothing by ignoring this mans lunacy, it loses a lot in the eyes of the world wide community by putting him in jail.
I’m quite positive you’ll be the No1 for long time…
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