If jailing Holocaust deniers for denyin the Holocaust is not persecution, I do not know what is.

Actually the arguments that I have been semi-espousing are not too different from this essay :http://www.holocaust-history.org/gen-semantics/gs.pdf. In this article, the author explains that the number of deaths commonly reported by mainstream media and "the man on the street" are overestimates of the numbers of people killed, incorrect in the methods they were killed, and attributes actions by Soviets to Nazis. For example, the number killed at Auschwitz has been reduced from 4.4 million to 1.5 million (if I remember correctly.) So, it is not absurd to question the validity of the commonly told story of the Holocaust, nor is it incorrect.

The author of the article then goes on to show how those who actually deny the enitre Holocaust (they do exist, despite what I have either said or implied) use these example to somehow "disprove" that the entire thing happened. Because the number of those killed at Auschwitz has been diminished, isn't it reasonable to ask about the other camps? Maybe they have been overestimated, as well.

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"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-Thomas Jefferson in his first inauguration address

I have read reputable (IMO) estimates from 4.5 million to 6 million that incorporate the reduced number at aushwitz. But inflated numbers is not the only or even the main red herring deniers use. They also, as the article notes, quote historical documents out of context and redefine terms to make their "argument".

As for the denial laws I have no idea why you won't acknowledge the exception for "fighting words" or incitement to riot which are limits to speech recognized even by most first amendment supporters and which are recognized in US law as well. It seems to me if you want to be consistent you must also consider the prosecution of yelling "fire" in the theater or whippping a crowd into a murderous frenzy and setting them on innocent bystanders as persecution.

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A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon

Incidentally, my numbers were wrong, and that's what I get for typing late at night.

Here's the original sign at Auschwitz that was up for decades.


Here's the new one.


Four million minus 1.5 million equals 2.5 million difference... yet the official numbers of 5.5 million Jews and 5.5 million assorted others that don't matter has not changed.

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We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
The hammer of the gods...

I remember reading, and I can't remember for the life of me where, that the reason for this is because the Communist Polish government were the only ones who believed the 4 million figure. Historians outside of Poland never took it into account, and always went off a figure around 1.5 million.

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There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival. Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush.

We are at war with forces too terrible to comprehend. We cannot afford mercy for any of its victims too weak to take the correct course. Mercy destroys us; it weakens us and saps our resolve. Put aside all such thoughts. They are not worthy of those in the service of country.

You may very well be right... I've never heard that one, but it works. It still doesn't explain the number discrepancy in light that the official total has never changed.

__________________
We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
The hammer of the gods...

It doesn't? Historians arrived at that number (actually, somewhere between 5 and 5.5 million) by using the figure of 1.5, not 4 million. Therefore, when Auschwitz finally made the correction there was no need to change the overall figure.

__________________
There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival. Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush.

We are at war with forces too terrible to comprehend. We cannot afford mercy for any of its victims too weak to take the correct course. Mercy destroys us; it weakens us and saps our resolve. Put aside all such thoughts. They are not worthy of those in the service of country.

Interesting. I'd love to see a source on that.

I'm not a philosopher by trade, but my understanding of a "red herring" argument is that it's a tactic to divert the course of the debate. Argument over inflated numbers, for example, wouldn't be a red herring... simply a point of argument.

It's not a red herring simply because you don't like it.

Simple. The two examples you give are examples of inciting imminent lawlessness. For an American example, there are three seperate court cases that draw a line between legitimate speech and opining for violence against public officials... and openly advocating lawlessness. For example: I can publicly state that an elected official should be hanged; I cannot say "let's go hang ______________ or direct others to do so."

Criminalizing holocaust deniers (and yes I realize this happens in countries not under the US legal system) is another matter altogether. The idea that simply advocating a re-examination of the historical period might lead to anti-semitic acts doesn't cut it. How European legal systems play fast and loose with concepts such as freedom of speech is their business. As a citizen of the nation that created the concept, I need not respect their approach to it.

__________________
We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
The hammer of the gods...

If what you say is true, then that may be correct. It also implies that since the Pole government was wrong for so many years... and the actual sites were under communist Pole control... that other figures might be wrong as well... or we simply don't know and probably never will.

Any chance you can source your original statement? I need to see that.

__________________
We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
The hammer of the gods...

If memory serves me correct, it was addressed in the book Final Solution, by Retlinger (sp?).

EDIT: Now that I think about it, Raul Hilberg also touched on it in his book The Destruction of the European Jews. This book was published in the 60's, and he was the first to put forward the 5 million total dead figure.

__________________
There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival. Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush.

We are at war with forces too terrible to comprehend. We cannot afford mercy for any of its victims too weak to take the correct course. Mercy destroys us; it weakens us and saps our resolve. Put aside all such thoughts. They are not worthy of those in the service of country.

From what I gathered from that article (and it is the only one I read, so others might clear it up), the 6 million number is inaccurate. I think he talks about this in the first paragraph. While I can aknowledge the deniers use some trickery, I also predict that some ammount of trickery is used by those who argue against the revisionists, and the guy seems to be saying that in his article. It seems, again, from this one article, that there were plans to kill the Jews and not simply relocate them.
May be I will not acknowledge the fighting words exception because it does not apply. There are glaraing disanalogies between the cases you present and the case of Holocaust denial. First, in the cases you present there is someone speaking before a large group of already roudy people. In the denial case, there are simply people writting about it and talking about it. Second, it seems that if it were a law against inciting riots then people who were clearly not intending to incite a riot would not be prosecuted.

As for free speech and yelling fire, I think you might misunderstand the concept of freedom of speech. It does not mean that you have a right to say whatever you want whenever you and whereever you want. The first amendment only applies to governmental activites, therefore, it does not apply to yelling fire in a theatre. Doing this violates the property rights of the theatre owner, and this is why yelling fire is wrong. It is just as wrong to yell "Cat!" (Althought the ammount of money paid to the owner in damages might be greater in the fire case than in the cat case.)

__________________
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-Thomas Jefferson in his first inauguration address

I would agree with you if we were talking about the US. But I don't feel I have an intimate enough knowledge of a country which suffered millions of deaths through the racist actions of the nazis to condemn their equation of nazi hate speech with inciting a riot or fighting words. Even if I was to disagree with their application of the law that disagreement could never (for me) reach the point where I would consider it "persecution" of holocaust deniers.

__________________
A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon

Thanks. I'll try and find that.

__________________
We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.
The hammer of the gods...

So before the revision it was 6,000,000 and after the revision it is still 6,000,000 even though numbers were revised by the millions downward?

No, most historians (starting in the 60s) never used the 6 million figure.

__________________
There can be no bystanders in the battle for survival. Anyone who will not fight by your side is an enemy you must crush.

We are at war with forces too terrible to comprehend. We cannot afford mercy for any of its victims too weak to take the correct course. Mercy destroys us; it weakens us and saps our resolve. Put aside all such thoughts. They are not worthy of those in the service of country.

Can you provide an example; this is news to me.