Holocaust denial is, of course, a malign idiocy, but making it a crime across the EU will achieve nothing other than to give a weapon to those forces within Europe now trying so hard to limit free speech on, say, grounds of religious sensitivity (not to mention the spurious “validation” it will give to the nonsense the Iranians have been spouting about Western double standards). The way to defeat the David Irvings of this world is through debate, not the jailhouse.
The Germans, it seems, still do not understand this.
Germany is to revive plans to criminalise Holocaust denial as well as the use of Nazi symbols in all EU countries, making them punishable by up to three years in prison. Ministers in Berlin have identified the move as a priority of Germany’s six-month presidency of the EU which began on 1 January. Its efforts come against the background of the formation in the European Parliament of a far-right group, Identity, Sovereignty and Tradition. However, the proposal is certain to provoke controversy, particularly in the EU’s new members in eastern Europe where politicians have objected to any legislation that would ban Nazi insignia but permit the use of Communist symbols.
If, more than seventy years after the rise of Hitler and almost twenty years after the collapse of East Berlin’s communist dictatorship, the German government still does not understand the meaning of free speech, that is its problem. It should not be the EU’s.