German bishop faces 5 years for denying the holocaust

[Siddhartha]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1145739.html

Deny the existence of God, get a Nobel Prize. Question the holocaust and get 5 years in prison? lol.
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A German court said on Wednesday it had summoned traditionalist Catholic bishop Richard Williamson to face charges he denied the Holocaust, an offence punishable by up to five years in jail.

In comments broadcast on Swedish television last January, Williamson said he believed no more than 300,000 Jews perished in the Holocaust and that there were no gas chambers.

The consensus among historians is the Nazis killed some six million Jews in the Holocaust.

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The district court in the southern city of Regensburg has set a hearing for April 16, because Williamson had appealed against a 12,000 euro fine for incitement that was summarily handed down last year for his remarks.

The court has now summoned Williamson, 69, to face questioning in person, court spokesman Thomas Frick said.

Authorities cannot force him to attend, but if Williamson is not represented at the hearing, then the appeal against the fine will be thrown out, Frick added.

"Then the fine becomes legally binding," he said.

Williamson's remarks broadcast on the television station were made near to Regensburg, within the court's jurisdiction.

British-born Williamson belongs to an ultra-traditionalist Catholic splinter group, the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX).

The Pope caused outrage among Jewish groups last year when he lifted excommunications on four SSPX bishops, including Williamson, at about the same time that Williamson denied Jews had died in Nazi gas chambers.

Williamson later offered an apology for his comments though the Vatican rejected this, saying it did not go far enough.

SSPX, which opposes the way the Catholic Church has evolved over the last 40 years, rejects the Second Vatican Council's decision to stop calling Jews killers of Jesus Christ and to seek good ties with Protestants, Jews, Muslims and other faiths

Which god are you referring to, Zeus?

I would expect Germany to be very serious about the Holocaust because their country killed a lot of civilians and lost the war so they couldn't sweep it under a historical rug.

 

[JJ44]

You have to understand Germany's predicament. It was host to the only industrialized genocide in the history of mankind.

There have been many genocides before and after the genocide by Germany against the Jews. You can find our own god commanding them in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible).

Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide, was FIRST, before the Holocaust even occurred a student of the Armenian Genocide, which he called the first genocide of the 20th century.

There are lots of deniers of the Armenian genocide as well as deniers of the Holocaust.

People who make the holocaust completely exceptional are engaging in a form of Genocide denial, and this is extensively discussed by Samantha Powers in "A problem from Helll."

It is exceptional in that it was a killing of Europeans by Europeans who had previously killed way more non Europeans. It was not exceptional for its deep racist theory or religious supremacy as "scientific" antisemitism of the Germans since scientific racism, along with eugenic "hygiene" was born and perfected in the US, and religious supremacy was invented as part of monotheism three millennia ago.

Now people who deny that 5 to 6 million Jews were killed in an orgy of mass murder and evil organized but the German state abetted by Axis allies such as Italy and Bulgaria are not worth abiding and should be criticsized with the disgust they deserve. But that is a differnet thing than honestly looking at world history and not seeing such mass murder as the norm for most of "civilized" history.

 

[JJ44]

Don't ask me for a link because I don't have one, but I think even though technically the German people inacted these types of laws, the US and the world community put a lot of pressure on them to enact them. After all we were bankrolling them with the Marshall Plan and had lots of leverage.

Not really. It is because criminal libel has always been around in Europe. You could be prosecuted for defaming the state or even the Nation in many places for centuries and still can be in some European countries. You can be prosecution (not just sued in civil court as in the US). Even in the UK defamation is a much broader term as is illegal speech.

In the US criminal libel, criminal false speech, pre-speech suppression was never well supported in courts, even in pre constitutional times before the First amendment, and even our "hate speech" laws are relatively difficult to prove.

It isn that the Germans (and others Europeans) created these laws under pressure, but rather that such laws already fell into their judicial views.