Holocaust denial laws criminalize a claim states leave flat-earth beliefs free
Evidence
The most effective method of promulgating falsiļ¬ed history is of course coercion. This was universal in the Soviet Bloc, and although it is no longer applied there, it still persists in other parts of the world, where only one version of historical events is permitted, other versions being forbidden and punishable. Even in a democratic state the use of coercion is still a possibility, by selective legislation. For example the Loi Gayssot in France makes it a criminal offense to deny that the Holocaust took place. There is no such law either in the United States or in the United Kingdom, any more than there are laws making it criminal to claim that the earth is ļ¬at. Anyone who wishes to argue that the earth is ļ¬at is free to do so both in Britain and in America. In France, and also in Germany, which has a similar law for a similar reason, there is a somewhat different history. One can easily explain and one may try to justify the Loi Gayssot, but one cannot dispute that it constitutes a limitation on freedom of expression, and may be a dangerous precedent. ā Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1846
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The pairing of denial-law and flat-earth-claim is a genuinely uncomfortable provocation: it asks whether the harm principle can license outlawing one false historical claim without licensing all of them, and where the line philosophically holds.
- SHARE: Send to anyone who debates free-speech absolutism ā the flat-earth juxtaposition is a compact thought experiment for what makes some false claims legally actionable.