The EU wants Richard Williamson's scalp.
He is an easy way into something far more sinister.
Why should minimising the Holocaust be an offence, rather than simply an error to be corrected as such, when, say, minimising or denying the crimes of Chairman Mao is not? Surely not because an old Maoist turned rabid "free" marketeer and Bush supporter is President of the European Commission?
Numerous old officials of the Soviet Communist Party or its satellites hold office in Brussels.
At Strasbourg sit and vote members of avowedly Stalinist and Trotskyist parties.
And so on.
When old Stalinists, Trotskyists or Maoists simply change tactics and become rabid "free" marketeers and Bush supporters, as different means to the same old ends, then what always, always, always characterises their global view?
Bush and his Crazies may be gone. But Barroso is still there. Sarkozy is still there. Merkel is still there. Berlusconi is still there. Brown is still there.
The first did, and the others still do, lead (having largely or entirely created) movements of which the prototype, the godfather, the mothership is Likud.
Holocaust denial is not what this is really all about.
The real aim is to make any criticism of Israel a criminal offence.
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David,
ReplyDeleteHistorical errors or, as is almost surely the case here, Mr. Williamson's expression of his hatred towards Jews by means of making false historical statements ought not be a crime. To that extent, I agree with you.
That the criminalization of such statements has to do with Israel, on the other hand, is nonsense. Such has everything to do with European history and its bloody hatred of Jews.
Mercifully, no one who really matters in your country any longer pays any attention to people who come out with lines like that.
ReplyDeleteOn the popular level, however ... well, it certainly raises the question of what it has all been for over the last forty years. Has Holywood, most obviously, become any less anti-Catholic? Not a bit of it.
As with the Catholic dialogue with anyone else since Vatican II, it is not really a dialogue at all. Catholics are just expected to turn up here, there and everywhere in order to be harrangued and insulted. Well, no more, it seems. Not before time.
David,
ReplyDeleteEmploying a tu quoque argument - invalid on its face - about my country, the US, does not change how Jews were treated in Europe. Moreover, your argument does not change the reason why someone like Mr. Williamson would deny the Holocaust.
Some facts need to be faced. Holocaust denial is an argument employed by Antisemites and, so far as I know, only by Antisemites. It is not merely a misinterpretation of history.
Again, though, stupidity and hatred ought not be criminalized. But, such things should be criticized, not defended.
They are certainly not defened on here.
ReplyDeleteBut nor, even by omission, are the "stupidity and hatred" that bang on, and on, and on about the Holocaust to the exclusion of all other genocides, massacres, and so forth.
As I say in an entire post today, Hollywood, in particular, is completely obsessed with the Holocaust, and with a very particular, wildly inaccurate version of the Holocaust at that.