Of Facebook, Holocaust Denial, and Dissent

Of Facebook, Holocaust Denial, and Dissent

I am a dissident, forever a dissident, marching to my own drummer. No Canadian newspapers can quench my appetite for real debate and dissent in the spirit of an open, liberal pluralism. No doubt, I find great pieces in The National Post, Globe and Mail, and sometimes even the Toronto Star. Yet, more open political debate occurs in the blogsphere today than in Canada's national newspapers. And Canada's newspapers are not alone, from Le Monde to the New York Times, I can almost predict the editorial positions and certainly what particular columnists will say. This is not debate for me, but mere ritualism, like reciting a profession of faith when you rise each morning with the sun. I love ritual, don't get me wrong. But the ritual repetition of the same poliical platitudes by left and right is tiring, dogmatic, and masks substantive political debates.

So I guess I was secretly excited when Facebook recently said they would remove a few Holocaust denial groups from its site. Then we discovered that there were more Holocaust denial groups on Facebook. And that Facebook has a policy that prohibits hate against identifiable groups, yet is now defending the right of the Holocaust deniers to air their noxious positions. I am a Facebook user and I was secretly excited because it is with the toughest of "free speech" issues like Holocaust denial that we come to know our collective values as a society. We come to know the degree to which free expression is an authentic value, or a rhetorical ploy used by those with power to be the guardians of morality and the shifting winds of political correctness.

Some Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors and their relatives have pushed Facebook to chase out the Holocaust denial sites. The Holocaust denial groups use the mantra of free speech, while they are merely interested in using Holocaust denial as a platform to finish the job the Nazis began when they came to power in 1933. Free speech advocates can be divided into two classes: Radical libertarians where all is fair game (including Holocaust denial) and more nuanced free speech supporters. The latter included a former professor when I was studying at York University, Aurel Braun. Braun correctly pointed out that there is a distinction between free speech and political speech that veers into action and can cause "imminent harm and danger." I am not talking about hurting morals, sensibilities, worldviews, or your comfortable conception of the world. I am talking about Rwanda's Hutu-led government in 1994 getting on public radio to call for the "cutting down" (extermination) of Tutsis. I am talking about the Nazi Party in inter-war years Germany calling for the annihilation of world Jewry. This is the terrain of Holocaust denial and this is what makes it so tricky.

So I stand for free expression, even noxious free expression, and the collision of radically different worldviews, which is the essence of politics. Yet, I am the author of a book on neo-fascism in Western Europe, Where Have All The Fascists Gone? (Ashgate, 2007), which argues that generally fascists in Europe are no longer of the Holocaust denial type. They are no longer open fascist or Nazi sympathizers. They have changed their clothes, as all good wolves do. And this has made them more effective in an "anti-fascist" and even "post-fascist" age. In short, I am sympathetic to the people that argue in favour of legal sanctions for those that call for the extermination of particular groups. If I threaten someone with murder on the street, I can certainly go to jail. If I threaten the annihilation of Jews, blacks, Arabs, blue people, or the green-eyed, have I not entered the terrain where acceptable speech ends and the incitement to genocidal murder begins?

Facebook understands that Holocaust denial is an entire industry with millions of worldwide followers from Iran and Egypt to Russia and the United States. Anti-Jewish conspiracies have also grown in the post-9-11 climate. And supposedly smart people eat them up like a delicious corned beef sandwich, but one that gives indigestion to the eater and the society in question. And Facebook knows that if they act more vociferously against the Holocaust deniers, they will say: "We told you so. Jews control the world. They control the media. They control what we can say and what we cannot say."

So what to do about mad people that want to restart Auschwitz? What to do about the Holocaust hoaxers on Facebook? I have 12 suggestions:

1) Combat blatant falsehoods with social truths. This is the surest path to victory. This minimizes the use of creeping authoritarian legislation and protects free expression. As Deborah Lipstadt, the author of Denying the Holocaust, notes: "I am not happy when censorship wins, and I don't believe in winning battles via censorship… The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth."

2) Educate people about the "crime of crimes" (genocide), the Holocaust, and genocides in the 20th century. An excellent starting point is Samantha's Power's "A Problem From Hell" because it also highlights our worldwide indifference (as well as US governmental indifference) vis-a-vis six genocides of the 20th century: the Armenian, Holocaust, Cambodian, Iraqi Kurd, Bosnian, and Rwandan.

3) Tolerate some denial in civil society as it is out there in abundance on the Net and will not be stopped. Yet, legally punish those that veer into action by inciting for the wholesale destruction "in whole or in part" of identifiable ethnic groups in the here and now. This is certainly more important with those in positions of state power, although the Nazis began their ascent as an insignificant national socialist party in 1920. In this respect, Ahmadinejad's Holocaust hoax theories are far more troubling than a Texas lone wolf Christan, racist patriot that spews Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG) garbage on Facebook.

4) Jail individuals and leaders that actually engage in violence against particular ethnic, cultural, or religious groups. And jail them without amnesty. Remember Hitler wrote his venomous Mein Kampf in jail after a failed coup. His amnesty and political rehabilitation should have been foiled by German political and legal authorities.

5) Know that Holocaust denial is a species of an ancient passion, anti-Semitism (or the "socialism of fools"), which cannot be fully defeated because of human hatred, envy, jealousy, and negative mimetic behaviour. It expresses the real powerlessness of people in a globalized world where capitalist institutions, states, and ordinary people have less power to determine their sovereign political affairs. Jews are the convenient scapegoat for the loss of power of all, whether in authoritarian or liberal democratic contexts. If the Jews were not around, as the French royalist anti-Semite Charles Maurras once said, they would need to be invented. The Jewish scapegoat is an easy answer for all of our grave ills from the current banking crisis to the loss of national identity, and from 9-11 to world poverty. I suppose Jews are also to blame for radical Islamism, Nazism, and Stalinist communism. Yes, the anti-Semitic conspiracy cranks really go that far!

6) Provide more positive models for humanity than the Holocaust deniers. Provide examples of positive cooperation and unity between Jews and Christians, Jews and Muslims, and Arabs and Israelis. Or show how love, spirituality, and cultural understanding rather than Holocaust hate can help us heal the world.

7) Mainstream cultural and political organizations, Jewish or non-Jewish, do not necessarily need to be so defensive and whiff out anti-Semitic abuses everywhere at all times in all places. When a madman howls at the wind, do we need to inflame him with our incendiary commentary? When we call for the banning of the Holocaust deniers, we give them the oxygen of publicity they so crave. Sometimes silence is more powerful than outright condemnation. This is something to be considered on a case-by-case basis. The decisions are indeed difficult and complex ones.

8) If we err, we ought to err on the side of speech, dissent, the right of even cranks of all political camps to have their say.

9) When banning begins of one political camp, it will never end there. Before you know it, the state will be determining your thoughts, acceptable worldviews, and movements. My family did not come to liberal democratic Canada to be policed by a nanny state.

10) Know that Holocaust denial is both a free speech issue and simultaneously a test case for the limits of political speech. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre is illegal because it will cause "imminent harm and danger" to people in the theatre. When political authorities start to call for the physical elimination of certain cultural or religious groups from our universe, their right to speech has crossed into the toxic river of genocidal murder.

11) Know that Holocaust denial is sometimes a terrible provocation against those that are tired of perceived media control of political debate by the same newspapers, columnists, and editors.

12) Know that in the end humanity, the spirit of dissent, and the memory of the victims of the Holocaust can be preserved with our vigilance. But also know that as the Holocaust survivors will all soon be gone. The deniers of the world will count on time, the loss of political memory, ignorance, and hatred to continue the legacy of denial. The truth and the memory of the Holocaust dead should hang permamently in all our hearts as a testament to humanity's inhumanity. The lesson is applicable for Jews and non-Jews alike.

Tamir Bar-On