Legality of Holocaust denial
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"The fact that, after having been ignored or repressed for decades, the memory of the Holocaust has been transformed today into a kind of civil religion in the Western world, sometimes protected by the law, shows the profound isolation of anti-Semitic discourse and ideas."--The End of Jewish Modernity (2016) by Enzo Traverso |
Related e |
Featured: |
Holocaust denial, the denial of the systematic genocidal killing of millions of ethnic minorities in Europe by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, is illegal in 14 European nations. Many countries also have broader laws that criminalize genocide denial. Of the countries that ban Holocaust denial, some, such as Austria, Germany, Hungary, and Romania, were among the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and many of these also ban other elements associated with Nazism, such as the expression of Nazi symbols.
In several nations such as the United Kingdom and the United States, laws against Holocaust denial have come up in legal discussion and have been proposed, but the measures have been rejected. Organizations representing groups that have been victimized during the Holocaust have generally been split about such laws. In the United States the First Amendment to the United States Constitution establishes freedom of expression and protects virtually all speech, including "hate speech".
See also