Judar som vill förinta yttrandefriheten

Jüdische Organisationen hatten schon seit längerem ein solches Gesetz gefordert.

Italy's government Thursday approved a bill that makes denying the Holocaust a crime and stiffens prison sentences for those found guilty of inciting racial hatred.

The decree, submitted by Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, received unanimous approval by the Romano Prodi cabinet. Italy will celebrate Holocaust Memorial Day on Saturday.

Ministry officials said those found guilty of spreading ideas about a race being superior to another would now risk up to three years in prison while acts designed to incite racial, ethnic, religious or sexual violence would be punishable with a maximum four- year prison sentence.

But then, when both interviews were finally ready for publication, the management of Historia changed hands, and the new director, Alberto Tagliati, took it upon himself to set aside the former director’s plan. He eliminated my interview entirely, and had Historia publish only the side of my opponent, Professor Cajani! The reason which the new director gave for his decision, was revealed in a brief introduction which he published over the signature “a.t.” (obviously Alberto Tagliati’s initials). It was surprising, to say the very least! This is what he said:

Gianluca Virgilio’s interview of Professor Luigi Cajani of La Sapienza University in Rome—published in the following pages—was to have been accompanied by another, parallel interview, which was to discuss the reasons for the new revisionism, an attempt to offer a reductive, de-dramatized framework to the reality of the concentration camps and the genocide of the Jews. We cannot agree with such a misconception of “objectivity”; we agree with the theory of history expressed by Burckhardt. (p. 22)

The Explanation

In his Swiss impartiality, Burckhardt formed a stable, detached concept of so-called historical objectivity. “History” he stated, “is that which one era considers useful to hold true of another.” I do not believe that this opinion should be revised or corrected, less than ever with regards to Nazism. Of course, contemporary history has judged Nazism from a one-sided point of view—that of the victors, that of Nuremberg—but that was the only point of view from which the apocalyptic inhumanity of Nazism could be contemplated. If historical criticism has taken a negative attitude—one of prevention—it is because Hitlerism has given it full logical and ethical justification for so doing today. Execration is still, today, the “useful” judgment—in Burckhardt’s words—a prophylactic measure which must be taken by our era to guard against that recidivous infection of the spirit. It should not be forgotten that, only a few weeks ago, neo-Nazis burnt the synagogue of Lübeck [Translator’s note: persons unknown scorched the back door and did some very minor damage to a shed or kitchen.] and vandalized the Jewish cemetery in Berlin. Fifty years after the end of the Second World War, by contrast, there are people who invoke a cold “objectivity” —who pursue a “serenity of judgment”—academically equidistant in an appraisal of Nazism and its crimes. This pedantic attempt to square the circle reveals a sympathy with Nazism which is substantially intended to absolve it of its crimes. (pp. 22–23)


The Criticism

Certain accountants of a revisionism inclined to perform a computeristic juggling act with the gross total horrors of Auschwitz and Mauthausen, are shrewdly parsimonious in manipulating the abacus of human victims. This is a duplicitous game in which scores between victims and torturers are totted up on an equal basis. Insistently, inquiringly, they dissect the testimonies—the stammered recollections of survivors in a further, technically punctilious examination of the quantity of refractory materials used in crematory ovens in a state of over-production—the quantities of coal “reasonably” required to burn one man, or a million men. Everything from the horrifying photographs of 1945 to the cinemagraphic record of “Schindler’s List” is said to be a fraud, a hoax. According to the claims of these inquisitive late-comers, no one ever “left through the chimney”, to use the horrifying metaphor of Birkenau. Only the lice had anything to fear from the gas chambers; and as for the ovens, they burned the aromatic wood of good intentions, and were—we are told—hygienic disinfestation devices. These miniaturists of the “lager archipelago” are chiselling gilded decorations to the memory of Himmler and Eichmann. Let us hope they do so unconsciously. (p. 23)

The Method
Alberto Tagliati has therefore concretely inaugurated a new historiographical methodology which rejects “objectivity” and “serenity of judgment,” and stresses the “useful” instead of the truth! History is that which the victors consider “useful” to hold true of the vanquished! This means that if Hitler had won the Second World War, our director would have lashed out at the “apocalyptic inhumanity” of the Allies based upon a historiographical point of view “useful” to the victors! Not bad for the director of Historia, a “monthly history illustrated.”

His decision only confirms the objectivity—the serenity of judgment—and the demonstrative value of my statements. Through his refusal to print my interview, back to back with that of Professor Cajani, Alberto Tagliati has proven that he fears direct confrontation and has very little faith in the statements of Professor Cajani. If my statements are incorrect—as alleged by certain impromptu critics—then what better occasion to refute them publicly, than in a prestige periodical with the assistance of academics? But that is obviously of little importance to the director of Historia. My statements are not incorrect—they are simply not “useful,” and therefore “damaging” to official historiography, and that is sufficient to condemn them.

Italian justice minister Clemente Mastella failed to win support for a more explicit bill with some 200 historians having voiced their objection saying such a move would violate free speech, according to AFP.