Covering up controversial issue is driven by fear

Oct 28 2009 - 10:54pm | Robert Beckhusen

Last week, I had the horror of witnessing a guest speaker on campus — though I agreed with much of what he said –—talk nonsense to the applause of credulous students. But I should begin with some background.

Brian Cuban, who spoke Oct. 21, has been waging a minor but dedicated campaign since 2008 against Facebook. The company decided to allow Holocaust denial groups to stay on the Web site after complaints against speech that denigrates ethnic and religious groups.

Since Cuban began speaking on this issue, several of the groups appear to have been taken down, but others —filled with a grungy assortment of anti-Semitic types from the Midwest to Pakistan—remain on the Web.

Facebook has prohibited hate groups in the past, but has resisted blanket bans on Holocaust denial. If users declare they are prepared to use violence, something neo-Nazis are prone to do, Facebook will remove the offending speech. But Facebook has defended its initial stance for the sake of promoting unrestricted discussion. The company more or less said there’s no need to list the reasons why denying the Holocaust is objectionable, it is self-evidently offensive (this is where Cuban, the bosses at Facebook and myself agree) but that’s not a good enough reason to prohibit it.

In an open letter to Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg in May, Cuban backed down from a “short-sighted, back door ‘lawyer’s approach’” that said Holocaust denial is a punishable offense in several countries such as Germany. Facebook’s terms of service prohibits any content that violates the laws of any country where Facebook exists, so Facebook should ban Holocaust denial.

This is, of course, an extremely difficult rule to enforce consistently —many students here (probably most of you, actually, if I think about it) have uploaded personal photographs dressed in a manner that would be considered a criminal offense in countries that allow Facebook, but practice a great deal of moral censorship.

Instead Cuban has shifted to that he simply doesn’t like it, that Holocaust denial is hateful and bigoted and anti-Semitic. Again, I certainly agree. Cuban said it’s a value call. As the company (a private company) is well within its rights to ban from its servers whatever speech it wants. But that doesn’t mean it should.

To argue this, I would scribble down the standard stuff about why speech should always be defended, and the most objectionable speech should be defended most vigorously, but that’s been done.

Holocaust denial is particularly objectionable, not only for its anti-Semitism, but it is possessed by the temptation to erase history.

Heinrich Himmler, the morbid boss of the slave system that was the Nazi concentration camps, said to Reich officials in October 1943 in occupied Poland that the genocide would be “a glorious chapter that has not and will not be spoken of.” That is, not only would the Jews cease to exist, but knowledge of the destruction of the Jews would be suppressed and forbidden. The past would be rewritten –—you’re erased from the photograph, you’re permanently deleted.

Recognizing that, and coming to terms with the idea this sinister impulse can be left open to further study, that Holocaust deniers can be observed and monitored is worth serious consideration. It’s no benefit to push the rodent underground where research becomes much harder to carry out. The study of Holocaust denial, and why people believe it, is essential to its study, and what better way to study it when it’s right there for all to see?

Journalist and columnist for the National Post —a Canadian daily newspaper – Jonathan Kay wrote in his review of Michael Shermer’s book Denying History, “Hatred for Holocaust deniers is compounded by the helpless fear that the pseudo-historians’ specious lies may spread. When one is armed with concrete knowledge, however, that fear is lessened and hatred gives way to pity.”

We should remember this, and resist the temptation to applaud the schoolyard demands of scared men.

–Robert Beckhusen is a mass communication sophomore

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