The Brussels Bureau of Double Standards

[Anthony Lawson]

The Brussels Bureau of Double Standards

Several mainstream media outlets have reported that the European Union is about to introduce laws that would make denying or trivialising the Holocaust a criminal offence punishable by jail sentences.

If such laws were passed, they would be yet another large railway spike in the coffin of our freedoms, and will offer a huge latitude to complainants and prosecutors, particularly because of the word ‘trivialise’. This could cover all kinds of statements, the degree of 'triviality' and what constitutes it being in the eyes of the beholder.

It is also apparent that the EU is placing two standards on what they consider might be incitement to racial hatred, because it appears that, in the case of past crimes against humanity, this applies to the Jewish Holocaust, almost exclusively, with a mention of the Rwanda genocide. However, denying or trivialising the Armenian Holocaust, for example, would not be criminalised. This is in deference to Turkey, which has always denied that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman troops in the aftermath of the 1915 collapse of the Ottoman empire was a planned act of genocide, despite the fact that there is documentary evidence which proves that it was. (It is not yet clear whether the Rwanda genocide would gain the status of a holocaust.)

Robert Fisk, in his book: The Great War For Civilization (Harper Perennial, 1966) devotes an entire chapter to the Armenian genocide, titled ‘The First Holocaust’, which most modern Turkish politicians refer to as an ‘episode’, sometimes adding the adjective ‘unfortunate,’ and one can’t help but wonder why the EU is so concerned about their feelings. Could it have anything to do with the way that the Middle East is shaping up, with Turkey being in a powerful geographical position to cut the existing and potential oil pipelines to Europe?

Israel shares this sentiment, for similar strategic reasons, and there have been several instances where Israel or its sympathisers have declined to include the ‘unfortunate’ Armenian ‘episode’ in Holocaust-related conferences, exhibitions and museums, on the basis that doing so would offend Turkey.

George Bush uses similar double standards, stopping short of calling the Armenian genocide by its correct name after he became president, because he didn’t want to offend Turkey, which threatened to close its airbases to US aircraft, yet he was happy enough to bolster his chances of gaining the Armenian vote when he stated, prior to the 2000 election, that ‘the Armenians were subjected to a genocidal campaign....’ Calling a spade a spade, it seems, is only prudent if someone is not about to bury you with it.

So, there are two sinister forces at work here, on both sides of the Atlantic, or maybe two sides of the same sinister force. We are to be denied our right to free speech, even if we wish to legitimately question certain elements of the Holocaust story, or if we trivialise the suffering of the Jews. Perhaps trivialising could be construed as having been done by pointing out that those who suffered during the Second World War were not all Jews, nor was the Jewish Holocaust the first of the twentieth century, nor was it to be the last.

What happened to Jews in Germany and Austria, in Poland and in Hungary and in other parts of Europe and Russia was horrifying—a disgusting blot in the pages of world history—yet so was what happened to millions of non-Jews. Suffering was not exclusive to Jews, and, in my view, their suffering should not be memorialised so as to swamp our concern for the suffering of others.

Our personal reactions to, and judicial actions against all crimes against humanity should not be racially, religiously or ethnically biased. To single out a certain section of the world’s population for special sympathy automatically suggests that other sections are not so deserving of our concern, whether for acts against them in the past or for acts which could occur in the future. This last consideration is far more important than any other, because it speaks of acts of barbarism which are likely to happen, and which, therefore, could be prevented as long as we become aware of the potential in time, and we then push those who aspire to ‘lead’ us into getting our—not their—priorities right.

All double standards are odious, and whenever I see or hear a mention of the Holocaust, I cannot prevent the following thought from entering my mind: How could a people who suffered so much at the hands of others—some of whom now spend so much energy ensuring that their suffering will not be forgotten—treat another group of people so appallingly, or allow it to happen without protest? Of course those who were murdered deserve our compassion, and so do those who survived, after seeing their parents or loved ones perish. But are their co-religionists deserving of compassion, while so many of them appear to have no compassion for the Palestinians whom they so dishonourably displaced so that the Jewish State of Israel could come into existence?

This forum has the word ‘Truth’ in its title. It came into existence because some concerned individuals did not believe that the truth about the events of 9/11 had been told. Without us being able to contradict, to expose and reveal events and details which have been withheld, we would never get anywhere.

Therefore anything which threatens our ability to find out what is true and what is false is an attack on our most basic freedoms: the right to free speech and thought. This is the right to think, write and say what we feel about those who act in a way which we believe to be illegal or unlawful, in a humanitarian sense, without fear of being branded with some catch-all label such as Holocaust denier or trivialiser or anti-Semite.

Standing on street corners and yelling “Down with…” or “Kill the…” is, of course, quite another matter, and should be dealt with as such.

The Brussels Bureau of Double Standards must not be allowed to steal the right to free speech from us, or from our children.

[karlos]

Link

[Anthony Lawson]

A précis, please.

Hello stelios69,

Would you mind giving me some idea as to what the link leads to?

Apparently it links to U-Tube which cannot be accessed from Thailand, at the moment.

Take care,

[gareth]

[karlos]

i didnt realise youtube was banned in thailand.

Basically it word for word demonstrates bush and hitler doing EXACTLY the same things,
example hitler started called germany the 'homeland'
bush has also started calling the us the 'homeland'
hitler interned people
bush interns muslims
etc

[Anthony Lawson]

U-tube out

Thank you for letting me know about the link.

U-tube is blocked here, because someone posted something about the King of Thailand which was not very flattering, apparently, and Google wouldn't remove it.