Is That Legal?

Well stated. It's the same issue with the creationists, and why Michael Shermer was not out-of-bounds in comparing evolution denial to holocaust denial. The important point of similarity is that both camps of deniers need to discard objectively verified fact in order to pursue whatever goal their particular denial serves. If the Divine Design Advocates had as their goals universal health care and a guaranteed living wage IT WOULDN'T MATTER. They'd still be wrong to be trying to teach theological opinion as if it were objectively determined empirical fact.

And note to professor Volokh: comparing evolution-deniers to holocaust-deniers is NOT the same as comparing Divine Designists to Nazis. Not the same thing at all.

FYI: John Stewart had a great segment last night on the Daily Show about politicians invoking Hitler comparisons. You should catch it again tonight at 7:00 pm

Marietta, I suppose it's not out of order to compare an irritable parking enforcement cop with the Nazis as well. After all, the parking cop issues you a ticket as you are running out of your office, just as the meter expires, and it's either an extreme or unhealthy devotion to ordnung, or an abuse of power, that leads to your parking ticket. Shared pathology, right? So really, the parking cop is just like Hitler.

For that matter, Shermer is just like the antichrist. After all, according to the Christian religious texts the antichrist will stand up against Christians. So does Shermer. Enough?

I believe Volokh's point is that for most people, the motive for the action matters; this necessarily takes into account a moral metric. You could compare any prison to the concentration camps, since, after all, people are held behind bars and barbed wire against their will. The motivation is different in both cases, however, and relevant if you accept that there is such a thing as "degrees" of being wrong, e.g. a little wrong, very wrong, or wrong in a different way. (Of course if there is only wrong or right, full stop, then you are engaged in a type of absolutism yourself, but that's a whole 'nother thing).

The danger with invoking Godwin's rule at every turn is that pretty soon, your vocabulary for opposing evil - that is if you believe in the objective notion of evil, and not just "evil is what I disagree with politically" - the vocabulary for opposing evil becomes degraded, and you have a tough time explaining why something is wrong. Correspondingly, a lot of people lose the ability to recognize evil, and the ability or rationale to oppose it. Yes, words do things. The same reason it was wrong for people to contemporaneously categorize the death camps as labor camps, it's wrong to categorize enemy prisoner of war camps as death camps.

Eventually, Bush is just like Hitler and the parking enforcement cop is just like Hitler and the prison guards are just like Hitler and your neighbor who cuts the grass at 7:00 AM on a weekend morning is just like Hitler. Pretty soon, you have a tough time opposing the next Hitler, or even recognizing him. You've lost the ability to distinguish.

The Gitmo/Amnesty International scuffle is a good example. I know what the Gulag was about; tens of millions perished in the Gulag. There were some criminals sent there, but most were dissidents or people who simply couldn't conform themselves to communist absolutism and could not fit into the extreme authoritarian society. There were many prisoners of conscience there. To compare Gitmo to the Gulag is a rhetorical trick similar to holocaust denial; it is saying that an enormous death camp system is basically comparable to a small prisoner of war camp. Wrong on method, wrong on the facts, and with a nod to Eugene Volokh, usually wrongly motivated as well. Calling Al Qaida fighters "prisoners of conscience" is to classify heroic dissidents like Sharansky and Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn as similar to Al Qaida fighters captured on the battlefield. This does violence to the language that defends conscience and human rights. The dilution of language allows dictators running places with real death camps, such as China, and real efforts to exterminate the opposition like Zimbabwe and Sudan, to evade the moral suasion applied to get them to stop doing it. When Sudan is told that they are committing genocide, they can simply point to Gitmo (where the physical facilities for the prisoners are better than for most of the Marine guards, BTW) and say "that's genocide to... and so what?"

I'll stand with Hannah Arendt on this point. Holocaust denial is both wrong and evil, but we do harm to our own cause by invoking the philology of evil to name everything with which we disagree.

Hmmm, but would you feel as emotionally invested about those who would deny or support whether the genocide of the Canaanites occurred? I mean, who really cares anymore? I think the reason why Holocaust deniers invoke passionate feelings is because it is in very recent memory; has been used to serve anti-Jewish prejudice AND is factually and methodologically incorrect.

Eric, I dislike Holocaust deniers, too, but for a slightly different reason. (BTW: both of the above are legitimate). Denying the history of the Holocaust is certainly a factual problem and thinking that deniers "dislike Jews" or something is possibly true, but not the point. My dislike for them is that they are setting the state for another one. By denying what's true in history, just like in politics, we pave the way for more abuse.

Think US today. Many have simply forgotten or are in denial about McCarthyism and see what we have today? A virtual repeat of it: if you're against something, you're unpatriotic. (insert "communist")

If you deny that women died in back alleys from clothes hanger "abortions," then it's fine to try to do away with legal and safe abortion.

If you deny that there are destitute single mothers raising children and many adoptable youngsters not being adopted, then you are OK with encouraging anti-choice law and damn the consequences.

Yes, it's a very arguable topic, but I think the slope is wide and very slippery.

(delurking; I read your stuff everyday. Well done!)

Eric- Do you think that it was appropriate for Sen. Durbin to compare the treatment of prisoners in American control to things that were done by the Nazis, or would you agree that describing American interrogation techniques in this way cheapens the true horror of the Holocaust. Isn't this just another form of Holcaust denial? I'm surprised that you haven't commented on this yet. It's caused quite a reaction in Congress and prompted a response from the ADL. What are your thoughts?

Then how do you feel about people who pretend that there was only one Holocaust, instead of all too many holocausts in the past 100 years? Or who deny the holocausts that are in progress in the present?

The problem is they're factually wrong, methodologically wrong, and not foolish. We're not talking about people who took a wrong turn and came to an erroneous conclusion, but people who deliberately twist evidence in order to advocate for a lie. It does matter to me that the lie they're presenting is intended to rehabilitate Nazism and provide evidence for an international Jewish conspiricy, but I'd have a problem with their twisting of the truth no matter what their motivation.

It's not as if evolution deniers have innocent motives either. Their immediate goal is to insinuate religion into public schools, and worse, into science classes. At a time when we need more and better prepared science students, they want to confuse kids about the meanings of basic concepts like "science" and "theory." I also suspect that for many of them, this immediate goal is part of a larger campaign to break down separation of church and state and move the US closer to becoming a theocracy.

So yes, my abhorance Nazism is a significant part of (though not the main reason for) my dislike of Holocaust deniers. But a respect for science and the first amendment is also a significant part of my dislike of IDers, and a dread of racial or religious internment camps is a significant part of my dislike of Japanese internment revisionists.

Boy, there's a lot of wind in here...

All the more reason to catch John Stewart's segment on when-not-to invoke Hitler comparisons.

From NYT 6/18


I recently received a letter from a former high school teacher of mine in Tel Aviv. He was liberated from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by a British Army unit in which my father served. Now, he was criticizing me for working on the government's plan to withdraw from 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and 4 in the West Bank. "How dare you pull Jews out of their homes?" he wrote. "This is just like what the Nazis did to us!"

Unfortunately, I am no longer surprised when a Jew compares me and other Israeli officials to Nazis. It has become part of the rhetoric of those who oppose withdrawal, including the tiny minority who threaten violent resistance. But my old teacher was not threatening me; he was crying out as if in the middle of a nightmare.



I am with the writer. Let's not deny any real Nazis, of which there are many of all shapes and colors, and let's not call anything we disagree with "Nazi."

[i]
It's not as if evolution deniers have innocent motives either. Their immediate goal is to insinuate religion into public schools, and worse, into science classes. At a time when we need more and better prepared science students, they want to confuse kids about the meanings of basic concepts like "science" and "theory." I also suspect that for many of them, this immediate goal is part of a larger campaign to break down separation of church and state and move the US closer to becoming a theocracy. [/i]

Well said. The basic point of the intelligent design movement, however, I think is a much broader one than simply edging public schools towards more "Christian-oriented" curriculum. It's an attempt to essentially limit the history of man to civilized times, and more specifically, conjuring up a world order where man has domination over all life and environment (leading eventually to the argument that whatever man MUST be right inr espects to nature and that God will provide no matters what the case).

Do you detest flat-earthers as strongly? If not, then I humbly suggest Volokh may have a point.

Eric,

But surely it is more than that they are merely factually wrong. That is to say, if they just as stupidly claimed that butter was not made from milk we would not react the same as denying mass murder?

Lostingotham, no, I don't. But of course, flat earthers didn't kill my uncle.

I think Eugene strayed when he purported to explain why "people" and "we" dislike Holocaust deniers.

I assume that this means that you at least understand, and empathize with, devout Christians (insert religion of your choice) hate athiests?

Scott, why did you write "Christians"? I know you tried to fix it and all with the parenthetical, but ... it didn't work.

I wanted to give something concrete to think about, but didn't want to make it a Christians vs the left. It didn't have to be religious, but I couldn't think of non-religious example.

Before 9/11 I would have used Muslims for such concrete theorectical examples, because from the perspective of the US, they were a large, respected, neutral religion. Now that Islam conjures so many other issues, I'm kind of stuck.

In retrospect I would like to have phrased it "...empathize with, say, Christians hating atheists."

So that now leaves me with two questions: if you think that it is appropriate to dislike people who deny what you "know and feel at the very core of [your] being" (and maybe you don't, and the above post was just honest introspection without any normative implications), do you have a way to criticize Christians for disliking athiests (my mistake for using the word "hate" above when you used "dislike") other than your not sharing their deeply held beliefs (I'm merely guessing that you would want to have one, I don't really know)?

Second, what did my parenthetical try to fix? Do you think I'm a Christian who hates athiests or an athiest who hates Christians?

Scott, in your initial message you cast the opposite of "atheist" as "Christian," rather than as its true opposite, which is simply a "deeply religious person." Very revealing. The parenthetical tried to mask your equation of religiosity with Christianity.

Now, as for your questions, I entirely understand why a devout member of most faiths (or, at least, monotheistic ones) would intensely dislike atheism. What leads you to assume otherwise?

Dislike athieism, sure, but what about disliking athiests?

I originally thought about using Muslim's disliking Christians (or maybe it was the other way around). What would that have revealed?

Anyway, I really am curious about what you have gathered by beliefs to be: athiesm with special animosity towards Christians, or Christianity with a great disdain for other faiths? Or something else.

Holocaust deniers didn't kill you uncle, either. But as Volokh says, it's very likely that they are dishonestly attempting to cover the guilt of those who did kill your uncle.

I find it irritating, as you seem too, when someone claims to know what "people" or "we" think, but not so much that I'll adopt I position I don't agree with just to prove him wrong. In this case, Volokh describes my feelings towards holocaust deniers pretty accurately, so my strongest criticism would be that while feel that way, I am not qualified to speak for all people.

That said, your response to my flat-earth question suggests that your original position (that you despise holocaust deniers because they're factually and methodologically wrong) isn't quite accurate. Remember, you just claimed you don't care what agenda they serve by their denial. The flat-earthers are just as factually and methodologically wrong as the holocaust deniers. The difference is that millions of people haven't died because of flat-earth-induced navigation errors.

On another point--I read your blog more-or-less daily and generally enjoy (and often agree with) it. I'm usually only inspired to comment when I disagree. It occurs to me that I'm probably not that unusual in this regard, and that as a result you may see more criticism than is really "fair." So, notwithstanding the first three paragraphs of this post, please let me take this rather odd opportunity to say "thank you" and "well done."