The well-meaning Free Speech crackdown

Some time ago, I posted about the announcement from the German Presidency of the EU that they were proposing to:

“make it an offence to publicaly incite ‘discrimination, violence or hatred against a group of persons or members of a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin’. It would also allow for the punishment of ‘public condoning, denial or trivialisation of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes’.”

At the time, as Smiffy (Of this parish) pointed out, it seemed unlikely the Germans would be able to get unanimity on a measure so blatantly designed to infringe on free speech and to restrict historical debate. Regrettably, according to the EU Observer, the EU has agreed a ‘breakthrough hate-crime law’. Jamie Smyth of the Irish Times also has a piece on it here but subscription is required.

After six years of debate, a compromise has been hammered out that will means offenders will face up to three years in prison for “public incitement to violence or hatred, directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin.”

The same punishment will apply to those people “publicly condoning, denying, or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes,”. The definition of what is genocide or a war crime will be left up to the International Criminal Court. Statewatch has some more background in it’s briefing ahead of the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting here.

Part of the ‘compromise’, is that member states can allow debate on controversial matters in a controlled environment. Marvellous. Or as Smyth puts it in the Irish Times: ” Irish historians can debate the existence or scope of the Holocaust if they are not provoking public disorder.” Perhaps, they will need to be licensed historians. If Smiffy and I for example, were to debate the existence or scope of the Holocaust on a website, such as this one for example, are we ‘historians’, and if our debate prompts, without any intention to do so, public disorder, are we likely to face the possibility of three years in prison. Frankly, I’m too pretty to go to prison.

Also interesting that efforts by Poland and a number of other eastern European states to give up their demands to include the crimes of Stalinism within the Bill. Instead, the EU is to organise high-profile debates on totalitarian regimes and their crimes in Europe, though how this is to be done is not made clear. The EU Commission as a college debate soc.

It is now necessary for me to state the following. I accept the Holocaust, in which over six million Jews and countless more homosexuals, gypsies, communists, trade unionists and Slavs were murdered by the Nazi state in an act of genocide. Furthermore, I am opposed to discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, creed, colour, nationality and so on. But I also defend the right of people to challenge historical facts, such as the Holocaust, nor do I trust governments to legislate appropriately in terms of what is ‘incitement’.

Graham Watson, Liberal Democrat MEP and leader of the Liberal Group in the EU Parliament, has already been out attacking the initiative:  “The proposed list risks opening the floodgates on a plethora of historical controversies – like the crimes of the Stalinist regime or the alleged Armenian genocide – whose inclusion could pose a grave threat to freedom of speech. The EU has no business legislating on history.” Some good points, with the exception of his reference to the Armenian genocide as ‘alleged’. He’s entitled to his opinion (For now) but the arguments that a genocide took place are very convincing.

As well-meaning as this Directive, to be transposed into national law within the next two years, might be, it is a restriction on the right of a person to say what he or she wants or believes, and to convince others of the merits of that position. It is a licence to government to crack down on beliefs, or the articulation of beliefs, that it finds morally, socially, culturally or politically unacceptable.

And that’s dangerous, regardless of how acceptable your current beliefs might be to the people who will be deciding what is, and is not, acceptable in the future.