Debating genocide denial

In a March 5 editorial, The Times opposed a bill in the French parliament that would have made it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide. The bill was proposed by President Nicolas Sarkozy, then struck down byFrance’s Constitutional Council. Now Sarkozy says he wants to revive it.

Reader Berj Proodian wrote suggesting that The Times may have been hypocritical on the subject:

“In the past year, the L.A. Times has printed [several] editorials condemning France’s law against denying the Armenian genocide. Many Western European democracies (including France) have had laws against denying the Holocaust for a couple of decades now. If it is unconstitutional to punish those who deny the Armenian genocide, then how can democracies justify denial of the Holocaust to be a criminal offense? I don’t remember the L.A. Times ever speaking up against that.”

Times Editorial Page Editor Nicholas Goldberg responds:

We have editorialized consistently in recent years against laws that ban Holocaust denial and otherwise stifle free expression. As far back as October 2006, for instance, we wrote the following about another law that would have made it an offense to deny the Armenian genocide: “This matches similar laws across the EU criminalizing Holocaust denial. Both notions exhibit an unseemly lack of confidence in the free competition of ideas and leave European governments open to charges of hypocrisy.”

In 2009, we criticizedGermany’slaw banning Holocaust denial along with another one making it illegal to publish “Mein Kampf,”Adolf Hitler’sautobiographical manifesto. We wrote: “Those rules were put in place with the best of intentions.... But liberal democracy cannot tolerate such bans on free expression indefinitely.”

The Holocaust and the Armenian genocide are historical facts. The editorial board has no doubt that they occurred and has often said that they were monstrous crimes that the world should not forget. But we do not believe that banning speech is the most effective way to get that message across.

Dictatorships often rely on censorship, making it illegal to express unpopular or unacceptable points of view. But democracies like France, Germany and the United States should have robust freedom of speech laws that include protections even for outrageous, hurtful and ahistorical opinions.