A Decision That Denies Reality

Germany’s highest appeals court has ruled that the leader of a far-right party did not violate the law against inciting racial hatred when he endorsed another person’s claim that Jews were not exterminated in Nazi death camps. Given German law, this was an irresponsible decision, condemned by both liberal and conservative voices in Germany. And it comes at a time when neo-fascism is becoming increasingly prominent across much of Europe. Intended or not, its implicit and disturbing message is of increased legal tolerance for the advocates of intolerance.

German law, interpreted and upheld by many court decisions in the postwar years, outlaws the publication of Nazi propaganda, the display of the swastika and statements that seek to deny or call into doubt the massively documented record of Nazi war crimes.

At a rally in the town of Weinheim in 1991 an American neo-Nazi named Fred Leuchter made a speech claiming that mass murder could not have occurred at the Auschwitz death camp. Gunter Deckert, chairman of the National Democratic Party, translated and circulated the speech, leading to his conviction for inciting hatred. But the appeals court has now found that repeating Leuchter’s assertions didn’t make Deckert guilty of incitement.

Claims that Nazi war crimes--specifically the Holocaust--never occurred are the basis of a growing international industry, a good part of which, actually, has its home in the United States. The irrationalism underlying these claims is beyond the reach of normal argument. It is also an assault on civilized values. In “Denying the Holocaust” Deborah Lipstadt perceptively notes that “just as the Holocaust was not a tragedy of the Jews but a tragedy of civilization in which the victims were Jews, so too denial of the Holocaust is not a threat just to Jewish history but a threat to all who believe in the ultimate power of reason.”

The appeals court has ordered Deckert to be retried, and asked that particular attention be given--as if there could be any question about it--to whether he acted out of a belief in Nazi principles. The common-sense answer to that question is of course plain, if not to the appeals court then certainly to nearly everyone else in Germany.