Michael Smerconish | Should Free Speech Allow Holocaust Denial?

Michael Smirkonish is a well known war-mongering leftist who calls himself conservative to bolster his talk radio audience. In today's Daily News he advocates laws against "Holocaust Denial." Not directly of course - America is not in ready for so baldfaced an abrogation of the rock of our liberty - Freedom of Speech. But the usual Jewish groups (ADL, SPLC, ACLU) have been lobbying for laws against "Holocaust Denial" for years. Smirkonish is doing his part by trying to make a big issue of something that isn't. Then left-wing lobbyists can approach lawmakers with the threat that failure to pass such a law is evidence of hate (chose from antisemitism, racism, nazism, etc.) and that they will be "exposed" in the media - by people like Michael Smirkonish of course.

The arguments for such laws are as absurd as is the headline of his piece - laws against speech means that speech is not free. It is a contradiction terms - but as George Orwell wrote - the State can do whatever it want's including make people read, thin, and say, what it wants.

One of the many problems I have with people who use the term "Holocaust denial" (in the same way they use terms like "racist" and anti-semite") is that the term can mean anything you want it to. What is the Holocaust?

Is defending Christianity against the charge of anti-semitism "Holocaust Denial?"

Is defending John Demjanjuk (despite the fact that he has been found innocent) "Holocaust Denial?"

Is challenging the claim that 4 1/2 million people died at Auschwitz of gassing "Holocaust Denial?"

You see? Depending on who you are these could be "Holocaust Denial" - yet they've been said many times quite successfully by people who are Jewish, or who have the power to escape the charge. But for most of us just trying to hold a job and raise a family we cannot take a chance on federal charges. So people exercise self-censorship.

One only needs to see what is happening to the squeeky-clean Jimmy Carter because he criticised Israel to see what could happen to any of us. Smirkconish claimed Carter was being "surly" with him becuase he wouldn't back down from his comparision of Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank; with South Africa's policy of apartheid. Has anyone ever see Jimmy Carter - surly? Can you even imagine him surly? I cannot.

Michael Smirkonish is simply a shallow populist with a radio show - trying to get on the right side of minor but popular issues so he can use his talk show for the really important issue (to him) of defending Israel - and the founding myths of Israel and the American empire.