Facebook won’t ban Holocaust denial groups

SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) -- Facebook, the popular social networking Web site, will only ban groups that deny the Holocaust in countries where it is a criminal offense.

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said that although the organization does “abhor Nazi ideals and find Holocaust denial repulsive,” the popular social networking Web site believes that people have a right to discuss these ideas, CNN reported Friday.

“We want Facebook to be a place where ideas, even controversial ideas, can be discussed,” Schnitt said.

Facebook wants “to strike a very delicate balance between giving users the freedom to express their opinions and beliefs -- even those that are controversial or that we may find repulsive -- while also ensuring that individuals and groups of people do not feel threatened or endangered,” he added.

Schnitt said that in countries where Holocaust denial is illegal, such as Germany and Israel, users would be denied access.

Groups currently on Facebook include “Holocaust: A series of lies,” “Holocaust is a Holohoax” and “Holocaust is a myth."

Just because content is illegal in one country does not mean it will be removed from the site, Schnitt said.

“For example, homosexual content is illegal in some countries, but that does not mean it should be removed from Facebook,” he said.

In a recent blog post, a U.S. attorney, Brian Cuban -- the brother of Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban -- blasted the social networking site for allowing Holocaust denial groups to be formed, apparently in defiance of the Web site’s terms of use.

Facebook’s terms of use state that any of its 200 million users can be banned if they post “any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.”

Schnitt told CNN, “We can't guarantee that there isn't any content that violates our policies and I don't know of any site hosting user-generated content that makes this guarantee.” continues here

Facebook urged to remove Holocaust-denial groups

(CNN) -- Part of the power of social networking is the ability to form communities with like-minded individuals.But what happens when those communities are offensive to others?

That issue is at the heart of attempts by a Dallas, Texas, attorney to have social-networking site Facebook remove pages for Holocaust deniers.

The Holocaust Denial movement seeks to deny or minimize the Holocaust, in which Nazis killed about six million European Jews during World War II.

Attorney Brian Cuban, brother of Dallas Mavericks team owner Mark Cuban, has been trying since last year to have the pages of groups with such names as "Holocaust: A Series of Lies," and "Holocaust is a Holohoax" removed from Facebook.

He pointed out that Facebook has removed groups based on complaints before and said the site is "setting the subjective standard on what they remove and what they don't."

"There is no First Amendment right to free speech in the private realm," Cuban said. "This isn't a freedom-of-speech issue. Facebook is free to set the standard that they wish."

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said his company is in agreement with Cuban that the Holocaust-denial pages are offensive and objectionable.

Where the two sides part, Schnitt said, is whether people have the right to discuss such ideas on Facebook.

"It's a difficult decision to make. We have a lot of internal debate and we bring in experts to talk about it," Schnitt said. "Just being offensive or objectionable doesn't get it taken off Facebook. We want it [the site] to be a place where people can discuss all kinds of ideas, including controversial ones."

Schnitt said Facebook has drawn the line with pages or groups that attack an individual or incite or threaten violence. Schnitt pointed to the recent removal of the "Isle of Man KKK" page, created by residents of the island off the coast of England.

Facebook interpreted the page's advocacy of "cleansing the island of foreigners" as threatening and inciting violence, he said.

Facebook receives lots of reports about such pages and actively polices the site, Schnitt said. Last year Facebook removed several pages posted by Italian neo-Nazis after complaints that they encouraged violence against gypsies.

Brian Cuban, who is of Russian Jewish descent, has written about his fight to have the Holocaust-denial pages removed on his site, The Cuban Revolution.

He said he contacted Facebook after a conversation with a friend who runs the Jewish Internet Defense Force, a group that monitors and tries to eradicate anti-Semitic online content.

The Jewish Internet Defense Force, which was successful in removing a Facebook page for the group "Israel Is Not A Country! Delist It From Facebook As A Country," is outspoken in its own right and sometimes guilty of sweeping generalizations of its own.

In an article on Brian Cuban's site published during the 2008 presidential campaign, a representative from the Jewish Internet Defense Force was quoted as saying that "99.9 percent of Muslims hate us."

The article went on to quote JIDF spokesman on the last Presidential campaign: "We hope to continue to highlight the issues surrounding [then-candidate Barack Obama's] terrorist connections as well as his racist and anti-Semitic church, which has supported Hamas and the Rev. Louis Farrakhan."

A Jewish Internet Defense Force spokesperson named David, who requested his last name be withheld because his group has received death threats, said Thursday he would rather people not focus on those specific quotes for several reasons, including the fact that it was an "informal interview" and Cuban "would not let us correct any of our statements after we quickly answered him to help him meet his deadline."

But on the matter of Facebook and Holocaust deniers, the Jewish Internet Defense Force has a clear stance.

"Facebook should not provide a platform for hatred, especially as it is against their TOS [terms of service]," David said. "Holocaust denial is illegal in 13 countries and represents a form of Jew hatred and hate speech in general."

Deborah Lipstadt is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University and an expert on Holocaust denial. She said social-networking sites like Facebook are attractive to deniers.

"It allows people to find one another, both for good and for bad," she said. "People who are drawn to Holocaust denial tend to be fringe kind of people who might not otherwise be able to find a group, but this way they can find other like-minded people."

Deborah Lauter, director of Civil Rights for the Anti-Defamation League, said the issue of anti-Semitism and hate speech online is a growing one, partly because of the anonymity the Web offers.

Lauter pointed out that Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities says that users "will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence."

She said the Anti-Defamation League has worked with sites such as YouTube and MySpace to encourage them to be "socially responsible corporate citizens."
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Every school to get Holocaust specialist under anti-racism initiative

Every secondary school is to get a Holocaust specialist to ensure that the subject is taught comprehensively and sensitively. 

One teacher from every school will be offered a place on a Holocaust education training course to combat racism and intolerance. 

One in ten of those who take the course will also be able to take a master’s degree module in Holocaust education, as part of a £1.5 million scheme run by the Institute of Education. 

Teachers will discuss parts of the subject that they find difficult to teach and work on lesson plans with experts on how to broach the issue.   

Stuart Foster, director of the project, said: “There are increasing concerns in society about intolerance and racism. The BNP is coming to the forefront, and there’s increased anti-Semitism.” 

The initiative is designed to maintain awareness of the Nazi’s systematic massacre of the Jews during the Second World War as survivor numbers dwindle, Times Educational Supplement reports. 

The project will launch on Sunday, the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht — the night in 1938 when 91 Jews were killed, 30,000 were arrested and 191 synagogues were destroyed marking the beginning of the Nazi’s genocide of the Jewish people. 

Ruth-Anne Lenga, education consultant at the Jewish Museum, said that the Holocaust was often covered very briefly by schools despite being on the school curriculum. “It could be the emotiveness of the subject worries teachers, or it raises difficult moral challenges and questions. We want to ensure there’s support.” 

The project will coincide with a survey testing teachers’ knowledge of the subject and their teaching methods. It will ask teachers for their definition of “Holocaust” and whether they think teaching children about it is important. continues here

The limits of free speech

A fractional loss of liberty is a small price to pay compared to what can follow if the far right is shielded all the way into power

The recent electoral success of the far-right parties in Austria and the detention of the alleged Holocaust denier Gerald Töben in Britain together raise some awkward questions. How should liberal, democratic societies deal with those who espouse antisemitism and racism, who deny the systematic mass murder of the Jews by the Nazis, and who pour vitriol on Muslims and gay people?

Despite decades of "Holocaust education" and the building of Holocaust memorials, 29% of Austrian voters cast their ballot for the heirs and admirers of National Socialism. Although the Austrian government is a member of an intergovernmental taskforce dedicated to promoting memory of the Holocaust and its grim lessons worldwide, at home it cannot even convince its own population to stay away from the suit-wearing inheritors of Hitler's toxic ideology.

And notwithstanding the metastasisation of antisemitism on the web and state promotion of Holocaust denial, most openly and notoriously by Iran, there are many people in this country who denounce the process that will enable Germany to extradite and prosecute Töben. They argue that Britain has a reputation for freedom of speech and has long given asylum to those persecuted for their views. Britain, therefore, should be a haven for such as him even though his utterances are despicable.

Something is going wrong here. First, "Holocaust education" is bouncing off the far right. Although its advocates claimed that it would help to blunt racism in general and encourage acceptance of difference, it seems that to the target audience not all difference is the same. It has become common for extreme rightwingers to malign Islam or Gypsies, while at the same time averring philo-semitism. The new mayor of Rome is a case in point.

Second, liberal society's abhorrence of neo-Nazi ideology commingles with a frisson of pleasure, not to say envy, at their naughtiness, taboo-breaking, and defiance of conventional wisdom. At one extreme the defenders of what was once unacceptable come from the swollen ranks of those attracted to "counterknowledge", the internet bred and fed millions who believe anything generated by the "establishment" must be a half truth or a lie.

What links these two phenomena is the insidious claim that there is a "Holocaust industry" and that everything from historical research to raising "Holocaust awareness" is a ramp to benefit Jewish interests and Israel.

Then there are those who deplore Islamophobia, antisemitism, racism and homophobia who simultaneously defend the right of creative figures, and logically anyone else, to cause offence. It would be nice to call this a "principled" stand but it is precisely the lack of any aesthetic principle by which creativity can be judged that has reduced the benchmark of appreciation to breaking taboos and upsetting people.

These attitudes create a penumbra in which Töben and his ilk can operate with impunity. Or not. Because the German authorities see things differently and now have the legal mechanisms to act even if a person alleged to have broken their laws is on UK territory. Yet his case has triggered alarm calls here from those who argue that democracy and tolerance are robust enough not to need laws for their defence. But how would it look if the far right in the UK started taking 5 or 10 or 20% of the vote in local and national elections? If they took power at some level?

In countries with a memory of how fragile democracy can be, the fractional loss of liberty entailed in penalising the expression of neo-Nazi views or Holocaust denial seems a small price to pay compared to what can follow if the far right is shielded all the way into power. By contrast we in Britain tend to take the robustness of our democracy for granted. We forget that for much of the last century, democracy was a rare and vulnerable species of political culture, easily rendered extinct. The plight of democracy in most post-communist countries ought to be a reminder that not so much has changed in that respect.

With a global recession on the horizon, possibly bringing with it mass unemployment, homelessness, poverty, and cuts in government budgets for welfare, who would like to bank on democracy staying in robust good health? In a few years time, the extradition of Töben might look like a smart move if it sends a message to the far right in Austria, not to mention our own breed, that continues here

Above David Cesarani, he's not biased at all is he?

By Making Holocaust Personal to Pupils, Sarkozy Stirs Anger

ELAINE SCIOLINO

PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy dropped an intellectual bombshell this week, surprising the nation and touching off waves of protest with his revision of the school curriculum: beginning next fall, he said, every fifth grader will have to learn the life story of one of the 11,000 French children killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust.

“Nothing is more moving, for a child, than the story of a child his own age, who has the same games, the same joys and the same hopes as he, but who, in the dawn of the 1940s, had the bad fortune to be defined as a Jew,” Mr. Sarkozy said at the end of a dinner speech to France’s Jewish community on Wednesday night. He added that every French child should be “entrusted with the memory of a French child-victim of the Holocaust.”

Adding to the national fracas over the announcement, Mr. Sarkozy wrapped his plan in the cloak of religion, placing blame for the wars and violence of the last century on an “absence of God” and calling the Nazi belief in a hierarchy of races “radically incompatible with Judeo-Christian monotheism.”

Education Minister Xavier Darcos explained later that the aim of the plan was to “create an identification between a child of today and one of the same age who was deported and gassed.”

The Holocaust is already taught in French schools, but some psychiatrists and educators predicted that requiring students to identify with a specific victim would traumatize them.

Secularists accused Mr. Sarkozy, who is already under fire for his frequent praise of God and religion, of subverting both the country’s iron-clad separation of church and state and the national ideal of a single, nonreligious identity for all.

Political opponents dismissed the plan as his latest misguided idea, unveiled without reflection or consultation. Some historians argued that the focus on victims could steer attention away from the Vichy government’s collaboration with the Nazis. Still others warned that the plan could backfire, creating resentment among France’s ethnic Arab and African populations if they felt their own histories were getting short shrift......Article conts (-)