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Can You Call Someone ‘Anti-Semitic’ on a Blog? Not in Germany
A recent court ruling protects hate speech from those who condemn it.
Several points are particularly noteworthy in the Cologne District Court’s ruling, the text of which has been made available to the author.
The first point is the distinction that the court draws between an “average reader” and a specialized — “for example, academic” — public. The expression “anti-Zionist anti-Semitism” is in fact commonplace in German discussions of so-called “new” German anti-Semitism, including but not limited to academic discussions. The restraining order against Broder implies that while one can speak in general of the phenomenon, the naming of concrete cases could always be subject to prohibition and/or sanction. It is seemingly in order to deflect this criticism that the judges of the Cologne District Court called in the help of the mythical “average reader”: “someone who is in principle not (especially) familiar with the subject.” It is from the perspective of this “average reader,” the judges argued, and not from that of the specialist, that it is to be evaluated whether the charge of anti-Semitism constitutes defamatory “abusive criticism” [Schmähkritik].
And, lo and behold, they ascertained that it does:
From the perspective of the average reader, the application of the concept “anti-Semitic” is especially grave and like hardly any other well suited to depreciate [the person] connected to it in the eyes of the public. This has to do with the terrible consequences that anti-Semitism has brought about precisely in Germany.
The argument is bizarre in multiple ways — not least of which because it implies that from the perspective of a specialist the charge of anti-Semitism would somehow be less serious! But it is, above all, the court’s transformation of the well-known ravages wrought by German anti-Semitism into grounds for affording Germans, so to say, “special protection” against the charge of anti-Semitism that gives cause to pause and represents a second point of note.
A third and final point is the vast field covered by the notion of “abusive criticism” as compared to the narrow concept of defamation employed in British or American jurisprudence. In the American or British courts, truth is an absolute defense against defamation charges. This is to say, for example, that if X is a child molester, I have the right to say that X is a child molester: I do not have to provide a complete catalog of all the evidence proving the fact every time I make the claim. According to the Cologne court’s ruling, however, even a true statement can represent defamatory “abusive criticism,” provided it is not accompanied by “sufficient” grounds. This obviously implies a sort of hyper-regulation of speech on the part of the German courts. Given, moreover, that the court has done nothing to specify the threshold for “sufficiency,” the potential for arbitrariness in the application of this power is virtually unlimited. Broder himself, for example, has been accused by some of “Islamophobia.” Will he now be able to obtain restraining orders against the authors of such charges?
Of course, it could be argued that what constitutes anti-Semitism is more a matter of interpretation or opinion than what constitutes child molestation or, say, plagiarism or other more typical subjects of personal defamation suits. But this is all the more reason why in a liberal democratic society it is not a suitable matter for the courts. In any case, if there is such a thing as “anti-Zionist anti-Semitism,” then there is little room for doubt that the fulminations of Evelyn Hecht-Galinski on the “Jewish-Israeli lobby” constitute an example. The similarities between the latter and the morbid phantasms of the Nazis on the power of “international Jewry” are obvious for even just a minimally historically informed observer.
“Wehret den Anfängen!” is a slogan that is frequently cited in contemporary German political discussions. It means “beware the beginnings!” and it is supposed to connote vigilance toward the reemergence of National Socialism and associated forms of ideology. The motto of the Cologne District Court in the matter of Hecht-Galinski v. Broder might rather be “Beware of those who beware the beginnings!” The ruling will surely limit the ability of Germans to remain vigilant as concerns the most dangerous legacies of German history.
Never one to avoid a fight, Henryk Broder published a new letter to the WDR on the Achsen des Guten blog.
In it, he refers to Hecht-Galinski making
anti-Semitic anti-Zionist statements … inasmuch as she compares the situation of Palestinians in the “ghetto” of Ramallah or Gaza with the situation of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, inasmuch as she speaks of a worldwide “Jewish-Israel lobby” and thereby resurrects the classical anti-Semitic cliché of the Jewish world conspiracy, and inasmuch as she defames everyone who does not share her opinions as agents of an “Israel lobby.”
It remains to be seen whether Hecht-Galinski will take up the gauntlet and seek a new restraining order and, if so, whether the German courts will then find Broder’s new version of his charge to be “sufficiently” grounded.
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John Rosenthal’s writings on European politics and transatlantic relations have appeared in English, French, and German in such leading publications as Policy Review, Les Temps Modernes, and Merkur. He holds a PhD in philosophy and he taught political philosophy and classical German philosophy before turning to journalism. More of his work can be found at Transatlantic Intelligencer.
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16 Comments
1. Hyphenated American:Europe lost its mind….
Nov 9, 2008 - 12:41 am 2. Jean:What remains to be seen is if the case will be ported to the constitutionnal court of Karlsruhe. I’m not sure if the other courts can interpret the constitution, and this is a constitutionnal issue.
Nov 9, 2008 - 1:48 am 3. Roy N:John has written another article about this that includes some more background and other useful information:
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articlePrint.aspx?ID=2601
I’d never hear of this person. I did some reading. Here are some things she has said.
“As a German Jew, I feel it my duty to denounce injustice,”
“The Israeli government is not ashamed to use my grandparents who perished in the concentration camps and mass graves of the Nazi regime,”
“This is unbearable, and I am by no means the only one who thinks that way; my Jewish comrades feel the same.”
“It is the Israeli government’s foremost duty to protect its citizens by every means available to its state-of-the-art high-tech army – but only along its own borders,”
The point of this stuff is not to say she is right, or even sane, but it seems clear that she sees herself as part of a European Jewish lobby, and that calling her anti-semitic is senseless. She may be a crazy apologist for terrorsim but she is not an anti-semite.
Nov 9, 2008 - 2:06 am 4. cedarford:Generally I like the Continental and Asian concept of defamation applying to “abusive criticism”, without “simple truth” being exonorating. Since crimes involving sex and plagarism involve a wide spectrum, it is quite easy in America to get away with the abuse an author in the media as a “noted plagarist” for one attritibution lapse in one book, or to label a person as a “sex offender” to damage their reputation based on a “public exposure” incident and plead out fine for being caught pissing in a state park at a beer party.
America is too easy in excusing the malicious nature of the legal defamation, all too easy on those that distort and misrepresent public figures in sliming them to make money or advance a political or special interest agenda.
That said, a good portion of Europe once did what was thought at the time to be a just and compassionate thing meant to prevent the rise of fascism…made ethnic criticism, questioning the official holocaust line, formin organizations that had revisionist WWII beliefs, or academic publications that questioned the “correct” view of past history – criminal.
We have seen how this has been used by other groups to criminalize or more pervasively, intimidate, those who question radical Islam and mass 3rd World immigration into Europe or Canada.
Canada’s infamous Human Rights Tribunals got their start thanks to the Canadian Jewish Congress seeking a legal tool against “holocaust revisionism and neo-nazis”. And in only 15 years they have seen use of the Tribunals expand to be a threat and tool of intimidation against anyone that has “incorrect thought”.
In the case of Israel, Zionism, Jews, overseas Jews in groups like AIPAC or Jewish Committee for Justice in Palestine you have major intellectual and back and forth “bigotry, anti-Semitism” allegations because of Israel being one of the few states (a handful of Muslim countries being the other) of a modern state being organized as a religious state. And doing secular actions based on sectarian belief.
Thus if you criticize Israel, usually you have some critique of Zionism implicit in the critique if it involves spreading more Settlements, human rights issues with Israeli Palestinians, or jobs restricted only to Jews. Then to Jews abroad if they, through lobbies, encourage Zionist activities that progressive European, non-aligned countries, and Asian nations find repellent.
The same critique can be laid out on nations where Muslims are privileged against other groups – and state activities cleanse, purge, or otherwise discriminate against other religions. Basically the basis of Saudi-bashing, though the Muslims don’t get bashed for it as much as Israel does..
Nov 9, 2008 - 7:29 am 5. Daily Pundit » The Europenis Diaries:[...] Pajamas Media » Can You Call Someone ‘Anti-Semitic’ on a Blog? Not in Germany In a tortuous ruling that threatens to have a chilling effect on discussions of “new” German anti-Semitism, the District Court of Cologne recently upheld a restraining order that forbids author Henryk Broder from describing the discourse of a virulent critic of Israel as “anti-Semitic” in a post on a popular German blog. [...]
Nov 9, 2008 - 8:57 am 6. Thomas:I do not have any intention to join the “let’s bash Israel” club because it’s is a sick, hard left inspired movement and that is beyond my interest.
I prefer to stay home. When hardcore Stalinist, Marxist-Leninist Jews incessantly inciting against America, defaming this country, wanting to “abolish the white race” (Noel Ignatiev), like Chomsky, Soros, the warriors at ACLU etc. I am outraged. I have well founded reason to say nasty thing to these children of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1919 for waging war against the Western civilization and against my adopted country, the US.
The Frankfurt School, H. Marcuse, Adorno, Horkcheimer etc. in their position of university profs. they indoctrinated many generation of young people and they never hid their ultimate goal as George Lukacs put it bluntly:
“Who will save us from Western Civilization?” He also theorized that the great obstacle to the creation of a Marxist paradise was
the culture: Western civilization itself.”
Criticizing these Jews is or isn’t Anti-Semitism?
Israel bashing is OK, but American Jews are permitted to wage war on us and we must not utter a single word of outrage?
You are all hypocritical liars who are bashing a few Jews overseas who survived the ovens and you pay homage to those who are working on the destruction of your country.
Talk to Chomsky about it.
Nov 9, 2008 - 9:57 am 7. Roy N:Thomas, in what sense are their ‘hardcore Stalinist Leninist’ related to their Jewishness? If the answer is ‘not much’ then I have to wonder why you choose to keep your outrage for Jewish people in particular?
Nothing un-American about abolishing the white race. Lets abolish them all.
Nov 9, 2008 - 11:32 am 8. Roy N:….All races, not all white people.
Nov 9, 2008 - 11:33 am 9. DoktorNo:Criticism of Israeli policy is not always antisemitic (and vice versa). But the line schould be drawed by honest discussion, not court rulings. If Herr Broder is wrong, someone schould respond. And if this person is wrong, then Broder schould make his own reply.
This is how civilised discourse works.
Nov 9, 2008 - 11:40 am 10. Roy N:Herr Doktor,
That begs the question of whether calling a German Jew whose grandparents died in the holocaust “anti-semitic” is inside or outside of civilised discourse.
The answer might legitmately be ‘It is outside’. I wouldn’t do it.
Nov 9, 2008 - 12:15 pm 11. BB:Perhaps it would be helpful to consider Natan Sharansky’s 3D test to distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism : demonization, double standards, and delegitimization.
Nov 9, 2008 - 1:02 pm 12. tanstaafl:Oh, well, I better hurry up and call this ranter and raver…viciously, big time…
anti-semitic
…Farrakhan’s past statements about Judaism, which many have considered anti-Semitic. Nation of Islam officials have said Farrakhan’s comments are often taken out of context…
Right, beware the liars and dissemblers.
Louis Farrakhan has made a living out of Muslim based “anti-semitism”.
Farrakhan Says Obama ‘New Beginning’
Nov 9, 2008 - 2:11 pm 13. Judy, NYC:we are really way past blogs. the most effective means to deter neo nazi jew hating sub morons is to bash their heads until they are like open watermelons. or, just cut their tongues out. after which, put a fork in them and toss them in the nearest dumpster with the rest of the rotting garbage.
Nov 9, 2008 - 3:46 pm 14. jerryofva:I have developed several criteria for determining whether a person is ant-Semitic or just critical of Israeli policies.
First criteria: Does the person criticizing Israel support abortion, women’s equality and gay rights? If so, then they are anti-Semitic because Israel is the society that they would prefer to live in or support. Therefore, the only reason that they would show animosity toward Israel is animus towards Jews.
Second criteria: Do they rant about Israeli atrocities in Jenin where few died and are silent about the Lebanese Army’s attack on Nahr el-Bared which destroyed the camp, displaced 50,000 refugees and inflicted hundreds of casualties on innocent Palestinians? If so they are anti-Semitic and not merely critical of Israeli policy.
I think Hecht-Galinski validating anti-Semitism is typical of Jews looking to appease anti-Semites. She believes that by parroting the new-new-Nazi line she can convince them that many Jews are on their side so they will temper their abuse. This is a strategy that Jews have unsuccessfully tried for centuries. I continue to be surprised at the resilience of strategies that have historically failed to work.
Nov 10, 2008 - 6:23 am 15. deguello:Why are we still in NATO, defending nation that practice speech suppression and cultural repression?
Nov 10, 2008 - 10:19 am 16. Elle:I agree that Ms Hecht-Galinski is anti-semetic regardless of the murder of her relatives. She seeks to appease those who would happily murder ALL Jews regardless of their political views. In 1948 and 1967 there were no settlements, no fence, and none of the policies which became necessary when it became clear that murderous Muslims were officially demanding, not a two state solution, but a one state solution i.e. the total destruction of Israel.
Nov 10, 2008 - 11:47 amParenthetically,It is anti-semetic when whose like Thomas blame “the Jews” rather than left wing individuals, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who espouse policies that conservatives (and I am a proud conservative) regard as destructive to this country.