Hatred Online

Dr William Jonas

Your editorial about race hate on the net (19/9) misses the point.

The Federal Court ruling to remove offensive racist material from a Holocaust denial website is an action taken under existing law, which makes publication of race hate material unlawful. What is new about this case is that it confirms the law applies to websites (in addition to radio, TV and print media).

Both sides of parliament supported the 1995 amendments to the Racial Discrimination Act to stop racial vilification, deciding that this law is necessary to protect citizens from harm. Unfettered freedom of speech does not exist and never has existed.

Restrictions on the freedom of speech are necessary in public life to protect the rights and freedoms of others. Examples include the law on defamation, the restriction of pornography, restrictions to protect national security and copyright law. The harm caused by racial vilification has also rightly been judged to require restrictions.

In this particular case, Fredrick Toben was given the opportunity to argue defences, including that his website published fair and accurate reports on matters of public interest; or were academic publications, made reasonably and in good faith. But he did not do so, as is clear to anyone who reads the transcript of the decision.

And finally, the reference to your columnist being investigated for alleged racial vilification of Americans failed to mention that the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission looked into the complaint and found it was lacking in substance.

 

Fredrick Töben replies

 

When I met Dr Jonas at the 'Hate on the Internet' seminar in Sydney a couple of years ago, he seemed to understand my point-of-view, that if someone talks about someone in his absence, then in serious matters (beyond gossip) a person thus talked about should, be given a right-of-reply.

The Federal Court judgment has taken this right from me by permitting individuals who espouse a certain 'Holocaust' storyline, to get away with spreading the most horrible libel placed on Germans, namely that they systematically exterminated 6 million Jews, mainly in homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz.

This libel was never tested in the Federal Court. What was tested was whether someone, under the guise of a hurt feeling, was permitted to repeat such a libel. The Federal Court found that it is quite in order to do this because, as Justice Branson stated in her judgment, it was not up to her to prove the truthfulness or otherwise of the assertion.

There is a raging debate about the 'Holocaust-Shoah'- and to silence one significant view-point on this issue is morally and intellectually unjust because balance in the debate has now been lost. I have been gagged from presenting a view on this matter that is fatal to the whole 'Holocaust' story. As this story is significant in the upholding of the Zionist-apartheid-racist State of Israel, little wonder that critics need to be silenced.

Adelaide student, Anthony Long, has an anti-Revisionist website that advocates the traditional view-point on matters 'Holocaust'  www.williscarto.com

However, as the 'Jews' are not a race, nor an ethnically homogenous group, this historical 'Holocaust' issue should never have been placed before the Federal Court.

Pulling the race card to silence one's critics may work for a while, but then it will become apparent there is intellectual deceit involved.

Using the shut-up words, 'hater', 'Holocaust denier', 'antisemite', 'racist', 'neo-Nazi', does not solve the problem of understanding the period of history that has been called the 'Jewish Holocaust'.

Only an open enquiry will settle the dispute whether the Germans did or didn't gas millions of people. Stifling debate on the issue will only lead to a distortion of our understanding of what happened during World War II. Such distortions is not good for our moral and intellectual well-being.