Historian Charged With Denying Holocaust

kaiser wrote:

It's not important to my point whether you personally like Hollywood movies you mentioned that the vulgar language in the movies could lead to unrestrained behaviour thus my comment that watching them is entirely voluntary thus no state compulsion(Big Brother) is involved. Further, there is no convincing evidence that exposure to vulgar language in movies changes people's behaviour in any substantive way.

Yes, at least to some degree. Thus my comment as to why the Bill of Rights is still needed.

 

Oh yes it is important.You said something i didn't even say.But it is childish to quarrel over a small matter like this.

Yes,i do admit there is no convincing evidence that vulgar language leads to unrestrained behaviour. However,i think that,being a reader of 1984,as i have already mentioned,you do admit it is theoretically possible?Plus,i am unaware if there was indeed an experiment or research into this matter.Any infor from the res i would greatly appreciate

 

kaiser wrote:

Feel free to continue. I however will reserve comment until something worthy of debate is contributed. I seldom abandon a topic as long as real issues are being debated however I have no interest in mere bickering.

The burden of proof is always on the one making an assertion not on the negation of that assertion. Though I'm aware that there have been studies on the subject I don't feel obliged to try and rebut a point that was never established in the first place.

 

It seems established enough for the old professors in England i'm afraid

And anyhow,yes it is mere bickering over whether i had said something i had not.Though i do not understand why you choose to reply to something you don't feel worthy of discussion.[/quote]

 

Ahhh, Newspeak!

 

Ok, going back to basics...

Basically, I think that Grieg is saying this:

Anybody can say anything they like, provided they do not follow up on the evil words with actions.

If gullible people follow the words and perform the actions, is it just they who should be made accountable (for being dumb enough to actually follow) or also the speaker (for misusing their influence to incite people to do bad things)?


I agree that starting to decide what can & can't be said is a potentially very slippery slope, and one that has a lot of grey areas and could be hugely misused. However, all human relationships are essentially a set of compromises, so maybe (as an example) I should agree not to call Asian people 'Pakis' (I don't, but this is an example ), because it is hurtful to them. And on a more pragmatic, self-centred level it could get me beaten up.

 

[/quote]

Agreed.
Maybe it's acultural difference again.
In the US, there may be a higher priority on freedom of speech in ANY form, while in Europe, historical experience has taught that inciting to hate could have really bad results....

I also agree that one must be carefull about grey zones in such laws, however by no means do I consider my freedom of speech restrained by the fact that I cannot publicaly insult or incite to hate....
You know, there are people who feel their liberty restrained because they are not allowed to run naked trough the streets, but that does not make it a restrain to freedom of expression.

On another note, reportes without frontiers publish their annual report on freedom of press every year, and everytime many european countries arrive well ahead of the US, so it can't be that bad here....

 

Reporters without Frontiers is a French organization. Enough said.

 

Are you claiming that the Media is biased, Grieg?


Don't make me mention Fox News, which managed to surpass even our British Tabloids at re-inventing news items

 

What's wrong with the French?weren't they the first to give us(if my french don't fail me)"Egalite,fraternite,liberate"?

 

ricky wrote:

The French media is biased against nearly all things American.

Lol...really? Any examples?

 

Like I said, you don't need to have a name for something to be aware of it. With most emotions, the first time you experience them you can't name them for what they are; similarly, if you've developed a new concept by your thoughts, you will not have a name for it until you give it one. If someone is really angry at the government, they will at some point formulate what "rebellion" is, and then they will give it a name.

Do you believe that when god created language, he also created terms like "evolutionism" or "capitalism" or, on a much more basic level, "microwave" or "automobile"; names for things or concepts developed much later by human minds?

It's "liberté, equalité, fraternité", and I don't think Grieg is denying them their legacy. He is merely pointing out that the organization which puts the US behind certain European countries in terms of the amount of freedom of press they allow, is French and therefore probably biased (though them being French alone isn't reason enough to assume this).

 

Are they?
What french media do you read/listen/watch?

As for the reporters without frontiers, I don't think it is a french organisation.
Maybe you are confusing them with the doctors without frontiers which indeed are french?

 

Oh really?And isn't it conincidental then that all revolutions around the world are led by the EDUCATED?

Now as i have said,that is debatable.But if i were to teach u nothing at all except words that meant obedience like "yes" and "all right". In the first place,since young,i would have moulded your nature to be someone who is agreeable and without any form of resistance.Sure you may feel unhappy over something,but because you can't name the emoption,the emotion that I have given you are likely to prevail over the unhappy ones.(it's like You trainning me since young to say,'Evolution is right',i would have felt unhappy,but then,it's the only concept i know and hence,with a lack of intelligence,i won't go very far.)

Oh you wouldn't want to know my answer on that one....

And also,thanks for correcting my french.haha.

 

Oh really?And isn't it conincidental then that all revolutions around the world are led by the EDUCATED?

A sweeping statement if I ever heard one... the Spartakus revolts of 1918 were not led by the educated. In any case education and initiative often go hand in hand, those who have the initiative to instigate a revolt often have the initiative to make the most of their opportunities for example to persue further or higher education if it is available. So in a nutshell, yes it's coincedence.

 

Apart from the fact that this simply isn't true, there is also the fact that in the world we know, there are words for rebellion in most languages, so the situation is different. People are bound to know the term. The question at hand is, would they be able to formulate it if they didn't know it? I reckon they would, because in the end it is a very basic act of human nature to revolt against something that is putting you at a disadvantage of some sort or other. Whether you give it a linguistic definition isn't really that relevant.

People will want to eat even if you do not tell them what eating is, or what food is. Now of course, rebellion isn't an instinctive feautre in human beings, but as this example shows, once again, you do not need to know a word for something to experience it.

The power of indoctrination should not be underestimated; but like I said, if humans are unable to create words and word thoughts themselves, how come new concepts and inventions have been created and named? How do you explain that man has developed language at all, in so many places and different forms?

 

This is really frustrating.

I had a perfect example, but lost it when I had to clear out my old e-mails when we switched e-mail programmes at work.

Back in 2004, during the whole 'Hutton Inquiry' era* I was sent a vastly amusing video clip of Fox News, with their news reporter person getting the whole case completely wrong, and roundly denouncing pretty much all of Britain for deliberately staging the whole thing because it (and especially the BBC) was hugely anti-American. I sent this clip to an American friend of mine who was in Britain at the time, who said (paraphrasing, obviously) "yeah, we take Fox News with a pinch of salt".

The Fox News website only contains the written reports, which are broadly accurate, though this one sums up the attitude of the clip:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,109880,00.html

I'm Frustrated at not having the vid...

*basic background - BBC reporter alledged that a Government source had told him that the WMD threat had been 'sexed-up' [or in plain language, blown out of proportion] to justify war with Iraq. The governmen found out who the source was [Dr David Kelly], told him off, he committed suicide, there was a big Inquiry, and it found the BBC at fault for not verifying its claims before broadcasting them

 

I'll have to agree with Roel here. The fact that throughout the course of history humans have continuously coined words in order to give things and concepts that previously were not in the human vocabulary linguistic form is already proof enough that words don't control your thoughts. You don't need to verbalize a concept in order to understand it. I'm quite sure cavemen could count to 5 even if they did not have a word that represented the concept of 5.

Kaiser, aren't you already saying here that it is possible to feel happy without knowing the word to describe the happy emotion? Its true that you would be tell others that you were feeling happy without inventing a word for it, but then again I do not think that inventing the word happy is an altogether impossible task.

Similarly, newspeak would be pretty useless if people could simply invent new words that represented concepts not found in the newspeak vocabularly and get everyone to understand these new words. After all, the whole idea behind newspeak is to limit the concepts that can be communicated from one person to another.

 

You just said it all Gatsby,need i elaborate more?If i limit the concept,wouldn't it be more difficult for you to discover the concept of happiness or rebellion?Of course it would be silly to just use something such as newspeak to control or subjugate people.And since i think most of you here have read "1984" i shall not go too much into the other methods invented by Mr Orwell.(Truth is,i just finished an exam on it and too lazy)

Besides Gatsby,you are just telling me what Roel is already saying.I'm sure you have more to bring to our plate.I am interested to hear the views of another who have did some studying on this topic.

The terrifying thing is not about the dystopian methods...what's horrifying is it can be done.

 

It is perfectly reasonable to keep bringing up the same point as long as it is not refuted.

We can experience things we do not have a name for, things we cannot name to others; we might be able to describe them, or communicate in some other form than words? An angry person is recongizably angry whether he's yelling and screaming or not. A person unhappy with the way things are surely looks unhappy, and does not need the word to make this clear to others.