All right, I'm not sure why this is happening now, but Germany's highest constitutional court has just ruled that PETA's 2003 Holocaust on Your Plate campaign is offensive and has banned it (although I don't know if it's running anymore, or if this case was the initial reason why the campaign stopped):
March 26 (Bloomberg) -- Germany’s highest constitutional court ruled that an animal-rights campaign comparing the slaughter of animals for consumption with the murder of Jews by the Nazis is forbidden by law because it offends Holocaust survivors.
The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe today upheld a lower-court ruling that sidelined the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals campaign, entitled “The Holocaust on your plate.” PETA in March 2004 had presented a picture of animals being prepared for slaughter next to victims of a Nazi-era concentration camp.
The animal-rights campaign represents “a minimization and banalization of the plight of Holocaust survivors,” the court said in a statement. Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany.
Damn right. What I'm still not sure of is how the hell PETA ever thought this campaign would be acceptable anywhere, let alone in Germany. They did end up apologizing for the ad campaign, which makes you wonder why they haven't apologized for their lynching campaigns or the commercial with the woman being beaten to death for wearing fur -- maybe because they've never faced a real threat of legal action from those, I would guess. To be honest, I didn't even realize they were running the Holocaust campaign in Germany, though I'm not surprised they did. This is, as one of my favorite ecofeminists Pattrice Jones has noted, trying to win an argument by brute force. You don't care what the effects are on your audience; you just want to bully them into doing what you want. You want to scare them, you don't want to engage in respectful dialogue, you assume your audience is too stupid to be swayed by any other method. The end justifies the means, no matter how horrible the means and no matter how many people are hurt along the way.
Anyhow, Germany, although your legal system clearly needs to speed the hell up, you rock!Labels: antisemitism, German culture, hate speech, Holocaust, idiots who don't get it, Nazis, racism, religion |
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