Should It Matter Where Genocide Denial Is Banned? A Critique of the Nexus Argument

Abstract

A great many countries have adopted laws banning the denial of historical events – typically genocides and crimes against humanity. One attempt to classify these laws focuses on nexus: Is there a connection between the country banning the denial and the historical act being denied? For example, Germany might have a reason to ban Holocaust denial but Argentina would not. My essay critiques this argument. One critique is practical: How “local” must the history in question be? Does the concept of “local” censorship make sense in a world where nation-states (the entities called on to censor) have increasingly limited relevance? Another problem is theoretical: By highlighting the slippery slope problem (Argentines banning Holocaust denial), the nexus argument undercuts other legitimate arguments for and against memory laws. One can, for example, view memory laws as responses to political pressure. For example, Armenians in France have been trying for a decade to get France to ban denial of the Armenian Genocide. But what makes memory laws such an appealing alternative? One possibility is that calls for memory laws emerge from an explosion of denial which, in turn, comes from global efforts to taboo more traditional forms of hate speech. Regardless of the cause of memory laws, a “place”-based analysis has serious limitations. A serious analysis of memory laws should instead focus on: a) the nature of the event being denied; b) the rhetorical form the act of denial takes; and c) the legal context in which the act of denial arises (i.e. does the society ban other hate speech and/or denial of other genocides?). “Place” may have a role in this analysis – but it is a limited one.