Nuremberg rallies are still going on

Nuremberg saw the halcyon days of Nazism so expertly filmed by Leni Riefenstahl. To keep things in balance, 13 years later it also saw 10 corpses hanging off the gallows.

Yet now Nuremberg rallies are back. The pomp and circumstance aren’t quite the same as in the good old days, but the animating spirit has survived intact.

The current pageant is staged by a far-Left mob demonstrating against the City Council that banned a malignantly anti-Semitic display at the Nuremberg Left (!) Literature Fair.

The display in question is a travelling exhibit of racial hatred, an interactive photographic installation on which passers-by write what they think about Jews in general and Israel in particular.

Passers-by readily comply, producing exactly the sort of stuff for which Julius Streicher danced the Nuremberg jig. Here are a few choice bits:

Jews, writes one concerned citizen, are “an elite of criminals, the New-World-Order-Mafia, enslaves the rest of the world and controls politics, media and corporations.”

Another chap draws historical parallels: “Hitler is the past, but Israel is the present.”

Yet another expresses himself pictorially, by producing a Der Stürmer-style cartoon that shows a Jew, draped in an American flag and a Star of David, scoffing a child off the end of a fork. A glass of blood next to his plate completes the picture.

The installation has a distinct sense of déjà vu, which lessens its novelty appeal. More interesting is the hysterical anti-ban campaign, featuring fisticuffs and clashes with police.

What’s especially symbolic about this brouhaha isn’t just its place but also its timing. For tomorrow and the day after mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht, when similar sentiments found such a shattering expression.

Also fetching is the protesters’ appeal to freedom of speech, a liberty to which the Left has only a rather selective commitment.

For example, the show organisers represent Arbeiterfotografie, a group that regards Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as “one of the greatest statesmen in the world”. Yet if he deserves this accolade, it’s definitely not on the strength of Iran’s dedication to free speech.

Now these chaps are accusing the Nuremberg Council of censorship, which is prohibited under the German Constitution. I haven’t got its text handy, but, if that venerable document countenances unqualified verbal licence, it’s seriously flawed.

For, contrary to the liberal cliché, freedom of speech can’t possibly be absolute. It has to be a matter of consensus, which by definition makes it relative. Every society is justified in censoring speech it finds dangerous to its survival. Every society has done so – including today’s Germany.

For example, the country criminalises Holocaust denial and bans Hitler’s masterpiece Mein Kampf . Without passing judgement on such measures, one can’t deny the existence of precedents.

The earliest precedent can be found at the birth of our civilisation, midwifed as it was by Christianity. Even though free will and the resulting freedom of the spirit are cornerstones of Christianity, Jesus made it clear that some speech is acceptable and some is not:

“And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.”

Hence an offensive word may confine the utterer to eternal hell, a considerably harsher injunction than a ban on Nazi propaganda masquerading as art.

My earlier statement about the Left’s understated commitment to any free speech that doesn’t comply with the Left’s diktats opens up another interesting area of discussion.

A persuasive argument could be made that no constitution should protect those who seek to destroy it. The Left, especially its extreme wing exemplified by the snappily named Arbeiterfotografie, has no more moral right to demand freedom of speech than Julius Streicher would have to insist on the impartiality of the press.

The law of self-preservation hasn’t so far been repealed, and every society has a right to defend itself against those who do it physical or moral harm. Freedom of speech isn’t always good, nor is some censorship always bad.

In art specifically (and such installations don’t qualify as such even when they don’t carry cannibalistic messages) there are two types of censorship: proscriptive and prescriptive. The former tells artists what they can’t do; the latter tells them what they must do.

While the latter kills art stone dead, there’s no evidence that the former unduly inhibits self-expression. In fact, one could argue that the greatest masterpieces of art and literature were created in the conditions of some censorship, while its absence seems to have a stifling effect.

Free speech can’t be allowed to act as a weapon in the hands of those who wish to destroy free speech. A group – predictably Left-wing, just like its Nazi progenitors – that promotes both jihadist or anti-Semitic propaganda thereby relinquishes its right either to defend free speech or to claim its protection.

It’s civilised people who should do so, and they must be careful not to overstep the line beyond which justifiable social self-defence ends and tyranny begins. Yet they’re unlikely to confuse the two – for otherwise they wouldn’t be civilised.