ABSTRACT
Holocaust denial (HD) is the activity of denying the occurrence of key events and processes which constitute the Holocaust. HD brings into particularly sharp focus many of the difficult questions faced by advocates of the reasonableness defence of toleration (and, indeed, defenders of toleration everywhere) insofar as it is predictably motivated and accompanied by anti-semitism, causes profound offence and upset to Jews (and many others), and yet (in its most pernicious forms) imitates legitimate academic history. Because the most sophisticated HD takes this form it is unclear what grounds there can be, given the reasonableness defence, for its prohibition in law; indeed, in this chapter I shall argue that there are no such grounds, and that HD must be tolerated in law. However, the most sophisticated deniers hunt bigger game: not only do they demand legal permission to deny the Holocaust, they also insist – often, they claim, as a consequence of their legal right to propagate HD – that they be granted equal access to the institutions constitutive of the Academy. It is on this terrain that the most interesting debates are located.
