Holocaust Denial Warrants a Revival of the Ancient Greek Custom of Ostracism

Conservatives and Republicans are rightly angry about a two-hour interview Tucker Carlson did with Holocaust denier and Hitler apologist Nick Fuentes. Mr. Carlson has a large audience, and he spoke at the last Republican National Convention. He is regarded by many as an important modern conservative voice. Mr. Carlson has justly earned the ire of many for lending his platform to Mr. Fuentes — and failing to repudiate Mr. Fuentes’s extremist views or challenge Mr. Fuentes to defend them.Senator Ted Cruz called the confusion about what is acceptable versus frighteningly destructive “existential.” He said the rising antisemitism on the right — and the flight from historic truth into conspiratorial fantasies — creates “bilious bigotry and rage.”He suggested that Mr Carlson’s inability to condemn or challenge Mr. Fuentes was cowardly and “complicit in that evil.”Similarly, leading conservative commentator Erick Erickson wrote: “When leaders like J.D. Vance and Kevin Roberts excuse Tucker Carlson’s embrace of extremists, they’re not defending the conservative movement — they’re burning it to the ground.”Mr. Erickson’s mention of the highly respected head of the Heritage Foundation was a reference to a video that Mr. Roberts had made defending Carlson. In it, Mr. Roberts said, “the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right.”Mr. Roberts’s comment dramatically increased the intensity and scale of the outrage, because it implied that Mr. Fuentes might be “a friend on the right.” Within days, Mr Roberts posted on X: “@Heritage Foundation and I denounce and stand against his vicious antisemitic ideology, his Holocaust denial, and his relentless conspiracy theories that echo the darkest chapters of history.” Mr. Roberts’s second reaction was the correct one. Holocaust denial isn’t just wrong, it is evil.More than 6 million Jews were killed in the Nazis’ campaign of systematic genocide. Hitler’s dictatorial goal was to kill all the Jews in Europe. (Hamas’s language is eerily similar in insisting that “not a single Jew will remain” in Israel).Denying the historic fact that Nazis systematically massacred millions of people because of their religious identity is an effort to strip the value, dignity, and humanity from those who were murdered.It’s that simple.You don’t argue with Holocaust deniers, Hitler apologists, or their fellow travelers. Arguing suggests that there is something worth considering on their side. Instead, you ostracize them.Five-hundred years before Christ, the Greeks developed systematic ostracism for people who professed evil. A municipality could vote to banish someone for five or ten years. To be ostracized was literally to be excluded from the community as someone who posed such a danger that their existence was a threat to the common good.Of course, constitutionally, we don’t legally expel people for their thoughts. Yet we can socially banish them. Those who advocate Holocaust denial should be ostracized from society for as long as they hold those views. Reacceptance should require a considerable amount of time spent giving up and repudiating their abhorrent and dangerous ideas.The emerging antisemitic hatred on the right and left must not be tolerated. Those who would infect our society with such hatred should be cast aside and ignored. Their ostracism should be a signal to others that bigotry will not be accepted or tolerated.Evil must be defeated — not simply debated. This is the lesson of history.

Holocaust Denial Warrants a Revival of the Ancient Greek Custom of Ostracism

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