referred to “Zionist Jews” and not Jews in general. Of course, both in the title
of the book and in the excerpts read during the proceedings, the term “Jews”
without modifer predominates, while the term “Zionist Jews” is also constantly
identiied with “Jews”, making it extremely diicult to discern the diference,
even if one assumes that there is indeed a diference.49
Furthermore, the Court accepted that this is a historical-scientiic book “based on
historical sources and undeniable speciic facts concerning the Jews’ trans-historical pursuit of global dominance … The strong phrasings and the characterizations against the so-called Zionist Jews, found repeatedly in the book, are
logically and meaningfully consistent with the style and the content of the book,
which is a book of polemic, and are justiied by the defendant author’s exercise
of his right to freely express his thoughts”.
Thus, we have a paradoxical situation wherein an author explicitly declares in his book
that he is a racist and a Nazi. He does not care to (nor could he) hide his political ideology from his readers. Yet the Court gives its own interpretation of the
author’s historical views and refuses to classify him as a racist and a Nazi. By
adopting the false distinction between Jews and Zionist Jews, the Court, in a
lengthy and highly unusual ratio decidendi, constantly refuses to read the actual
words and see that the use of the term “Jew” is the dominant one in the book,
and that no such distinction is plausible. Besides, the author himself refers en
bloc to “Jews”, “Semites” and “Jewishness”, while praising national socialism and
Hitler’s practices. Nevertheless, the Court gave its own meaning to the book,
ruling that, based solely on the excerpts in question, one might distort and misinterpret the author’s intentions and belie the substance of his work! In other
words, the court fully accepted the author’s argumentation, as it found that the
Jews’ trans-historical goal is indeed global dominance based on the author’s
well-grounded sources and undeniable cited facts. As a result, the author did
not ofend Jews on grounds of their racial or national origin. On the contrary,
it was the Jews themselves, or at least a part of them, who were linked to dark
pursuits, schemes and conspiracies.
On similar grounds, the Plenary Session of the Supreme Court judged that the appeal
court decision was well-reasoned and conirmed the acquittal. This Supreme
Court decision is emblematic, not only because the Plenary Session handed
down its irst case law on the matter, but also because it weighed the right to
express a purely racist, and not just “revisionist”, discourse against the others’
protection of their rights from violations through the application of the antiracist law, and decided in favour of the former.
Most importantly, though, this decision of the Supreme Court,50 which has a special
authority not easily ignored by other courts, must also be seen within the context of the Supreme Court’s other case-law regarding freedom of speech, and
49.
50.
50 |
However, cf. the very interesting minority view in this Supreme Court ruling.
The Supreme Court decisions in Greece do not constitute a precedent in the AngloSaxon sense, but they do have an autorité de la chose interprétée.
ROSA LUXEMBURG STIFTUNG
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