The (Non)Political Taboo: Why Democracies Ban Holocaust Denial

This article unpacks the controversy that surrounds criminal law restrictions on Holocaust denial in democracies. By applying insights from postmodernist and post-structuralist theories on amendments of criminal legislation in three Central European democracies, I aim to understand the interplay between politics and truth in introducing legal bans on Holocaust denial. Through a comparative analysis of parliamentary discourse, I demonstrate that the various justifications in favor of such bans all postulate that truth should be separated from politics. In turn, this effort to transform the Holocaust into a taboo outside of politics has consequences on the nature of its remembrance.