Chris Penk Personally Intervenes for Holocaust Denier

The general advertising strategy of far-right speakers for the last few years has been to announce they’re coming to New Zealand, wait for their visa to be denied or their venue to cancel on them, and then use that free promotion and outrage generation (sponsored by the Free Speech Union) to attract a larger audience than they ever would have gotten otherwise.

Most recently, this has worked out very well for Candace Owens, a classy antisemite who refuses to acknowledge that the Nazis engaged in human experimentation, and who Chris Penk has personally granted a visa to after hers was denied.

It is not uncommon at all for New Zealand to deny the visas of people who want to spread racial hatred and proven disinformation; in 2004, holocaust-denier David Irving was denied a visa and then was refused permission to board his plane when he attempted to come anyway.

Like with Owens, Immigration NZ used the prior decision of Australia to exclude Irving to deny him a visa.

But democracy has degraded since then, and the right have now spent several years establishing controversy over the idea of “freedom of speech” being suppressed so that they can help literal Nazi sympathisers to sidestep the usual visa process.

We have a LOT of evidence that medical experimentation occurred during the holocaust, and that it was horrific and inhumane. This is the problem with Holocaust Denial and why it cannot be argued with; evidence and reason are meaningless to the people spreading it.

Does this mean we have more freedom of speech in 2024 than we did twenty years ago?

I don’t think we do. Censorship is a normal part of ensuring wider freedoms, INCLUDING the freedom of speech. It is a right we balance alongside the rights of all New Zealanders. In this decision, Chris Penk has taken it upon himself to personally decide that this speech in the specific is important enough to protect that he must override the immigration requirements for assessment of good character that applies to every visa applicant and so puts at risk the rights of other New Zealanders to be free from discrimination, to be safe, and to practice their religion freely.

Denying the harms of the holocaust is incredibly dangerous rhetoric. It’s dangerous enough that in free and liberal societies, it often justifies censorship in and of itself. It is outright illegal in Germany, Austria, Israel, etc, while other countries like Australia prosecute holocaust denial under hate speech.

But Chris Penk’s personal decision, and therefore the decision of this government, has been that foreign speakers have the right to be able to come here and preach it.

Air pressure experiment to determine if the Luftwaffe pilots would die at higher altitudes

This is a radical and hateful decision, and just how radical the positioning is will be covered up by cries of freedom of speech being infringed from the right, by accusations of “cancel culture” and political interference. I don’t think cancelling Nazis was called cancel culture back in the 40s and 50s, it was called protecting democracy, so it’s interesting how much that script has flipped.

But had Owens been refused entry, her freedom of speech wouldn’t have been denied. Nothing, literally nothing, stops her from giving her exact speech to New Zealanders online. The FSU, so worried about the freedoms of those wanting to hear her thoughts, would not have to worry that the country would miss out on what she has to say. She just wouldn’t be able to physically come here and do it — something which she is not entitled to do.

But something this government have let happen anyway.

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