MP Proposes Ban On Holocaust Denialism
Published January 21, 2021 / The Reykjavik Grapevine, Grapevine.is [Iceland]
(Originally seen at CODOH-Forum, French section)
An MP for the Social Democrats submitted a bill to Parliament last Tuesday that proposes an addition to the Icelandic Penal Code: making Holocaust denialism a punishable offense.
The bill has the support of all the Social Democrat MPs, as well as Reform Party MP Þorbjörg Sigríður Gunnlaugsdóttir and independent MP Andrés Ingi Jónsson. This legislation aims to add one sentence to Article 233 of the Penal Code:“Whoever publicly denies, or cruelly diminishes, or tries to justify or approve the genocide committed by the German Nazi party in the Second World War will be subject to fines or jail time of up to two years.”
Who are these MPs pushing the Holocaust Denial law? Why now?
An investigation into how the Holocaust (and specifically Holocaust Denial laws) are used in political discourse. Iceland is small, but there are lessons that apply everywhere across the West. Even if the bill fails to pass, there are lessons from a close-in look at what was going on here.
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The Icelandic Parliament consists of 63 members:
Government:
Independence Party (16 MPs): center-right, moderate freemarket
Left-Green Movement (9): socially left-wing
Progressive Party (8): right-wing, populist, strong freemarket, anti-EU
Opposition:
Centre Party (9): "centrist"
Social Democrats (8): center-left
Pirate Party (6): non-ideological, free-speech, youth-oriented, Internet-troll-culture-based semi-joke party
Reform Party (4): center-right, freemarket, pro-EU
People's Party (2): populist-nationalist, immigration-restrictionist, anti-EU
Independent (1): formerly a member of the Left-Green Movement
The law to criminalize Holocaust Denial is being pushed by ten MPs. Eight are Social Democrats, one is member of the Reform Party, and the last one is independent MP formerly of the (co-governing) Left-Green Movement. All ten sponsors are in the opposition. Why would that be? Is the Holocaust a weapon to score points against political enemies? (Yes, it is.)
You can tell that Iceland politics is consensus-based because the governing coalition is seemingly ideologically incoherent, of a kind that would never work with the equivalent parties in, say, Germany (The CDU ruling with the LINKE party?). But even in a small, consensus-driven, basically still homogenous ethnopolitical culture like Iceland's, we see clear signs that the coalition was doomed from the start, and the kinds of things defectors might do in protest; the Holocaust Bill was low-hanging fruit.
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Who is pushing the bill?
In the last general election, 11 people were elected MPs under the Left-Green Movement, a socially left-wing party. The party then entered a ruling coalition with the larger Independence Party, one of the usual center-right kind. Two of the original eleven Left-Green MPs have since left the party. It is no surprise that the two defectors are among the sponsors of the bill, one of them the lead-sponsor.
The lead sponsor of the bill is Rosa Björk Brynjolfsdottir (b.1975; three children; two with current cohabiting male, one from previous marriage). She is a typical social-Leftist of the European type and was a member of the Left-Green Movement but resigned several months in protest against the government's handling of "matters of refugees and asylum seekers."
Now in opposition and a member of the Social Democrats, Rosa persuaded all seven other Social Democrats to go along with her Holocaust Denial bill, only weeks after joining the party (resigned in protest from Left-Greens, Sept. 2020; joined Social Democrats, mid-December; Holocaust bill made public, mid-January).
There are seven other Social Democratic co-sponsors (Albertina Fridbjörg Eliasdottir [female, b.1980], Agust Olafur Agustsson [male, b.1977], Gudjon S. Brjansson [male, b.1955], Gudmundur Andri Thorsson [b.1957], Helga Vala Helgadottir [female, b.1972], Logi Einarsson [male. b.1964], Oddny G. Hardardottir [female, b.1957, former party leader]), whom I will not profile individually, as they are clearly following new member Rosa's initiative. What one can say about the seven Social Democratic MPs who are co-sponsoring Rosa's bill is they hope for an infusion of energy because their party reached historic lows in the 2010s, in one election (2016) dropping to 6% of the vote, then recovering to 12% (2017). All polling suggests they will do better in 2021, probably closer to 20% than their 2017 result of 12%. But eight months remain until the election.
The one MP who is roughly on the Right is Thorbjörg Sigridur Gunnlaugsdottir (b.1978; went to New York City for a graduate degree at Columbia University, 2011), if the center-right, freemarket, pro-EU Reform Party. She has three daughters, born 2002-2012, but in the 2010s divorced her husband.
- Thorbjörg Sigridur Gunnlaugsdottir.jpg (22.25 KiB) Viewed 3020 times
Thorbjörg Sigridur Gunnlaugsdottir is of a nominally Right-of-Center party but on January 20 (US inauguration day), she tweeted enthusiastic congratulations to Kamala Harris, and positively quoted Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
The independent MP who signed onto the bill is Andres Ingi Jonsson (b.1979; lived in Berlin two years, 2004-2006; married, two children born 2010-13). Like the main sponsor of the Holocaust Denial bill (Rosa Björk Brynjolfsdottir), Andres Ingi Jonssonis also a dissident member of the Left-Green Movement, which he joined at the start of his political career in 2009. He left that party in late 2019 in protest against the Left-Green Movement cooperating with Independence Party (center-right, moderate freemarket) and Progressive Party (right-wing, populist, strong freemarket, anti-EU).
- Andres Ingi Jonsson.jpeg (5.5 KiB) Viewed 3019 times
Andres Ingi Jonsson made the news three years ago with an initiative to "fight gender bias" in Iceland (See EuroNews).
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Why are they pushing a ban on Holocaust Denial?
We see the initiative begins with Rosa Björk Brynjolfsdottir, left-wing MP who defected from the left-wing party in government for ideological reasons and within a month of signing onto the new party, this Holocaust bill is being pushed.
The next Icelandic general election is scheduled for September 2021 (coincidentally the same week as the German Bundestag election). The pushers of the bill must be confident this (kind of) action will help them and not hurt them in eight months, especially considering they are doing it while in opposition. Maybe the thinking is this shores up their ideological bona fides, in a time when there is a revolt against the Left-Greens.
There are signs that these people are True Believers. We see key figures with the bill are among the younger members of parliament, all raised in the 1980s/1990s when Holocaust Power was very strong across the West. Two have degrees from centers of Holocaust political power, Berlin and NYC.
It has been easy for Iceland to skate by somewhat detached from trends elsewhere (as demonstrated for instance by no trace of any Holocaust law until now) because of its small size. Another way Iceland is unique is the pro-fertility culture, a continuing social expectation of pairing and procreation, of a kind that has drifted out of most Western societies decades ago now. Through the 2010s Iceland had a relatively high fertility rate for a Western country (near or above 2.0 through 2012; since dropped to 1.7; there is likely a further drop in 2021 associated with the 2020's "Coronavirus Panic") . In any case, it's notable that all three of the left-wing MPs who are pushing the bill and whom I profile above, in their early forties today, have two or three children. This would be unlikely among comparable types in continental Europe.
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Local-Resident Foreigner and Jewish Activism, or Lack Thereof
The Icelandic Parliament has a long history and an almost-unbroken tradition since the 10th century AD. Iceland has always been so small and self-contained (as an island) that the parliament has been more like a town council, less like the big parliaments of large states. It is harder in that kind of system for radical minority activists to make progress. There also just never were many minorities anyway.
There are only around 330,000 Icelandic citizens today (95%+ of Icelandic ancestry, some of foreign origin), and now up to 40,000 non-voting foreign residents. One might guess that these tens of thousands of foreigners include people who support banning Holocaust Denial, or come from political cultures that expect it. Polish-Christians form the biggest single foreigner group with several thousand residents.
A Jewish group claims 250 Jews live in Iceland (<0.1%); the former first-lady was Jewish (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o ... land_today) but she is not seemingly anything like a "political Jew."
I see no reason at all to believe domestic Jewish lobbying is behind this bill, and general pressure from foreign residents, while not zero, is also not decisive. The origins seem more within domestic politics.
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Geopolitics, and More
"The origins seem more within domestic politics," but domestic politics is rarely if ever a self-contained universe; and certainly Iceland is not an isolated, lost-in-time island and is affected by general cultural and political conditions across the West, including geopolitics, which realigned considerably for Iceland in the 1940s, the world of 1939 being very different from the world of 1949, as big a realignment as almost any in Icelandic history
Important to recall here is that Iceland has effectively been under the US security-umbrella since mid-June 1941 and the entire period since; That's soon to be eighty years. It has been in NATO since the start. It is not in the EU and strong domestic forces want it to stay out. One can expect the same forces to perhaps resist the Holocaust Denial bill
