Cosa è andato storto? Commento a Emanuela Fronza, Memory and Punishment: Historical Denialism, Free Speech and the Limits of Criminal Law, The Hague, Asser Press, 2018

Since punitive Memory Laws have been implemented all over Europe, Holocaust denial and, more generally, racist and xenophobic attitudes have become more widespread than they have ever been after WWII. Is this fact to be taken as a mere coincidence or is it reasonable to assume that anti-negationist laws have failed to reach their explicit objective (fighting racism), as condensed in the familiar phrase Never Forget/Never Again? Emanuela Fronza’s book (Memory and Punishment, 2018) throws light on such thorny issues by distinguishing between overt and latent functions of the criminalization of Holocaust Denial.