That was Adolf Hitler in 1939, who had found a model for his own policies of mass extermination. He was explaining that the genocide of the Armenians had become, as one of his latter-day French followers once claimed of the Holocaust, a footnote of history.

France recently passed legislation making Armenian genocide-denial a criminal offence. But now, under pressure from Turkey, lawmakers are having second thoughts.

In their letters of appeal to the [French constitutional] council, 77 senators and 65 members of the National Assembly said that the law might infringe on freedom of speech and argued that it was not the legislature’s place to write history.

Nor is it the legislature’s place, one would have thought, to re-write history on behalf of the offending party. But that’s effectively what quashing this legislation would amount to. No doubt the local Speech Warriors™ are on board, however, once again offering cover to exterminationists past and present. We’ve already had a bellyful of that in this country.

In fairness, the far Right is not alone. Amnesty International has issued a plaintive plea for free speech—while having no problem with criminalizing Holocaust-denial. It appears that all genocides are not created equal.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu tells us, apropos of this legislation, that “European values are under threat.” What almighty chutzpah! But perhaps the silver lining in this dark, roiling cloud is that, three-quarters of a century afterwards, all sides of this debate are decisively giving the lie to Adolf Hitler.