I honestly don't know why it's better to ban denial rather than trying to engage and educate. It's been very confusing to me. Could you please explain?
Probably because it's "simply" easier (said). Let's take SandyHook (and the false information that is was all faked.)
It would be much easier to say "let's ban the dissemination of the idea that it was faked" than to say, let's go out there and show all those deniers and people who listen to them and show them the facts.
We know it's difficult to change the minds of people who hold steadfast views like these.
But the side-effect of something like this is pretty dire. You get what the PLA and the CCP exercise in China. There is the official, sanctioned version, which because it is shaped by body can take any shape the controllers want.
So instead of random people making up facts, you can have a center of power making up faked facts --and you can't dispute it, since they provide the official version of things.
The entire school system is based on how bad they were, how many bad things they did and how how everyone in Germany should never repeat the same mistakes again. Ok, I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's the general idea. I think Germany was one of the only countries to actually deal, accept and discuss openly in society the atrocities they did in WWII. So it's not just banning and getting over denial.
The german school system is not about indoctrination or assigning guilt.
The post war german generations were not teached that they are guilty, but that they do carry responsibility for being aware of how easily facism and dehumanisation happens and escalates, and of keeping the memory of such evil present.
And yes, this includes the responsibility of being aware that similar things may happen again, clearly detecting extremism by the root, calling it out and hopefully averting it. Probably every country in the world should put such emphasis in their history lessons, but nobody else ever really will for obvious reasons.
So this kind of became a responsibility of the people born in modern germany. This is why it is one possible Abitur topic in politics, history and german lessons, why it is one element of the curriculum in (3 to 4)+2 different middle school years + Abitur (saxony speaking) and why there are high school visits to concentration camps.
I suppose only country in the history which has gone to such an extent in educating the new generation about the past mistakes. Still people won't take a second before bringing it up, especially American and other European countries, in order to win their argument. I am not even German, and it makes me angry. I can hardly imagine how a German feels when they are thrown in their face their Nazi past in an argument which has nothing to do with WW2.
It's hard not to do it if you don't think much/deeply about it. Many family members of mine were brutally murdered by Nazis. I used to seriously hate Germans - I was a child though (it changed around 15 y/o) - not because of my parents/teachers/..., they actively tried to change it. Many people in my country never change their mind, there are even many swear words based on words that used to mean "German [person]".
I'm not really sure we can blame them. The atrocities that Nazis have commited are still in living memory, there are still bullet holes in walls, whole villages are destroyed and the remains are still there... and hate over death of family members is an extremely strong emotion.
Holocaust denial is, on the root, pure antisemitism, which has been an evil element of every Western society since the beginning of the diaspora. The ideology behind it is pretty much equal to that part of nazi ideology (and I'm not one of those who is quick to run around calling everybody nazi these days).
As someone whose school system has provided them with some insight on how this all happened I see the US absolutist view on free speech when it is about outright lies like Holocaust denial as a bit dangerous. Preventing deluted individuals from spreading a life-threatening lie is not censorship. I see that the US view is coming from a very humanist view here, but tolerance needs to have limits set by basic human rights values, otherwise it will be destroyed by itself sooner or later.
The approach to "educate the deniers" is indicating to them and the listeners that you are taking them and their delusions seriously, and dissiminate them in the process. In the current debates about e.g. evolution you clearly see what happens in wider society if you talk to the 1% "skeptics".
It would be much easier to say "let's ban the dissemination of the idea that it was faked" than to say, let's go out there and show all those deniers and people who listen to them and show them the facts.
We know it's difficult to change the minds of people who hold steadfast views like these.
But the side-effect of something like this is pretty dire. You get what the PLA and the CCP exercise in China. There is the official, sanctioned version, which because it is shaped by body can take any shape the controllers want.
So instead of random people making up facts, you can have a center of power making up faked facts --and you can't dispute it, since they provide the official version of things.