| Popis: |
Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, once said that '... it [will] probably always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it provided its own mortal enemies with the means by which it was destroyed'. Was Goebbels right? Does democracy provide its enemies with the means to destroy it? Is democracy defenceless against anti-democratic ideologies? The assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister, the late Yitzchak Rabin, on 4 November 1995 triggered a public debate in Israel about the ability of the state to deal with anti-democratic agents endeavouring to alter a democratic system in the service of an antidemocratic ideology. Almost everyone who took part in the debate assumed that the state has a right to defend itself against such ideologies and those acting in the name of such ideologies. The debate focused on the limitations of this right, offering various boundaries to the permission given to the state to use coercive measures, and more specifically, criminal law. In this thesis I confront Goebbels's proposition and tackle the counter-presumption that the state has a right to defend itself against anti-democratic ideologies. I seek to find a moral source for the state's right to self-defence against internal anti-democratic ideologies. |
