What part of illegal did you not understand?
Even Canadian free speech laws are much more limited than the US. See the ridiculous "twitter harassment case" from last year/early this year.
tldr; if you don't want police to raid, don't break the law.
Freedom of speech is working fine aside from NSLs.
In your opinion (and that of the US), "violence" in this context is defined as physical violence. However, one can argue that non-physical violence should be considered too. In that case, it could be said that hate speech is a form of indirect threat or intimidation against a minority.
> no government should be allowed to oppress the free expression of ideas
Are you okay then, with an intelligence or military defector (not a whistleblower), revealing all government secrets and publishing it publicly without any selection or redaction?
My belief in whistleblowing is as follows. If the act of whistleblowing violates laws and go beyond the provisions in whistleblowing laws, but you or I dearly believe in what we are doing as proper and just, then we do it but understand the consequences and don't and should not seek understanding or forgiveness. If we believe so much, then it's our duty to sacrifice our selves in the face of adverse conditions. I compare it to revolutionaries. You believe in your cause enough that the negative consequences are part of the deal and you don't expect leniency or official pardons, else the issue is not that dire.
> In the law of some countries, hate speech is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is forbidden because it incites violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group.
So would you consider it censorship to forbid hate speech?
But no, I don't speech that simply disparages an individual or group of people (without inciting violence as defined above) should be a crime. There's a difference between disgusting speech and speech that should be outlawed and it's very dangerous to say simply that this speech or that speech is icky and therefore the person who said it should literally lose their freedom.
I'm also going to leave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce... here because some people seem to be under the misapprehension that the US has no restrictions on speech.
Edit: Instead of silently downvoting please provide even a single link to an HN comment espousing that freedom of speech actually means you can say anything at any time to anyone without any repercussions.
Then you're not arguing against the current raids then. From the source [1]:
Bedrohung, Nötigung, Erpressung, Verunglimpfung, extremistische Inhalte, die Androhung von Gewalttaten oder der öffentliche Aufruf zu Straftaten
Threats, coercion, oppression, slander, extremist content, inciting violence and calls to commit crime.
I said nothing of the sort and it takes some impressive mental gymnastics to reach that point.
Extremist speech, on its own and in isolation, is not necessarily violent and should not be a crime automatically. It obviously can espouse violence and is therefore already outlawed. It may even be the fact that 99.9% of extremist speech advocates violence in one form or another. But until it does, someone should be able to spew as much racist, hateful garbage as they want.
It really doesn't. You used the explicit phrase "extremist content [falls] under speech which does not necessary advocate violence" as an argument to exclude "extremist content" from the list of examples of actionable material, without further elaboration.
Try this: go to a playground and say to a parent: "I want to beat up your child." Then stand there and wait until the cops arrive and claim it was just freedom of speech. Remember to exactly repeat it to the cops.
This is exactly what the laws in Germany are against. Hate speech that ultimately leads to violence.
Compared to Europe, apparently yes
> Try this: go to a playground and say to a parent ...
I doubt this would have the outcome you imagine. What would the police officer arrest me for? Expressing an opinion?
"Officer": "What seems to be the problem"
"Woman": "This man said he wanted to beat up my child"
"Officer": "Is this true?"
"Me": "Yes"
"Officer": "Why did you say that?"
"Me": "Someone on the internet told me I would be arrested if I did"
"Officer": "Go home."
Your example is not mere "hate speech that ultimately leads to violence", its -- while somewhat ambiguously worded so it might not actually be prosecutable in the US, its right on the boundary -- something that could (depending on other elements of context) be seen as a threat coupled with present capacity for execution directed at a specific person.
Its not a clear example of something outside the bounds of protection in the US, and to the extent that it might be seen as crossing the line in the US, its very much not analogous to the kinds of things prohibited by the more expansive German restrictions on speech.
The "why" part, actually. Why is hate speech illegal? Where is the line drawn? Who gets to draw the line? Can the line move over time? Could politicians eventually move the line to suppress undesirable speech (political dissension) under the guise of hate speech?
We (i.e., the US/the internet) have a tendency to view basic human rights through a very US-centric framework. We value freedom of speech above all else (well except the right to bear/bare arms...). However, our framework of what rights there should be is not entirely universal, nor should it be. We tend to be not so great at articulating a basic right to exist or to be free from harm created by others. I hear many conversations about the constitution, which is our law, but I rarely hear people discuss the declaration of independence which was a much broader statement about the rights of human beings. The constitution is our codification and does not, nor should it, be applied as a universal critique of other systems.
And none of that is to say that we have unlimited free speech anyways in the US. The standard framework for restriction is strict scrutiny, which requires a compelling governmental interest to restrict free speech (e.g., preserving the health and welfare of many citizens is why you can't yell fire in a crowded theater). Because the law is not ahistorical, I think you could make a fairly compelling argument that it is in the German government's interest to make laws that do things like make denying the holocaust illegal or placing some limits on hate speech. The potential damage of those things is something that Germany has experienced in ways we haven't, and I would generally defer to them making laws within their own society rather than judge them with ours.
Most people in this discussion seem not to know this, so you see that what these people (whose homes got raided) must have had a effect on the real world to be punishable.
Furthermore, in Germany if you get charged with something at first there is an investigation by the police. The result is handed over to the prosecutor who decides if there is going to be prosecution (first hurdle), then it is going to court. The judge first decides if the prosecution is even accepted(!!!) (second hurdle) and THEN there is a trial (third hurdle). So it is not like these people are put in jail just because there is an investigation.
I am seriously baffled by the comments that lack significant knowledge of that the hell this news mean.
If you believe the rights enumerated in our founding documents are truly inalienable human rights that exist simply by virtue of us being human, then yes you should also believe that they should be codified in every other country's laws as well.
OTOH, if you believe that they are one, almost certainly imperfect, attempt to protect actual inalienable human rights rather than a flawless articulation of the exact bounds of actual inalienable human rights, you can easily accept that there may be alternative mechanisms attempted to protect the actual underlying rights that are no farther from the ideal than those in our founding documents.
Treating the results of the political compromises that went into creating our founding documents as if they were carved on stone tablets by God's own hand and handed down to Moses as eternal law is, well, about as sensible as doing that with the output of any randomly-chosen more recent political compromise by our governing bodies.