Germany, in a First, Shuts Down Left-Wing Extremist Website
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I come from a country where being called a leftist is a compliment, and being called a rightist is generally viewed as an insult (being a centrist - like myself - also implies - in this country - that you're a rightist, go figure).
While the left has always resorted to violence and aggressive tactics (beating up professors who refused to yield to "student strikes" at universities, for example), they have always claimed the moral high ground. In the meantime, any public action or protest by the right (even moderate right) was generally viewed with scorn.
In other words, it was a mirror-image of the US. While the radical left in the US exists, it is mostly harmless, unlike the radical right.
Europe largely works as a mirror image of the US in that sense. In France, for example, people view as acceptable that workers conduct violent strikes, sometimes kidnapping and beating up managers, but any rightist manifestation is seen as an extreme danger.
It is good to see countries striving for a more neutral treatment of violent actions, from any ends of the political spectrum.
[Just in case it wasn't clear enough: antifas/radical-left in the US are pretty much a harmless joke, and by no means equivalent to the radical-right/extreme-right/alt-right/Nazis/white-supremacist/whatever threat]
I can think of at least 5 languages that would make that mistake, probably representing dozens (Dozens!) of countries. Italian, French, Portuguese, Catalan, Corsican, etc...
And I didn't confuse manifestation with demonstration. A demonstration IS a manifestation, but not all manifestations are demonstrations.
They claim as their spiritual forebears, the "Red Shirts" who were part and parcel of the destabilization of the Weimar Republic. It's the clashes between the "Red Shirts" and the "Brown Shirts" that helped the Nazis rise to power there. They also claim some of the same forebears as the people who did this stuff in a 1st world industrialized country, very recently:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_Lead_(Italy)
I've also been speaking to a number of Antifa supporters on social media. The "organization" doesn't do a good job of promoting a coherent ideology which supports the notion of human rights. If anything, their media output indicates they feel they can disdain human rights for their cause. More precisely, they declare that they can unilaterally, extra-judicially decide to withdraw human rights from certain people and act accordingly. This is plainly what they both do and say.
Study your history. Violent clashes between extremists and the decay of the rule of law are the harbingers of a lot of very bad stuff. Any movement acting to normalize that kind of environment is just bad news waiting to happen.
(EDIT: Yes, it's good that they managed to defend Cornell West. Genuine defense against physical attack is fine. Unprovoked attacks and vandalism aren't. You can't excuse someone's whole record based on one good thing they did.)
> Study your history.
Such condescending tone. Much patronizing. Very naive.
I do study my history. I'm not saying that antifas are harmless. I'm saying that antifas in the US are a harmless joke.
> Any movement acting to normalize that kind of environment is just bad news waiting to happen.
What makes you think I'm normalizing that kind of environment? It seems you failed to read my post:
> It is good to see countries striving for a more neutral treatment of violent actions, from any ends of the political spectrum.
Lots of jumping to conclusions here. You jumped to the conclusion that I was preaching directly at you. I'm generally writing primarily to 3rd party using the discussion as a framework. And no, considering what violent extremists have done in the 20th century, I don't think it's naive at all.
What makes you think I'm normalizing that kind of environment?
Nothing makes me think you are. However, by performing such actions and getting a free pass in the US press, Antifa are doing that kind of normalization. Abrogating people's human rights because of their politics -- this is something that belongs in 3rd world dictatorships, not on US soil.
> It is good to see countries striving for a more neutral treatment of violent actions, from any ends of the political spectrum.
Sorry if you felt I was attacking you. I entirely agree. I criticize the extremes.
> Sorry if you felt I was attacking you. I entirely agree. I criticize the extremes.
Oh, sorry, I thought that you replying to my comment meant you were replying to me :)
No worries, all good!
This is patently false. It's just that there is a very long history in the 20th century of aiding and abetting the radical left, while crazy right-wingers tend to act out alone.
Some survey essays and interesting reading here: https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/ and https://status451.com/2017/07/11/radical-book-club-the-decen... .
No, that's exactly like the US. Has been since the 60s. Or do I have to whip out the statistics on left wing bombings in the 60s and 70s? Or the number of antifa on trial for assault in the past year alone?
No need to, I'll do it for you (oh, and this is from the Cato institute, so if there's any bias, it is pro-right):
https://www.cato.org/blog/terrorism-deaths-ideology-charlott...
Terrorists have murdered 3,342 people on U.S. soil from 1992 through August 12, 2017:
Right-wing: 219 deaths
Left-wing: 23 deaths
Ouch.
Nice try.
Let me guess: you won't provide any.
> [Just in case it wasn't clear enough: antifas/radical-left in the US are pretty much a harmless joke, and by no means equivalent to the radical-right/extreme-right/alt-right/Nazis/white-supremacist/whatever threat]
Are you sure? The neo-Nazis and KKK may number in the tens of thousands. The ctrl-left number (easily) 10x that, and have media support. And have a proclivity for violence even when the alt-right aren't around. They are funded and organized. They are on the move.
Maybe this is democracy in action - but I see the alt-right (by the new new definition of neo-Nazi and KKK, not the old 4-chan definition), as a joke and that the Ctrl-Left is really becoming problematic.
Am I wrong? (It's possible - because it has happened more than once before)
"The ctrl-left number"
I don't understand what you mean by that, would you please clarify?
To help burst anyone's delusions, here's just a few recent left-wing violent incidents off the top of my head.
http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/05/24/berkeley-college-prof...
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/us/dallas-quiet-after-pol...
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/17/us/baton-route-police-shooting...
https://www.rt.com/usa/366452-portland-riots-anti-trump/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mob-at-middlebury-148858650...
Police violence? War on Terror? Armed border patrols?
That's what I hate about politics nowadays - it's either you're agree with us on everything or we immediately assume that you disagree with us on everything.
Being a filthy ignorant American, all I know about Germany regarding freedom of X is that they do have hard limits on anything related to Nazism. So how "arbitrary" is this really, especially when there's a precedent for a limit on freedom of speech? Does she even have an argument?
(1) as much as there are in other parties ranks more or less.
No other parties "elected the NSDAP into power", the President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as chancellor. Who then went on to illegalize all other parties.
The usual explanation is that they wanted to "tame" Hitler, but in effect they only served to help him consolidate his power.
EDIT: Regarding the lineage of current German parties: neither Zentrum (ancestor of the CDU) nor SPD had any part in the deal that brought Hitler to power; the other major parties were only founded later.
However, we both might want to reread our history books a bit. One crucial step in the Nazi coup was the Enabling Act of 1933 which gave the NSDAP or rather Hitlers Cabinet - despite not having a majority in the parliament - the right to pass laws. The communists had been suppressed before and could not vote and I remembered that the SPD abstained. That's where I'm wrong - they voted against, at least those present. Some were not present at the vote. The rest of the parliament, including the Zentrum and the Liberals (which had 5 seats) voted in favor, granting the required 2/3 majority. Many Zentrum members, including the head of the party at that time were strict nationalist. Other members voted under duress. So yes, the Zentrum had a part in the dealing that brought Hitler to power. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933 and https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erm%C3%A4chtigungsgesetz_vom_2...
There's a fairly interesting list of Ex-NSDAP members that after the war joined other parties. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_ehemaliger_NSDAP-Mitglie... (among them Filbinger, and, notably, Hans Furler, President of the European Parliament and Genscher, the Exterior Minister at the time of the Reuinion)
And the German constitution: http://www.dw.com/en/trial-highlights-limits-of-free-speech-...
So in both cases there is a recognition of "necessary" restrictions, leading to the question of how necessary it really is.
The US approach to protest restriction is different: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/08/donald-trump-a...
And of course you can't threaten the police in the US either https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/18/facebook-com...
That is of course one instance, but if this is the first time a left-wing website has been shut down by the German government, it looks like it's no worse than 1:1!
I can assure you that if you create a right wing website with bomb making instructions and a call to action to destroy the government, then it too will be shut down.
This isn't about left vs. right, this is about order vs. anarchy.
It seems like left wing riots are much more common than right wing riots (in Europe and America) and those seem to draw the most attention from governments.
However, the reality is more complicated. Esp. in America, there are a ton of recent examples (2016 to present) of mayors / college admins telling police to stand down / avoid protecting right wingers from left wing violence. Plenty of Trump supporters have been punched (or worse) during rallies. People openly call for punching Nazis (which seems to be a blanket term for individuals for conservative sympathies).
Berkley? Evergreen? San Jose? The stand down orders are tantamount to a conspiracy to deprive right wing people of their civil rights and that's de jure discrimination if not active de facto discrimination.
It's tough because both sides can point to some injustice and correctly say that there's an element of ideological discrimination at-play. It's disappointing that calls to reduce political violence are equivocated with partisan positions.
My American political bent surely influences this, but the censorship of ideas on the internet leaves a foul taste in my mouth. I would hope that was an opinion shared among the majority of tech folks, but comments lately on HN lead to me believe that is no longer the case.
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^1 for what may be best described as "petty terror": Torched cars, smashed windows etc.
Tech companies, as a whole, are a social negative. Let's not appeal to them to position themselves as figures of social authoritiey or defender of rights.
It may depend on the company in question. For Google that supplies 78% of all search results it is probably dangerous to allow them to decide what to favor and what to censor.
For a smaller service provider like Cloudflare, I am not so sure.
It will be interesting to see how it would go down in court.
I am not a lawyer or legal expert by any means, but if the courts decided that business have to serve the public, for example forcing a baker to bake a wedding cake for a gay wedding, I can see a court forcing Cloudflare to host content they don't want to host.
Now the interpretation of the law today would not support that because minority opinion holders are not a protected class, but the court extends its power all the time and I could see this leap being made, although it is unlikely.
All in all interesting stuff to ponder.
This is just like the WTO protests here in Seattle, suppressing the citizenry so you can hold a conference with the bankers and influential politicians from 20 countries is apt to not end well. I'm sure Germany will focus their panopticon to try and eliminate those who seek to organize strong opposition to the G-20 summit.
It should be up to the law, applied to all with equality, that decides the eventual outcome. In a short term it may be more useful to monitor the activities and determine bad actors that should also be removed from society.
Nazis are intolerant and should be opposed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Update: the website used to track nazis is still alive: https://nazi-watch.noblogs.org/ See archives section: it starts in 2008 and ends in 2013. Now antifa in USA are doing the same thing, exposing nazis to their employers and doxing them. USA is repeating Russian history.
The "nazis" who came out in VA recently are a tiny group with little support. One moron carried out vehicular homicide and is being dealt with appropriately by the law. If he hadn't carried out those actions though I'm sure your narrative would be the same.
I hope both groups are suppressed in equal measures, and I hope those carrying the hammer and sickle are dealt with as equally as their comrades carrying swastikas.
Because clearly the solution to tyranny is fringe extreme groups committing violence, supressing speech, and property destruction, the vast majority of the time against other citizens not even the state... (do I have to say /s?).
A solution ripe with all the drawbacks and dangers of vigilante justice (misidentification, no due process, excessive violence, unrelated crime being masked by the mob, etc).
I've always known politics was a mind killer but I never thought it could reach new levels of absurdity.
Straw man argument. Nobody said this above.
Suppressing groups (nazi and antfia) for violence of its members is the problem.
The government needs some reason to claim some movement "terrorist" and suppress it, otherwise violation of freedom of speech will not be tolerated by ordinary people. "If he hadn't carried out those actions" government would have to wait until either "left" or "right" side does something similar.
> I hope both groups are suppressed in equal measures, and I hope those carrying the hammer and sickle are dealt with as equally as their comrades carrying swastikas.
The point is to make people tolerate suppression of groups based on their ideas. Then you only have to chop both sides equally by silencing the most active activists as "extremist" until there are no "radicals" and all political parties look the same.
Second, classifying ANTIFA as a terrorist organization is nothing like Russia cracking down on Nazis. In the US you have free speech even if the government believes you are a terrorist organization. Now if the left wing get's their way and starts imposing hate speech laws, then ANTIFA needs to watch out because then they will be silenced by the government.
Finally, there is a deep respect for protesting in the US but not for people who do it hiding behind masks. Ghandi didn't wear a mask, Malcom X didn't wear a mask, the kids at Kent State that were shot by the police didn't wear masks. A mask indicates you are there to do harm. Sometimes harm is warranted, but we respect protesters who actually practice Civil Disobedience, part of which is owning up to what you did.
My only point here is that I believe Antifa would get more support from the American people if they could convince the 10-20% of members that show up dressed in black and wearing masks to just dress down and lose the goon squad apparel.
He is opposed by a significant fraction of the other elected officials in his party in some issues, but he's also carrying out a campaign to bring he party to heel (and has not been especially constrained in taking extraordinary executive actions by the intraparty opposition, though that has limited his legislative success.) While his public support is weak overall, it's mostly concentrated in the committed electoral base of the party. So he's actually positioned better than one might expect for the intraparty struggle. If he remains in office through the midterms, I wouldn't be surprised to see him in relatively undisputed control of the party after them.
> Ghandi didn't wear a mask, Malcom X didn't wear a mask, the kids at Kent State that were shot by the police didn't wear masks
Another thing that all those people have in common is being shot for their activism.
Just saying Antifa would get a lot more support if they changed their look. People in black masks busting up Starbucks are not who anyone wants in charge. They just do Trump a favor.
They don't want to be in charge, most of them are anarchists (but only a minority of anarchists are antifa and not all antifa are anarchists).
They are like Lenin's 'useful idiots' [1], although the question is what use they serve to whom.
Yes, because in Russia it is history, you can study it and learn how nazi and antifa theme was used to attack free speech. That is what Trump is doing now by all means (fake news etc.). The result in Russia was anti-extremist law [1], see SOVA reports, they monitor it: http://www.sova-center.ru/en/misuse/ This year it was even used to take to court a child [2] because someone (likely a policeman in fact, account was fake and action was taken this same day) posted emoticon with swastika on his page (the guy has a pro-libertarian YouTube blog).
> A mask indicates you are there to do harm.
It indicates they fear being identified by nazis and/or government.
[1] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/anti-extremism-poli...
[2] https://tjournal.ru/57191-kurganskogo-shkolnika-obvinili-v-e...
What do you understand as "serious move"? They are being watched and if they commit crimes, they are being prosecuted like every other criminal.
So I'm not sure that the bright-line rule has really been lost in Germany.
(I'd appreciate being corrected about this by Germans if I have my facts wrong!)
Actually, chances are that the government funds you.
I don't have a source at hand right now, but I recall reports that the NPD (the German nationalist party) would have gone bankrupt many times over if it weren't for a substantial number of its members being recruited by the domestic intelligence service as confidential informants, who then donated their informant salaries (or parts thereof) to the party.
My best friends come from the "neo nazi" working class hotbeds of Leipzig and Dresden. I have never ever seen anything like you mention, ever.
In other words, Germany's laws are dumb, because they don't actually slow down neo-Nazis and simply criminalize people for using pictures.
The boundary is of necessity vague. IMNSHO: arguing that free speech should be absolute is almost tantamount to arguing it is irrelevant. Isn't the point that messages matter, and being able to exchange them is powerful? Then clearly that power can be used - and abused. Thus to argue that it is right to never constrain speech implies you either believe it is of no consequence; or believe harm is good (i.e. are malicious or insane); or believe enforcement is impossible or counter-productive.
A dose of rationality in the free speech debate would be appreciated. Heck, it's not like this is the only exception... libel, fraud, and a variety of IP laws all suggest a long history of consistently democratically-backed infringements to free speech. Were our ancestors all crazy?
In short: merely yelling "free speech!" doesn't really resolve anything. Might as well yell "free noise!", at least that way there's truth in advertising.
The problem is that when the standard is so expanded it stifles the expression of emotions and values. Ideas are not powerful, at least in my telling; "ideas are powerful" is usually a statement by someone selling ideas, by which I mean selling magazines. What is powerful are the emotional connections that bind people to ideas and through ideas bind people together into groups and movements. These are not so easily banned and must be exposed in order to be dealt with.
I'm sorry I called you a fascist earlier. Today has been stressful.
I agree that there should be some limits on what can be censored (although really, I'm not sure this is even traditional censorship, since it's after-the-fact and doesn't extend to all channels the message is posted on). It's more like tearing down a gang stronghold - it's not necessarily going to prevent any individual gang member from doing what they did before, but it might disrupt the negative feedback loop that encourages "lawless action". Notably the government's court argument rests critically on this being an association; so there is some check on this power. It cannot with the same argument prevent the individuals from making the same suggestions.
Regardless: I definitely value free speech. I just think we should be open to consider exactly which limits are useful, and which are not.
I for one believe the chilling effects of this kind of action are much smaller and less dangerous than the chilling effects caused by libel, fraud and copyright laws, especially as they pertain to corporations - a concept that didn't even exist (in its modern form) when the US constitution was drafted.
If you will: any organisation can hold power; not just government. The point of freedom of speech should not be to protect us (and ironically itself!) from government; but from its power - and if so, why limit that to governmental power?
I see free speech and democracy as a kind of way or protecting society from local minima: a reality check to ensure we break out of nasty patterns. I'm not sure it's working very well with respect to large "private" entities. I'm not saying it's failed either; I'm just a little worried ;-). Liberal democracy has had a long time to rest on its laurels. Perhaps we take it for granted a little too much, and thus aren't vigilant enough to competitors and internal weaknesses.
In any case: thanks for the unexpectedly gracious reply in the face of my somewhat peeved response ;-).
It's interesting to me that you would say that, because if you look at the US in the late 19th and early 20th century when the country had significantly more powerful private entities than we do today, it was the press that helped to change public opinion and decrease their direct power and control.
I believe free speech is necessary so that speech advocating lawless action doesn't become necessary. By that I mean that advocating for a change in policy or type of government should be allowed and be open as the alternative is significantly greater violence. The revolutions in France and the US began with open words and attempts to change policy. When that started to be punished, the eventual result was not people changing their minds, but instead others going underground and violence increasing at a dramatic pace. Many other revolutions and rebellions, failed and successful, began the same way.
That's why people advocating the overthrow of government need to be allowed to speak openly and be heard. They can then be reasoned with and if necessary placated.
No, the point is that people matter, and being able to understand them is crucial. If ideas are suppressed (rather than merely problematic expressions) people become dishonest and you can't criticize their real beliefs because you don't know what they are. For example another person noted that neo-Nazi organizations survive in Germany by simply pretending to be something else. That's not success by any reasonable metric.
>A dose of rationality in the free speech debate would be appreciated.
If there's one thing that's truly ridiculous it's that fascistic positions like yours are considered "rational".