Germany Acts to Tame Facebook, Learning from Its Own History of Hate
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It's also interesting that Human Rights Watch has come out against the German law: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/14/germany-flawed-social-me...
Still, the scale of the two issues - prosecutions vs platform censorship basically implies that most of the things being censored do not rise to that level of illegality.
* The illegal content can be removed quickly, without tying up resources in the prosecution of minor offenders. Prosecution can focus on the worst of them.
* The platforms get to play the role of a neutral party and are not themselves being responsible for distributing the illegal content.
Given the increased centralization on the Internet to a few of these platforms, this allows for efficient implementation of the law.
This is quite similar to the development of copyright law (in the US). The DMCA grants platforms immunity by actively taking part in the removal of illegal content when requested. I haven't checked the numbers, but I expect that here also the number of DMCA takedowns greatly outnumbers the copyright violation law suits (which would be kept for the worst offenders)
Nazi whatever aside, these are border officers..
You don't mess with them, period, unless you're into body cavity searches and the like..
I used to have a nazi symbol on my car just to rile people up. Once a neighbor called the police who were completely reasonable and asked me to please not park so close to his house because it's making him angry.
No healthy person does this "just to rile people up."
This is profoundly fucked behavior, and in a sane society it does, and should, lead to ostracizing. Actions have consequences.
Bonus Points if you put a Hammer and Sickle right next to them. Creepy Thought-controll-freaks of all nations united- in outrage. My man.
I would expect czech police there to be more "nah, above my paygrade" when it comes to foreigners than German customs officers.
And you're right, the police would likely just roll their eyes and move on. I think anything nazi-related is taken much more seriously in Germany than anything socialist/communist related is here (there's even still an actual communist party which iirc gets regular single-digit share of electoral votes).
Completely relinquishing the ability to judge things on their actual context in favor of the unthinking punitive application of absolutist principles is the beating heart of every anti-human ideology.
Putting Nazi shit on things you own is a sign of tribal identity and that tribe exists to break our norms and kill us once they have the chance. On one's own head be it. This may catch up some dipshits who want to offend people. But...y'know? That's OK. Don't be that dipshit. Don't play with Nazi shit.
Point is, he's not a victim, he's a criminal and has received his well-deserved punishment.
> you've been reading more news stories than him.
When you go to another country, it is your responsibility to follow their laws. Ignorantia legis non excusat.
>I grew up trusting authorities and them always being reasonable and I would never have imagined Germany was such a bizarrely brutal place.
"Brutal". In all fairness, compared to US prisons, German prisons must feel like holiday resorts... As a German citizen, I trust my authorities to uphold the laws.
> I used to have a nazi symbol on my car just to rile people up.
No. You had Nazi symbolism on your car because you are likely someone who agrees with the ideology. This also reflects in the kind of people you hang around with.
> Once a neighbor called the police who were completely reasonable and asked me to please not park so close to his house because it's making him angry.
And in Germany, you would have gotten jail time (§ 86a StGB), have your car confiscated and likely destroyed, and probably would have lost your driving license because you have demonstrated that you lack the adequate character to safely operate a vehicle.
And I would have been ok with that.
Are you actually in support of rule of law no matter what, or is it just this law you like? For example, are you OK with China executing Falun Gong members? Are you OK with ISIS killing gay people (it's the law of Islam!)? Are you OK with slavery as long as it's legal? Or are you just angry about Nazis especially out of all the other horrible groups in history for some reason? What about the Romans? They were pretty brutal - do you want to destroy the property of people who write roman numerals and write Latin phrases on things? Your extreme reaction doesn't make sense to me.
> lack the adequate character to safely operate a vehicle
It has nothing to do with safety. I grew up playing Wolfenstein 3D and watching the History channel. Nazi symbols were completely normal and everywhere. It was in no sense a crime or an indication that you're so mentally ill that you're going to crash your car.
> No. You had Nazi symbolism on your car because you are likely someone who agrees with the ideology. This also reflects in the kind of people you hang around with.
Please don't make personal judgments. I explained my reason.
That doesn't mean the law is okay but the country is fully free to punish you as they see fit.
> Nazi symbols were completely normal and everywhere.
Not here. Outside of certain exceptions, don't go waving around Nazi symbols in the country that to this day regrets this part of history.
You obviously should have paid a lot more attention, then.
Can it with the whataboutism, it's not helping you.
If you visit a country, you respect its laws and customs. You don't go around breaking them because you disagree with them. Leave it to the residents of that country to change their laws if needed, don't be an invading asshole.
Let me speak it out for you again:
It doesn't matter. Ignorance does not protect against punishment.
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
Your friend must have been completely and utterly ignorant of fundamental history. That's not something to be proud of.
I wasn't using whataboutism. I was showing an inconsistency in the commenter's general claim. Do you also really believe gays are being assholes if they have sex in Saudi Arabia? That they should show respect to the culture that has a deep shame about homosexuals?
>"Do you also really believe gays are being assholes if they have sex in Saudi Arabia? That they should show respect to the culture that has a deep shame about homosexuals?"
More whataboutism. No, I don't think they're assholes, I think they're idiots. Going to a notoriously anti-gay country, with a death penalty for homosexuality, and then completely flouting those laws? Yeah, that's a really bad idea.
Here, I'm trying to tease out the meaning from you and a grandparent's posts that seem to ridicule anyone breaking any law, no matter how unjust the law might be. Your particular disrespect seems to be focused on foreigners visiting a country, which seems kind of arbitrary but you've done such a poor job explaining what's behind your judgments that I don't think there's much there besides the desire for violence against anyone who, even unknowingly, offends you. You've also been offensive to me in this thread (feeling free to because I don't have the power to punish you?) and say that you would insult the victims of anti-gay laws. It's clear now that you're a hate filled person so I don't want to know what you really mean anymore.
The simple truth is, if you go visit a country, you do a bit of preparation before you go. That includes any local laws and customs that may differ from those in your home country, in order to avoid trouble.
You wouldn't try to bring a pocket knife on a flight, would you? Like me, you probably disagree with the security theater that has been put in place, but that does not mean you get to plead innocence because of ignorance, or because you disagree with the rules.
Once again: ignorance does not confer immunity from the law, no matter how unjust the law is.
That doesn't matter in this context. When you visit a country, you respect their laws, no matter how unjust they may be.
However, you will find very few people who would agree with you that it is unjust for someone to face consequences for directly and provocatively insulting a policeman with his country's greatest shame in recorded history.
>"locked up for 3 months for making a friendly joke"
Shouting "heil Hitler!" at a German -- especially if it's an authority figure -- is not "a friendly joke". It's a grave insult. If you do not understand why that is, I would suggest you spend a little time researching 20th century history.
Your example with the tree cutter is false equivalence. In his case, it would be a tragedy, which could have been prevented through the use of specialized knowledge. Maybe he didn't know, maybe he was forgetful, maybe he was simply negligent.
If you wanted to make the cases more equivalent, a better example would if he climbed to the top of a very tall tree, and then sawed over the branch he was sitting on. Clearly stupid and with absolutely no common sense.
> I used to have a nazi symbol on my car just to rile people up
You can't then complain that people get riled up. It was your intention to provoke them; they were provoked; and now you suffer the consequences for provoking them.
If you don't wish to suffer those consequences you have the freedom to not behave like a fucking idiot.
This is universally known as insensitive behaviour and no amount of "muh free speech" is gonna save you from being charged with a hate crime.
When you go to a country, at the very least make the effort not to offend officials with the worst part of that country's history. Otherwise you're not just gonna be seen as a total (criminal) twat but also a lazy one at that.
You subscribe to the might-makes-right mindset by demanding respect for people who have the power to punish you. That's practical, but not morally very solid since it implies less politeness to weaker people.
Some would argue the 30 years war was worse than the Nazis. It killed more people than the holocaust, and at a time when the population was much smaller.
I totally oppose physical violence against people for saying insults. That's terrible to me. For exactly this reason - innocent people not trying to hurt anybody end up getting punished because they're misunderstood. The swastika really doesn't mean the same thing to people everywhere in the world. Not everyone shares the Germans' violent anger at people who remind them of their past.
But still fuck you for comparing an instance of senseless mass-murder/genocide with a religious war spanning 30 years and involving most of central europe ~400 years ago, at a time where the slightest wound may have condemned one to die, notwithstanding the quite "good" chance to starve or die from plague as back then hygiene wasn't really that important to the people.
And I would have been ok with that."
And no german would see the irony in this...
This is something we are learning in the UK as sweeping powers "necessary to implement Brexit" are getting pushed through Parliament. Only so very principled MPs are preventing really sweeping executive powers being granted - they are referred to as Henry VIII laws to give an idea how retrograde we are getting
It is cutting extremely deep into their greatest national shame, one of the worst parts of any nation's legacy and all of human history.
Imagine going up to a Russian border guard and going "hail, comrade Stalin!". It's that bad, or worse.
I hope he learned an extremely valuable lesson.
A better example would be going "hey boy, get back to pickin' cotton!" to a black border guard in the US.
They do try to wrap it in nationalism and appeals to history ("back when the motherland was strong!"), but it's transparently about enforcing the oligarchy.
He was objectively the greatest leader in the history of their country/union, with a massively powerful cult of personality. To paraphrase from a popular series of books, "after all, [he] did great things – terrible, yes, but great."
While the Russians might even, to some degree, like the idea, it does not make it right.
NetzDG only regulates how platforms that get a lot of complaints about content that is already illegal under existing criminal code have to handle and report those complaints.
It has been deemed unconstitutional by many experts - and whether it holds up against those claims will have to be decided in the supreme court.
That Arvato, the company running the content-checking centers, is a subsidiary of Bertelsmann isn't helping either: Criticism of the government that gets deleted on Facebook by a pro-government company like Bertelsmann comes with a certain stench.
As comes the fact that the NYT somehow forgets to mention this affiliation and somehow manages it to intertwine this with the "right cause" of post-war Germany's approach to limit free-speech for Nazism.
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1993/0082/latest/D...
"It shall be unlawful for any person to publish or distribute written matter which is threatening, abusive, or insulting, or to broadcast by means of radio or television or other electronic communication words which are threatening, abusive, or insulting"
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1993/0082/latest/D...
which references the previously mentioned section. But also followed up by
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1993/0082/latest/D...
"No prosecution for an offence against section 131 shall be instituted without the consent of the Attorney-General."
Which is weird, because they are already censoring you considering there is a long range of things you can’t share in their platform, such as pictures of you breastfeeding your baby.
I’m not sure why breastfeeding is considered worse than hate speech at Facebook but apparently it is. Please note that while I mentioned the swastika, I didn’t mean to imply that Facebook is only cool with alt-right nonsense, the truth is that you can share all sorts of radical hatred from any political standpoint and Facebook is completely fine with it.
I get the free speech argument though, but the truth is that you’re always on someone’s platform and most of them wouldn’t be cool with your crazy. I mean, you’d get thrown out of a public park if you started making Facebook styled hate comments at random strangers.
Where I live (Görlitzer Park), those kinds of signs are literally everywhere -- only they're the leftwing equivalent, calling for bloody revolution, for the rich to be booted from their homes, racists and xenophobes to be punched, etc. I'm actually pretty relaxed about it -- a bunch of 20 year olds who get their kicks spray painting while drinking copious amounts of booze? Big deal.
And to offer another perspective on the recent emotional concern expressed so histrioniocally by a, politically speaking, suspiciously homogeneous crowd: Last year there was a huge, state financed charity billboard celebrating the life of... Fidel Castro. It was a collab between our Green local govt and the Cuban tourist ministry IIRC. Castro... who was responsible for how many deaths, 50,000? 100K?
By way of comparison, Pinochet had (according to Wikipedia) 10-30K on his account. I guarantee you there were no billboards of him around. Do I need to mention the recent merry festivities surrounding Karl Marx 200th birthday -- ceremony lead by Jean-Claude Juncker? Lest I have my words twisted against: I don't desire either of the these men to be displayed on taxpayer financed billboards!
The point that I'm trying to make is that this kind of legislation, and the so-called journalism and commentary surrounding it, don't fool anyone who's even the slightest bit (like me) conservative. We see right through these tendentiously applied, faux histrionic ("oh pity the poor soul who has endure watching -- and then deleting -- horribly vicious, hate-filled posts") outbursts whose real purpose is totally obvious. Namely to leverage dominance in various domains (journalism, charity, education, civil service) to usurp the electoral beating the left taken in any number of countries over the past two years. A beating meted out by a population who sees through the phony social concern, and sees the manifest and seething hypocrisy, the coziness of those who are insanely rich and the charity, journalistic, and civil service complexes.
In this battle any means to push back against at the barbarians at the gate are deemed appropriate. And so we are treated to the pathetic spectacle of those screeching about the deleterious, democracy damaging impact of fake news happily engaging in its production if it suits their side, the so-called defenders of liberty and free speech engaging in a rampage of censorship, bullying, "calling out", etc. of anyone who has an even slightly different opinion.
Now, don't get me wrong, I understand that those forces have no intention of trying to convince me. That is definitely not the goal, for if it were, the path that's being taken would certainly be recognized as wholly counterproductive. No, the real goal is to set boundaries, to wear out, tire, and demoralize the enemy. In other words, this is a propaganda war, exactly as e.g. Jacques Ellul described it. The very focus on such emotively charged terms as "love" (what we're about) and "hate speech" (what they do) makes this patently obvious.
To finalize, my feeling is that the forces I've described are winning, and I actually think they'll prevail in the battle. The propaganda war won't make any friends, but I believe it will succeed in its purpose, which is to wear out and dissipate the forces currently arrayed against it.
Final note: this is just an opinion. It's a strong one, yes. But I really love being proven wrong, so I'm really happy for the many highly intelligent and well-informed HNers to tear my argument apart. Have fun :)
We’ve always had people who called vaccines dangerous against better evidence, but platforms like facebook, allowed these people to construct their own realities, and as a result people are now dying from diseases that have been extinct for more than 50 years.
As I’ve said, there have always been village idiots, but social media marks the first time in human history, that we’ve actually had to take them seriously.
What do I make of these two comments? How I read them is as follows: you're so utterly sure of your position -- because you're likely inclined to believe it, and because you've been bombarded with messages confirming it ("the others are stupid") -- that you're quite literally failing to engage your brain. Instead, you're making lazy, emotive arguments.
So thanks for proving my point: the claims that one should consider so-and-so's feelings, the supposed humanism. That's just BS, isn't it?
On parts of Facebook the value of a professor in medicine counts for less than the experiences of an average soccer mom, and you’re seriously telling me to accept that as a new norm because it might hurt someone’s feelings if I didn’t? Right.
Ellul has a passage in which ancient Chinese poetry is "analyzed" by communist party members. This was served in classrooms of course. And the analysis was manifestly ridiculous. Anyone who reads it can't help but chuckle at the ham-fisted attempt to suggest that a poem about the sky, actually was referring to the glorious peoples revolution.
But: read that every day, hear in class every year, hear 1000 messages that confirm and reinforce this crazy, idiotic, message, and you can't help but be affected by it.
That is the nature of propaganda. In it's essence, it is a demonstration, an exercise of power. There is nothing subtle about it, and only part of it is covert.
```In on article in Pruula in May 1957. the Chinese writer Mao Dun wrote that the ancient poets of Chma used the following words to express the striving of the people toward a better life: The Bowers perfume the air. the moon shines, man has a long life " And he added: “Allow me to give a new explanation of these poetic terms The flowers perfume the air — this means that the flowers of the art of socialist realism are incomparably beautiful The moon shines — this means that the sputnik has opened a new era In the conquest of space Man has a long life — this means that the grout Soviet Union will live tens and tens of thousands of years “
When one reads this ouce, one smiles If one reads i* a thousand times, and no longer reads anything else, one must undergo a change. And we must reflect on the transformation of perspective already suffered by a whole society in which texts like this I pub- lished by the thousands) can be distributed and taken seriously not only by the authorities but by the intellectuals This complete change of perspective of the Weltanschauung is the primary totali- tarian element of propaganda.
```
The authentic protest is almost always met with violence, either directly from the state or with the state allowing or aiding in its administration.
I think, at its core, the message of the state sanctioned protest/counter-protest is essentially "these people can be unleashed on you and you will have no recourse".
You can tell those regimes didn't actually believe in socialism, by how they oppressed the poor, the weak and those who were different (religiously, sexually and so on).
I think this is far harder to implement than people assume. We still have many things in life that are non-fungible, the most obvious of which is probably housing location.
Those companies are enabling the criminals. German law defines the users as criminals and it is this pre-internet law that is being upgraded and enforced, because profiting from enabling illegal activity is clearly wrong.
FB employs 1200 people to deal with this... why is that? It isn't their fault that the world has so many fucktards in it, but is their problem when they give a platform to their illegality
furor over the failings of the "city state" that FB are trying to establish. Good
But your "There is nothing substantive here" is worrying me, since it probably means you'd like more that a somewhat mundane description of the situation without judgment. Did you expect a strong position, probably in favor of US free speech values? It to be a hit piece for or against NetzDG? Strong policy recommendations with big impacts? I don't want that! I like our current society and want marginal fixes for its countless little flaws. But responding to the current hot issue (lets say school shootings) with extremist positions (arm everyone vs take all guns away) seems highly unproductive in improving our lives.
When in reality, I believe, social media has done more to connect people and show them more possible lives than anything in history.
Journalism in its best form is first-hand. Meaning, those images and videos of events you see are most likely coming from an eyewitness on the ground, who happened to be there. Legacy journalism will have to evolve to survive. So far its devolved
That article generally misrepresents German laws, making them seem more draconian than they actually are.
For instance displaying a Swastika is perfectly legal if you don't "objectively" use it to "promote (the) national socialism".
The German definition of Volksverhetzung, often translated as "hate speech", is also quite a bit a narrower than what your average native english speaker would understand as hate speech: basically, under that law, ONLY hate speech against a group or individual targeting them for belonging to a certain ethnic group, nationality, or religion is illegal IF it is disseminated in a way that has the potential to disrupt public peace.
Yet the chilling effects are real, leading to silly examples of censorship. Particularly in new mediums such as video games - most famously Wolfenstein 3D. The Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (BPjM) / Jugendschutzgesetz (JuSchG) has made some questionable decisions in the past.
I agree that "hate speech" has a different connotation than Volksverhetzung (particularly in this day and age), and it's a bit more nuances than the article presents it.
It seems that only applies if your work falls clearly within a few categories of exceptions. For example, Wolfenstein, a game about a Jewish commando fighting against the Nazis, was censored in Germany to comply with the law.
> "In Germany, we've removed all Nazi symbols and references. Unlike films and other works of art, video games in Germany are forbidden to use such symbols and references as they are classified in Germany as toys and not media art." The illegal display of Nazi imagery is punishable by three years in prison in Germany. (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27488254)
Even "Maus: A Survivor's Tale" struggled to be published uncensored. They eventually succeeded in convincing the culture ministry to allow publication, but it's not enough to be anti-Nazi.
Art, sciences and education are obviously exempt from these rules and while many pretty much assumed games to be art a recent court confirmed that games would be ruled as art.
The reason why Wolfenstein was censored is because of the USK, the board behind age ratings in germany, which has in the past been rather strict with nazi symbolism, regardless of context. They've softened up a lot and would wave through games with nazi symbolism like the newer Wolfenstein titles, however publishers don't want to take the chances of having to reapply for rating and simply already submit a censored version before it even hits their desks.
In some situations it is just more practical to leave things vague and deal with the facts on a case by case basis once the need arises instead of trying forever - and probably failing - to come up with an airtight definitions covering each and every edge case.
There absolutely is a problem with these sorts of laws.
For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscenity.
Algolia says: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13039422#13043027
Here is the full text of the law in question: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/netzdg/BJNR335210017.html (and here is a legally non-binding English translation: https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Gesetzgebungsverfahren/Dokume... )
§ 1(3) contains the exhaustive list of crimes I mentioned above.
Reading the translation I have a couple questions. Is the same punishment given whether it is "hate" or "violence"? (I assume not)
What is Germany's definition of "hate"? Is it just up to the court to decide if something is considered hate?
For example, I have never heard of someone being convicted of "Volksverhetzung" (demagogery, incitement of the masses) just because they were homophobic. Its when they incite other people is when that paragraph is applied.
So the intention of the law is to protect the victims of the violence before the public incitation can reach a point where they become victims. Because that's what happened during the Third Reich in Germany on a large scale (and it's still happening everywhere on the world).
In other words, your personal freedom (of free spech) ends where it starts to violate the personal freedom of other people (bodily harm via a third party). That's different from the American view, which somehow has glorified free spech as an absolute virtue, and doesn't care about negative consequences.
So this law is not about violence at all (which is also punishable, by other, very different laws). This law is about public behaviour. And if a case comes before a court, the court won't have to define "hate", the court will have to decide "is this public behaviour which can serve as incitation to violence against others". And in a case like "seven people were beat to death in India after a false viral message on Faceback", it's probably pretty easy to decide. In other cases, it will be harder, but that's what courts are for.
And a big problem of course is that the internet is blurring the distinction between public and private: Before the internet, you'd need to print and distribute flyers, or manage to get an article in a newspaper, or book a slot on TV. That's costly and not open for everyone. Now, you can just write a message on Facebook at no cost at all, and millions can read it.
The law has to catch up with this problem somehow, to protect the victims. In what way the law needs to be modified to deal with it remains to be seen; but it should be obvious by now that the big actors like Facebook have no interest in dealing with this problem on their own, without prodding.
FB ususally reports DAU/MAU (daily active users, weekly active users). That means, if you remove 500 million of not active users (not using facebook last month), these numbers are not affected. I don't think this would explain the majority of 500M number.
Most of the 584 million removed fake accounts were most likely created in the same period (and most of them were removed quickly after registration -- as said in the FB report). So they didn't decimate their user base, but additional 500M accounts that were deleted (so they shouldn't affect the user growth). This assumes vast majority of active fake accounts will be blocked.
It will become nearly impossible to form a new global social network as these rules come into being. No other entities will be capable of dealing with it, you'll have to have vast resources to do it. It won't be about paid vs ad supported approaches, that doesn't matter for that purpose: the localized compliance will go far beyond privacy (that is merely one issue on a long list of compliance requirements that will exist in the future, it'll be as complex and varied as cultures and government systems are).
Microsoft hosts for example in Ireland (part of the EU), but is an American company.
A subreddit has its own moderators and rules, but has to also adhere the global Reddit policy.
FOSS is developed by people all over the world.
One solution is to lay low and be low profile. For example, an invite-only system, or E2EE. Another is to host in a more liberal country. But if the website is in Russian, it is assumed that its being served for Russians (people in Russia).
"I found that, contrary to what most people think, Weimar Germany did have hate-speech laws, and they were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is, of course, irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech and Nazi propaganda had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served two prison sentences. Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate. In the years from 1923 to 1933, Der Stürmer [Streicher's newspaper] was either confiscated or editors taken to court on no fewer than thirty-six occasions. The more charges Streicher faced, the greater became the admiration of his supporters. The courts became an important platform for Streicher's campaign against the Jews. In the words of a present-day civil-rights campaigner, pre-Hitler Germany had laws very much like the anti-hate laws of today, and they were enforced with some vigor. As history so painfully testifies, this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it."
Fascism must be met at all time with hard, Swift and decisive opposition, violent if necessary. There must be no tolerance for ideologies built on intolerance.
And no, you obviously shouldn't attack people for "wrongthink". You have to attack them for acts, not for thoughts. Standing up in public and calling for violence and persecution against people is an act, not a thought.
I don't understand why our reaction to that should be also violent, why cannot we, as you write, "swiftly and decisively", collectively ignore that act.
On one hand, you deny that society has moral agency, because you think that this is not an alternative. On the other hand, you want the society to act, as if it had a moral agency. So which is it?
If we do not act and do not speak out against them or even attack them, we are tacitly saying "well, they might have a point", and that leads to unacceptable acceptance of intolerant acts.
Not to godwin this, but historical parallels for your approach here do point very much at Germany.
However, freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. If you make public speeches calling for the violent persecution of immigrants, there will be consequences for you. Yes, even in the US.
Another one of the most important aspect of the free society is the rule of law. Not vigilante justice.
Unfortunately it very often is susceptible to political and economic influences. And the courts are not in the streets, where the attacks happen. Far too often the police turn a blind eye to right wing incitement and violence (due to a large number of sympathizers in the police), so sometimes direct action is the only way to show fascists and other hatemongers the error of their ways.
Unfortunately, the actual history shows that doesn't show them the error, but is more likely to increase the resentment and resistance.
And why such a discrimination of communists, who are far more deadly and dangerous than any "fascist" (your Soviet terminology is showing; surely you mean nazis of different stripes, not comparatively vegetarian Italians).
Fascists are a very real problem today. Communists are not.
Arguably, communists are a greater problem than fringe nazi groups exactly because while being a nazi is not acceptable in a decent company, being a communist unfortunately is despite all historical evidence of their dangerousness.
But you are still avoiding the key question -- are you taking it upon yourself to determine who is a "fascist" to suffer consequences, and who is not?
What do you mean by "lead"? Do you consider the people who cause such violence as being not responsible for their own actions?
Let's take an example. A person A says that there should be violence against person C. Then, person B commits violence against person C.
I totally agree that society should persecute person B, but I don't see why persecute (with violence) the person A. Person B is morally responsible for their own action (we don't absolve people of murder even if someone suggests to them that they should murder someone). And I also agree that we should speak out against A's suggestion of violence.
So you can see, I am not advocating tacit tolerance of any intolerant acts, and yet disagree with your suggestion of persecution of person A (actually, not in all situations, but I disagree with it in general).
Also, if a person directly calls to action against specific groups (eg. "we must throw out all immigrants right now! The police and courts are useless, we have to act!"), that should also be dealt with, rather harshly.
Like I've said before, freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. You can say exactly what you want, and neither the government nor anyone else can legally stop you from doing so. But they can very much hold you accountable for the consequences of what you say, and the manner in which you said it (eg. publicly, to a large crowd of angry people).
If person A commanded (or otherwise extorted) person B to act, then it's a different situation. And it's already covered in laws against threatening and extortion.
I am asking about situation where person B can, with reason, and on their own will, ignore the pleading of person A for violence. Or what if there is no person B? Should we punish person A regardless?
"Like I've said before, freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences."
I strongly disagree, and I think it's misunderstanding of concept of free speech. The act of speech must be without consequence, if it's to be free.
People often give an example of somebody saying something to their employer and the employer firing them for that. This is a limitation of free speech.
Before making that argument, you should consider that in the communist regimes (such in Czech Republic), dissidents were often suppressed by being fired from their job. You're effectively saying that it was morally acceptable, and I disagree.
That is ideally for the courts to decide, whether A's utterances and calls for action can reasonably be said to have incited B's actions. Obviously B bears the primary responsibility, but A can also be culpable, especially if they have knowledge that their words are very likely to spur people like B into action.
>"The act of speech must be without consequence, if it's to be free."
No. Even in the US ("LAND OF THE FREE RAH RAH RAH HOME OF THE BRAVE U S A U S A U S A"), freedom of speech is not absolute. There are laws against libel and slander, for good reason.
If you walk up to your employer and call them a fascist limp-dicked low-paying money-grubbing shitstain, what do you think will happen? Do you think you'll just keep your job, keep working as if nothing happened? Do you think they'll just ignore that and act as if nothing had happened?
What if you do the same thing by posting it publicly on the internet or in a newspaper? Do you expect there to be no consequences?
In other words, freedom of speech means that you are free to express yourself, with no threat of censorship. It does not absolve you from responsibility for what you said. Stand by what you say, take responsibility.
It wouldn't apply to a site like HN, for instance.
If they would like to turn their back to an 80 million people market, sure. However, if this becomes the EU standard, it jumps up to a market of almost 500 million people. Hard to turn that down.
The problem starts if you go around in public, making hateful speeches that incite violence.
The court of public opinion is notoriously fickle. Rousing hate in the masses is not a reliable tactic, and often backfires.
This is amazing, it's like Charlottesville never happened and Bannon never had the president's ear.
Where?
>"Marxism is regarded as a movement to empower the oppressed."
Because it is. That is literally the entire point of Marxism.
Marxism != Communism.
I'm more towards AnCom myself, but Marxism makes some extremely valid points about the exploitation of labor.
They are even hiring former stasi people to do it.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/09/17/german-govt-hires...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_10_of_the_European_Con...
In practice he's right because eventually it will be used to silence valid criticism against the state.