Wait, is that illegal in Germany? Do Germans not have a right to free speechi
Which tells you something about how meaningless the discussion about whether a country explicitly grants this right or not is. Whether there's a piece of paper saying you have freedom of speech tells you nothing about whether you have de-facto freedom of speech.
"In accordance with the interests of the people and in order to strengthen and develop the socialist system, citizens of the USSR are guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly, meetings, street processions and demonstrations. Exercise of these political freedoms is ensured by putting public buildings, streets and squares at the disposal of the working people and their organisations, by broad dissemination of information, and by the opportunity to use the press, television, and radio."
[1] - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Soviet_Un...
The US has a fairly unique view on what constitutes "speech" and what forms of it should be protected and to what extent. In the case of Germany, Nazi propaganda is considered equivalent to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater for obvious historical reasons.
I guess having experienced a fascist dictatorship using carefully crafted speech as propaganda to control its population and erode "reservations" about literally murdering millions of people makes you look at "freeze peach" a bit differently from ... largely doing the same for centuries but getting away with it.
EDIT: I wonder whether I got rate-limited automatically because I mentioned the war or by a moderator. Either way, the fact that I got rate limited while arguing about the limits of free speech and policing seems kind of ironic.
It sure feels stupid to hear Americans complain about the free speech angle regarding Nazi speech and imagery in Germany, when they were the ones to force it upon Germany.
The Allies would certainly not have accepted a variant of the US Constitution as post-war Germany's constitution.
Thinking about it, can you name a single place where America has been "nation building" in the last 70 years that got something resembling the US Constitution? I can't.
No, but they do get US-style copyright and patent laws - the US isn't shy about exporting those. See e.g. Iraq order 81, which banned re-planting of licensed seeds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Orders
Nominally, this is to prevent the rise of another movement like the Nazis. But ironically, one of the first parties to be banned was one of the only two that had vigorously opposed the Nazis during their rise, the KPD. Nowadays, there are suspicions that the Verfassungsschutz is riddled with far-right sympathizers itself, given how it has handled several cases.
However the Verfassungsschutz has a terrible track record when it comes to investigating and preventing right-wing attacks e.g. against asylum seekers and immigrants. There have also been several cases of dubious use of informants (at one point it was joked that the far-right party NPD is entirely run by informants) and intentional destruction of records.
Also Verfassungsschutz members have publicly spoken out against the dangers of left-wing extremism while being dismissive about right-wing extremism, the most recent case being the person literally in charge of the organisation who insisted that a video showing a group of people attacking immigrants posted on Twitter was likely fraudulent despite several news outlets vouching for its authenticity and providing fairly exhaustive evidence from their fact checking departments.
On a side-note: in communal politics, the right-of-center "majority party" CDU just formed a coalition with the far-right AfD, which had previously been a taboo and was officially ruled out by the CDU party leadership. So the risk of far-right extremism being normalised is very present and very real right now.
In Germany glorifying and promoting Nazi-ism is simply considered equivalent to explicitly calling for and promoting the things Nazi-ism called for and promoted. Hence it is prohibited.
- "This building should be [unlawfully] burnt down." = legal
- "I've got gas and matches. Let's meet up today and [unlawfully] burn this building down. Who's with me?" = illegal
It is illegal in France and Germany to sell certain items.