Germany raided 83 homes in coordinated raids against online hate speech
pressfrom.info
pressfrom.info
P.S. I didn't know there are so many censorships fans on HN!
Hysterical bullshit. Heterosexual white male is still the easiest setting on which to play the game of life.
I'm not downplaying your troubles in life. Sure sounds tough. But with limited resources, we have to pick where to concentrate the efforts.
Is this the official, government endorsed, swatting?
The most comprehensive survey on various freedoms in the World that I know of ranks Germany at 94, ahead of France at 90 and the US at 86. (100 is the perfect score)
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2018-table-cou...
Freedom of speech is also a guaranteed right in the German constitution, as it is in the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
In every jurisdiction there are limits to the freedom of speech. This applies to the US as well as everywhere else:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech#cite_note-3
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20080705115024/http://www2.ohchr...
Which might help explain what is considered hate speech. These discussions tend to devolve (as all good online discussions do) into the nuance and what-about's. It's the role of the courts to determine that, and it's an ever-evolving collection of legal precedent as a result.
"Mutual exchange of insults
If an insult is immediately reciprocated, the court may declare one or both of the persons involved in the exchange of insults not to be liable to punishment."
Then put selective enforcement on top and you have a very powerful weapon that gets great PR ("against hate").
So you can’t get prosecuted for disliking someone (and saying so) but you can for saying insulting or untrue (e.g. holocaust denial) things - those are not opinions.
We would really need to see examples of what the hate speech actually is that caused these people to get raided. Was it that the earth is flat? Was it that they believe Angela Merkel is incompetent? Was it that they want all Syrians and Jews to be rounded up and murdered?
https://www.jta.org/2020/09/03/opinion/former-aclu-president...
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-v...
"Contrary to what most people think, Germany did have hate-speech laws that were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti-Jewish sentiment is irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti-Semitic speech had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis, including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher, were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. And rather than deterring them, the many court cases served as effective public relations machinery for the Nazis, affording them a level of attention that they never would have received in a climate of a free and open debate."
Merely describing it as "stuff we don't like" is either inaccurate or reductionist, in the same way murder could be described as "actions we don't like", or a threatening letter is "some scribbles we don't like", or child pornography is "some movies we don't like".
The German law may be vague (I don't know), but the bar seems to be higher than "stuff we don't like".
Whether it should be censored is a good question, but it does nobody any good to be reductionist about the content of the speech.
Let's say somebody has a sensetive finger, and breaking it causes extreme pain, according to that person. Assuming something like the eggshell skull rule still holds, should we dismiss his complaint or treat it as lesser because his pain is 'subjective'?
All harms are subjective, and not all actions result in equal harm to the victim. A concert pianist is arguably harmed more by having his fingers broken than an English teacher is. A professor once said he'd rather someone break his leg instead of a student falsely accuse him of sexual assault.
And I‘m not just talking about Hitler and the Holocaust. Elected representatives of the people, from village mayors to members of parliament, are giving up their office because they can no longer bear the barrage of abuse and intimidation thrown at them. What starts online doesn‘t stay online. The current mayor of Cologne was stabbed the night before her election, a top Hessian state official shot dead in his own garden.
Democracy cannot survive indefinitely under an atmosphere of fear and hatred. If you want more examples, look at the end of the Roman republic, the Weimar republic, the pre-Civil-War United States. Free speech is a precious right. But if you abuse this right to undermine the very democracy that gives it to you, you have thereby forfeited it.
> Free speech is a precious right. But if you abuse this right to undermine the very democracy that gives it to you, you have thereby forfeited it.
also, what? we can debate the value of free speech, but it doesn't seem like much of a right if it can be lost so easily.
Fair point. What I was thinking of was the general decline of respect for the (semi-democratic) republican system of governance. The Republic crumbled when politicians stopped using the „constitutional“ means of settling differences and turned to gangs of thugs instead. So I wasn‘t so much thinking of „hate speech“ as of „anti-democratic speech“.
A core criterium of German law is loyalty to the constitution. A number of political rights (the right to free speech, the right to form a political party, the right to hold public office or be employed by the government) are predicated upon the citizen‘s constitutional loyalty, his/her upholding of our democratic values. The idea is that our democracy does not want to aid its enemies in its own destruction, as was partly the case in Weimar.
> it doesn't seem like much of a right if it can be lost so easily
Multiple US states refuse ex-convicts the right to vote. Talking about convicts: prison sentences are nothing but the government stripping you of your right to free movement. Capital punishment is you being denied the right to life. You may object to all three of these forms of punishment, but the fact remains that all countries restrict peoples‘ rights in some way or another. (What constitutes just cause for such a restriction of rights is a fascinating and tough question, but one I unfortunately cannot answer...)
why did Hitler appear in the first place? was it because thats just how germans are...or was there some other reason?
Because they didn't have laws against hate speech, of course.
Oh wait... they did:
https://www.jta.org/2020/09/03/opinion/former-aclu-president...
>There were dozens of prosecutions, including successful prosecutions, against Nazis — including Julius Streicher, the publisher of Der Sturmer. And it just became a propaganda platform for the Nazis. It got all kinds of attention they otherwise would not have received, and sympathy they otherwise would not have received.
[0]: https://polizei.news/2020/11/03/aktionstag-gegen-hassposting...
BTW, to evaluate ideologies based on counting the dead in conflicts between powers, or on number of victims in famines that occur because of failed policies implies ideological and historical ignorance, despite the popularity of such blame games on social media. But it shows that people are getting fed up with all the killing at least.
Case in point, you had a question which you couldn't answer through that method. I gave you an explanation that explains the need for another method (study of the historical events in their context); you came back insisting that history should bend to your will. You might be surprised to learn that doesn't work like that, eventually.
"Whoever domestically disseminates or produces ... the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization ... shall be punished ..."
It is illegal to sell swastika stickers in Germany even if you don't engage in any propaganda.
You would need to have clear context that critizes the prohibited parties (e.g. swastika thrown into a trash can).