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Comment by joshgel | Hacker News Reader

Do all Western democracies guarantee Freedom of Speech like in the US? I seem to remember reading this is actually a US-centric view that isn’t universally shared. Eg nazi slogans in present day Germany.

Do we actually need to guarantee universal Freedom of Speech to have a democracy?

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All Democracy's, including the United States, have limits on freedom of speech. Try publishing Harry Potter fanfiction in book stores in America and see what the court system does to you. Try showing female nipples on network television and see what the legal system does to you. Try sticking the Apple logo on your product without Apple's permission and see what the court system does to you.

Free speech= democracy isn't a very nuanced view.

The US does value freedom of speech greater than pretty much every other country on the planet.

Just because it’s not absolute doesn’t mean it’s not true.

> Try showing female nipples on network television

I think this is the US specific part :p.

The rest I all agree with

England has been pretty notoriously abridging the "right to offend" for years now. And as you point out, there's Germany.

> Do we actually need [FoS]?

It probably depends on how much you trust the government to be "self-regulated" in prioritizing the liberty of the people over time. Democracy is not the natural state of things by any means.

Rights and democracy are in conflict.

In a real democracy, the majority could decide to lock you up simply because they didn't like you.

In a rights-driven system, everything is ultimately decided by the courts, which are run by elites.

Confusingly, Bill-of-Rights "Freedom is Speech" is really a right rather than a freedom. You can brazenly violate the live-and-let-live principle and still be safe.

    Do we actually need to guarantee universal Freedom of Speech to have a democracy?

My view, no. If anything the Bill of Rights is the source of the rift that is pulling US democracy apart. Through the bill of rights, the judiciary became an unelected and unwieldy legislative body. US politics has been distilled into a vicious contest about who gets to make Supreme Court appointments. No other country has this dynamic.

Mostly what you need is sensible people that value democracy. That's all that's really required. If you have that the rest tends to work itself out, if you don't have that then nothing else matters.

In Germany, it is contextualized. You can show a swastika flag in a film or anything remotely educational but not to promote Nazi ideology. So, no, there is no absolute FoS in Germany.

Whether Germany can be ranked as a democracy is debated: the extreme left and right believe it is a US protectorate, QAnon believes it is run by lizard people/Jews/Freemasons/5G chips... If you go by a freedom of press index, human development index, democracy index, it usually ranks below the Scandinavian countries but in a decent place.

The usual paradox of tolerance applies: if you don't censor some speech, you might be the one who will have zero free speech.

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