Poll: Only 18 Percent of Germans Feel Free to Voice Views in Public (2019)
jonathanturley.org
jonathanturley.org
"Would you say that you are free to express your opinion in public or do you have to be careful with certain or many topics?" („Würden Sie sagen, man kann seine Meinung in der Öffentlichkeit frei äußern oder muss man bei einigen oder vielen Themen vorsichtig sein?“)
As a German, I believe that I am free to express my opinion, nevertheless I would say that there are obviously many topics of discussion where one has to be careful just because there is lots of potential to be misunderstood.
How am I supposed to answer this poll?
Would you call this nearly-perfect free-speech?
We were ranked at place 11 but were downranked cause of continous attacks on journalists.[1] But the people wo did this are those who cry loudly: "We have no freedom of speech". I even read in this thread "Germany is a totalitarian dystopia with no free speech"
Those people are so far away from reality. I am concerned they might never find back.
[1] https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/deutschland/panorama/pressefr...
Germany Raids Homes of 36 People Accused of Hateful Postings Over Social Media - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/world/europe/germany-36-a... (a few of the arrests were for threats and coercion, I'm sure you'll prefer to focus on those)
I'm serious, the comparison is so out of this world, but I keep hearing it.
Tell me anything that is politically incorrect that you could say in a bar that will get you tortured/executed/imprisoned.
I'm really not saying that this political correctness craze is any good and I'm pretty much on the it's too much in many cases side, but the degrees between getting bad looks and a discussion that gets heated.
Whenever I also have this argument, some people go nut picking and get me a couple of example where you could say that, I'm not even saying those don't exist, and they are terrible, it's just not even close to systematic and nothing to do with the Stasi times.
Also in regards to Germany, have you ever been there? I know it's anecdotal but people basically there just speak their minds, I've heard mall kinds of right wing politically incorrect stuff, on both sides.
In Germany you can't advocate for far-right organizations (or the German communist party!) because there has been .. trouble with that kind of thing in the past.
How does that work?
We have communist parties here but they almost get no votes ( DKP and MLPD)
KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands) — in East Germany, merged with SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) in 1946 to form SED. In West Germany, banned after 1956.
SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) - ruled East Germany until the democratic transition in 1989. Rebranded as PDS in 1990.
PDS (Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus) - Merged with the minor party WASG in 2007 to form Die Linke.
But the party changed over time and today it doesnt matter anymore. Same goes for die Linke in my opinion. The only thing that should count, are the targets of a party.
The obvious bias of this website is...obvious.
Often I don't feel free to express my views in the US, not because there are social consequences but because it is simply not a space where my opinion is useful or valid. E.g., I don't feel free to express my views publicly about other peoples parenting decisions.
The article posted here starts with an outcome and then takes a poorly written poll question as the sole piece of evidence to support its preformed conclusions.
The poll in no way supports the statement: "The view of Germans that they are living without free speech would be of little surprise. What is most disconcerting is that they seem to reconciled to living without this basic human right."
Even if the poll supported the first sentence, it doesn't even COME CLOSE to supporting the second one.
I think it is way more problematic how he intentionally misinterprets a survey of 1283 people to spread the constructs in his head.
It's not about agree or disagree...its just that if this is the best argumentation you can do for your point and hold that opinion in good faith, you should probably re-evaluate your point before you try and convince others of it.
> In appearances on Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The Rachel Maddow Show, he called for criminal prosecution of Bush administration officials for war crimes, including torture.[21]
> He has opined that the Supreme Court is injecting itself into partisan politics.[29] He frequently has expressed the view that recent nominees to the court hold extreme views.[30]
> Turley described U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in an op-ed as President Barack Obama's sin-eater, writing:
> “For Obama, there has been no better sin eater than Holder. When the president promised CIA employees early in his first term that they would not be investigated for torture, it was the attorney general who shielded officials from prosecution. When the Obama administration decided it would expand secret and warrantless surveillance, it was Holder who justified it. When the president wanted the authority to kill any American he deemed a threat without charge or trial, it was Holder who went public to announce the ‘kill list’ policy.”
I think it’s more accurate to say Turley is a libertarian-leaning liberal in a party that’s closed ranks around its statist wing and thrown its libertarians completely under the bus. (And I say that as a statist who didn’t agree with Turley back then!)
I'm not sure I remember any time during my adult life where the Democratic party had a libertarian wing. I'm curious what you think are examples of libertarian Democrats. People like Feingold and Wyden get cited here because they're ardent about conventionally-construed civil liberties, but that's just a small part of what a libertarian is.
I recall a pretty strong civil libertarian wing among democrats during the Bush era. I’d say Howard Dean at least had some libertarian tendencies, such as supporting gun rights.
For those who can’t read the German version: it’s the latter.
Unfortunately there is no way to distinguish these two in English other than using the somewhat dated pronoun “one”. It usually doesn’t cause any confusion but I think in this particular case, the answer is different depending on the meaning. I might feel safe to say my opinions, because I don’t believe anything particularly controversial, but still think “one” might need to be careful depending on the particular content of “one”‘s views.
The only reasonable explanation is the poll is done on a very private or paranoid group
Heresy - questioning the orthodoxy of today's doctrines - carries a high punishment these days.
This is false, even if we limit ourselves to only legal danger. If you say something to two people, and one of them repeats your words to the police, the police can easily ask the second person for confirmation. Add a few vague "lying to the police is very serious" threats, and there's a good chance the second person will betray you.
I wrote in another comment [1] why people might be wary about voicing their opinions, TL;DR: polarizing topics with staunch opinions from both sides (and about the other side) would lead to heated debates.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allensbach_Institute
[2]: https://www.ifd-allensbach.de/fileadmin/user_upload/FAZ_Mai2...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurter_Allgemeine_Zeitung
[4]: https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/allensbach-umfrag...
The survey question and results itself, page 24 for this 18% figure: https://www.ifd-allensbach.de/fileadmin/user_upload/FAZ_Mai2...
Google translation of the question: "Would you say one can freely express one's opinion on anything in public, or does one have to be careful about some or many topics?"
The German summary linked from his blog says "The rude forms of argument are given as the reason for this low value.".
The survey doesn't even ask how the people lean, and I know during the refugee crisis, even pro-refugee people are wary of discussing that topic, because somebody at the next table in the bar (or sitting opposite you in your own kitchen) could have a different opinion and everybody was very firm in their belief, leading to heated debates. The observation was, "Flüchtlinge" ("refugees") was the new F-word.
In fact the last 18 months have seen weekly protests professing a host of views that I had considered extinct.
…and, of course, HN eats it up.
Views that you could 'feel' not free to express could include:
- Stating facts about their political opponents
- Expressing their acceptance of NAMBLA
- Enjoying pineapple on pizza
You can't reduce your argument to a single decontextualized question about how people feel in general. Show me some qualitative data on how people, in German, interpret that question and then we can talk about how badly the article abuses that one poll question.
1) There is a “long tail” to controversial ideas, and while each idea may be held by a small number of individuals, holding at least one such idea is common across the population had a whole.
2) There are widely held ideas that the public nonetheless feels uncomfortable talking about.
In the first case, that suggests that society had more than just a handful of ideas (like Holocaust denial or support for pedophilia) that are deemed beyond public discussion. In the second case, that suggests suppression of views held by the majority. Either way that’s a pretty telling statistic.
This entire effort is a bald faced exercise in laundering right wing ideology as uncriticizable, and speech by those outside of the right as some form of 'not speech' when it is critical of the ideas.
Being uncomfortable talking about something is not prima facia evidence you are being silenced, it is only evidence that you are being silent. You aren't entitled, and have no right, to be comfortable when you share controversial ideas. This is why there isn't a difference between your 1 and 2. 2 does not suggest suppression. 2 could just as easily suggest growth of a society or a cultural characteristic that someone from the US misunderstands.
I don’t know about the German perspective, but in the U.S. folks spent a lot of time not only making legal space for controversial ideas, but making cultural space for them. You may not have a “right” to be comfortable sharing controversial ideas, but a society where people feel free to do so is arguably better than one where people don’t.
He cites one Survey of 1283 people and thinks he can deduce the consequences of european hate-speech-laws from that. Despite the fact that I doubt that this small poll is representative, his assumptions are completly wrong.
What the by him cited article implies is that people are carefull with their opinion not because of laws but because of potential backslash from other people. Many people avoid controverse opinions because they want to avoid arguments. And the way the german question is written, this kind of avoidance is included. This has nothing to do with german laws.
If I read "I have long been a critic of the German laws prohibiting certain symbols and phrases" I am disgusted. Prohibiting the Swastika is part of historical responsibility we have as a society. That has nothing to do with free speech and the fact that turley implies that says alot about his mindset.
Luckily saying "Put all Jews in gas chambers" is not considered free speech here. We have to prevent on all means that history repeats itself. And the paradox of intolerance[1] is an important part of that.
https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/4_an/4_Anti-Semitis...
To be sure, courts are meant to handle individual or corporate matters, and not ideal or even effective in the maintenance of polities. But it is a mistake to compare the Weimer-era standards with current hate speech laws in Europe since theya re separated by the facts of WW2 and the Holocaust.
I've already been stalked and "screamed" at online because of an offhand comment I made on a political article once.
I'm fine with being insulted or yelled at for my views. But if someone physically attacks me for my views, that means something has gone very, very wrong with society.
As somebody else noted, this seems to be a "poll" that was trying to push a certain agenda.
There is indeed a growing number of people that understand right to "free speech" as the right to utter anything without anybody being allowed to question their statement. If you question their statement, they claim you are violation their right on "free speech".
And an even more concerning group are people that utter "opinions" that are relevant due to legal reasons. E.g. claiming the holocaust did not happen, glorifying murder and prosecution of minorities, calling to murder certain people ... These people also cry out loud about how their "free speech" is limited by the evil green leftwing (which it isn't) government ...
> German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a major concession to Europe's populist movement this week when she admitted the existence of so-called “no-go zones” in Germany.
> Despite evidence of the existence of areas in Western countries, European leaders and left-wing media commentators have long denied, and sometimes even mocked, those who claim that no-go zones exist.
> “It means for example that there cannot be any no-go areas, that there cannot be areas where no-one dares to go but there are such places,” she said. “One has to call them by name and do something about it.”
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
― George Orwell, 1984