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Comment by illuminerdy | Hacker News Reader

> "Together with the fundamental liberties of speech, association, and religion, the Basic Law confers a general right to “personal freedom” as well as a more specific right to “life and physical integrity."

Germany has too many curbs on freedom of speech for me to consider it a real liberty. Holocaust denial laws are a particularly obvious infringement of speech rights.

Most of Europe is the same way. I just watched a video of police in England telling a reporter who was having a conversation with a LGBT activist that they would arrest him if he continued to insult the activist.

That's not free speech.

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Ahah yes the check notes unalienable right to spread hatred against jews. clearly mankind's most cherish liberty.

Free speech must include the things people do not want you to say.

If it only includes the things people would be ok with you saying, there would be no need to protect it as a right.

> If it only includes the things people would be ok with you saying, there would be no need to protect it as a right.

We have freedom of speech protected as a right to allow speech against government and oppressive institutions. Not to protect you from spending the night in jail because you decided to use your speech to hurl insults at your neighbor for 6 hours straight to disturb a barbecue party you feel they should have asked you permission to hold.

Speech is not just hollow wind, speech is actions, and some actions we protect.

You have freedom of movement, but you still get arrested if you trespass. You have freedom to own a gun and shoot it at animals, but if you shoot ar humans for sport you end up facing consequences.

Somehow for almost all other freedoms we have, everyone understand that their are limitations, but as soon as the subject falls on speech everyone acts like a 6 year old kid going “ok, so I can say anything without consequence!?! Mom is a whore and Dad is a drunk!” And then whine about their speech not being free because it has consequences when they go to bed without dinner.

Yes, there is indeed a difference between freedom of speech and other freedoms.

I don't think there's any society in history that has not allowed more freedom in speech then in action.

Kindergarten kids are taught that "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me".

Parents ask their children who was the first to use violence in a fight, and ignore attempts to explain that the violence was provoked with an insult.

> I don't think there's any society in history that has not allowed more freedom in speech then in action.

Speech is action. Therefore axiomatically every society has always allowed more freedom in action than in speech because speech in being action is a subset of actions. You may be thinking about the difference between taking about a thing and doing the thing mentioned, and there there are obviously any cases where speaking about it is allowed but doing it isn’t, but that doesn’t mean you are more free in speech than in action, imagine how foolish that ends up sounding in Comparison between freedom of ownership and speech. “I am free to say that I own my butler but I am not free to actually own him, this shows I am more free in speech than i am in ownership!”

> Kindergarten kids are taught that "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me".

Is a lie repeatedly told to children yes. And kids are taught to be nice otherwise the magical chimney man won’t give them gifts. The saying is obviously wrong to anyone who’s no longer a kid. Word can cause very real long term psychological trauma. The reason parents tell their kids this saying to get them to ignore the very real pains they feel when bullied ignored or neglected. That’s just bad parenting, and doesn’t really have any relevance in a discussion about freedom of speech.

> Free speech must include the things people do not want you to say. Says who? I understand the core principles of absolute free speech. I just don't agree. This is a very absolutist (and americano-centered) view of what liberties encompass.

Same goes for political activity. Some political organizations should be prohibited. And I dont see any issue knowing islamists or skinheads are excluded from parliement and prosecuted after intimidating opposition through violence.

Besides keep in mind, for most of those things, the legal hurdles are very high. Your voting rights cant be stripped away for small offenses.

> "Some political organizations should be prohibited."

And who gets to decide which ones are prohibited and the standards used? Because some people think Antifa should be prohibited while others think it's a necessary organization that is fighting the good fight. Some people think Christian organizations that reject homosexuality and gay marriage should be banned while others think they are doing God's work.

Thats why it's necessary to protect all viewpoints when talking about speech. Because your opinion is not the only valid one.

> And who gets to decide which ones are prohibited and the standards used?

In Germany's case, a bench of Constitutional judges, after Guardians of the Constitution informed the parliament that they will prosecute an organization deemed a threat to a free and democratic society. So again, a proper independent judicial instance whose mission is to examinate evidences and make a choice after a fair trial.

Regarding Antifa its more complicated for there is decision-making is distributed. There is no proper leader or leading-commitee, just a bunch of folks working together (and sometimes using dubious means), pretty much like Anonymous.

Also no, wishing a ethnical cleansing is no regular opinion. We aren't debating about budget or public service, but of literal state-sanctioned genocide.

> "So again, a proper independent judicial instance whose mission is to examinate evidences and make a choice after a fair trial."

So if an "independent judicial instance" decided that you or your organization should not be allowed to criticize an election result or election process because doing so would be "a threat to a free and democratic society", you would accept that?

> Says who? I understand the core principles of absolute free speech. I just don't agree. This is a very absolutist (and americano-centered) view of what liberties encompass.

It should be obvious, but the people in power will not want you to say bad things about them. If given the power to prevent that, of course they will. (and they'll say that "politician X was found in bed with a dead hooker" is libel, regardless of the facts)

> Some political organizations should be prohibited.

But which ones? Just genocidal ones? Do communists count? How far do philosophies need to differ before a party is allowed again, and who (besides the individual voter) should be the one to choose?

"They're totally just lying about their beliefs" can be both true and not an acceptable reason IMO.

> prosecuted after intimidating opposition through violence.

Then BAN INTIMIDATING OPPOSITION WITH VIOLENCE. Ban ALL of it. But "these words are violence, this violence is just protest" isn't ok.

> Your voting rights cant be stripped away for small offenses.

Only being able to vote for people with governmentally approved opinions is itself a removal of voting rights. This should obviously be true for the limit case (only one candidate), but it's a spectrum.

> Do communists count?

well yeah? In Germany, violent Marxist-Leninists have been prohibited, disbanded and expropriated. So why not ? Today they are allowed again in some Länder, for they dont use violence anymore nor threaten democracy as a whole. So yeah?

Germans had the experience of that speech at least being partially responsible for more that ten million people being murdered by the German state.

Of course speech wasn’t the only factor (far from it) but virulent antisemitism didn’t just suddenly appear fully formed.

If you agree that speech is powerful and important then you necessarily should also agree that speech can be harmful. As such it should be easy for you to understand that rational people can conclude that unlimited free speech is not a necessary component of liberty.

It can't exclude things merely because people (or the government) don't like to hear them. But it absolutely doesn't follow that it must therefore include everything someone could say. And it doesn't. The US knows many exceptions to Freedom of Speech.

> In the defamation case Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974), the Supreme Court said that there is "no constitutional value in false statements of fact".

Somehow the "free speech absolutists" always show up when it's about the Holocaust, yet the comment sections of defamation trials are not littered with their opinions...

Speech has consequences. Often indirect, sometimes quite direct. As such, maximising the liberty of the largest number of people is fundamentally incompatible with protecting all speech equally.

Popper's Paradox of Tolerance [1] is a more direct expression of this:

> The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.

Sometimes, that intolerance of intolerance can be sufficiently dealt with by society merely expressing disagreement, but if the intolerance expressed involves direct abuse and threats, for example, by people undeterred by their opponent merely countering their speech with speech, the only non-violent means of preventing the harm, including limiting the liberty of the victims, may be through the application of legal restrictions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

That's complete and utter nonsense.

Being "intolerant of the intolerant"? Does that include your own intolerance?

People are completely within their rights to be intolerant. Nothing gives you or the government the right to decide who/what I should like or want to associate with. Nothing gives you the right to persecute me for wrongthink.

People are completely within their rights to be intolerant up to the point where their intolerance does harm to others.

The preservation of liberty gives us all a right, and many would say an obligation, to persecute you when what you engage in puts others at severe danger of being stripped of liberty, or, worse, of life.

Not even the US allows unfettered speech for that reason, even as much as it goes further than most places in allowing harm to others.

> "People are completely within their rights to be intolerant up to the point where their intolerance does harm to others."

We're talking about speech. Speech is not "harm". Nobody cares about your hurt feelings.

The limitations on speech in the U.S. occur when the speech directly results in ACTUAL harm (again, not just hurt feelings). That's why the U.S. has the most expansive speech protection of any country in the world. I can deny the Holocaust as much as I want. I can call mock "trans" people as much as I want. Because, again, your hurt feelings don't matter when you're talking about protecting speech.

So you agree speech can cause actual harm, in other words, and hence the disagreement is only over where the line goes with respect to actual harm.

Germany has drawn in by considering the risk posed of another authoritarian regime as an unacceptable actual harm of allowing certain kinds of extremist speech, other countries consider the reduced feeling of safety and security or mental health consequences of harassment and abuse to be actual harm.

The US de facto considers things like many forms of defamation or false claims to be actual harm given that it renders a free speech defence moot in many circumstances, so it is clear that even in the US this actual harm does not need to be physical or direct.

I don't necessarily think Germany has gotten the balance right, but it's incredibly arrogant to think the US interpretation of harm is the only reasonable one.

You don't get it.

The stuff you find abhorrent is THE WHOLE POINT of protecting freedom of speech. Things that nobody finds objectionable (if there is such a thing) don't need to be protected.

In the US you can't claim free speech if you yell "fire" in a full theater. In Germany you also can't claim free speech if you yell "kill all the jews" on a street corner. I'm not sure those are that different. They are both about the right to physical integrity winning out over the right to free speech once the latter threatens the former.

With insults it's important to note that European constitutions commonly protect not just physical integrity, but also dignity or honour. You again have to balance which right weights more. England goes a bit too far in my opinion. In Germany insulting someone is also technically illegal and can get you up to one year in prison, but in reality, results in nothing at all or a 3-4 digit fine (German courts are quite reasonable, most of the time).

Note that the “shouting fire in a crowded theatre” argument comes from an overturned 1919 Supreme Court case which held that the federal government could ban the distribution of anti-draft pamphlets during WW1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_t...

And that Supreme Court decision was overturned later in Brandenburg v Ohio.

Speech is substantially more restricted in Germany. The US only bans immediate incitement to violence (that is, contrary to the folk belief, yelling “fire” in a crowded theater is ok). Whereas in Germany certain symbols such as the swastika may not be displayed.

If you honestly believe the theater to be on fire, you absolutely have the right to shout “fire” in a crowded theater.

> That's not free speech.

Do you also believe that it impedes on your free speech when you boss decides to fire you after you repeatedly call them racial slurs?

Freedom of speech does not mean “freedom from consequences”

And ofcause there will be consequences if your using hate speech and insults to harass minorities at demonstrations.

> Freedom of speech does not mean “freedom from consequences”

Not even freedom from the consequence of going to prison for your speech?

If I were to judge US liberty by the videos of cops I have seen...

In the US you can be sued if you lie and your lie causes economic damage. E.g. if you claim that voting machines are unsafe despite knowing that the evidence says otherwise, you get sued.

In Germany if you lie about the Holocaust, a lie that damages the fundamental right to human dignity, you can get sued.

In other words any country has limits to free speech. There is a whole article on Wikipedia just about this.

Yet comments like yours always pretend like Germany/Europe doesn't have free speech, without engaging with the genuine complexity of the topic. Yes Germany and the US draw the limits of free expression differently. If you have an argument why Germanys lines are worse than the US' lines bring it.

Merely claiming that Germany does not have "real liberty" is... not it.

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From Wikipedia:

> In the defamation case Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974), the Supreme Court said that there is "no constitutional value in false statements of fact".[11] However, this is not a concrete rule as the Court has struggled with how much of the "speech that matters" can be put at risk in order to punish a falsehood.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_ex...

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Freedom score from Freedom House:

https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores

Germany 94 UK 93 USA 83

(This score reflects a far broader notion of rights, freedoms and liberties than just speech)

Meanwhile the US definition also leaves much to be desired...

The U.S. recognizes 17 exclusions to freedom of speech.

The German law recognizes a concept called "streitbare Demokratie" (self-defence of Democracy) that puts restrictions to undemocratic movements. It's a legal solution to Popper's paradox of tolerance.

Freedom of speech in liberal democracies can be summarized as follows:

1. There is general freedom of speech and expression.

2. Any exception must be codified in the law.

You're exactly right: it's not free speach. It's freedom of opinion. The Grundgesetz stipulates that you can walk up to Angela Merkel and tell her that her policies screwed up the nation without her being able to put you in prison. But denying that the Holocaust happened is an outright lie and has nothing to do with speaking truth to power.

It might be a lie in the objective sense, but it is certainly possible to imagine Holocaust-deniers whose belief that the Jews screwed up the country is just as genuine as the person who thinks that of Merkel. There is a long side discussion about how many such people there are, of course. But that gets into pragmatics.

Oppositely, I think our collective epistemic certainty that the earth is round is even higher than our (already very certain belief) that the Holocaust happened. Yet few people think that the government should prevent people from saying this.

Personally, I believe freedom of speech is a false goal. I'm 100% OK with governments restricting speech because it helps the population flourish. But it's a false frame to just make the question a matter of "truth".

Personally, I'm mostly in favor of them, but I think there can be a strong case that Holocaust denial laws are bad for society.

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