As a Brit, I'm embarrassed. These politicians are LARPing and haven't learned the most important political lesson of the last 100 years - that restrictions on speech are dangerous.
So it seems popular among the EU people too, even among the more sophisticated HN crowd.
I wouldn't call it censorship either. No symbol or idea is being repressed. You can learn about the lies of Holocaust deniers. About the symbols, and so on. Youre "just" not supposed to go out there and recruit people with those tools.
The discussion and misunderstanding OP has seen here comes from the fact that the "radical" free speech laws in the US set no borders on spreading this kind of propaganda. The results are very visible these days in the US and I'm happy they're not in Germany (at least not in a relevant way).
This from a foreigner who has been living in Germany for longer.
In Germany it is straight up illegal to display nazi symbols, do their salute, or even advocate their beliefs, isn't it? I was told as much by quite a few Germans at least.
That said, my problem with the censorship approach is that these groups appeal to actual problems within society and individuals, and by censoring them, none of that goes away. If anything, I think they just get pushed underground and the real issues that allow them to successfully recruit are still there, and they just do it quietly, which is why the local motorcycle club is full of fucking nazis, like it or not. The only way to stop these groups is to remove the fuel, which implies making changes to society itself to reduce the number of people who are in poor circumstances and might find a voice telling them it is the immigrants/jews/brown people who are to blame for their personal sense of injustice. Officially censoring also gives an anti-establishment sheen to them that definitely appeals to some.
You can display them for educational or artistic reasons for example. This is not a religious law. It's forbidden to walk around randomly with a swastika on your T-Shirt or recruit people under your new fascist party which has a swastika as a logo for example.
> That said, my problem with the censorship approach is that these groups appeal to actual problems within society and individuals, and by censoring them, none of that goes away.
Those groups have enough other ways to display their affiliation and intentions. Nobody here has a problem distinguishing those since the education on those topics is quite thorough. Which goes for your second argument on how to fix it. I doubt there is a country on this planet which schools their children more clearly on this topic but there will always be that bottom parts of society which will still go there. They follow the myths and do have those "forbidden materials". However they do also have a problem coming along. It's illegal. They can't spread it openly and promote it this way. It works quite well.
> Officially censoring also gives an anti-establishment sheen to them that definitely appeals to some.
They don't need a picture of a swastika to justify that story.
I think the misunderstanding here comes again from this "free speech" doctrine which doesn't allow for self thinking. Everything is 1 or 0 because otherwise it would be too complicated. But it can work different. It works in Germany at least.
How is that different from communism being illegal in the US?
At least Germans banned Nazism which was born in Germany and wrote one of the worst pages of modern history, same reason why in Italy the fascist party is illegal and cannot be recreated.
Both have creates societies were violence is an order of magnitude less prominent than in the US and society tries to help those in need, more than those with deep pockets.
Maybe educating people to avoid totally nihilistic and destructive ideas works...
What's the excuse USA found to ban communism, which never actually rose to power there?
Imagine a country where you can be a Nazi, praise Hitler, say that there's good in him and that you love the Jews but also Nazis, but can't stand for workers rights and support the class struggle.
How dare they to even think about it?
Also: remember when to export encryption freely the World had only one option: avoid USA? GPG was possible only because a German free software developer (Werner Koch) created and maintained it, if it was for US laws, nobody else could use it. If that's their idea of freedom, I'd rather stay on the Germans side.
Communism isn’t illegal in the US.
It's not censorship, it's SOCIAL PROGRESS, something the USA seem to have abandoned long time ago.
Neo nazis also won some local election in Germany, of course not as the official "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei"
Proving that there is much more freedom of expression in Germany than in USA, where a communist party existed, has been outlawed, people have been persecuted, arrested and killed, for being a member, long after the war ended ensuring that their ideas would disappear from the public discourse.
It's easy to claim comolete freedom when you kill ideas you don't like in the crib. And with the ideas usually the US also kill the people...
If you talk to an average american, they still believe that socialism is a crime and communism killed 100 million people (myth debunked hundreds of times)
How free!
You can't understand the kind of freedom we experience in the old continent, the same way a lion born and raised in a cage cannot understand the savana.
You don't understand that we all think that banning Nazi symbols and ideas is a good thing, we wouldn't feel more free if they could show them at will, we would think we are descending into madness and that we are all in danger. Because it's how those things work, the more they are free to spread, the more they are picked up. We've seen nazi flags in the US recently and it scared us all here. Also it disgusted us. We collectively think that some things are better relegated to history, like the death penalty, slavery, segregation, racism and of course fascism and nazism.
Again, that's not censorship.
At least in Germany you can drive around knowing that police officers won't shoot you for speeding [1]
And of course USA don't want to ban Nazism under the pretense of "freedom" [2]
The Communist Control Act of 1954 (68 Stat. 775, 50 U.S.C. §§ 841–844) is an American law signed by President Dwight Eisenhower on August 24, 1954, that outlaws the Communist Party of the United States and criminalizes membership in or support for the party or "Communist-action" organizations and defines evidence to be considered by a jury in determining participation in the activities, planning, actions, objectives, or purposes of such organizations.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/21/us-police-vi...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-na...
Germany can in fact ban Nazism. The US cannot.
A myth? Do you not know why there are monuments to victims of communism all over Europe? Have you not heard of the holocaust that the Bolsheviks unleashed on Russians, Ukrainians and countless other ethnic groups? Do you not know how many millions of people were murdered in communist China during its Cultural Revolution? Do you not know why communism is often rightly compared with Nazism?
There we have it, the true philosophical split between those who support freedom of expression and those who would limit it. The first care for truth more than the problems expressing the truth bring, and the latter care more about orderliness and reputation, the clinging to which brings myriad problems too (far worse in my opinion, but who could compare a few harsh words on Twitter or in a newspaper with a the rise of fascism in several places and the odd genocide?)
What we actually have here is what I expressed in an answer below: certain people understand only 0 and 1 but humans are not like that. One needs to grow up and have a proper education to understand that but it will work than. It does in Germany. We neither slipped into some dystopian censorship state nor did it lead to harm within the society.
So how about looking at reality for a change?
The freedom in freedom of expression is the freedom from consequences other than:
- being listened to
- being ignored
- getting speech in return
> One needs to grow up and have a proper education to understand…
> So how about looking at reality for a change?
How about you try reading about the subject first, or asking people who've thought it through far longer than the the arrogant instant you spent on it, and then it will save us all from having to endure your blurting out basic mental errors which you use in pursuit of an authoritarianism that you erroneously think will lead somewhere different than the authoritarianism you claim it counters.
The HN guidelines[0] say:
> Be kind. Don't be snarky.
I'm always happy to make an exception for those who decide such unwarranted lack of respect is okay though.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments
- in your country, do you have the FREEDOM to tell lies about whoever you chose to whoever you want? Like the media or police for example?
- Read some of what advocates of freedom of speech have written. If you're able to find someone advocating the freedom to lie to whomever one choses or about whomever one wants without restriction, you've hit the jackpot. Bring back a flying pig while you're at it.
- English common law (and hence American) already includes some types of lie as protected speech(see [1] for a primer and [2] for more examples from America).
Hence, both the idealists and the pragmatists are well ahead of you here.
Finally, this:
> Like the media or police for example?
Why should there be a law against lying to the media? That made me chuckle. Or did you mean by the media? Also a laughable notion. Shackling the press for the common good is almost a cliché in a dictator's playbook.
As to the police, why lie to the police when you shouldn't talk to them at all?[3] You have a right to silence (or did, in the UK) since hundreds of years back (which is itself another aspect of free speech). That video also covers how the police are legally permitted to lie to suspects and routinely do, so whichever question you intended based on brazenly displayed ignorance of the subject at hand, it's been covered.
I suggest you begin here, with On Liberty https://www.bartleby.com/130/index.html
[1] https://law.stackexchange.com/a/132/11158
[2] https://www.standleague.org/newsroom/blog/freedom-of-speech-...
Regardless, I didn't make assumptions and covered all bases. Do get back in touch if you bother to find out what this free speech stuff is all about, otherwise you are welcome to leave it.
My attempt to break the problem down so you won't be able to derail again failed since you intentionally misunderstood me and wrote a huge comment which is completely irrelevant since what you described is the case in every civilized country. My second attempt to push you on the topic. Without any decoration was followed by this personal something.
So the discrepancy between you seeming to want to participate in a discussion and the amount of work you invest in derailing it, do not fit. I assume therefore that I fell for a troll.
Don't get back in touch. I don't care.
> So how about looking at reality for a change?
Someone using this type of language on HN has no room to complain about criticism of their behaviour.
Your "tolerant" western Europe has no shortage of ingrained racism of all kinds that it just sweeps under the rug to a degree that in the U.S doesn't happen nearly so much. Many Americans are indeed racist but at least in the U.S there's a lot of very open, free and very public discussion and debate about it. In the EU, it's more a case of people patting themselves on the back because they ban symbolic things and hide the modern nasty traits so many of their fellows still have towards all kinds of ethnicities.
Free speech "radicalism" is not responsible for racial tensions in the U.S. If anything it helps ease them slowly by bringing them into the open.
I used to be a free speech absolutist (especially as a teenager, campaigning against Internet filters in school, as one is want to), I’ve refined my position over time away from that unsophisticated and unhelpfully simplistic position, but I haven’t yet found an accurate succinct way to describe my current feelings beyond saying I’m “aligned with defensive-democracy” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_democracy ) - but I try to avoid advocating DD with language like “reasonable restrictions” because that’s currently the language used by people who I’m ideologically opposed to, but I don’t want to come across as a libertarian… nor a V-for-Vendetta fan either.
As much as I’d love to blame Ofcom’s letter on the Tories, I believe under Labour it would be just as bad: Labour is/was the party of Wacky Jacqui Smith after-all; whereas this perennial paternalism comes from the current constitutional design of the Home Office: until and unless the Home Office changes their attitude we’ll keep on seeing this kind of policymaking - it’s an analogue to the US’ “foreign policy blob” situation, imo ( https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/us/politics/blob-afghanis... )
I read some of that Wikipedia page on defensive democracy, it has as one of the examples Holocaust denial in 10 countries. I do wonder why in countries, such as Germany, that do have a continuing problem with Nazis and anti-semitism, people think that restricting speech is the way to combat it. It didn’t work in the past as it arguably gave rise (or at least was a supporting factor) in the rise of both ant-semitism and National Socialism to such prominence, and the problems aren’t going away despite it being three quarters of a century since their terrible apex even with these laws in place.
Britain, Canada, Australia, NZ and the US, which all (historically) have a speech culture derived from Locke’s liberalism (to varying degrees but broadly similar, hence the strong objections to infringement of speech in them by the populace regardless of legality) have had no such problems as both anti-semitism and National Socialists are thankfully a fringe activity in those places.
Liberal speech laws reduce authoritarianism and racism because they can only grow without opposition. In fact, we see growing anti-semitism and clearly racist behaviours amongst “progressives” in those places, and they are the biggest supporters of censorship because they understand this too as they fail to persuade others of the merits of their position when people can say what they like in return.
All my soapbox-standing being said, I’m confused as to how you’ve got a foot in the defensive democracy camp, given your clear sympathies with strong free speech allowances (if no longer so absolutist), a clear understanding of the failings of our legislators, and the role of the Home office in all of this. I’m not criticising you, I’m just at a loss as to how to reconcile them. Perhaps it’s the narrow examples given on that page?
(Bad analogy warning) It’s like a heuristics-based anti-virus with root permission: userland processes can largely do what they want, but if I see an executable program making a syscall that it has no good reason for making, like DailyExpress.exe or FoxNews.exe manipulating the memory space of processes owned by the ImpressionsbleAudience user-group (which contains all of us) instead of going through hardened, public, well-defined interfaces then yes then I’m going to kill-9 it.
For example, it's one thing to express a controversial or unpopular opinion, but it's quite another to engage in hate speech, incite violence, post SPAM, excessive use of straw-man arguments, countering scientific consensus with harmful conspiracy theories, et al. In these cases, allowing such speech to go unchecked can have harmful consequences, and it's important for society to have mechanisms in place to address these issues.
Free speech is important to balance a strong democracy but its not an absolute right. Moderation in free speech is necessary in order to balance the rights of individuals to express themselves with the need to protect the rights and safety of others. Without moderation, the right to free speech can become a license to cause harm and to silence the voices of others.
I don't think anybody disputes that. The question was never "do these things harm us?". They clearly do.
The question is - is the medicine as bad or worse than disease?
Imagine a vile political leader whom you thoroughly loathe. Now imagine the powers of speech suppression you advocate for will probably wind up in their hands. How much do you still want it?
Easier said then done, but perhaps this just means a type of Overton window. It's not legally enforced, people just come to learn that being reactionary is faux pas.
Clearly it's not plausible to provide an absolutist definition because things change, setting rules could undermine their original objectives. But for the points raised in my original comment; laissez-faire free speech is also widely open to abuse.
You mean "harmful conspiracy theories" such as previous suggestions that COVID might have accidentally come from a lab accident? or that the vaccines didn't work as wonderfully as first advertised, or that they may just cause harm to some people? How about others that also later proved to have some truth to them. All of these things would have been perfect candidates for using your supposedly moderate "harm reducing" stance on free speech to snuff out worthy debate even if some of it is colored with tones of irrational conspiracy thinking.
And that is exactly why free speech moderation is so dangerously stupid. It allows reasonable sounding people to crush attacks on reasonable sounding ideas, right up until both these reasonable ideas and the people supporting them become unreasonably authoritarian, and attack even wider ranges of open expression.
All, if not most conspiracy theories have some element of truth to them. That's what makes them so compelling - In a similar fashion to fiction writing. Philosophers like Nietzsche would say “there are no facts, only interpretations”.
Rather than debate semantics. What I was referring to in context was the festering of dangerous conspiracy theories such as 1930's anti-semitism, and yes, hoaxes about inoculation.
Being wrong is acceptable. Purposely seeking to undermine scientific evidence on the bases of small instances which are not sufficient to draw conclusions about the wider point is intentional.