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Comment by scarab92 | Hacker News Reader

There obviously are problems with freedom of speech in Europe.

Everyone knows it.

Tell me more. I live here and have never encountered a situation where I was not allowed to express my opinions in a systematic way. So I don't know but would be delighted to

It might simply mean your opinions fall in the narrow band of views that are permitted to be expressed. It proves nothing about freedom of speech in general.

Even in North Korea, people are allowed to freely express their love for their Dear Leader. Those who express a different view are swiftly disposed of. If you love Dear Leader you could live your entire life believing that you and everyone else has free speech, simply because you have never encountered evidence to the contrary.

AfD is a Nazi party, and nobody's silencing them, despite overwhelming opposition in all EU countries. If you listen to EU parliament speeches, there's all kinds of radical political views being shared during debates. Vance came to Europe to peddle US culture wars and got laughed out.

> AfD is a Nazi party.

It feels inappropriate that progressives have decided that it's okay to use Nazi as a generic insult for mainstream right wing parties. It waters down the true horrors of the Nazi party.

Anyway, as to censorship coming from Germany:

"Germany submits the highest number of legal demands for user data to X within the European Union, with ~87% of these requests targeting speech-related offenses. "

https://x.com/GlobalAffairs/status/1891593848771707233

Your source is Elon Musk. AfD is not just "a mainstream right-wing party".

Sure it is. Their policies are comparable to the those of the current trump administration.

That says a lot about the current Trump administration, not the other way around.

It's more complicated than that, in this case. They aren't simply insulting AfD by calling it a Nazi party. There is some truth to it, in that AfD almost certainly has Nazis in it. A prominent AfD member has used the phrase "all for Germany" that was also used by the Nazis. They also openly say that they want to take down holocaust memorials and stop talking about it.

Personally, I think that the full accusation of Nazism should be reserved for when it's really needed. But I assume that Germans know better than I do how to go about keeping Nazis out of their country.

Germany is also the biggest market in the EU. Without actual numbers this proves nothing. And with a platform that primarily relies on speech I struggle to come up with a huge list of non-speech-related offenses that could come up. Also, we're taking about a platform owned by an heavily opinionated US gov official here, come on...

AfD the extreme right wing nazi party helmed by a lesbian that is married to a brown woman?

Are you sure you're using all of these words correctly?

Yes, they are.

https://extremismterms.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/altern...

AFAIK they don't terribly mind what Israel is doing in Gaza, and even the ADL has that page about them.

There is a lot more if you are not convinced. At any rate Alice Weidel being lesbian means as much as some of the original Nazi leadership being homosexual, nothing. Homosexuality isn't a taboo anymore, holocaust revisionism is. Those to whom it isn't are anathema to those to whom it is.

Sure, and Elon Musk couldn't have done a Nazi salute twice, because he photographed himself looking bummed out at Auschwitz. What does it take for you to call spade a spade?

The established political parties in Germany are in fact trying to silence the AfD - precisely because they are gaining support amongs the population that is no longer represented by the established parties.

No, that's the story the AfD tells everyone. In reality it's because the AfD isn't compatible with our constitution and democracy.

My, this narrative sounds familiar... Almost like it's been peddled in Germany before, 80 years ago.

What "narrative"?

A disillusioned and unrepresentated population being mopped up by a right-wing populist political party in Germany. This is exactly how the Nazi party took power. It's what just happened in America. It pays to know your history.

Alice Weidel is in almost every talk show I watch, was invited to almost every major debate and everyone is doing a great job of normalizing the AfD. Every time someone from there complains about not being allowed to say what they want it's on a stage with a mic in hand and them being allowed to say whatever they want. So while I don't really agree on the "Nazi" part they're definitely not silenced. And apparently no one in this thread can tell me what freedom I'm missing despite claiming I do. Just give me some statistic or some example of systematic suppression of speech if it's that obvious to anyone but me

That's great and all, but last time I checked I didn't live in a country with a grand leader. Germany's chancellor is looking at loosing an election in less than a week. So I ask again, and I'm actually serious about this question: What opinion am I not allowed to express? (Except insults and denying the death of 6 million Jews)

Are we counting the UK? Because that one's really easy to find examples of - just google "UK arresting protestors", maybe throw in "Queen" or "Royal". They really, really don't like the anti-monarchists.

You might also look into things like the French ban on hijab in sporting events, and how that played out at the 2024 Olympics.

There's a lot of results concerned with religion - Germany has been using it's anti-semitism laws to crack down on anyone that's pro-Palestine, the French hijab thing I just mentioned, etc..

The UK also has some remarkable issues with libel laws.

This is just off the top of my mind - I'm not trying to say any particular issue is super important, just threads you can investigate. But I think even a few examples like that should make it clear that there's something systemic going on.

This is cute because it needs the UK to not be in EU in order to not immediately get a guffaw.

I think the French might have some quibbles about how free their speech is.

And I have never been charged with a murder so we can conclude that murder is in fact allowed.

The US ranks #55 in press freedom, all positions in the top 10 are EU countries.

You never said it explicitly but you are referencing the French Reporters sans frontières (RSF) ranking, which is a European organization which is obviously predisposed to rank European countries highly.

I find their ranking highly suspect because they put the Netherlands at number #4, one of the highest rankings, while in reality the press in the Netherlands is in a dire state: literally all newspapers of record are collectively owned by just two Belgian (not even Dutch) mega-corporations. Is this really one of the most free countries? It's like Rupert Murdoch and Michael Bloomberg together owned all newspapers in the US.

And the US is ranked suspiciously low, at #55, below a country like Belize. Belize! Look at what RSF itself writes about Belize:

> With no daily newspapers, the pool of media outlets is small, and of those considered mainstream, some are supportive of political parties, even when privately owned. Independent media are scarce and access to funding is limited. Most of the advertising funds that media publishers rely on come from the government and their distribution are often dependent on the party in power.

Am I supposed to take it seriously that this is better than the US? That Belizeans have access to a more free press than Americans do? It seems more plausible the ranking is bogus.

You picked the wrong country. I'm from the Netherlands and it's not in a dire state.

It has newspapers across the spectrum. Volkskrant and Parool are left-wing, AD is centrist, Telegraaf is center-right. To name a few. This reflects our political system which is a distribution rather than a binary system.

In addition, there's state-owned news that reports very factually, with little to no bias in any direction.

We also have excellent deep journalism, my favorite being Follow The Money: https://www.ftm.nl/

EU edition: https://www.ftm.eu/articles

...the type of journalism the entire world needs.

The Netherlands has no hard-right or alt-right newspapers or TV channels. Not because it's not allowed, we just don't have the equivalent of Fox.

In my view, this is a blessing. It's not because I'm left wing. I'm center-right. Alt-right with their misinformation and alternative facts are an attack on information itself. It's not just "another view", it undermines reality itself.

And for the record, we have no hard-left in mainstream media either. Not because it's not allowed, it just doesn't work over here.

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