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Comment by em-bee | Hacker News Reader

jailing people for wrong opinions (a real threat in the EU since there is no protection of Freedom of Speech anywhere)

how do you figure that? the freedom of opinion is explicitly enshrined in the german constitution for example. there are limitations, but these are very specific and not arbitrary.

gemany is in fact one of the countries the provides the most protection for your opinion world wide, as long as that opinion is not based on obvious falsehoods (like holocaust denial), or stirs up hatred against a group of people. you can however criticize others and at this point germany provides even more protection than the US.

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"Hatred against a group of people" has been stretched to the breaking point in recent years.

in germany? examples please.

After a minute of searching... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/technology/germany-intern... I admit that these cases are arguable but by the same token the police don't have to respond to every mistake with a dawn raid. Even the US Secret Service has more discretion than this.

i agree with the overuse of raids, but i didn't see anything mentioned that didn't warrant at least some investigation.

Not even the multiple cases of an individual doing nothing but call a politician a dick on social media?

> Last year, Andy Grote, a city senator responsible for public safety and the police in Hamburg, broke the local social distancing rules — which he was in charge of enforcing — by hosting a small election party in a downtown bar.

> After Mr. Grote later made remarks admonishing others for hosting parties during the pandemic, a Twitter user wrote: “Du bist so 1 Pimmel” (“You are such a penis”).

> Three months later, six police officers raided the house of the man who had posted the insult, looking for his electronic devices. The incident caused an uproar.

...

> In response to a message by [politician] Mr. Jurca criticizing Muslims, Mr. Mai posted a link to a picture of the mural [saying “Du bist so 1 Pimmel”].

> Several weeks later, four police officers pounded on Mr. Mai’s door at 6 a.m. with a warrant to confiscate his electronics. Mr. Jurca had filed a police report claiming the link to the photo was an insult.

call a politician a dick on social media

in germany that is covered under insult against the honor and dignity of an individual. i don't know about this case, but this is generally only prosecuted when the insulted asks for it, and in most cases is a civil matter. that the incident caused an uproar shows that the response this case is an example of overreach, but overreach happens everywhere, and is an issue in itself. he question here is, is the risk for overreach more dangerous than removing the law/protection. this is certainly debatable.

The continual harassment of socialist parties by the government, including declarations that any group following Marxist philosophy is necessarily acting towards an unconstitutional goal.

because they are calling for a revolution, not reforms. revolution is an unconstitutional goal. if they believe that marxist philosophy can be achieved without a revolution they better ought to make that very clear. and to my knowledge the treatment of communists in the US was way worse.

Yes, well, calling for a revolution is protected speech in the United States.

It is only if your words are likely to promptly cause someone to commit violence that you can be prosecuted for it.

there is a difference between individuals calling for a revolution and organized groups that have that in their program as a goal. the latter is not a theoretical threat but one that has historical precedent.

in France for example

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230329-french-woman-...

Right now, in the suppression of protest against the genocide in Palestine.

What are you talking about? I see those (clearly very well funded) protests calling for literal unambiguous genocide of the Israeli people "from the river to the sea" almost weekly in every major train station and city center in the EU (and also China which means CCP gov backs the message)?!

Open jew hate in Europe hasn't been this elevated since WWII.

> Open jew hate in Europe hasn't been this elevated since WWII.

Opposition to genocide or to Israel is not anti-Semitism.

we need to be more specific here. peaceful demonstrations are certainly allowed. it becomes a problem when those demonstrations become violent. suppression would be not allowing these demonstrations in the first place. and if that is the case we need to look at how often that happens and whether the risk for a planned demonstration turning violent justifies not allowing it to take place.

> peaceful demonstrations are certainly allowed

That's just not true. Germany has banned slogans in favour of Palestinian freedom.

What's allowed is government-sanctioned gathering, which is the opposite of freedom of speech.

Germany has banned slogans in favour of Palestinian freedom.

do you have any references?

and what do you mean by "government-sanctioned"? reality is that any kind of large public demonstration requires registration and is subject to permission. the question is whether permission is granted to all groups equally, or whether certain groups are getting limited. if that is what you mean then we would have to look at actual statistics. demonstrations in favor of palestina certainly did happen.

> do you have any references?

Staatsräson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany#Restrict...

> and what do you mean by "government-sanctioned"? reality is that any kind of large public demonstration requires registration and is subject to permission.

In Germany. That's not true in the majority of the democratic world and is not what any reasonable person would call freedom of expression. Nothing that requires permission is a right and civil rights don't require permission.

> demonstrations in favor of palestina certainly did happen.

And the protestors have faced consequences both immediate and in long-tail harassment from the German State.

i can't think of any country where it would be legal to block traffic without some kind of permit.

for the rest, i can't comment on your claims without knowing more details about them

You don't just need permission for a demonstration in Germany if you plan to block traffic. See e.g. how covid policy protesters were treated. But I guess you agree with those policies so think that's ok.

covid was a special case, because obviously a mass gathering in that time would have been considered a health risk. a lot of countries went into emergency mode and used exceptions to implement or enforce these rules. they are not a good indicator of what is normally acceptable and allowed.

just because something was possible to happen during covid does not mean that it is possible to happen otherwise. comparably what is happening in the US now is also exceptional and we have yet to see if that becomes the new normal.

btw, it turns out i was wrong, you don't even need permission, you just need to announce the demonstration. there can be restrictions, and in specific circumstances a demonstration can be disallowed. but by default all you need to do is make an announcement towards the appropriate institutions.

i found two articles that write about this:

https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1191189.index-der-repressi...

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/berlin-demonstrationen-g...

the first is a left wing publication, but the second is quite conservative.

i have to admit that what they describe is much worse than i imagined. :-(

you are right it certainly looks a lot like suppression of legitimate protests and support of palestine being deliberately misinterpreted as antisemitism.

Fair play to you for doing your research and making this comment.

i am not discussing here to win arguments, but to learn and educate (myself included).

> you can however criticize others and at this point germany provides even more protection than the US.

Would what last few episodes of South Park be legal if they were made by Germans and targeted German politicians? Probably not?

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