Hard to judge this without knowing specifically what was said, but it doesn't seem great.
I don't believe that government forces should enter peoples homes and imprison them for expressing their opposition to immigration, which could easily be cast as "xenophobia".
Let's fight the prospect of genocide with an authoritarian fascist regime that seeks to control your speech with a secretive dragnet surveillance apparatuses.
That's the whole point, it should not be illegal. Suppression of speech which does not explicitly advocate for violence is oppression. Plain and simple. You may disagree with the speech, it may be distasteful, hateful, or whatever, but no government should be allowed to oppress the free expression of ideas. You should have freedom of speech, not freedom from speech.
Freedom of speech to the extent that we have in the US is not very common. There are tons of laws in Germany specifically the limit free speech due to being very sensitive about Holocaust deniers and people who try to incite mass hatred.
Even Canadian free speech laws are much more limited than the US. See the ridiculous "twitter harassment case" from last year/early this year.
Not that I like Armenians that much, but it kind of making no sense. Why not level the playing field by making other countries admit their genocides and crimes like Germany and Russia did?
> On the other hand, it's not as if Germany can make it illegal for Turkey to deny genocide.
They can (the nature of sovereignty is such that a sovereign can outlaw anyone doing anything), though they may have trouble enforcing the law by which they make that illegal. Foreign states have been dragged into another state's courts for violations of the latter state's law, though (this is particularly true when the latter state is the US), so its not necessarily the case that there is no possibility of some accountability to such a law.
Irish don't like English.
French don't like Germans.
I don't like Armenians.
Should I?
People don't like each other by default.
But the depth of this feeling is not enough to be considered racism (especially when both of us are "Caucasian") and can surely be overriden by personal experience with a given Armenian.
Nobody on HN truly believes there are no exceptions, they just disagree about whether given speech falls under an exception or not.
Edit: Instead of silently downvoting please provide even a single link to an HN comment espousing that freedom of speech actually means you can say anything at any time to anyone without any repercussions.
> Suppression of speech which does not explicitly advocate for violence is oppression.
In your opinion (and that of the US), "violence" in this context is defined as physical violence. However, one can argue that non-physical violence should be considered too. In that case, it could be said that hate speech is a form of indirect threat or intimidation against a minority.
> no government should be allowed to oppress the free expression of ideas
Are you okay then, with an intelligence or military defector (not a whistleblower), revealing all government secrets and publishing it publicly without any selection or redaction?
Not the OP but there is a difference between ideas you generate and those generated, compiled by other people as well as appropriating and disseminating something that wasn't "yours".
My belief in whistleblowing is as follows. If the act of whistleblowing violates laws and go beyond the provisions in whistleblowing laws, but you or I dearly believe in what we are doing as proper and just, then we do it but understand the consequences and don't and should not seek understanding or forgiveness. If we believe so much, then it's our duty to sacrifice our selves in the face of adverse conditions. I compare it to revolutionaries. You believe in your cause enough that the negative consequences are part of the deal and you don't expect leniency or official pardons, else the issue is not that dire.
I think most people would agree that intimidation is a form of violence. Saying something that someone doesn't like, or that hurts their feelings, or that makes them remember something bad that happened to them is not.
> In the law of some countries, hate speech is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is forbidden because it incites violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group.
So would you consider it censorship to forbid hate speech?
Do you really think you have unlimited freedom of speech in the US?
Try this: go to a playground and say to a parent: "I want to beat up your child." Then stand there and wait until the cops arrive and claim it was just freedom of speech. Remember to exactly repeat it to the cops.
This is exactly what the laws in Germany are against. Hate speech that ultimately leads to violence.
> This is exactly what the laws in Germany are against. Hate speech that ultimately leads to violence.
Your example is not mere "hate speech that ultimately leads to violence", its -- while somewhat ambiguously worded so it might not actually be prosecutable in the US, its right on the boundary -- something that could (depending on other elements of context) be seen as a threat coupled with present capacity for execution directed at a specific person.
Its not a clear example of something outside the bounds of protection in the US, and to the extent that it might be seen as crossing the line in the US, its very much not analogous to the kinds of things prohibited by the more expansive German restrictions on speech.
The "why" part, actually. Why is hate speech illegal? Where is the line drawn? Who gets to draw the line? Can the line move over time? Could politicians eventually move the line to suppress undesirable speech (political dissension) under the guise of hate speech?
while the comment you replied to is stupidly phrased...and strangely authoritarian for HN...I think there may be room for a deeper discussion here.
We (i.e., the US/the internet) have a tendency to view basic human rights through a very US-centric framework. We value freedom of speech above all else (well except the right to bear/bare arms...). However, our framework of what rights there should be is not entirely universal, nor should it be. We tend to be not so great at articulating a basic right to exist or to be free from harm created by others. I hear many conversations about the constitution, which is our law, but I rarely hear people discuss the declaration of independence which was a much broader statement about the rights of human beings. The constitution is our codification and does not, nor should it, be applied as a universal critique of other systems.
And none of that is to say that we have unlimited free speech anyways in the US. The standard framework for restriction is strict scrutiny, which requires a compelling governmental interest to restrict free speech (e.g., preserving the health and welfare of many citizens is why you can't yell fire in a crowded theater). Because the law is not ahistorical, I think you could make a fairly compelling argument that it is in the German government's interest to make laws that do things like make denying the holocaust illegal or placing some limits on hate speech. The potential damage of those things is something that Germany has experienced in ways we haven't, and I would generally defer to them making laws within their own society rather than judge them with ours.
> However, our framework of what rights there should be is not entirely universal, nor should it be.
If you believe the rights enumerated in our founding documents are truly inalienable human rights that exist simply by virtue of us being human, then yes you should also believe that they should be codified in every other country's laws as well.
> If you believe the rights enumerated in our founding documents are truly inalienable human rights that exist simply by virtue of us being human, then yes you should also believe that they should be codified in every other country's laws as well.
OTOH, if you believe that they are one, almost certainly imperfect, attempt to protect actual inalienable human rights rather than a flawless articulation of the exact bounds of actual inalienable human rights, you can easily accept that there may be alternative mechanisms attempted to protect the actual underlying rights that are no farther from the ideal than those in our founding documents.
Treating the results of the political compromises that went into creating our founding documents as if they were carved on stone tablets by God's own hand and handed down to Moses as eternal law is, well, about as sensible as doing that with the output of any randomly-chosen more recent political compromise by our governing bodies.
The internationalist elite are trying to use the internet as a data-driven lawfare machine to augment their existing models of globalism. They believe that nationalism in any form whatsoever is a threat to the demand curve since nationalism eventually turns into mercantilism, which is the death knell of globalism, and thus, their ability to control the productive flows of billions of people with interest rates alone will be severely compromised.
To their credit, I'd take a zero-tolerance policy, too, if my simple tool to steer globalized humanity was under assault... but the thing about suppressing nationalists is that the means of force doesn't inspire fear... it inspires envy.
Just to give you back-room context of how such conversations can go: "Look at how the Jew suppresses us! We, too, should have weaponry and influence like that...!"
Expressing concern that a Jewish cabal of bankers are using dirty tricks to suppress you and your loved ones... and then sending armed police forces to kick in your door for expressing that concern... doesn't exactly negate their concerns.
In detail, what you are seeing the contention between the globalist model vs. a nationalist model.
Surely it's much simpler than that and doesn't have to involve any nebulous internationalist elite. The giant "never again" of the Holocaust makes Germany very, very intolerant of far-right groups attempting to stir up hate against marginalised people which may result in their deaths.
The Jew of course is a red herring in this case. You'd be a fool to believe that globalists care about the common middle class Jew in the streets, while they are importing their latest wave of cheap labour from some of the most rabidly anti-semitic cultures* of the world.
If anything, this sort of superficial prejudice just plays into their hands. Divide and conquer.
(* which is not to say that all Muslims are necessarily bad people - It's Complicated.)
I think it's wrong that you focus on Jews or any fixed identity. Globalist elites are highly polymorphic and you can't peg them like that. Just leads to endless pointless discussions.
Nevertheless, I have to share this experience: I was mildly left-liberal ten years ago, but now I'm heavily nationalistic. It's the only view point now that doesn't try to combat objective reality.
The focus on a fixed racial identity is actually really important. It's one thing to rebel against a nebulous "global elite" archetype; where the movement really gets legs is when it is attached to a concrete identifier.
Whether the focus on Jews is accurate or not I cannot say, but it pairs well with other themes (over-representation of Jews in media/politics, USA's unwavering support for Israel) to create a compelling case for a conspiratorial "cabal"
I can't tell whether you're in favour of this or just stating what you believe someone else's position to be here, but I'd like to remind HN that accusing the Jews of running a cabal is literally what led to the Holocaust. That is why Germany takes a stricter line against the far right than most countries.
Yes, thanks for the reminder. I'm explaining why some nationalists are magnetized towards belief in a Jewish conspiracy.
Putting an embargo on any discussion pertaining to that only confirms what these people believe, and outright arresting them REALLY confirms and spreads the belief.
A similar situation played out during the Waco siege. You have a group of cultists who are convinced that the end of the world is coming, and that it will be marked by persecution leading up to an outright attack against them. It sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when an army of ATF agents show up at their door.
From what I've researched, it has little to do with the end of the world and more about the failure to suppress questioning the world.
For example, I'm going to give you a list of last names: Bernanke, Greenspan, Yellen, Madoff, Goldman, Icahn, Eisner, Weinstein, Zuckerberg, Ginsburg, Adelson, Bloomberg, Strauss-Kahn, Axelrod, Brin, Ellison, Friedman
My question to you is, Do you believe you can shame and attack people forever without retaliation for seeing patterns in that list of last names and why do you think that is the only way to go about it?
And another question, just to get the brain juice bubbling: Do you think the massive expansion of credit after 1974 and the subsequent tech bubbles it made possible did anything to help the "fly-over" states or the "ghettos" of America?
The problem I see with this is: how do they know someone is who they claim to be on Facebook? There's no indication in the article that they collaborated with Facebook and an ISP to link a user's post with their (possibly dynamic) IP address and home address. There's a big leap from "it appears someone posted hate speech using your facebook account" to "you are guilty of posting hate speech on facebook".
Facebook is readily complying with all of this, as they do in all countries with similar government censorship. They even gave a private company working for the German government access to delete Facebook posts as they see fit.
Even China's constitution says "Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."
Of course, that doesn't apply in practice, but that is my point. Just having an article in the constitution granting you a right does not guarantee that right in practice.
>European convention on human rights (which has its own free speech article).
You are referring to article 10 which comes with a very big caveat:
The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
Compare it to the 1st Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
So yes, the US is pretty much unique in the way it refers to freedom of speech both de jure and de facto.
Article 10 pretty much says, yeah we respect the fact that in theory you should be able to say what you want, but make sure it doesn't offend anyone.
The express caveat in Article 10 is not all that dissimilar to how the protections in the Bill of Rights are actually applied in the US; now, its true, that the caveats in the US are unwritten (at least, in the Constitution itself) and are found in case law which is itself grounded in the historical context of the Bill of Rights, the way in which the similar language in older documents which inspired the Bill of Rights was applied (which is held to illuminate the intended meaning of the language used in the Bill of Rights), etc.
Obviously, the ECHR, being between countries which lack the commonality of legal history and political culture had to make express what would be understood from context in a framework where the participants shared more deeply in a common legal history and political culture, but the substantive meaning isn't all that different.
Some European countries (such as Sweden and Germany) and the EU as a whole have been stepping up censorship of both social and traditional media these past few years.
While it's easy to classify this as just fighting "right wing extremist" much of what is being censored wouldn't be considered right wing nor extremist in the academic sense in any way.
This does not only include traditional "hate speech" like immigrants are bad... mmkay or jews are evil but goes deeper and threatens to classify any criticism of EU policies or anything that causes political disturbance as "hate speech".
Whats even more disturbing is that many of these measures are enacted on the back of terrorist attacks in Europe and over the world, but end up being used in combating local political dissent.
If you'll want to make an analogy to what happens in the US then the latest EU movements to cramp freedom of speech are not that different than the massive surveillance program that the US embarked on post 9/11, if anything it is probably worse.
While surveillance might have a negative effect on expression and it sure can help breed homogenous group think, dictating what can and cannot be said, and what should are should not be thought is considerably more dangerous.
Not true. Germany does in fact have a constitutional right to free speech.
>Freedom of expression is granted by Article 5 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, which also states that there is no censorship and freedom of expression that may be limited by law.
The US is in fact the only developed country that has no laws banning hate speech, including no legal recourse for outright lies like Holocaust denial.
Words are messages, and government always reserves the right to punish the use of some messages, and prevent them. And in this, it is a matter of degree, not kind.
For hate speech in Germany, I firmly believe that the story should not end at "police raids" but rather at "and the neo-nazi was adopted by Syrian immigrants and shown great love and compassion, and he fell in love with a nice Syrian girl and they will be married in the fall." But that has more to do with what the punishment is.
While I'm against hate speech laws in general because of the withering slippery-slope argument, Germany really is a special case because of the holocaust.
Last but not least, this news article implies that we are being monitored. We might not trigger visible action, or any action, but our messages are running a gauntlet of predicates that, if any flip to "true" will get human eyeballs on our messages, which may yield humans wielding guns in our living rooms. Such is life.
In the German newspapers I read it was reported that the statements in question were actual calls for violence, not merely hate speech (I guess "kill all xyz" vs "xyz are evil").
So the police statement is rather misleading. To be sure, some official institutions have been involved in questionable campaigns against "hate speech" recently, so perhaps they wanted to show that they are making progress. It seems likely to me that the raid was actually about real illegal activities, rather than hateful opinions.
I think even in the US calling for somebodies death is not really protected by "free speech"?
Nevertheless it is worrying that official institutions lent their name to the questionable campaign against hate speech. (Questionable because it was initiated by several people with a track record of hate speech, and because it seems to be designed to simply silence unwelcome opinions, as hate speech is not clearly defined by the campaigners).
> Operation targeted 60 people accused of posting far-right content to a private Facebook group
Does "private" Facebook means what I think it means? I.e. outsiders won't see this at all? What's the problem there then? Next time they'll raid my bedroom because they don't like what goes on there?
> most of the suspects were accused of posting... xenophobic... messages
What's wrong in being xenophobic, from moral perspective?
Is it now a requirement for me to avoid feeling emotions against people who I don't approve?
> "strong rise in verbal radicalism"
It's definitely easier to combat verbal xenophobes than real terrorists. First of all, they don't shoot back at you.
It is more than stupid shit, it is illegal stupid shit. Please read (edit: replaced, was "the") the German legal code. From your argument it would be better not to pursue crime just because you might "(to) get more physical radicalism"? That is clearly not justice.
You forget that in Germany we have "Gewaltenteilung", meaning that legislation, judiciary and executive are separated. This is a concept that is fundamental to our country and culture. If the law is not okay it is not in the power of the executive to change, not enforce or bend it. There is a separate process for it that must be invoked. (In this case) there seems to be no critical mass that calls for changing this particular law. And you can rest assured that we have a very active public discussion about changes to the criminal code right now, with thousands of people actively participating. As you might be better informed the me, could you please cite at least one instance of what these people or people in similar cases said/wrote that should NOT the punishable, but is under current law?
edit: citing the decision to allow prosecution of Böhmermann reveals how little you understand the German legal system. The article is misleading at best and not covering the legal grounds and background correctly at all.
@frabbit exactly, but they did NOT yell "fire" but "open fire on the immigrants" (literally: in one instance the comment was posted beneath a picture of a immigrant child "you need a flamethrower to get rid of these bugs", with bugs might not be the best translation here) posted besides Nazi symbols.
At least for me, this makes a difference.
edit: I am going out on a limb here, but I thought exactly this was one of the purposes of RICO. Telling someone to commit a crime in a formed group is a crime and not free speech. I am a total amateur in US criminal code, is this understanding correct?
You are correct. Legal codes in many countries criminalize the act of speech itself.
This even goes all the way back to the concept of "assault" in anglo-saxon legal traditions[1] (which is the simple threat part of the pair "assault and battery". Many of us use "assault" to mean a physical attack, but it seems originally to be simply causing someone to fear.)
Again, though, you are arguing that because something is the law then that in itself makes it moral and useful.
Those who make slippery-slope arguments about the vesting of power in the state seem increasingly persuasive when we see the turning of the act of speaking into a crime itself. For further examples of "European" countries which illustrate the dangers you could look at Ireland's blasphemy laws which still stand.
I don't necessarily argue that everything is right because it is the law, I argue that THIS exact law is right. It might not be for you, but it is for me. And seemingly not only for.me, but for a lot of people in this country. Otherwise there would be a (stronger) opposition to this law. I think we might have to recognize that the German culture is different from yours (US I suppose it is) and that we simply cannot expect to agree on everything. This might be because we are grown up in the system that protects us both adequately and we therefore think it is the best one, only because it is a adequate one. This goes both ways, e.g. you are right to think your system is better while I am right to think ours is. And exactly that tolerance is what I would like to not only see but DEMAND from other people. And I believe this exact law is right in a way that it makes it harder for people that don't recognize that all people are created and to be treated equal to express and propagate their beliefs. I think you could even find a similar or maybe exact same argument for your position. I respect that but hope you have other ways to ensure no one creates a climate of fear, hatred and violence (physical and non-physical) against people that are different. This law will not be everything the German culture sets against that climate but is one piece of our puzzle.
> you are right to think your system is better while I am right to think ours is. And exactly that tolerance is what I would like to not only see but DEMAND from other people.
I am not interested in the personalization of the argument or grounding it in lived experience of any sort.
Objectively the system which you extoll results in censorship, in this case of criticism of a near-dictator involved in genocide against the Kurdish people.
I believe that enabling a state to censor what people can say is dangerous to democracy. I think this is adequately demonstrated through numerous historical and current examples.
Your statement of "tolerance" is meaningless because you will be unaware of other viewpoints of which you must be tolerant when they are censored.
Ironically as this discussion is deemed offensive to the moderators of HN this entire discussion has been effaced.
I can't follow. How is this incident related to any genocide, dictatorship, erdogan... what?
I have the feeling you are just cherry picking this to troll on and not interested in talking about the different dogmatics of legal systems. I didn't want to personalize the discussion, just replace "you" and "me" with "any person from your belief system" and "any person from my belief system". It looks to me that you are not interested in thinking about other people's opinion and/or belief system. Now THAT was a personal remark.
> I can't follow. How is this incident related to any genocide, dictatorship, erdogan... what?
Really? So, you can't see the link between the German state's power to choose which speech acts can be punished and the punishing of someone for speech acts?
You cannot see the link between the Turkish bombing and starving of the Kurdish people and the historical assaults by your own country on minority populations?
I am not going to reply any more to you as you have descended to personalized abuse, but I will close with thanking you for illustrating exactly why the policing of free speech can never be allowed: there are too many people like you who are incapable of exercising tolerance and rationality, and once a lever of power and control is in your hands you will pull it.
> could you please cite at least one instance of what these people or people in similar cases said/wrote that should NOT the punishable, but is under current law?
If I am parsing what you wrote correctly then you are asking me to draw a distinction between different types of speech which should be allowed under law.
I don't believe any should be restricted. That includes the classic "shouting `fire' in a crowded theatre" or making threats to someone. Certainly in both cases if actual physical or financial harm results then the speaker can be deemed to have caused harm and measures taken against them. But the outlawing and punishment of the act of speech in and of itself is illogical.
In effect hate speech and other laws conflate locution, illocution and perlocution[1].
The effect on the discussion of ideas (e.g. the criticism of Erdogan) in a democracy strike me as obvious, so I won't go into them further.
Laws that oppress the free expression of ideas, which are not expressed to advocate direct or indirect harm or violence, are bad laws that should be broken.
I don't really think that calling to arms (in this case as self justice in combination with using Nazi symbols) is expression of free speech. It is totally okay that our understanding of free speech differs, but I just don't count that as free speech. And sympathizing with Nazis by using their symbols is not okay for me, too. I might be wrong, but in a lot of countries it might not be legal to call for self justice on a whole race.
Some state intervention (e.g. drug prohibition) creates issues (in this case mass violations of civil liberties, militarization of police, vast numbers of incarcerated minorities, criminalization of medical conditions) that are measurably worse than the original problem it intended to solve. I don't know whether that's the case here, but it's worth asking. You'd better be certain that hate speech online is a serious enough problem that it is worth the cost, and you'd better have a good idea of what the cost will be.
>"It is more than stupid shit, it is illegal stupid shit."
Exactly. This is like how posting negative things about the communist party leadership in a wechat group can get your house raided. Break the law, and police might show up.
Do you feel all opinions on this are equal? That someone expressing misinformation about groups or calling for restrictions to their freedom is equivalent to someone expressing support for the same minorities?
I feel that whenever practices like this are made acceptable, invariably abuses follow. It is an accident of history that the people being picked on now are regarded as deserving.
I'll pose my earlier question with a different group--how would you feel were this being done to conservative Christians or Muslims? Both groups express misinformation and sometimes call for restrictions on others (covering women in public, treatment of homosexuals, this sort of thing).
We can't get everyone to get along. However, we can seek to eliminate state powers that are ripe for abuse.
If you could indicate using Nazi symbols and calling to arms and self justice is free speech I would be happy to discuss further. I have a bit of a doubt that you grasp what the charge is.
All of those are communicative in nature and do not involve the bodily injury of another human being--so yes, I think it's fair to consider them free speech.
I am unfamiliar with German law, so if you would like to educate me on the nuances of the charge, I would appreciate it.
I think a very important nuance here is that it is not enough to just tell other people to commit crimes against people from a religion/race/color/gender/..., it must be suitable (I have trouble translating here) to be effective in that matter. The reason is explicitly the human rights, because nobody should fear to be harmed because somebody told other people to harm people from a certain gender/race etc.
There are BTW other "Äußerungsdelikte" (statement offenses, free translation), like slander and deformation. All these are based on the human right that no harm should be inflicted on you because somebody says something wrong about you (in a very simplistic way, you normally would have a lots of hours of law lectures just on this offenses, their reasoning and distinction).