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 ki

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.