4 ms·
This law is just the German constitution applied specifically to a certain industry. Germany doesn't have free speech in the same vein as the First Amendment in
by IBM 9y ago
This law is just the German constitution applied specifically to a certain industry. Germany doesn't have free speech in the same vein as the First Amendment in the US. When the Allies created the German constitution they avoided the trap of using the US model in Germany. It would have been utterly idiotic for there to be US-style "free speech" in the country that was ground zero for Nazism. Without the handcuffs of free speech, Germany was free to completely de-Nazify itself.
No one would accuse Germany of being anything but an open liberal democracy. And it's a liberal democracy with unique protections that will ensure it remains one (while other liberal democracies are hijacked with their own freedoms) [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streitbare_Demokratie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streitbare_Demokratie
- gdwatson 9y ago"No one would accuse Germany of being anything but an open liberal democracy. And it's a liberal democracy with unique protections that will ensure it remains one (while other liberal democracies are hijacked with their own freedoms) [1]." The point of a liberal democracy is to protect the freedoms of its citizens. If the state sacrifices those freedoms to preserve itself, it remains a state and it may remain a democracy, but it ceases to be liberal in this sense. Germany is an illiberal democracy.
- int_19h 9y ago> No one would accuse Germany of being anything but an open liberal democracy. I would disagree with it. It's a democracy, sure, but it's not particularly liberal. This depends on your definition of liberalism, of course, but I wouldn't consider any society that censors political speech to be fully liberal.
- InternetOfStuff 9y ago> I wouldn't consider any society that censors political speech to be fully liberal. Perhaps; but every society draws lines somewhere, and it's always a tradeoff. As a German, I like that our tradeoff goes a little more in the direction of decency (whatever that means) over stark freedom to be offensive. And remember German "censorship" allows pretty crass things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6hmermann_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6hmermann_affair There's mostly some historical/cultural sensitivity around Nazi symbols and the like. Some of this sensitivity is debatable nowadays, but I don't think it's actually distorting the political debate.