7 ms·

That's the massive understanding I see when people who don't live in Germany complain about German censorship of speech: It's not about feelings. It's about s

by pluma 9y ago

That's the massive understanding I see when people who don't live in Germany complain about German censorship of speech: It's not about feelings. It's about shaping other people's opinions. If someone says "jack9 is a kiddy fiddler" the damage is not that it might make jack9 upset, the damage is that others might think it's true and take actions that harm him. If someone says "kill the kikes" the damage is not that Jewish people might be upset, the damage is that others might agree and commit violence against Jewish people. It doesn't even have to be a convincing argument, it just has to give other people the impression their hatred is socially acceptable and their violence has public support. Hate speech is like broken windows: the more a certain hateful sentiment is tolerated in society, the more socially acceptable that sentiment becomes, the more likely it becomes someone will act on it and that society will tolerate those actions too. Hitler's rise to power was not a coup d'etat. Hitler didn't overthrow the government by killing generals and politicians and installing himself as leader. Hitler rose to power by manipulating people's sentiments with language. He created scapegoats and convinced people it's okay to channel their hate and frustration towards those scapegoats. When the Nazis first called for people to be killed or that their neighbors were inferior, few thought they meant it, but saying it over and over normalised the idea. They dehumanised their victims and their future enemies. A lot of that rhetoric is normal in many places today and Trump's campaign wasn't even a special example. The rhetoric after 9/11 made Germans feel icky because it was so familiar but even then it wasn't new. Americans worry about racism and sexism, Germans worry about xenophobia -- hatred of the foreign, the different, the "other".

pluma 9y ago
Oh, before anyone thinks this backs up radical "SJW" sentiments: there's plenty of hatred on that side of the arena as well. Intersectionality especially has a tendency to break down into othering. Victim narratives easily lend themselves to excusing violence against "abusers". While we're going full Godwin: Nazi Germany started out as the victim of the victors of WW2 and socialist traitors. Germany's entry into WW2 literally was as the victim of Polish aggression. None of that is really true if you look at it objectively, of course, but that was the language used by nazis at the time. If you the only thing making your behaviour morally righteous is your victimhood, maybe your behaviour isn't righteous at all. I'm socialist-libertarian myself but that doesn't mean I tolerate the same damaging behaviour from "my" side.
b6 9y ago
> Hitler rose to power by manipulating people's sentiments with language. He created scapegoats and convinced people it's okay to channel their hate and frustration towards those scapegoats. People should have the freedom to be persuaded to believe things that you don't agree with. It's OK to have a "wrong" opinion. Let people say what they want and believe what they want. I'm stunned that I still have to defend freedom of expression.
- novalis78 9y ago
  Exactly. And here I was thinking there was such a thing as 'being an adult' and 'education' and 'freedom of speech' - do we really want to undermine the basic tenets of the Age of Reason? Because if I am not mistaken, censorship was a widespread reality and it took a very long time and a lot of blood to crawl out from underneath it. In other words: Do you think Hitler could have been stopped by not letting 'The Stormer' publish?
  - pluma 9y ago
    I think "could X have stopped Hitler" is asking the wrong question (and it betrays the same kind of black/white thinking that is fundamental to the rhetoric I mentioned). The Treaty of Versailles was crippling the economy, the royalists felt betrayed by the social democrats who ended the Great War by surrendering, the Great Depression destabilised the banks, and so on. Even a bullet in the brain wouldn't necessarily have "stopped Hitler" at the time (the reason we talk about "stopping Hitler" is that Hitler wasn't stopped so we don't know who'd have taken his place and where that would have led the movement at the time). But this is irrelevant because 2010s Germans aren't 1920s/1930s Germans. West Germany underwent a massive process of Denazification, we entered into and established ourselves in the European Union and Germans who grew up in post-war Germany are used to the idea that incitement is a crime and racial hatred has no place in a civilised society. It's irrelevant whether criminalising incitement ("censorship") would have stopped Hitler in the 1930s because a single law doesn't instantly transform society. It's 2018 and this is not a new law. But we'll never be able to tell whether it stopped Hitler today because if we stopped him we won't know who he is because he'll never ascend to the same significance in history in the first place. It's a strawman. You also seem to be under the false presumption that you having legal "freedom of speech" means you can express anything you want without consequences. As is being pointed out all the time, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, just freedom from direct legal consequences. If you hold no significant political power and say something other people find disagreeable, you will be called out at best and ostracized at worst. In fact, freedom of speech might actually help those seeking to harm you because they have the righteous fury on their side. If you hold significant power, there are plenty of examples in US politics how that usually works out (though time will tell how it works out for Trump in particular). Fun side effect: dehumanising people also makes it easier to justify war. The US has been in a perpetual state of war since WW2. Do you even remember how to recognise propaganda and war rhetoric if it's been part of the mainstream since before you were born?
insickness 9y ago
In the US there is a fear of government taking too much of a role in "shaping the people's opinions." While your argument makes sense in combating xenophobia, it seems these controls are authoritarian in that you're still allowing the government--and individuals within government--to exercise such control over non-government individuals.
- Mithaldu 9y ago
  The difference is that this is made public. There is no secret conspiracy and marketing campaign to change public opinion. It is taught in schools and encoded in publically accessible law.
- pluma 9y ago
  The big mistake in that logic is that controlling speech also means controlling what speech politicians can use. In the past years American politicians have literally asked for people like Assange and Snowden to be lynched or murdered in cold blood -- no due process, no courts, just shooting them or striking them down with a drone. If those politicians had expressed those sentiments on public TV in Germany, they'd have faced prison sentences. The same people in the US who are scared of their government taking stances like "man-made climate change is real", "same-sex couples should be treated the same" or "maybe some people shouldn't own firearms" are the same people who comfortably arm the police to the teeth, send American soldiers to countries they wouldn't be able to find on a map, perpetually increase military spending, and demand the government regulates what people can do in their bedrooms or what public toilets they can use. Americans aren't afraid of government getting too much power. Americans are afraid of government taking on positions they don't personally agree with and partisan thinking has led them to believe that "the others" are one term away from ruining the Greatest Nation on Earth and to think that as long as "their team" wins on election day, everything will be perfect.

by pluma 9y ago

pluma 9y ago

Oh, before anyone thinks this backs up radical "SJW" sentiments: there's plenty of hatred on that side of the arena as well. Intersectionality especially has a tendency to break down into othering. Victim narratives easily lend themselves to excusing violence against "abusers". While we're going full Godwin: Nazi Germany started out as the victim of the victors of WW2 and socialist traitors. Germany's entry into WW2 literally was as the victim of Polish aggression. None of that is really true if you look at it objectively, of course, but that was the language used by nazis at the time. If you the only thing making your behaviour morally righteous is your victimhood, maybe your behaviour isn't righteous at all. I'm socialist-libertarian myself but that doesn't mean I tolerate the same damaging behaviour from "my" side.

b6 9y ago

> Hitler rose to power by manipulating people's sentiments with language. He created scapegoats and convinced people it's okay to channel their hate and frustration towards those scapegoats. People should have the freedom to be persuaded to believe things that you don't agree with. It's OK to have a "wrong" opinion. Let people say what they want and believe what they want. I'm stunned that I still have to defend freedom of expression.

novalis78 9y ago
Exactly. And here I was thinking there was such a thing as 'being an adult' and 'education' and 'freedom of speech' - do we really want to undermine the basic tenets of the Age of Reason? Because if I am not mistaken, censorship was a widespread reality and it took a very long time and a lot of blood to crawl out from underneath it. In other words: Do you think Hitler could have been stopped by not letting 'The Stormer' publish?
- pluma 9y ago
  I think "could X have stopped Hitler" is asking the wrong question (and it betrays the same kind of black/white thinking that is fundamental to the rhetoric I mentioned). The Treaty of Versailles was crippling the economy, the royalists felt betrayed by the social democrats who ended the Great War by surrendering, the Great Depression destabilised the banks, and so on. Even a bullet in the brain wouldn't necessarily have "stopped Hitler" at the time (the reason we talk about "stopping Hitler" is that Hitler wasn't stopped so we don't know who'd have taken his place and where that would have led the movement at the time). But this is irrelevant because 2010s Germans aren't 1920s/1930s Germans. West Germany underwent a massive process of Denazification, we entered into and established ourselves in the European Union and Germans who grew up in post-war Germany are used to the idea that incitement is a crime and racial hatred has no place in a civilised society. It's irrelevant whether criminalising incitement ("censorship") would have stopped Hitler in the 1930s because a single law doesn't instantly transform society. It's 2018 and this is not a new law. But we'll never be able to tell whether it stopped Hitler today because if we stopped him we won't know who he is because he'll never ascend to the same significance in history in the first place. It's a strawman. You also seem to be under the false presumption that you having legal "freedom of speech" means you can express anything you want without consequences. As is being pointed out all the time, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, just freedom from direct legal consequences. If you hold no significant political power and say something other people find disagreeable, you will be called out at best and ostracized at worst. In fact, freedom of speech might actually help those seeking to harm you because they have the righteous fury on their side. If you hold significant power, there are plenty of examples in US politics how that usually works out (though time will tell how it works out for Trump in particular). Fun side effect: dehumanising people also makes it easier to justify war. The US has been in a perpetual state of war since WW2. Do you even remember how to recognise propaganda and war rhetoric if it's been part of the mainstream since before you were born?

insickness 9y ago

In the US there is a fear of government taking too much of a role in "shaping the people's opinions." While your argument makes sense in combating xenophobia, it seems these controls are authoritarian in that you're still allowing the government--and individuals within government--to exercise such control over non-government individuals.

Mithaldu 9y ago
The difference is that this is made public. There is no secret conspiracy and marketing campaign to change public opinion. It is taught in schools and encoded in publically accessible law.
pluma 9y ago
The big mistake in that logic is that controlling speech also means controlling what speech politicians can use. In the past years American politicians have literally asked for people like Assange and Snowden to be lynched or murdered in cold blood -- no due process, no courts, just shooting them or striking them down with a drone. If those politicians had expressed those sentiments on public TV in Germany, they'd have faced prison sentences. The same people in the US who are scared of their government taking stances like "man-made climate change is real", "same-sex couples should be treated the same" or "maybe some people shouldn't own firearms" are the same people who comfortably arm the police to the teeth, send American soldiers to countries they wouldn't be able to find on a map, perpetually increase military spending, and demand the government regulates what people can do in their bedrooms or what public toilets they can use. Americans aren't afraid of government getting too much power. Americans are afraid of government taking on positions they don't personally agree with and partisan thinking has led them to believe that "the others" are one term away from ruining the Greatest Nation on Earth and to think that as long as "their team" wins on election day, everything will be perfect.