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Because it is. If you can't have an open, honest and educated discussion about the problems at hand, comparing different approaches, then you took a really wro

Because it is. If you can't have an open, honest and educated discussion about the problems at hand, comparing different approaches, then you took a really wrong turn somewhere. Just hiding the problem away, by making certain topics taboo or through other mechanisms, doesn't solve it. As a German, I can speak from experience because it's something we've been doing for a very long time across a whole variety of topics from neo-Nazis to online libel. In Germany, you are liable for any comments somebody leaves on your website. Couple that with all the anti-Nazi law stuff, you have the situation where literally no German news outlet allows unmoderated comments on their site. Did that help? Does that help? Are all neo-Nazis gone from Germany, and nobody writes anything nasty anymore? Far from it, but at the same time a lot of people can point at this stuff and go "Look how they are censoring us away, we are a persecuted minority!" reinforcing their own victim-narrative.

smsm42 8y ago
> If you can't have an open, honest and educated discussion You can't have such a discussion if there's a policeman (literal or figurative) standing over your shoulder waiting to drag you off to jail (literal or figurative) over any transgression - and anything that people who pay the policeman don't like is deemed to be the transgression. And what we have in Europe now is that people get fined and jailed for retweets and facebook shares. And it's not even the Nazi stuff anymore, it's "culturally insensitive" stuff - i.e. posting something somebody from thousands of identity groups might not like (even if none of them complained). One person got in trouble for literally posting a song by an American rapper (which used some spicy language with racial slurs, as some rappers commonly do). And then it goes to people being fired and persecuted for merely mentioning certain words - even in context of condemning use of the same word! Just for mere mention you can get fired. Maybe in 5 years you'd get 5 years in jail for that. All in the name of fighting fascism, of course.

smsm42 8y ago

> If you can't have an open, honest and educated discussion You can't have such a discussion if there's a policeman (literal or figurative) standing over your shoulder waiting to drag you off to jail (literal or figurative) over any transgression - and anything that people who pay the policeman don't like is deemed to be the transgression. And what we have in Europe now is that people get fined and jailed for retweets and facebook shares. And it's not even the Nazi stuff anymore, it's "culturally insensitive" stuff - i.e. posting something somebody from thousands of identity groups might not like (even if none of them complained). One person got in trouble for literally posting a song by an American rapper (which used some spicy language with racial slurs, as some rappers commonly do). And then it goes to people being fired and persecuted for merely mentioning certain words - even in context of condemning use of the same word! Just for mere mention you can get fired. Maybe in 5 years you'd get 5 years in jail for that. All in the name of fighting fascism, of course.