2 ms·

Anyone who is interested in free speech issues and civil rights should be very uneasy by the idea that the police can raid your house and interrogate you over o

by andor 6y ago

Anyone who is interested in free speech issues and civil rights should be very uneasy by the idea that the police can raid your house and interrogate you over online comments that are deemed by the politics de jour to be "hate speech" Not trying to convince you or anything, but I think you'd have a different opinion on the subject if you were as exposed as the politician mentioned in the article and regularly received death threats and harassment. Consider also that a raid in Germany is not like a raid in the US. The US doesn't have this problem with wide legal protections for free speech online or off. Europeans are not so lucky. This is not reflected in the World Press Freedom Index, maybe because there are non-hateful ways to express most thoughts: https://rsf.org/en/ranking https://rsf.org/en/ranking

bmmayer1 6y ago
Politicians are, by their choice of profession, exposed. Which is not to say that death threats and/or harassment shouldn't have legal consequences based on their severity, which of course they should. But note that this article mentions neither, instead saying that someone "insulted a female politician online," which I hope you would agree shouldn't be a crime. I...also don't know how to respond to your point about the Press Freedom Index other than to say, most European countries have blasphemy or heresy laws, and those apply to the press as well. So I don't know what this index is scoring based off of, but American journalists just don't go to jail for what they write. As opposed to David Irving[1], who did just that. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_trial
raxxorrax 6y ago
This doesn't excuse this behavior. I would be one of the first to go if people start to measure skulls again. And this behavior of executive forces is much more concerning than what some people post on the internet. It shows to me that the EU is not ready to take a leadership role in the 21st century and just tries to repeat old mistakes. Pitiful really and the brutality of the raid isn't the issue here. It is not even a question if the German state will use this to suppress "unfortunate" opinions and they would not deny it if you asked.

by andor 6y ago

bmmayer1 6y ago

Politicians are, by their choice of profession, exposed. Which is not to say that death threats and/or harassment shouldn't have legal consequences based on their severity, which of course they should. But note that this article mentions neither, instead saying that someone "insulted a female politician online," which I hope you would agree shouldn't be a crime. I...also don't know how to respond to your point about the Press Freedom Index other than to say, most European countries have blasphemy or heresy laws, and those apply to the press as well. So I don't know what this index is scoring based off of, but American journalists just don't go to jail for what they write. As opposed to David Irving[1], who did just that. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_trial

raxxorrax 6y ago

This doesn't excuse this behavior. I would be one of the first to go if people start to measure skulls again. And this behavior of executive forces is much more concerning than what some people post on the internet. It shows to me that the EU is not ready to take a leadership role in the 21st century and just tries to repeat old mistakes. Pitiful really and the brutality of the raid isn't the issue here. It is not even a question if the German state will use this to suppress "unfortunate" opinions and they would not deny it if you asked.