12 ms·

Just FYI, hate speech being free speech is an American thing. Other democracies in the world have frameworks for limiting/prioritizing basic rights, right to fr

Just FYI, hate speech being free speech is an American thing. Other democracies in the world have frameworks for limiting/prioritizing basic rights, right to free speech included (take, for example, German moderation laws) and have not become a totalitarian dystopias yet. One opinion I've heard in Germany is that the free speech absolutism and value neutrality of the constitution of the Weimar Republic allowed NSDAP to take power in the first place.

Thorentis 4y ago
Not advocating for NSDAP, but do you think it's worrying that one government would seek to make illegal, speech which could make people interested in a different government? That doesn't seem democratic to me.
- altacc 4y ago
  Not PP but in my opinion there is a big difference between how the law addresses speech that makes people interested in a different government and speech that promotes extreme ideologies. For example, if you look at countries like Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, etc... what's illegal or repressed is any promotion of opposition to the government. This is plainly anti-democratic & authoritarian. Whereas in a lot of Europe it is illegal to promote only extreme ideologies but apart from that the democratic discourse is as messy and varied as you'd expect it to be. (And due to variety of electoral systems I'd argue that political discourse in much of Europe is mush more varied than in places like the US.) We have countries swinging from left to right wing governments and even powerful political parties that started as far right wing or terrorist groups. What we all see is how the balance can be tipped from fragile democracy to repressive authoritarianism e.g. Hungary. Democracy is a constant effort, requiring constant vigilance. These are all discussions worth having, at least in good faith.
  - rhaksw 4y ago
    How laws are sold to the public are not how they get applied. Nixon's 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act, meant to regulate campaign finance, was immediately used to curtail speech critical of Nixon. Here's former ACLU executive director Ira Glasser in a podcast at 1:49:10 [1], transcript [2]: > Times writes back and says, we can't publish this ad because we – because you criticize Nixon and it's 1972, and it's in the middle of an election campaign, and if you criticize Nixon, unless you have his permission, it counts against the ad – the expenditure limitation of his opponent. I said, I have to get his permission in order to criticize him, what are you, crazy. It's the same issue that Cambodian bombing ad... > So, we file a lawsuit, we win that lawsuit, and we strike the law down for the second time. This goes on over and over again, and I'm saying to myself, this is a law that is supposed to get in the way of nasty rich folks, and the only two times it's been used so far is against these three aging radicals and the ACLU on totally legitimate, core First Amendment speech, how can that be, and that's how we get into this issue, and why we see it so clearly as a free speech issue. It goes on and on and on and on, and they kept coming back, doing it again, and again and again and again in 16 different versions. Earlier in that podcast episode he makes a good case for campaign finance being like the right to travel around 1:36:10 [3]. Have a listen, you might learn something. The embedded player on this page [4] lets you skip around the episode without subscribing to Soundcloud. [1] https://soundcloud.com/so-to-speak-the-free-speech-podcast/former-aclu-executive-director-ira-glasser#t=1:49:10 https://soundcloud.com/so-to-speak-the-free-speech-podcast/f... [2] https://www.thefire.org/news/so-speak-podcast-transcript-former-aclu-executive-director-ira-glasser https://www.thefire.org/news/so-speak-podcast-transcript-for... [3] https://soundcloud.com/so-to-speak-the-free-speech-podcast/former-aclu-executive-director-ira-glasser#t=1:36:10 https://soundcloud.com/so-to-speak-the-free-speech-podcast/f... [4] https://www.thefire.org/news/so-speak-podcast-former-aclu-executive-director-ira-glasser https://www.thefire.org/news/so-speak-podcast-former-aclu-ex...
    - joshuamorton 4y ago
      > How laws are sold to the public are not how they get applied. Nixon's 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act, meant to regulate campaign finance, was immediately used to curtail speech critical of Nixon. This is an argument against laws, corruption, and government. It is not, however, an argument against any particular position on speech. A capricious supreme court could revert to the speech precedent the US had for the first 150 years of it's existence, which we both presumably agree is flawed. Laws can be written and misapplied. Neither of those things being possible suggests that, as a value, free speech maximalism is superior to free speech...almost maximalism. It's clear that you can have stability and discussion and support for fairly extreme ideologies under the more restrictive speech standards of Europe.
      - rhaksw 4y ago
        > This is an argument against laws, corruption, and government. No, it's an argument for studying the history of law and understanding that some are good and some are bad. They don't come with a cover sheet saying so. You need to figure it out for yourself. > Laws can be written and misapplied. All the more reason to study them and give careful consideration to how they have been misapplied in the past. We're in agreement there. You're a different commenter than above, so I'm not sure if your main point is to agree with them, disagree with me, or both, and on what exactly. > It's clear that you can have stability and discussion and support for fairly extreme ideologies under the more restrictive speech standards of Europe. I think any anti hate speech laws are more experimental than the American experiment. The point of free speech is to protect minority voices. It was championed in the '60s when the left needed it, and it rose from the ashes in the early 1900s after Comstock tried to surreptitiously-but-not-so-surreptitiously squash it. The censor never calls himself a censor.
        joshuamorton 4y ago
        > I think any anti hate speech laws are more experimental than the American experiment The modern American jurisprudence on speech is fairly recent, as I alluded to above. There's tons of cases through the 18th and 19th century where the supreme court upheld blasphemy and obscenity convictions, allowed the federal government to censor speech, favor Christian religion and churches over others, and even consider libel a Crime. As late as 1951 (Dennis v. US) the Supreme Court ruled that members of the US Communist Party could be imprisoned because socialist organizing was a threat. And it took 20 more years for Brandenburg to cement the modern jurisprudence, 200 years after the American experiment began, and only 50 years ago. > No, it's an argument for studying the history of law and understanding that some are good and some are bad. No, my point is what is socially acceptable goes beyond simply what is legal. And this is always and has always been true. Many laws can be used for tyranny. If you want to avoid the potential for tyrannical laws, you can't have any laws, and that doesn't work either. Like again, this whole thing comes down to the fact that Western European countries (and the US!) have had more restrictive definitions of free speech for far longer than Brandenburg has been the law of the land, and they aren't tyrannical.
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    The concern that people have is that the definition of what is "extreme" tends to creep, in one direction or another, in western democracies. Perhaps that's a feature of democracy itself, from a certain point of view, but for example the nominal opinion in the US on immigration in the 1990s is not really that different than that of today's average Trump voter. Democracies tend to have short memories when it comes to their own history. >...what's illegal or repressed is any promotion of opposition to the government. This is plainly anti-democratic & authoritarian. What happens in democracies (or at least in the US) is that this just gets branded as "mis" or "disinformation", or worse a "conspiracy theory". A formulation I'm fond of is "this isn't happening, and it's good that it is", because it's a pattern repeated throughout political discourse. Depending on who is talking, something is either a crazy extremist conspiracy theory, or something we should all be cheering on.
    - altacc 4y ago
      the Overton window basically. That's where the constant vigilance and discussion comes in, to keep open the possibility of moving the window. for example, I still hear a LOT about conspiracy theories, anti-vaxx, etc... even though I don't want to. It's basically two sides shouting as loud as they can that the other side is talking nonsense, just one side is the government that the majority of people voted for and support, so gets a lounder voice. Anyone equating how speech about covid restrictions or vaccinations was handled in most of Europe vs true authoritarian repression of discussion about changing governments in China, Iran, etc... is hyperbolic, disingenuous or ill-informed. Societal totalitarianism is a very real concern. In its benign form it leads to quirky cultures and in its extreme leads to total suppression of any opposition to the zeitgeist, even without a fully authoritarian government. Unfortunately there's a massive fuzzy grey boundary between the two and it's up to the people of a country to course correct when they can, as getting back from a restrictive society is difficult.
      - remarkEon 4y ago
        >Societal totalitarianism This is a good phrase; I'm stealing this. I agree with your diagnosis of it, as it can indeed be benign and result merely in "people being weird".
- _glsb 4y ago
  You're talking about the Paradox of tolerance. I don't see why it is necessary to provide a democratic platform to undemocratic or misanthropic ideologies. I think it's misguided purism.
  - arwhatever 4y ago
    That’s all fine as long as I get to decide what is considered I democratic or misanthropic. :-)
arwhatever 4y ago
Article asserts that censorship attempts by the Weimar Republic against the Nazi party empowered the Nazis, and gives examples. But I am not a historian and cannot reconcile the articles content with what you’re stating here. https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/would-censorship-have-stopped-rise-nazis-part-16-answers https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/wo...
- rhaksw 4y ago
  > But I am not a historian and cannot reconcile the articles content with what you’re stating here. You're as free as any historian to form an opinion and share it. The rest of us can take the fact that you're not one into account while reading it. Thank you for sharing a link to this series, I was not aware of it.
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    I mean, it is usually best to find experts and listen to them rather than just forming hunches. Imagine saying this about microbiology or something.
    - rhaksw 4y ago
      It's fine for people to have opinions about science and to express them. People learn through interaction. Dismissing people by saying things like "imagine joe six pack sharing his opinion on microbiology" is part of what made the anti-vax or vax-skeptical crowd so upset. In many circumstances, the rest of us did not meet them where they were. That requires listening, and yes, encouraging uninformed people to express their opinions. It can be popular to behave dismissively online because it seems like you don't need to deal with the aftermath. When everyone does it, that adds up. I'm not saying everyone needs to be out there correcting misinformation, just that we deal ourselves a better hand when we accept that other people get things wrong. It's okay for people to be wrong, even in the absence of being corrected. Telling people to shut up doesn't nip the virus in the bud, it is the virus.
- jevgeni 4y ago
rhaksw 4y ago
> Just FYI, hate speech being free speech is an American thing. Other democracies in the world have frameworks for limiting/prioritizing basic rights, right to free speech included (take, for example, German moderation laws) and have not become a totalitarian dystopias yet. There are plenty of critics living in those countries who think it's a bad idea to limit free speech beyond limiting imminent incitement of violence. Nadine Strossen discusses this in, I believe, her appearance on the Higher Ed Now podcast [0], including this excerpt, 14:20: "Countries like Germany which were in the vanguard of enacting and enforcing laws against hate speech were in the rear guard when it came to outlawing actual discrimination against people in the workplace, in places of public accommodation in housing. It wasn't until very shockingly recently that Germany was dragged kicking and screaming by the EU to adopt those laws… targeting expression is only a superficial manifestation of a deep-seated problem, and it also is divorced from the actual real world consequences of discriminatory and violent conduct." > One opinion I've heard in Germany is that the free speech absolutism and value neutrality of the constitution of the Weimar Republic allowed NSDAP to take power in the first place. The Weimar Republic had hate speech laws. Nadine makes the case [1] that photos of Hitler imprisoned for running afoul of those laws helped him rise to power. It's not so unlike Milo receiving attention for being prevented from speaking at campus. The protesters do not realize their dogmatism and censorious behavior bring Milo more followers. Protesters should consider how their behavior will be perceived [2] by someone who knows nothing other than the fact that one person wants to speak, there is a willing audience, and that protesters either: stopped that conversation from happening by being noisy, or responded with counter speech and letting haters bury themselves [3]. If you are shouting over someone, you become a hater. It doesn't need to be that way. [0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nadine-strossen-free-speech-in-the-crosshairs/id1108171208?i=1000557652989&uo=4 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nadine-strossen-free-s... [1] https://youtu.be/J1iZffRFs8s?t=2838 https://youtu.be/J1iZffRFs8s?t=2838 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0T9XSG73kY&t=4889s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0T9XSG73kY&t=4889s [3] https://youtu.be/E0T9XSG73kY?t=3083 https://youtu.be/E0T9XSG73kY?t=3083
- jevgeni 4y ago
  Have to be honest, I didn't know about hate speech laws in Weimarer republic. But in terms of equality, I'd say what we get in practice *today* in Germany and Switzerland (don't know about Austria) is a society that is arguably *more* equal than the vanguard.
luckylion 4y ago
Germany has freedom of opinion, not freedom of speech. While they're generally understood (in Germany) to be the close to the same, they're not understood the same outside of Germany. You're allowed to think whatever you want, but you're not allowed to publicly say it, unless it's within the bounds of legal opinion (which are pretty wide, it's not like you're only allowed to state one opinion, but they are also clearly limited). Insults, while clearly speech, are forbidden and it's part of the penal code (up to one year in prison, but it's usually settled by fines), so not a civil matter. What Germany certainly doesn't have is a culture of free speech. It's important to remember that the last totalitarian dictatorship in (East) Germany only ended 30 years ago, and there was very little freedom of speech there, and the limits were violently enforced. German culture highly values conformity, and it's no accident that the spiral of silence was proposed by a German researcher (Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann), it essentially argues that people check their views for majority-compatibility and will stay silent if they find that they're not accepted. Because they stay silent, others who think like them will find their ideas not accepted in the majority and will also stay silent etc etc, as an act of social survival (which it certainly is in Germany, but isn't as much in countries with a culture of free speech). > speech absolutism and value neutrality of the constitution of the Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic had largely the same fundamental laws regarding freedom of speech as the Federal Republic of Germany today: you're allowed to say what isn't outlawed by a law, and you must not be punished for saying it.
- jevgeni 4y ago
  Thank you for the insights. I'll only disagree with the last statement. Weimarer constitution was value-neutral as opposed to Grundgesetz today - meaning an NSDAP leadership or NSDAP as a party was legally compatible with the the constitution back then. Contrast that with Art. 1 Grundgesetz today - "Human dignity is inviolable. It is the task and duty of the state to protect it" - that specifically was introduced to prevent any inhuman ideology from taking hold. So in legal practice the right to human dignity overrides the right to free-speech.
denton-scratch 4y ago
> hate speech being free speech is an American thing It's the constitution, innit? It's a confusing document, with many compromises. But many US citizens treat it like the Shroud of Turin. The German laws are tied up with Germany's history in the 20th C. In other parts of Western Europe, restrictions are less stringent and less specific. Obviously there are types of "harmless" speech that are likely to provoke a violent response. Personal abuse is an example, but so is the language of the likes of Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" speech. Do people really think that speech that's likely to cause public disorder is OK? I like the author's distinction between "cultural" and "legal" freedom of speech. I instinctively dislike restrictions on speech; but provided they are used mainly to nudge people into treating their fellow citiziens with respect (and with an explicit exception for satire), I see them as an overall good. That is, you can use legal restrictions, with a light touch, to encourage an atmosphere of cultural restraint. Arresting that guy who protested Charles III's accession by holding up a blank sheet of paper: that's not a good thing.
- mcv 4y ago
  > > hate speech being free speech is an American thing > It's the constitution, innit? Is it? I wasn't aware that hate speech was explicitly singled out as protected in the Constitution. > Do people really think that speech that's likely to cause public disorder is OK? Public disorder, no. But innocent people getting heard? Well, maybe. Lots of speech that hurts innocent people is already banned. Things like libel/slander. Threats. Blackmail. All of these can hurt someone, silence someone, inspire someone else to hurt someone. I don't think anyone ever objected to these being banned, and even punishable with real prison sentences. > Arresting that guy who protested Charles III's accession by holding up a blank sheet of paper: that's not a good thing. Did that happen? That's a silly thing to arrest someone for. It calls back to Putin arresting people for holding up blank sheets of paper.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    As an aside, I love it that blank sheets of paper turned into the go to way to message a protest. You can't get less menacing and a stronger "the emperor has no clothes" message than that.
rosmax_1337 4y ago
>One opinion I've heard in Germany is that the free speech absolutism and value neutrality of the constitution of the Weimar Republic allowed NSDAP to take power in the first place. I hear that a lot nowadays too. I wonder why that is?
naasking 4y ago
> Just FYI, hate speech being free speech is an American thing. Other democracies in the world have frameworks for limiting/prioritizing basic rights, right to free speech included (take, for example, German moderation laws) and have not become a totalitarian dystopias yet. Sure, and America hasn't become a country of hate speech or devolved into tyranny yet either, despite what some claim, so do those laws actually add any value? Seems speculative at best. > One opinion I've heard in Germany is that the free speech absolutism and value neutrality of the constitution of the Weimar Republic allowed NSDAP to take power in the first place. Some of their first moves after taking power was crack down on speech and imprison people that spoke out against them. What would have happened if free speech was a strongly held principle among the people such that they wouldn't have tolerated that? What if dissenting voices had been permitted to speak about and expose the secret death camps?
- valeness 4y ago
  > Sure, and America hasn't become a country of hate speech Hate speech spewed by the likes of Tucker Carlson caused a mass shooting like a week ago...
  - naasking 4y ago
    I'm sure that's one interpretation. And yet Tucker is the most watched cable news show last I checked, so clearly most Americans don't agree with your characterization of his speech. Furthermore, drawing a causal link between Tucker and the shooter is speculative at best.
    - valeness 4y ago
      "Most watched cable news show" does not equal "most americans"; let's just clear that up before we move on... Also, the people who watch his show agree with his speech and probably don't consider it stochastic terrorism because they also want to genocide trans people. It's not a hard concept to grasp. It's a hate-hour for a very specific slice of the population. And that slice is committing more and more acts of violence. Do I think Tucker is DIRECTLY responsible for the shooting? Maybe not, like you said it's speculative. But do I think there is a casual link between the entire "Trans people are evil" rhetoric crowd and the shooting? Absolutely, I think it'd be difficult to argue the other direction, we have studies and statistics on trans hate crimes already. And then do I think Tucker Carlson is part of the "Trans people are evil" rhetoric crowd? yes, hard to deny that imo. And you said it yourself, he's the largest voice out there in that crowd. So I think he definitely shoulders some blame. Also, speculation turns out to be more and more true each time. conservative talk show hosts are cited in conservative domestic terrorists manifestos all the time. This "hour of hate" is absolutely directly contributing to violence.

Thorentis 4y ago

Not advocating for NSDAP, but do you think it's worrying that one government would seek to make illegal, speech which could make people interested in a different government? That doesn't seem democratic to me.

altacc 4y ago
Not PP but in my opinion there is a big difference between how the law addresses speech that makes people interested in a different government and speech that promotes extreme ideologies. For example, if you look at countries like Russia, China, Iran, Myanmar, etc... what's illegal or repressed is any promotion of opposition to the government. This is plainly anti-democratic & authoritarian. Whereas in a lot of Europe it is illegal to promote only extreme ideologies but apart from that the democratic discourse is as messy and varied as you'd expect it to be. (And due to variety of electoral systems I'd argue that political discourse in much of Europe is mush more varied than in places like the US.) We have countries swinging from left to right wing governments and even powerful political parties that started as far right wing or terrorist groups. What we all see is how the balance can be tipped from fragile democracy to repressive authoritarianism e.g. Hungary. Democracy is a constant effort, requiring constant vigilance. These are all discussions worth having, at least in good faith.
- rhaksw 4y ago
  How laws are sold to the public are not how they get applied. Nixon's 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act, meant to regulate campaign finance, was immediately used to curtail speech critical of Nixon. Here's former ACLU executive director Ira Glasser in a podcast at 1:49:10 [1], transcript [2]: > Times writes back and says, we can't publish this ad because we – because you criticize Nixon and it's 1972, and it's in the middle of an election campaign, and if you criticize Nixon, unless you have his permission, it counts against the ad – the expenditure limitation of his opponent. I said, I have to get his permission in order to criticize him, what are you, crazy. It's the same issue that Cambodian bombing ad... > So, we file a lawsuit, we win that lawsuit, and we strike the law down for the second time. This goes on over and over again, and I'm saying to myself, this is a law that is supposed to get in the way of nasty rich folks, and the only two times it's been used so far is against these three aging radicals and the ACLU on totally legitimate, core First Amendment speech, how can that be, and that's how we get into this issue, and why we see it so clearly as a free speech issue. It goes on and on and on and on, and they kept coming back, doing it again, and again and again and again in 16 different versions. Earlier in that podcast episode he makes a good case for campaign finance being like the right to travel around 1:36:10 [3]. Have a listen, you might learn something. The embedded player on this page [4] lets you skip around the episode without subscribing to Soundcloud. [1] https://soundcloud.com/so-to-speak-the-free-speech-podcast/former-aclu-executive-director-ira-glasser#t=1:49:10 https://soundcloud.com/so-to-speak-the-free-speech-podcast/f... [2] https://www.thefire.org/news/so-speak-podcast-transcript-former-aclu-executive-director-ira-glasser https://www.thefire.org/news/so-speak-podcast-transcript-for... [3] https://soundcloud.com/so-to-speak-the-free-speech-podcast/former-aclu-executive-director-ira-glasser#t=1:36:10 https://soundcloud.com/so-to-speak-the-free-speech-podcast/f... [4] https://www.thefire.org/news/so-speak-podcast-former-aclu-executive-director-ira-glasser https://www.thefire.org/news/so-speak-podcast-former-aclu-ex...
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    > How laws are sold to the public are not how they get applied. Nixon's 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act, meant to regulate campaign finance, was immediately used to curtail speech critical of Nixon. This is an argument against laws, corruption, and government. It is not, however, an argument against any particular position on speech. A capricious supreme court could revert to the speech precedent the US had for the first 150 years of it's existence, which we both presumably agree is flawed. Laws can be written and misapplied. Neither of those things being possible suggests that, as a value, free speech maximalism is superior to free speech...almost maximalism. It's clear that you can have stability and discussion and support for fairly extreme ideologies under the more restrictive speech standards of Europe.
    - rhaksw 4y ago
      > This is an argument against laws, corruption, and government. No, it's an argument for studying the history of law and understanding that some are good and some are bad. They don't come with a cover sheet saying so. You need to figure it out for yourself. > Laws can be written and misapplied. All the more reason to study them and give careful consideration to how they have been misapplied in the past. We're in agreement there. You're a different commenter than above, so I'm not sure if your main point is to agree with them, disagree with me, or both, and on what exactly. > It's clear that you can have stability and discussion and support for fairly extreme ideologies under the more restrictive speech standards of Europe. I think any anti hate speech laws are more experimental than the American experiment. The point of free speech is to protect minority voices. It was championed in the '60s when the left needed it, and it rose from the ashes in the early 1900s after Comstock tried to surreptitiously-but-not-so-surreptitiously squash it. The censor never calls himself a censor.
      - joshuamorton 4y ago
        > I think any anti hate speech laws are more experimental than the American experiment The modern American jurisprudence on speech is fairly recent, as I alluded to above. There's tons of cases through the 18th and 19th century where the supreme court upheld blasphemy and obscenity convictions, allowed the federal government to censor speech, favor Christian religion and churches over others, and even consider libel a Crime. As late as 1951 (Dennis v. US) the Supreme Court ruled that members of the US Communist Party could be imprisoned because socialist organizing was a threat. And it took 20 more years for Brandenburg to cement the modern jurisprudence, 200 years after the American experiment began, and only 50 years ago. > No, it's an argument for studying the history of law and understanding that some are good and some are bad. No, my point is what is socially acceptable goes beyond simply what is legal. And this is always and has always been true. Many laws can be used for tyranny. If you want to avoid the potential for tyrannical laws, you can't have any laws, and that doesn't work either. Like again, this whole thing comes down to the fact that Western European countries (and the US!) have had more restrictive definitions of free speech for far longer than Brandenburg has been the law of the land, and they aren't tyrannical.
- remarkEon 4y ago
  The concern that people have is that the definition of what is "extreme" tends to creep, in one direction or another, in western democracies. Perhaps that's a feature of democracy itself, from a certain point of view, but for example the nominal opinion in the US on immigration in the 1990s is not really that different than that of today's average Trump voter. Democracies tend to have short memories when it comes to their own history. >...what's illegal or repressed is any promotion of opposition to the government. This is plainly anti-democratic & authoritarian. What happens in democracies (or at least in the US) is that this just gets branded as "mis" or "disinformation", or worse a "conspiracy theory". A formulation I'm fond of is "this isn't happening, and it's good that it is", because it's a pattern repeated throughout political discourse. Depending on who is talking, something is either a crazy extremist conspiracy theory, or something we should all be cheering on.
  - altacc 4y ago
    the Overton window basically. That's where the constant vigilance and discussion comes in, to keep open the possibility of moving the window. for example, I still hear a LOT about conspiracy theories, anti-vaxx, etc... even though I don't want to. It's basically two sides shouting as loud as they can that the other side is talking nonsense, just one side is the government that the majority of people voted for and support, so gets a lounder voice. Anyone equating how speech about covid restrictions or vaccinations was handled in most of Europe vs true authoritarian repression of discussion about changing governments in China, Iran, etc... is hyperbolic, disingenuous or ill-informed. Societal totalitarianism is a very real concern. In its benign form it leads to quirky cultures and in its extreme leads to total suppression of any opposition to the zeitgeist, even without a fully authoritarian government. Unfortunately there's a massive fuzzy grey boundary between the two and it's up to the people of a country to course correct when they can, as getting back from a restrictive society is difficult.
    - remarkEon 4y ago
      >Societal totalitarianism This is a good phrase; I'm stealing this. I agree with your diagnosis of it, as it can indeed be benign and result merely in "people being weird".
_glsb 4y ago
You're talking about the Paradox of tolerance. I don't see why it is necessary to provide a democratic platform to undemocratic or misanthropic ideologies. I think it's misguided purism.
- arwhatever 4y ago
  That’s all fine as long as I get to decide what is considered I democratic or misanthropic. :-)

arwhatever 4y ago

Article asserts that censorship attempts by the Weimar Republic against the Nazi party empowered the Nazis, and gives examples. But I am not a historian and cannot reconcile the articles content with what you’re stating here. https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/would-censorship-have-stopped-rise-nazis-part-16-answers https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/wo...

rhaksw 4y ago
> But I am not a historian and cannot reconcile the articles content with what you’re stating here. You're as free as any historian to form an opinion and share it. The rest of us can take the fact that you're not one into account while reading it. Thank you for sharing a link to this series, I was not aware of it.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  I mean, it is usually best to find experts and listen to them rather than just forming hunches. Imagine saying this about microbiology or something.
  - rhaksw 4y ago
    It's fine for people to have opinions about science and to express them. People learn through interaction. Dismissing people by saying things like "imagine joe six pack sharing his opinion on microbiology" is part of what made the anti-vax or vax-skeptical crowd so upset. In many circumstances, the rest of us did not meet them where they were. That requires listening, and yes, encouraging uninformed people to express their opinions. It can be popular to behave dismissively online because it seems like you don't need to deal with the aftermath. When everyone does it, that adds up. I'm not saying everyone needs to be out there correcting misinformation, just that we deal ourselves a better hand when we accept that other people get things wrong. It's okay for people to be wrong, even in the absence of being corrected. Telling people to shut up doesn't nip the virus in the bud, it is the virus.
jevgeni 4y ago

rhaksw 4y ago

> Just FYI, hate speech being free speech is an American thing. Other democracies in the world have frameworks for limiting/prioritizing basic rights, right to free speech included (take, for example, German moderation laws) and have not become a totalitarian dystopias yet. There are plenty of critics living in those countries who think it's a bad idea to limit free speech beyond limiting imminent incitement of violence. Nadine Strossen discusses this in, I believe, her appearance on the Higher Ed Now podcast [0], including this excerpt, 14:20: "Countries like Germany which were in the vanguard of enacting and enforcing laws against hate speech were in the rear guard when it came to outlawing actual discrimination against people in the workplace, in places of public accommodation in housing. It wasn't until very shockingly recently that Germany was dragged kicking and screaming by the EU to adopt those laws… targeting expression is only a superficial manifestation of a deep-seated problem, and it also is divorced from the actual real world consequences of discriminatory and violent conduct." > One opinion I've heard in Germany is that the free speech absolutism and value neutrality of the constitution of the Weimar Republic allowed NSDAP to take power in the first place. The Weimar Republic had hate speech laws. Nadine makes the case [1] that photos of Hitler imprisoned for running afoul of those laws helped him rise to power. It's not so unlike Milo receiving attention for being prevented from speaking at campus. The protesters do not realize their dogmatism and censorious behavior bring Milo more followers. Protesters should consider how their behavior will be perceived [2] by someone who knows nothing other than the fact that one person wants to speak, there is a willing audience, and that protesters either: stopped that conversation from happening by being noisy, or responded with counter speech and letting haters bury themselves [3]. If you are shouting over someone, you become a hater. It doesn't need to be that way. [0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nadine-strossen-free-speech-in-the-crosshairs/id1108171208?i=1000557652989&uo=4 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nadine-strossen-free-s... [1] https://youtu.be/J1iZffRFs8s?t=2838 https://youtu.be/J1iZffRFs8s?t=2838 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0T9XSG73kY&t=4889s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0T9XSG73kY&t=4889s [3] https://youtu.be/E0T9XSG73kY?t=3083 https://youtu.be/E0T9XSG73kY?t=3083

jevgeni 4y ago
Have to be honest, I didn't know about hate speech laws in Weimarer republic. But in terms of equality, I'd say what we get in practice *today* in Germany and Switzerland (don't know about Austria) is a society that is arguably *more* equal than the vanguard.

luckylion 4y ago

Germany has freedom of opinion, not freedom of speech. While they're generally understood (in Germany) to be the close to the same, they're not understood the same outside of Germany. You're allowed to think whatever you want, but you're not allowed to publicly say it, unless it's within the bounds of legal opinion (which are pretty wide, it's not like you're only allowed to state one opinion, but they are also clearly limited). Insults, while clearly speech, are forbidden and it's part of the penal code (up to one year in prison, but it's usually settled by fines), so not a civil matter. What Germany certainly doesn't have is a culture of free speech. It's important to remember that the last totalitarian dictatorship in (East) Germany only ended 30 years ago, and there was very little freedom of speech there, and the limits were violently enforced. German culture highly values conformity, and it's no accident that the spiral of silence was proposed by a German researcher (Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann), it essentially argues that people check their views for majority-compatibility and will stay silent if they find that they're not accepted. Because they stay silent, others who think like them will find their ideas not accepted in the majority and will also stay silent etc etc, as an act of social survival (which it certainly is in Germany, but isn't as much in countries with a culture of free speech). > speech absolutism and value neutrality of the constitution of the Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic had largely the same fundamental laws regarding freedom of speech as the Federal Republic of Germany today: you're allowed to say what isn't outlawed by a law, and you must not be punished for saying it.

jevgeni 4y ago
Thank you for the insights. I'll only disagree with the last statement. Weimarer constitution was value-neutral as opposed to Grundgesetz today - meaning an NSDAP leadership or NSDAP as a party was legally compatible with the the constitution back then. Contrast that with Art. 1 Grundgesetz today - "Human dignity is inviolable. It is the task and duty of the state to protect it" - that specifically was introduced to prevent any inhuman ideology from taking hold. So in legal practice the right to human dignity overrides the right to free-speech.

denton-scratch 4y ago

> hate speech being free speech is an American thing It's the constitution, innit? It's a confusing document, with many compromises. But many US citizens treat it like the Shroud of Turin. The German laws are tied up with Germany's history in the 20th C. In other parts of Western Europe, restrictions are less stringent and less specific. Obviously there are types of "harmless" speech that are likely to provoke a violent response. Personal abuse is an example, but so is the language of the likes of Enoch Powell's "rivers of blood" speech. Do people really think that speech that's likely to cause public disorder is OK? I like the author's distinction between "cultural" and "legal" freedom of speech. I instinctively dislike restrictions on speech; but provided they are used mainly to nudge people into treating their fellow citiziens with respect (and with an explicit exception for satire), I see them as an overall good. That is, you can use legal restrictions, with a light touch, to encourage an atmosphere of cultural restraint. Arresting that guy who protested Charles III's accession by holding up a blank sheet of paper: that's not a good thing.

mcv 4y ago
> > hate speech being free speech is an American thing > It's the constitution, innit? Is it? I wasn't aware that hate speech was explicitly singled out as protected in the Constitution. > Do people really think that speech that's likely to cause public disorder is OK? Public disorder, no. But innocent people getting heard? Well, maybe. Lots of speech that hurts innocent people is already banned. Things like libel/slander. Threats. Blackmail. All of these can hurt someone, silence someone, inspire someone else to hurt someone. I don't think anyone ever objected to these being banned, and even punishable with real prison sentences. > Arresting that guy who protested Charles III's accession by holding up a blank sheet of paper: that's not a good thing. Did that happen? That's a silly thing to arrest someone for. It calls back to Putin arresting people for holding up blank sheets of paper.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  As an aside, I love it that blank sheets of paper turned into the go to way to message a protest. You can't get less menacing and a stronger "the emperor has no clothes" message than that.

rosmax_1337 4y ago

>One opinion I've heard in Germany is that the free speech absolutism and value neutrality of the constitution of the Weimar Republic allowed NSDAP to take power in the first place. I hear that a lot nowadays too. I wonder why that is?

naasking 4y ago

valeness 4y ago
> Sure, and America hasn't become a country of hate speech Hate speech spewed by the likes of Tucker Carlson caused a mass shooting like a week ago...
- naasking 4y ago
  I'm sure that's one interpretation. And yet Tucker is the most watched cable news show last I checked, so clearly most Americans don't agree with your characterization of his speech. Furthermore, drawing a causal link between Tucker and the shooter is speculative at best.
  - valeness 4y ago
    "Most watched cable news show" does not equal "most americans"; let's just clear that up before we move on... Also, the people who watch his show agree with his speech and probably don't consider it stochastic terrorism because they also want to genocide trans people. It's not a hard concept to grasp. It's a hate-hour for a very specific slice of the population. And that slice is committing more and more acts of violence. Do I think Tucker is DIRECTLY responsible for the shooting? Maybe not, like you said it's speculative. But do I think there is a casual link between the entire "Trans people are evil" rhetoric crowd and the shooting? Absolutely, I think it'd be difficult to argue the other direction, we have studies and statistics on trans hate crimes already. And then do I think Tucker Carlson is part of the "Trans people are evil" rhetoric crowd? yes, hard to deny that imo. And you said it yourself, he's the largest voice out there in that crowd. So I think he definitely shoulders some blame. Also, speculation turns out to be more and more true each time. conservative talk show hosts are cited in conservative domestic terrorists manifestos all the time. This "hour of hate" is absolutely directly contributing to violence.