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There is considerable opposition in Germany against these things. It’s true that some political circles keep pushing for it, but there is also a strong constitu

by layer8 1y ago

There is considerable opposition in Germany against these things. It’s true that some political circles keep pushing for it, but there is also a strong constitutional and civil basis against it. It’s exceedingly unlikely to happen that “nobody is looking”. The biggest risk is the far right coming into power.

TylerLives 1y ago
Are they pushing for it?
- layer8 1y ago
  No, they position themselves against it, because they have a narrative similar to the (former) “deep state” narrative in the US, but you can be assured that they will reverse course as soon as they can afford it.
  - zaphar 1y ago
    I'm not familiar with the far right in Germany. Why should we be assured that they will reverse course as soon as they can afford it?
    - peterlk 1y ago
      Because, similar to the US, they have authoritarian tendencies - strong nationalism and anti-immigration. How are you going to round up the bad people if you don't have surveillance everywhere?
      - zaphar 1y ago
        I am unclear on how strong nationalism is an authoritarian signal. Can you go into more detail there?
        shakna 1y ago
        Because it makes it easier to create scapegoats, and excuses for why restrictions must be created. Blame the Jews, the immigrants, the trans, and then people will grudgingly accept the Gestapo, ICE, prosecution without proof or courts. Which then allows you to target the opposition without proof.
        croes 1y ago
        Because it’s a fake nationalism where they decide who and what is considered part of the nation and who and what not.
        glenstein 1y ago
        Well the Axis powers from World War II are the most obvious demonstrations of nationalism begetting authoritarianism. Germany, Italy, and Japan were nationalist in the extreme. And Italy from that time is such a clear example that it's basically the canonical example used to teach how fascism emerges. Contemporary examples include the Philippines, Hungary, Poland's Law and Justice Party, and arguably Russia, Turkey and India. Modi is a Hindu nationalist. The United States unfortunately is shaping up to count as an example as well. Extreme forms of nationalism tend to have a narrative of grievance, a desire to restore a once a great national identity, and a tendency to divide the world into loyal citizens, and enemies without and within, against whom authoritarians powers must be mobilized. So there's a conceptual basis, in terms of setting the stage for rationalizing authoritarianism, as well as abundant historical examples demonstrating the marriage of nationalism and authoritarianism in action. There's nothing wrong with not knowing, but I would say there's an extremely strong and familiar historical canon to those who study the topic.
        zmgsabst 1y ago
        But that would only be something nationalism signaled if the converse weren’t also true — eg, totalitarian states like the USSR, CCP, etc. Those also had: - grievance narratives; - a tendency to divide the world into loyal citizens and enemies; and, - use the above to justify authoritarian powers. You haven’t shown that nationalism played a particular part in that cycle; just that it also happened in nationalist states. Almost like the problem is those factors, rather than nationalism.
      - dinkumthinkum 1y ago
        Authoritarian? You're saying this because of immigration; this comes from a position that is basically open borders. It is an interesting double standard. The people that hold this position would not consider non-Western countries that don't want to have open borders or have dramatic demographic shifts in their population and culture to be "authoritarian." This whole notion of "rounding up the bad people" is just infantile leftist stuff. How do you have a sovereign country if you are not able to have a policy that prevents unfettered 'immigration' or unable to deport those that immigrated contrary to law?
        marcus_holmes 1y ago
        The whole concept of a country as a related group of people from one ethnicity or historical origin is relatively recent. Feudalism did not have this concept; a country was the land belonging to a king (or equivalent), mediated through a set of nobles. There was no concept of illegal or legal immigration; the population of a country were the people who worked for, or were owned by, the nobles ruling that country. There were land rights granted to peasants who had historically lived in that place, but these could and were often overruled by nobles. European nobility had no such idea of ethnicity or national grouping; the English monarchy is a German family, and most of European nobility were related to each other much more closely than to the citizens of their country. Early post-monarchy states didn't have this concept. The English Civil War and the French Revolution didn't create states that had a defined concept of the citizen as a member of any ethnic grouping. Again, there's no mention of immigration in any of the documents from this period. It just wasn't a concept they thought about. The whole concept that a nation-state is a formalisation of a historical grouping of ethnically related people is a very recent one, only a couple of hundred years old. So to answer your question: It is very easy to have a sovereign country without a policy that prevents unfettered immigration; you just don't care about your population being ethnically diverse. Your citizens are the people who live in your country, and have undergone whatever ceremony and formality you decide makes them citizens. This is, after all, how America historically did this; if you arrived in America and pledged allegiance, you became a citizen of America.
    - layer8 1y ago
      In simple terms, because the far right is about authoritarianism and control, not about civil liberties.
      - zaphar 1y ago
        Interesting. So they have a history of attempting to legislate authoritarian rules that restrict civil liberties for citizens?
        natebc 1y ago
        In Germany? Yes. Yes, they do.
        croes 1y ago
        The tried to prohibit inclusive language
        pezezin 1y ago
        The problem is that most Indo-European languages have grammatical gender, with English being a notable exception. In many cases, trying to fit that inclusive language means contorting or breaking the language grammar in unnatural ways, that's why many people oppose it.
        layer8 1y ago
        Yes, for example: https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2021/kw02-de-praeventionsgewahrsam-816570 https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2021/kw02-de-p... https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2018/kw08-de-vollverschleierung-542282 https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2018/kw08-de-v... https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/304/1930412.pdf https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/304/1930412.pdf https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/111/1911127.pdf https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/111/1911127.pdf
        FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        The first one is bad indeed, but what's so "authoritarian" about the rest? >https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2018/kw08-de-vollverschleierung-542282 https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2018/kw08-de-v... Other European countries like Switzerland, also banned full face veils(burqas) in public. Try entering a bank, city hall, school, etc with a balaclava, ski mask or motorcycle helmet see how that goes. >https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/304/1930412.pdf https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/304/1930412.pdf Allowing the surveillance of minors if they show signs of radicalization? This to me makes sense under existing child protection laws. If kids are being raised in environments that are harmful to themselves and society, should we just sit by and let them get permanently wrecked till they reach adulthood, over a technicality? The earlier you can catch the issues the better for everyone and the higher the chance you can rescue the child. Existing child protection laws in Germany already allow the state a lot of power to take children away from parents if they're seen as unfit. >https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/111/1911127.pdf https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/111/1911127.pdf Taking citizenship away from those who voluntarily join terrorist organizations like ISIS? 100% agree with this, how could you not? These are common sense viewpoints a lot of Europeans agree with, not authoritarian ones.
    - alsetmusic 1y ago
      > I'm not familiar with the far right in Germany. Why should we be assured that they will reverse course as soon as they can afford it? In addition to the authoritarian aspect pointed out by a sibling comment, the far-right generally consider the ends to justify the means because of their sense of righteousness. They will compromise their values to get what they want (control over others). Just look at the hypocrisy of the free-speech absolutists on twitter who have no complaints over Lonnie shutting down Leftist accounts.
    - hopelite 1y ago
      Because it’s just manipulative and abusive, self harming and self destructive narcissistic psychopathic people calling things that thwart their suicidal mindset as “far right”. If you don’t want to LoL yourself, you must be far-right. If you don’t feel safe in your own community because of foreigners that have no right to be there, then you must be a racist. It’s an odd phenomenon called a mass formation in large populations, when groups of people get fixated or obsessed with a certain concept or even a thing that the group ourself becomes self-reinforcing; usually until a point of exhaustion is reached or self-destruction. It can also be effectively injected into a culture as it was in Germany’s case after the war through endless and limitless collective and hereditary blame abuse to the point that Germans generally do not have self-respect, and if they show even a slight bit of self-respect they are branded far right, as of that means anything being the subconscious conditioning people have been subjected to. It’s kind of sad and unfortunate and humanity should never have allowed the collective torture, abuse, and punishment of Germans even to this day 80 years later. It’s a sick and depraved thing only the most devious and evil people would condone, let alone perpetrate.
    - rsynnott 1y ago
      Are you... familiar with the _history_ of the far right in Germany? Not scared of doing a little surveillance.
  - ratelimitsteve 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > No, they position themselves against it, because they have a narrative similar to the (former) “deep state” narrative in the US, but you can be assured that they will reverse course as soon as they can afford it. We seem to have a general problem with people not understanding that democracies have regular elections and the other party is going to get back in at some point. So then whenever one party is in power, instead of thinking ahead by five minutes and realizing that adding new constraints on the government and adding rather than eroding checks and balances will help you the next time the other team gets in, everybody thinks of them as an impediment to doing whatever they want immediately. And then like clockwork they get butthurt when they checks they eroded or failed to put into place aren't there after the next election, as if they had nothing to do with it.
  - dinkumthinkum 1y ago
    Who is the "far right" in Germany? Is it just anyone you disagree with? And, if it is the AfD being "far right" ... ok :/
hackandthink 1y ago
There is a lot of censorship in Germany. People do not care. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/russia-today-verbot-der-eu-zulaessig-oder-nicht-kompetenzueberschreitung https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/russia-today-verbot...
- fooqux 1y ago
  Censorship != forced breaking of E2EE. People can care differently about different things.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- uniqueuid 1y ago
  Nitpick: 1. Censorship in German constitutional law is only defined as the state pre-screening before publication. That's a very narrow area and rarely applies. Most people from an US legal tradition will consider censorship to include other things such as mandating removal of certain content after the fact, but that's different legal branches with different mechanisms (i.e. libel). 2. What Schulz is talking about in the second link definitely is state censorship (blocking a TV station), but it's not implemented by Germany but on the EU level. (Germany is still involved - complicated matter). Finally we should appreciate that the US government's opinion on censorship seems to have pivoted quite a lot, so I would expect free speech maximalism to not remain a very popular position on the government level (even though many people may still support it, either naïvely or with robust arguments).
  - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
    > Most people from an US legal tradition will consider censorship to include other things such as mandating removal of certain content after the fact Such as removals because of copyright claims?
    - LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago

by layer8 1y ago

TylerLives 1y ago

Are they pushing for it?

layer8 1y ago
No, they position themselves against it, because they have a narrative similar to the (former) “deep state” narrative in the US, but you can be assured that they will reverse course as soon as they can afford it.
- zaphar 1y ago
  I'm not familiar with the far right in Germany. Why should we be assured that they will reverse course as soon as they can afford it?
  - peterlk 1y ago
    Because, similar to the US, they have authoritarian tendencies - strong nationalism and anti-immigration. How are you going to round up the bad people if you don't have surveillance everywhere?
    - zaphar 1y ago
      I am unclear on how strong nationalism is an authoritarian signal. Can you go into more detail there?
      - shakna 1y ago
        Because it makes it easier to create scapegoats, and excuses for why restrictions must be created. Blame the Jews, the immigrants, the trans, and then people will grudgingly accept the Gestapo, ICE, prosecution without proof or courts. Which then allows you to target the opposition without proof.
      - croes 1y ago
        Because it’s a fake nationalism where they decide who and what is considered part of the nation and who and what not.
      - glenstein 1y ago
        Well the Axis powers from World War II are the most obvious demonstrations of nationalism begetting authoritarianism. Germany, Italy, and Japan were nationalist in the extreme. And Italy from that time is such a clear example that it's basically the canonical example used to teach how fascism emerges. Contemporary examples include the Philippines, Hungary, Poland's Law and Justice Party, and arguably Russia, Turkey and India. Modi is a Hindu nationalist. The United States unfortunately is shaping up to count as an example as well. Extreme forms of nationalism tend to have a narrative of grievance, a desire to restore a once a great national identity, and a tendency to divide the world into loyal citizens, and enemies without and within, against whom authoritarians powers must be mobilized. So there's a conceptual basis, in terms of setting the stage for rationalizing authoritarianism, as well as abundant historical examples demonstrating the marriage of nationalism and authoritarianism in action. There's nothing wrong with not knowing, but I would say there's an extremely strong and familiar historical canon to those who study the topic.
        zmgsabst 1y ago
        But that would only be something nationalism signaled if the converse weren’t also true — eg, totalitarian states like the USSR, CCP, etc. Those also had: - grievance narratives; - a tendency to divide the world into loyal citizens and enemies; and, - use the above to justify authoritarian powers. You haven’t shown that nationalism played a particular part in that cycle; just that it also happened in nationalist states. Almost like the problem is those factors, rather than nationalism.
    - dinkumthinkum 1y ago
      Authoritarian? You're saying this because of immigration; this comes from a position that is basically open borders. It is an interesting double standard. The people that hold this position would not consider non-Western countries that don't want to have open borders or have dramatic demographic shifts in their population and culture to be "authoritarian." This whole notion of "rounding up the bad people" is just infantile leftist stuff. How do you have a sovereign country if you are not able to have a policy that prevents unfettered 'immigration' or unable to deport those that immigrated contrary to law?
      - marcus_holmes 1y ago
        The whole concept of a country as a related group of people from one ethnicity or historical origin is relatively recent. Feudalism did not have this concept; a country was the land belonging to a king (or equivalent), mediated through a set of nobles. There was no concept of illegal or legal immigration; the population of a country were the people who worked for, or were owned by, the nobles ruling that country. There were land rights granted to peasants who had historically lived in that place, but these could and were often overruled by nobles. European nobility had no such idea of ethnicity or national grouping; the English monarchy is a German family, and most of European nobility were related to each other much more closely than to the citizens of their country. Early post-monarchy states didn't have this concept. The English Civil War and the French Revolution didn't create states that had a defined concept of the citizen as a member of any ethnic grouping. Again, there's no mention of immigration in any of the documents from this period. It just wasn't a concept they thought about. The whole concept that a nation-state is a formalisation of a historical grouping of ethnically related people is a very recent one, only a couple of hundred years old. So to answer your question: It is very easy to have a sovereign country without a policy that prevents unfettered immigration; you just don't care about your population being ethnically diverse. Your citizens are the people who live in your country, and have undergone whatever ceremony and formality you decide makes them citizens. This is, after all, how America historically did this; if you arrived in America and pledged allegiance, you became a citizen of America.
  - layer8 1y ago
    In simple terms, because the far right is about authoritarianism and control, not about civil liberties.
    - zaphar 1y ago
      Interesting. So they have a history of attempting to legislate authoritarian rules that restrict civil liberties for citizens?
      - natebc 1y ago
        In Germany? Yes. Yes, they do.
      - croes 1y ago
        The tried to prohibit inclusive language
        pezezin 1y ago
        The problem is that most Indo-European languages have grammatical gender, with English being a notable exception. In many cases, trying to fit that inclusive language means contorting or breaking the language grammar in unnatural ways, that's why many people oppose it.
      - layer8 1y ago
        Yes, for example: https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2021/kw02-de-praeventionsgewahrsam-816570 https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2021/kw02-de-p... https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2018/kw08-de-vollverschleierung-542282 https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2018/kw08-de-v... https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/304/1930412.pdf https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/304/1930412.pdf https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/111/1911127.pdf https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/111/1911127.pdf
        FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        The first one is bad indeed, but what's so "authoritarian" about the rest? >https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2018/kw08-de-vollverschleierung-542282 https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2018/kw08-de-v... Other European countries like Switzerland, also banned full face veils(burqas) in public. Try entering a bank, city hall, school, etc with a balaclava, ski mask or motorcycle helmet see how that goes. >https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/304/1930412.pdf https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/304/1930412.pdf Allowing the surveillance of minors if they show signs of radicalization? This to me makes sense under existing child protection laws. If kids are being raised in environments that are harmful to themselves and society, should we just sit by and let them get permanently wrecked till they reach adulthood, over a technicality? The earlier you can catch the issues the better for everyone and the higher the chance you can rescue the child. Existing child protection laws in Germany already allow the state a lot of power to take children away from parents if they're seen as unfit. >https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/111/1911127.pdf https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/111/1911127.pdf Taking citizenship away from those who voluntarily join terrorist organizations like ISIS? 100% agree with this, how could you not? These are common sense viewpoints a lot of Europeans agree with, not authoritarian ones.
  - alsetmusic 1y ago
    > I'm not familiar with the far right in Germany. Why should we be assured that they will reverse course as soon as they can afford it? In addition to the authoritarian aspect pointed out by a sibling comment, the far-right generally consider the ends to justify the means because of their sense of righteousness. They will compromise their values to get what they want (control over others). Just look at the hypocrisy of the free-speech absolutists on twitter who have no complaints over Lonnie shutting down Leftist accounts.
  - hopelite 1y ago
    Because it’s just manipulative and abusive, self harming and self destructive narcissistic psychopathic people calling things that thwart their suicidal mindset as “far right”. If you don’t want to LoL yourself, you must be far-right. If you don’t feel safe in your own community because of foreigners that have no right to be there, then you must be a racist. It’s an odd phenomenon called a mass formation in large populations, when groups of people get fixated or obsessed with a certain concept or even a thing that the group ourself becomes self-reinforcing; usually until a point of exhaustion is reached or self-destruction. It can also be effectively injected into a culture as it was in Germany’s case after the war through endless and limitless collective and hereditary blame abuse to the point that Germans generally do not have self-respect, and if they show even a slight bit of self-respect they are branded far right, as of that means anything being the subconscious conditioning people have been subjected to. It’s kind of sad and unfortunate and humanity should never have allowed the collective torture, abuse, and punishment of Germans even to this day 80 years later. It’s a sick and depraved thing only the most devious and evil people would condone, let alone perpetrate.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    Are you... familiar with the _history_ of the far right in Germany? Not scared of doing a little surveillance.
- ratelimitsteve 1y ago
  [flagged]
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > No, they position themselves against it, because they have a narrative similar to the (former) “deep state” narrative in the US, but you can be assured that they will reverse course as soon as they can afford it. We seem to have a general problem with people not understanding that democracies have regular elections and the other party is going to get back in at some point. So then whenever one party is in power, instead of thinking ahead by five minutes and realizing that adding new constraints on the government and adding rather than eroding checks and balances will help you the next time the other team gets in, everybody thinks of them as an impediment to doing whatever they want immediately. And then like clockwork they get butthurt when they checks they eroded or failed to put into place aren't there after the next election, as if they had nothing to do with it.
- dinkumthinkum 1y ago
  Who is the "far right" in Germany? Is it just anyone you disagree with? And, if it is the AfD being "far right" ... ok :/

hackandthink 1y ago

There is a lot of censorship in Germany. People do not care. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/russia-today-verbot-der-eu-zulaessig-oder-nicht-kompetenzueberschreitung https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/russia-today-verbot...

fooqux 1y ago
Censorship != forced breaking of E2EE. People can care differently about different things.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
uniqueuid 1y ago
Nitpick: 1. Censorship in German constitutional law is only defined as the state pre-screening before publication. That's a very narrow area and rarely applies. Most people from an US legal tradition will consider censorship to include other things such as mandating removal of certain content after the fact, but that's different legal branches with different mechanisms (i.e. libel). 2. What Schulz is talking about in the second link definitely is state censorship (blocking a TV station), but it's not implemented by Germany but on the EU level. (Germany is still involved - complicated matter). Finally we should appreciate that the US government's opinion on censorship seems to have pivoted quite a lot, so I would expect free speech maximalism to not remain a very popular position on the government level (even though many people may still support it, either naïvely or with robust arguments).
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago
  > Most people from an US legal tradition will consider censorship to include other things such as mandating removal of certain content after the fact Such as removals because of copyright claims?
  - LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago