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Comment by embik | Hacker News Reader

This is not true at all. The German Government is asking Facebook to delete comments which could be categorized as hate speech ("Volksverhetzung" in German). These comments are not "negative of her policies", they are calling on people to kill, gas or otherwise attack refugees, politicans or journalists. They are simply asking Facebook to comply with German law.

Some comments comparable to those in question are curated at a tumblr blog (https://perlen-aus-freital.tumblr.com/). Those comments are anything but a political statement against Merkel's policies. They are born out of pure hatred.

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I cannot stand these racist morons myself. And a lot of what I have seen in the last months clearly violates German law. But I think it’s very problematic to put some private company in charge to do this censoring.

The “no censorship (with some exceptions)” law in our constitution is usually interpreted in the sense that you can say, write, show, publish anything you want and that only afterwards a court can rule that it’s violating some law and censor it („Verbot der Vorzensur“). This principle is turned upside down when the government demands that private companies do the censoring and all public oversight is lost.

Also: I’m pretty sad that gone mad „Asylkritiker“ are here too :( I always thought of hackernews as this little civilized island.

When a state defines 'hate speech' laws they're really defining 'thought criminal' laws.

Merkle and co. are trying to manipulate public opinion through the destruction of contrarian thought from the public realm.

Hate speech laws and thought crimes are on a totally different level. In Germany you are completely free to use the most blatant hate speech as much as you like as long as you don't do so in public.

Those laws are also not created by "Merkel and co." but decades old and introduced by the allies after the second world-war.

No they are not (as outlined aboved). Death threats are not part of any public discourse nor political statements. People are able to oppose the government's policies without being silenced.

On a related note, the hate speech laws have not been introduced by the Merkel government.

When someone incites people to attack Cologne mayor Henriette Reker in an attempt to kill her for her positive views and policies regarding immigration and refugees, I'd classify this speech as "hate speech & call for violence" and should be dealt with swiftly and firmly in accordance with the law.

It's not just hate speech. "Volksverhetzung" implies that it is also incitement to commit crimes.

When you stand on the street and loudly demand that specific people or groups of people should be killed or injured in specific ways, that's a different matter from just saying those same people shouldn't be allowed into the country or should be deported.

One is demanding a change in policy or political action. The other is demanding vigilante "justice" and lynching.

This has nothing to do with Merkel (who btw is a conservative -- her refugee policy has been the single most liberal thing she did since entering office) and everything to do with upholding the constitution and the state of law.

Whether you demand the murder of refugees, nazis or antifa, if you openly do so while addressing the public, you are committing a crime under German law. The law protects all humans, not just refugees.

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