Comment by king_phil | Hacker News Reader

Comment by king_phil | Hacker News Reader

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You forget that in Germany we have "Gewaltenteilung", meaning that legislation, judiciary and executive are separated. This is a concept that is fundamental to our country and culture. If the law is not okay it is not in the power of the executive to change, not enforce or bend it. There is a separate process for it that must be invoked. (In this case) there seems to be no critical mass that calls for changing this particular law. And you can rest assured that we have a very active public discussion about changes to the criminal code right now, with thousands of people actively participating. As you might be better informed the me, could you please cite at least one instance of what these people or people in similar cases said/wrote that should NOT the punishable, but is under current law?

edit: citing the decision to allow prosecution of Böhmermann reveals how little you understand the German legal system. The article is misleading at best and not covering the legal grounds and background correctly at all.

@frabbit exactly, but they did NOT yell "fire" but "open fire on the immigrants" (literally: in one instance the comment was posted beneath a picture of a immigrant child "you need a flamethrower to get rid of these bugs", with bugs might not be the best translation here) posted besides Nazi symbols.

At least for me, this makes a difference.

edit: I am going out on a limb here, but I thought exactly this was one of the purposes of RICO. Telling someone to commit a crime in a formed group is a crime and not free speech. I am a total amateur in US criminal code, is this understanding correct?

While abhorrent I do not believe that speech should be made illegal.

You are correct. Legal codes in many countries criminalize the act of speech itself.

This even goes all the way back to the concept of "assault" in anglo-saxon legal traditions[1] (which is the simple threat part of the pair "assault and battery". Many of us use "assault" to mean a physical attack, but it seems originally to be simply causing someone to fear.)

Again, though, you are arguing that because something is the law then that in itself makes it moral and useful.

Those who make slippery-slope arguments about the vesting of power in the state seem increasingly persuasive when we see the turning of the act of speaking into a crime itself. For further examples of "European" countries which illustrate the dangers you could look at Ireland's blasphemy laws which still stand.

1. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/assault

I don't necessarily argue that everything is right because it is the law, I argue that THIS exact law is right. It might not be for you, but it is for me. And seemingly not only for.me, but for a lot of people in this country. Otherwise there would be a (stronger) opposition to this law. I think we might have to recognize that the German culture is different from yours (US I suppose it is) and that we simply cannot expect to agree on everything. This might be because we are grown up in the system that protects us both adequately and we therefore think it is the best one, only because it is a adequate one. This goes both ways, e.g. you are right to think your system is better while I am right to think ours is. And exactly that tolerance is what I would like to not only see but DEMAND from other people. And I believe this exact law is right in a way that it makes it harder for people that don't recognize that all people are created and to be treated equal to express and propagate their beliefs. I think you could even find a similar or maybe exact same argument for your position. I respect that but hope you have other ways to ensure no one creates a climate of fear, hatred and violence (physical and non-physical) against people that are different. This law will not be everything the German culture sets against that climate but is one piece of our puzzle.

> you are right to think your system is better while I am right to think ours is. And exactly that tolerance is what I would like to not only see but DEMAND from other people.

I am not interested in the personalization of the argument or grounding it in lived experience of any sort.

Objectively the system which you extoll results in censorship, in this case of criticism of a near-dictator involved in genocide against the Kurdish people.

I believe that enabling a state to censor what people can say is dangerous to democracy. I think this is adequately demonstrated through numerous historical and current examples.

Your statement of "tolerance" is meaningless because you will be unaware of other viewpoints of which you must be tolerant when they are censored.

Ironically as this discussion is deemed offensive to the moderators of HN this entire discussion has been effaced.

I can't follow. How is this incident related to any genocide, dictatorship, erdogan... what?

I have the feeling you are just cherry picking this to troll on and not interested in talking about the different dogmatics of legal systems. I didn't want to personalize the discussion, just replace "you" and "me" with "any person from your belief system" and "any person from my belief system". It looks to me that you are not interested in thinking about other people's opinion and/or belief system. Now THAT was a personal remark.

> I can't follow. How is this incident related to any genocide, dictatorship, erdogan... what?

Really? So, you can't see the link between the German state's power to choose which speech acts can be punished and the punishing of someone for speech acts?

You cannot see the link between the Turkish bombing and starving of the Kurdish people and the historical assaults by your own country on minority populations?

I am not going to reply any more to you as you have descended to personalized abuse, but I will close with thanking you for illustrating exactly why the policing of free speech can never be allowed: there are too many people like you who are incapable of exercising tolerance and rationality, and once a lever of power and control is in your hands you will pull it.

Thank you, and god bless the USA.

"The German state" is a construct in form of a organization. The people who decide are forming the structure of this organization. The concrete people who are deciding who is punished are judges. As I already stated in this discussion, we employ "Gewaltenteilung" to separate judiciary, execute and legislative. So "the state" is not able to punish anybody, it is people who punish. And they do by the rules that are set for the judiciary, which are made by the legislative and carried out by the executive. The executive has a different set of rules than the legislative and they have a different set then the judiciary. These different sets of rules are each a corrective for potential abuse of power. There is no "state" punishing anybody, it is a set of rules made by people, carried out by people, watched by people. For somebody who broadcasts that free speech is the Holy grail you act like you don't tolerate no opinion besides your own. You're basically a fanatic and revealed your own colors.

> could you please cite at least one instance of what these people or people in similar cases said/wrote that should NOT the punishable, but is under current law?

If I am parsing what you wrote correctly then you are asking me to draw a distinction between different types of speech which should be allowed under law.

I don't believe any should be restricted. That includes the classic "shouting `fire' in a crowded theatre" or making threats to someone. Certainly in both cases if actual physical or financial harm results then the speaker can be deemed to have caused harm and measures taken against them. But the outlawing and punishment of the act of speech in and of itself is illogical.

In effect hate speech and other laws conflate locution, illocution and perlocution[1].

The effect on the discussion of ideas (e.g. the criticism of Erdogan) in a democracy strike me as obvious, so I won't go into them further.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illocutionary_act

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