How a government was elected and how a government behaves are two different things.
They're undermining both free media and the justice system. How would you call that?
They're undermining both free media and the justice system. How would you call that?
Germany kerbs free speech in many ways vis a vis the US, but we don't call them undemocratic --they followed protocol and it's their version --not a version I'd prefer, but still not undemocratic.
The problem with Polands move is that the legislative tries to control the judiciary, a thing that goes against the very definition of a free democracy.
Similar in Turkey. The AKP controls not only the legislative without any real opposition, they also inoficially control the judiciary and the executive. Since all critical journalists get put in prison, the Press is also opressed.
My guess is that many here say "democratic" and mean "a system that will guarantee one respect as per John Rawls' veil of ignorance [0]". A parliamentary democracy with clear separation between legislative, executive and judiciary seems to be the lease bad solution humanity has been able to come up with for now.
Venezuela, Turkey and Poland are just recent highlights of how vulnerable parliamentary democracy is...
Once these changes are in place, and the division of power and free press is gone - the goal is open to move much faster. That's why it's so alarming in Poland/Turkey even though Venezuela is much worse already. Liberal democracy is brittle, and it can still be saved in Poland/Turkey. In Venezuela it has to be built.
Most liberal democracies have freedom of speech even though they have laws against libel/slander/hate speech and so on.
Next you go on to say that countries without freedom of speech are autocracies in disguise - implying Germany is an autocracy... not sure what to make of that. Are you implying that e.g either you live in a democracy and you can hate-speak, or you don't live in a democracy?
From the last paragraph I get the feeling you live in re US and take great pride in it being a true democracy because of its lack of hate speech laws (libel/slander laws exist). I wouldn't worry so much about politicians being able to limit hate speech in a place where elected officials draw the election district lines, effectively choosing their voters, where entire groups of citizens (such as prison inmates) can't vote at all, and where the executive branch of government doesn't have popular support even on Election Day.
I'm no fan of hate speech laws myself, but I consider it quite useless to define democracy as not being able to coexist with them.
That limits free speech. It's not hateful but it's political.
That fact aside, it's certainly problematic to have laws against insulting a foreign leader (Erdogan in this case). It must be noted of course that this particular type of insult (e.g calling someone a child molester) is probably enough for accusations of libel/slander in other countries as well, whether or not they have that odd "foreign leader" paragraph Germany has.
I think adults should be able to say/hear what they want.