Using the “Z” symbol could lead to prosecution in two German states

They've literally raided someone's home because he called a politician a dick. Raided his home, took all his devices and whatnot. It's completely out of control.

Once you create a list of things that can and cannot be said you have that list on hand. You might have the best intentions about what's on that list but it's better to not have that list at all because it's completely subjective what should and should not be on that list.

> Any system can be abused, but they are not in "fear" of that. They generally support the idea that Nazi ideals need to be curtailed given the atrocities committed to millions of people.

Also, I think many people, Americans in particular, overestimate the ability of "market systems" (i.e. "the marketplace of ideas) to self-regulate or the desirability of the results of that self-regulation.

It's one thing to let Nazis march down the street in Illinois, where they are a small group of pariahs with no hope of power; it's quite another to let them march down a street in a place where they've had power and used it to bad ends (and can be assumed to have significant residual support).

As a point of order, I may be lumping all German national censorship into the same bucket. When I perceive that Germany goes overboard with censorship, I mean things like banning Command and Conquer because it 'glorifies war' and then allowing it to be sold once the publisher changed some file assets so the fictional characters were cyborgs instead of people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Generals#...

While this isn't a specific case of censoring something glorifying or endorsing Nazism directly, they think that their own citizens cannot see such material out of fear that it will inspire people to become militaristic. While the goal of being anti-war and anti-nazi is noble and worthwhile, a lot of things get swept up in the effort to curtail as much of it as possible.

Wait, what? Where is this rigorous standard for what constitutes an acceptable post, which excludes personal conclusions?

There's a restaurant down the street from me that's real trash. I sense that it's not doing well, since it's always empty. Do I need to go run a survey before I could share that?

Why is this an issue? I'm sharing my perspective and I'm being upfront about it.

I feel this thread is chock-full of ahistorical ignorance and fatuous libertarianism that shouldn’t have a place here, not because it is unworthy of discussion but because the participants lack the required education and life experience to do it justice. HN is great for technology insight and complete shite for socio-political discussion.

I would say it has more to do with their history. It's kind of a special part of their history and it doesnt mean the rest of europe should adopt the same attitude

Not most - a lot of european countries are missing from that list

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#Legislation_in_other_...

13 countries is not "most of Europe". There are way more countries where it is legal.

You can say "fuck" on TV all you want, you just can't do it on public airwaves that you're licensing from all of us. The vast majority of TV content is over cable or satellite and has no restrictions including straight-up porn.

France has been targeted a lot for the opposite, allowing too much free speech against religions

I can't speak for others, but for me freedom of speech is the absolute highest right, and the other rights are (for the most part) either subservient to it, or directly supporting it.

The First Amendment grants freedom of speech.

The Second Amendment is useful because it lets you defend yourself against powers that try to forcibly take away that right to speech.

The Third Amendment and Fourth Amendment are useful because they keep the military from moving in (to your property) to intimidate or hinder your speech, or to drum up other charges or steal your property to punish you for your speech.

The Fifth Amendment is useful to keep you out of a Kafka-esque nightmare where you're not officially breaking speech laws, but the government punishes you via an unfair judicial system.

Etc. for the remaining Bill of Rights.

The reason that I personally value this freedom so highly isn't that others should be able to speak, it's that I should have the right to hear whatever I want that others have to say.

If I want to go listen to speeches by a neo-nazi fringe group to understand what drives them, I cherish that right and would begrudge any system that says I'm not allowed to. How can one expect to understand the world of they're not even allowed to hear the words or observe the true personal expression of those they disagree with most strongly?

Likewise, in America the skepticism of government is pretty deep-seated, so I have no faith that granting a government body regulatory rights over some speech which I don't like wouldn't soon snowball into government using those same rights against speech I do like. Better to never grant such decision-making to the government in the first place.

This is just my personal take, so take with many grains of salt, but thought it might be helpful in explaining some of the underpinning American ethos (since I know that stuff can be hard to translate cross-culture)

Having an absolute shit-show for a healthcare and education system falls under "not perfect". I'll freely admit a good many Americans (even most) would be better off living in Europe. But there are many of us that just can't accept not being able to express whatever we like. "Human dignity" is an admirable goal, but the extent and reach of that is subject to whomever is in power.

Yeah, it is curious that when self-recognized free speech advocates talk, they are not focusing on their right to run your own newspaper or criticize your own government but on the "right" to hurt someone with words and symbols.

how is free speech related to healthcare and gun policies though?

Banning free speech to improve healthcare is , at best, a cargo cult practice

> For video games it's of course even more complicated, they have an age rating given out by an industry board (just like movies in the US) and their views on what's acceptable shift drastically over time.

They also did a lot of weird stuff like replace red blood in games with green blood making the enemies "zombies" and thus making the game less violent somehow.

I would recommend against drawing any conclusion of reason from the decisions of this particular board.

For a long time, video games were considered, under German law, to have insufficient artistic or scholastic merit to permit Nazi symbols on the basis of context. So no consideration was given to context for Wolfenstein, it was just "swastikas in a video game = bad". Only recently did that law change.

> How is it treason to support (as in cheer for not support military) a country in a war your country is not fighting?

Because geography?

Do you still not get that if Ukraine falls, those countries are next? Do you still not get that while Ukraine fights for its existence, its western neighbours are hoping all to god this gets resolved before it reaches them?

Do you still not get that Europe is sending billions of euros of military aid to Ukraine, so that the fight stays contained within Ukraine?

And do you still not get that the further this spreads, the higher the risk of nuclear war?

This isn't a game anymore. This isn't Keyboard Warrior Happy Time, where we all get together and meta-talk about a variety of fallacies on the news du jour that might happen years down the line.

People are fucking dying by the thousands, and if we don't stop it, it'll be by the millions.

The pandemic was nothing compared to what we're potentially facing if we fuck up.

Never said it was universally held. Nothing is. I know european flat earthers, even. But do you disagree that it's by far the majority opinion and trend here?

BTW. If RT weren't DNS censored, all you would get is a 403. RT is now excluding most countries all on its own.

Looking at the page I can easily identify political opinion of the authors and detect view points of who should be given freedom of speech and who shouldn't. Thankfully they do link in small print to the methodology, which explain that the views are that of the Freedom House staff. They do consult others which is a major plus, but in the end its the staff that make a decision about what freedom is, who should get it, and who shouldn't. The biggest criticism I would give the site is the lack of any critical assessment of contested topics where different social scientists has different conclusions.

I give the site a score of 7/10.

This site is unreadable on mobile. Everything in the table has a huge font.

Reporters without Borders ranks the US behind quite a lot of European countries: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangliste_der_Pressefreiheit (German Wikipedia because the English article ironically doesn't include data)

"Freedom of Expression and Belief": US, 3/4. Germany, 4/4. Report invalidated.

In the name only. Russia is a hostile nation and there is great effort to do the most economical damage to it.

My point here is that history actually taught us that freedoms come with attachments.

I mentioned Facebook because it enabled the government of Myanmar during the persecution and genocide of the Rohingya people. They could have done something, but chose to ignore it and do nothing. This is not a unique occurrence either.

Freedom of speech without observing any moral or ethical consequences doesn't make you free, it makes you a libertine, and those who choose to enable these behaviours aren't innocent either.

On top of it, in this scenario, Russia is waging an information war against the West, so why should we grant them the freedom to do so?

In my short life, I've supported the right of many people to say shit I disagree with. Even pretty awful, disgusting shit at that.

How come I'm able to draw the line at "supporting an unjustified genocidal war, the invasion and killing of my neighbours, and the destruction of their homes"?

How come I'm able to see the difference between "freedom of having and speaking opinions that are contrary to the mainstream's", and "freedom to want to murder innocents"?

How do you explain Putin's speech at the beginning of the conflict, claiming a return to previous imperial Russia borders? Or the fact that a quick celebratory article explaining Russians, Belarusians and Ukranians where united again was published by mistake and then quickly deleted by Russia's main news agency? Is Putin a US agent in this scenario?

> It seems as if you don't even know the Russian side.

Most people know this. But Ukraine was not even able to join NATO because of disputed territories. So in case of Ukraine argument about NATO threat is pretty naive.

> if the above made you think I support Russia, or the war, you might be brainwashed

Yeah, well, you say that but you're here continuously defending them, and you're bringing up weak arguments. Upthread you've also said you "read RT daily", and maybe that has something to do with it.

FWIW, I'm extremely familiar with the Russian side of the argument. Not everyone is because not everyone is interested in digging into geopolitical issues that don't concern them directly beyond reading the news over breakfast cereal or vaguely scrolling a couple of retweets. This doesn't imply they're "brainwashed" or that we "suppress information"; I had no trouble at all finding all of Putin's idiotic arguments since 0224.

Of course, you can play right into his hands and "discuss NATO" or some shit, as if there is ANY justification to the war crimes and atrocities being committed every day. Civilians being explicitly targeted, hospitals and shelters being bombed, chemical weapons being used, and so on.

"Yes but you see, NATO" is justifying the unjustifiable.

> It seems as if you don't even know the Russian side

The Russian side doesn't matter. They're invading in a brutal manner a sovereign country for the interests of an authoritarian leader and his clique. It doesn't matter why he thinks this is the best course of action ( it isn't, whatever he hoped to achieve was unachievable from day 1), he's flat out wrong and doing a morally abhorrent thing. All of the excuses Russia has provided for the invasion are very flimsy at best, but usually outrageous ( like that Ukraine isn't a real country and has no national identity).

Russia has multiple NATO neighbours ( Baltics, Poland). Occupying Ukraine will add a few more ( Hungary, Slovakia, Romania). Even if we take Putin's "geopolitical concerns" at face value, and we shouldn't because Russia has done nothing but lie, it doesn't make sense.

But again, it doesn't matter why the crazy old person is bombing maternity hospitals, the important part is that he is, he deserves all the pushback possible and he should be punished for that.

The comparisons to the Nazis are in the playbook only - delusions of grandeur and nationalism, dismissal of other peoples, X isn't a real country, etc.

And yet based on further comments trotting out the NATO canard, the inference was correct. While there are certainly abstract free speech arguments to be made about Germany (and larger Europe), and despite being a proponent of the ideal of frees speech, I'm not particularly eager to advocate for it in the context of Europe during wartime.

I am so tired hearing “we have to listen to fringe voices” because oh my lord so many of those fringe voices are anti-democratic, accelerationists, theists, and/or greedy misanthropes.

Banning “Z” is banning support for a mafioso political system that is not only anti-democracy, but also actively murdering an internationally-recognized democratic nation… again.

Fringe voices need to give their heads a shake and sit this one out.

What isn't true? The video I linked you, that was aired on Russian TV prime time, and confirmed by multiple sources? Am I missing something?

And what would I be surprised at exactly? I'm getting a 403 when I load RT because RT banned my country from reading it. I used to read it once in a while FYI, just to get a sense of the types of articles they'd publish.

That Berliner was known for his Nazi sympathy and he got arrested after he demonstrated the dog's saluting to a cop.

Well that's your definition. I'd recommend reading about the history of Europe and its philosophers, you'd discover many version of freedom, freedom of speech, tolerance, &c.

Contrary to what Americans believe these things aren't written in stone by a Divine hand and are products of a long process

> A truly tolerant free speech society should be able to tolerate even literal nazi discourse without crumbling. What happens in practice is people get tired of debating, decide they're right and start excluding others.

It’s funny how it looks like you are almost sympathizing with nazis. By definition, nazis seek to exclude and maybe exterminate, everyone they don’t agree with, so tolerating them means giving them the right to preach their methods. That’s pretty much the core of Popper’s paradox of tolerance:

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”

Given the fascist war loving nature of Russia today, I don’t see the slippery slope.

Do you know the definition of slippery slope?

We can all be upset that russians are ruining a perfectly good letter, just as nazis ruined a perfectly good symbol, and hitler ruined a perfectly good mustache.

I wouldn't punch someone wearing that mustache style, but I'd also find it super gross regardless.

I don't have that shirt, but if I did, I also wouldn't wear it, and I would find it a waste. Sometimes, people ruin things for you. Life sucks. My SO's sister lost her home in Kyiv to the bombs, I think I could live with just losing a shirt.

Please cite that, there is almost no chance at all that a first-time offender would face prison in Germany in such a case. It's very unlikely a case like you described would end up prosecuted at all.