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Germany Cracks Down On Illegal Speech On Social Media. (smh.com.au)
ArmoredDragon writes: German police have raided 36 homes of people accused of using illegal speech on Facebook and Twitter. Much of it was aimed at political speech. According to the article, "Most of the raids concerned politically motivated right-wing incitement, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office, whose officers conducted home searches and interrogations. But the raids also targeted two people accused of left-wing extremist content, as well as one person accused of making threats or harassment based on someone's sexual orientation."
This comes just as a new law is being debated that can fine social media platforms $53 million for not removing 70% of illegal speech (including political, defamatory, and hateful speech) within 24 hours of it being posted, which Facebook argues will make it obligatory for them to delete posts and ban users for speech that isn't clearly illegal.
This comes just as a new law is being debated that can fine social media platforms $53 million for not removing 70% of illegal speech (including political, defamatory, and hateful speech) within 24 hours of it being posted, which Facebook argues will make it obligatory for them to delete posts and ban users for speech that isn't clearly illegal.
You're doing it wrong!
There should be no such thing as illegal speech.
governments are scared of the internet... they are trying to slowly kill it
Thankfully, here in the US the Supreme Court unanimously disagrees with this "hate speech" BS. Letting governments censor any sort of political speech is just a bad idea. https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Coming soon to a country near you with all the snowflakes who will want legally mandated safe spaces.
Germany's limitations on far right speech have been around for seven decades, and were born out of the Allied Occupation and Allied Denazification policies. We can argue whether those laws are justifiable now, but the intent, as with banning the Imperial form of Shinto by the US during the occupation of Japan, was to assure that the militaristic regimes that had killed hundreds of millions would not rise again.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Shouldn't this be under the censorship icon?
Assresting [sic] people for speech you don't like is something Hitler would do.
So is metabolizing oxygen. Well, when he was alive. So is drinking water and eating food.
I don't agree with what is going on with regards to curtailing speech, but comparing everything to Hitler and Nazis is just stupid.
Eisenhower also got the idea for the interstate highway system from Hitler's Autobahn. Should we also remove those? How about jet engines and rockets?
"Our free society must not allow a climate of fear, threat, criminal violence and violence either on the street or on the internet."
So we'll kick in your door if you make an internet post we don't like.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If Facebook and other social media companies dont like these new laws they should shut down all their German operations and have no employees, no servers, no infrastructure and no business presence in Germany and then say "we no longer have a presence in Germany therefore German law doesn't apply to us"
You do realize that meaningful death threats are illegal, right?
Yes, that was my point.
That's the whole point of free speech; you are free to say anything but NOT free of consequences from what you say.
Incorrect. The point of free speech is to keep the government from jailing you for speaking out against them.
Everything else in your post is sheer drivel.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The glazed over look of someone who has never done any research at all into why the thing they're condemning is being done.
It usually makes sense to actually find out why someone is doing something before criticizing them. Even if you end up disagreeing with their reasons, you'll at least be able to address them.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Guess who insisted that criminalising Nazism was a pre-condition for an independent Germany?
Oh wait, it was those enlightened Free Speech activists known as the USA.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
"Illegal speech" is only one tiny step away from "illegal thought". You can stuff these laws in your keester.
Germans have been reporting on each other since the 1920's.
Before WW2, during WW2.
After WW2 the Stasi had files on a lot of people. In the West the groups like the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ensured the new West German democracy stayed really safe.
Germany kept its powerful laws and political comments start interviews and investigations.
People report comments. Social media report people. Freedom after speech is a legal matter.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Merkel only seeks to silence opposition under the banner of political correctness.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It's not like they have a history of overreacting. :D
The foundational cornerstone of American democracy are the first and second amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The guarantee against government interference of free speech and the right of citizens to arm themselves. Everything else, all the other rights and amendments laid out in that document flow from and depend on the first two.
If you look at Europe today, that is exactly what European "democracies" lack, real U.S. strength 1st and 2nd amendments. What they lack are real free speech rights and the ability to defend themselves from their governments or the thug migrants that rape, murder and steal en masse in Europe. This is why they don't really have democracy in Europe. The EU is made up of a bunch of watered down, pseudo-democracies essentially run by Merkel via Brussels. Granted governments have tanks, etc, but there's no question that intimidating an armed people is a hella lot harder than an unarmed people.
What needs to happen is for a U.S. citizen(s) to set up a social media / discussion board hosted in the U.S. for the sole purpose of giving the people of Europe actual free speech. Give them the ability to say political things that their governments or Merkel doesn't like, without repercussion. The site/app, having no actual presence in Europe and based in the U.S., would be immune from any European country trying to obtain user info / ip addresses. People could use whatever user name they want and not worry about Germany, England or Sweden forcing the host site to give up any info, "we are Americans, piss off".
It might be blacklisted in Europe, there are ways around that. I realize that there is Tor, etc but that is too hard for most end users right now. And there are various U.S. based sites that could sort of do this now, but it really needs to be focused on Europe and advertise itself as a site for repressed Europeans to enjoy U.S. strength free speech. If they don't have the ability to speak freely, they have no hope.
Political Correctness is fascism pretending to be Manners. -- George Carlin
I would argue any time you can get arrested for expressing an opinion or belief you absolutely do not have democracy.
Democracy is built on the concept of debate, discussion, and trying to persuade others to your ideas. If you get arrested for attempting to debate, discuss, or persuade you are nowhere near a democracy.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
You dont get to change the facts of history buddy.
You're claiming a monopoly on that, yeah?
The redefinition that came afterwards ... the one that labeled the Nazi's as "right wing"
Yup, and we've always been at war with Eastasia ...
The NSDAP, despite it's name (by the time it came to power it was as "Socialist" as the German Democratic Republic was "democratic"), was clearly understood to be a party of the right, at the time. It is true that at it's inception the NSDAP did include Socialistic aspects, as their pre-Hitler era policy reveals. However, by the time Hitler rose to power the party was explicitly both anti-leftists and anti-semetic, in the extreme. Indeed it took most of it's votes from the old arch-conservative DNVP. Even more tellingly, the NSDAP was part of an ever changing, and often bitterly infighting, right-wing coalition united only by their common aim in the first place to undermine Mueller's Grand Coalition, and then post 1930 to keep the SPD, (still then the largest party in the Reichstag) out of power. Thus, aided and abetted by Hindenburg, the governments of minority party leaders came and (except for the last) went at a furious pace, slipping ever rightwards, from Bruening, von Pappen, von Schleicher and finally Hitler. In direct contradistinction to your Orwellian re-writing of history, it was unambiguous at the time that Hitler stood far to the right on the political spectrum.
Mussolini - Rose to power via PSI
While it is true that Mussolini rose to prominence in the PSI, it is a simple falsehood to claim that he rose to political power in it. Quite the opposite, he rose to political power in the PNF (The National Fascist Party), a party explicitly and very visibly opposed with the PSI. It's also true that the ambiguity of where Italian fascism stood on the political spectrum persisted for longer (even for Mussolini himself). It is fair to say, I think, that the PNF did begin as a pro-militarist, but none the less leftist offshoot (it was, for instance, strongly syndicalist). In the event the PNF was taken to the right, not so much by its founders as by a swelling membership of anti-Socialists. It was seen as the party actively taking the Socialists on, and thus attracted anti-Socialists looking for action. Thus when Mussolini attempted to call off the war with the PSI, the membership revolted, forcing Mussolini to relinquish for a short time the leadership of the PNF.
But again, by the time it came to power, as with the NSDAP, it's alignment was obvious. Unlike the luke-warm contemporary leftist, the aim of Socialists at the time was clear: remove the "means of production" from the "bourgeoisie" and hand them over the the "workers" (which is to say those socialists who control the state apparatus ... ahem). Both the NSDAP and the PNF were clearly on the side of industrialists who benefited greatly from their rule. Not only their ideology the, but their actions regarding this central question once in power, mark them out as being anti-left.
As to international appraisal of Italian Fascism at the time, the foreword the Mussolini's English language My Autobiography in the original 1928 edition, by the erstwhile US Ambassador to Italy, Richard Washburn Child, ought to disabuse you regarding your mistaken beliefs as to the political alignment of Fascism.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke