Germany, in a First, Shuts Down Left-Wing Extremist Website (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: An influential website linked to violence at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg last month has been ordered to shut down, in the first such move against left-wing extremists in the country (alternative source), the authorities in Germany said on Friday. Thomas de Maiziere, the interior minister, said that the unrest in Hamburg, during which more than 20,000 police officers were deployed and more than 400 people arrested or detained, had been stirred up on the website and showed the "serious consequences" of left-wing extremism. "The prelude to the G-20 summit in Hamburg was not the only time that violent actions and attacks on infrastructural facilities were mobilized on linksunten.indymedia," he said, referring to the website. The order on Friday was the latest move in a long battle against extremism in Germany. It comes in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Va., this month and amid worries about "antifa" factions that use violence to combat the far-right in the United States.

Comments

Now you see

[Anonymous Coward]

Why we must protect freedom of political speech in the US. Fortunately we have strong laws to do this. Google and Facebook should not be the arbiters of speech. Universities should not live in fear of letting people talk.

We do not want to hand the power they have in Germany to silence people to a man like Trump, or anyone who claims to be a fascist or anti-fascist (aka, communist)

Re: Now you see

[BlueStrat]

So you want to require universities to let White Supremacists speak?

Why not? What are you afraid of? Do you think their words will somehow trigger your latent, inner-Klansman?

Let them speak, it gives us all some comic-relief and a chance to laugh them back into irrelevance. There are only a few thousand of them in the entire US of ~350M people. They have no power. They're silly little goose-stepping idiots. They are no serious threat to anyone or anything.

You actually empower them with media attention they'd never get anyways. Makes me wonder if maybe you're actually a recruiter.

Strat

Re: Now you see

[CanHasDIY]

Oh, cool, so if we label someone as a Nazi they no longer have civil liberties.

You're a Nazi, now give me all of your stuff and stop offering your opinion.

Re: Now you see

[rogoshen1]

you do realize that trying to forcibly quell a viewpoint or movement is akin to putting a fire out with gasoline.

The only way to get them to actually go away is to ignore them completely. A speaker labeled as a white supremacist comes to speak at campus? Let them, so long as they aren't actually inciting violence directly.

If the only people who show up are the their supporters -- which despite all the hand-wringing consist of a vanishingly small number of people (especially relative to the fervent left-leaning types, particularly on college campuses). That will do much, much, more in the long run.

These people thrive on the controversy, they thrive on near-riot situations breaking out when they come to speak; then they get to cry "oppression", and gain even more supporters.

It is funny though, the extreme left has some appalling rhetoric of their own -- yet the seemingly get a free pass in the US. It takes some amazing double-speak and mental gymnastics to not notice the double standards.

Re: Now you see

[GerryGilmore]

Just the fact that you are justifying MURDER tells us all we need to know about you. Sadly, yes, in my old-fart experience, delusional, paranoid, hard-right extremists who can just make shit up (or, hear/see it on Fox and talk radio) and believe it like it's Holy Gospel are MUCH more common than earlier and makes me really, really glad that I am on old fart so that by the time your type of Idiocracy spreads too much further, I'll be gone and won't have to see it.

Re: Now you see

[LynnwoodRooster]

It only took one "Black Lives Matter" protestor to kill five officers.

Re: Now you see

[PopeRatzo]

The only way to get them to actually go away is to ignore them completely.

I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but that's not how we got rid of the original Nazis. The Jews ignored them until they were being sent to concentration camps. Europe ignored them until they had taken Poland, France, et al. England ignored them until bombs started falling. The US ignored them until they couldn't any more.

Ignoring nazis does not make them go away.

Speaking as a lefty

[rsilvergun]

Good. Every large group has it's version of Soccer Hooligans. The left is no different. The difference is (as Noam Chomsky noted) the Right is _much_ better at violence than the Left. Their love of strong authority figures means they can organize better and they've got more ex-military guys. The Left can win on issues because our policies work. But we can't win on violence because, well, we're not nearly as violent (and yes, that's probably a slightly controversial idea, but that doesn't make it less true).

Re:Speaking as a lefty

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead and tell all these peopled killed by the left that you're not nearly as violent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes

Tomorrow's fascists will be the antifascists

[JaredOfEuropa]

I'm a big believer in free speech and all that, but I am glad that Germany is at least applying whatever laws against extremist speech they have to both sides equally. Keep in mind though that they have an extensive and fairly recent history of actual left wing terrorism.

It can be hard to tell the fascists and antifascists apart sometimes, in methods, ideology and in appearance. Just how hard it can be was nicely illustrated today in an article on a Dutch left wing (and fairly sympathetic to Antifa) blog about how the altish-rightish FvD party has ties with neo-nazis. The article itself isn't relevant, but it carried a picture of a group of scary looking masked people with red, black and white banners, one of them flashing what at first glance appears to be a nazi salute. That blog could be forgiven for the fact that these are not neo-nazis, but Antifa. You can tell by looking closely at the flags.

Re:We have the opposite problem in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

Right wing extremist groups are not "propping up everywhere". They only reason they have a platform, and any coverage, of ANY sort... is because the misguided media keeps showing up with their cameras. Left wing extremism is real and it's causing just as many problems, if not more. I don't see Nazi groups destroying property and setting cars on fire over a speech at a college.

Both sides have extremist factions that they ignore, because they like that those extremist factions will do the dirty sh!t that the more "normal" (read: need to get re-elected) people won't do. That is why the president denounced violence on both sides. Problem was, the left isn't used to being called out for such dirty tricks, so they kept at it with "the president needs to apologize the CORRECT way, he needs to only blame the violence on the RIGHT".

Re:We have the opposite problem in the US

[Mr D from 63]

Right wing extremist groups are not "propping up everywhere". They only reason they have a platform, and any coverage, of ANY sort... is because the misguided media keeps showing up with their cameras. Left wing extremism is real and it's causing just as many problems, if not more. I don't see Nazi groups destroying property and setting cars on fire over a speech at a college.

Both sides have extremist factions that they ignore, because they like that those extremist factions will do the dirty sh!t that the more "normal" (read: need to get re-elected) people won't do. That is why the president denounced violence on both sides. Problem was, the left isn't used to being called out for such dirty tricks, so they kept at it with "the president needs to apologize the CORRECT way, he needs to only blame the violence on the RIGHT".

THIS. There are no more than there ever were. But the media seeks them out and actually helps them by making it look like a growing movement, sparking idiots on the other side to come and confront. Too bad we can't take the ultra left and ultra right and put them in a room together and lock the door, let the media cover the aftermath.

Re: Correct summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ Almighty...

Why does this have to be left vs. right?

Can't it be civilized people vs. violent monsters?

I don't care which stupid insane ideology you follow if you're hurting innocent people! Fuck off everyone! If you want my attention, this is how you won't get it.

Violence doesn't work.

[Gravis Zero]

Politically motivated violence (short of genocide) has been shown to be ineffective and many times counterproductive. However, if you think genocide is the answer then you have lost sight of what you were fighting for. Combating extremism with more extremism is a losing move.

Re: Correct summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit.

If you think hatred and violence is monopolized by any one political ideology, you're sorely mistaken. History shows us hatred and violence are an easy vice for any group to fall into, and it's one that we should attack regardless of whether "our team" is doing it or not.

Re:No, not this

[Mr D from 63]

It's the exact opposite. A simple google search will show thatright wing violence is 74% more common than left. This shouldn't be surprising. Antifa groups are anarchists. By definition they're unorganized and loose knit. They reject authority on the face of it. The Right OTOH make authority a central plank of their ideology. Better organization leads to more effective violence. That's why militaries use a chain of command instead of voting.

The google search does not given results that say right wing groups are growing. The NPR opinion piece you referred to limits its description of left wing violence to those done by "groups", but compares against all RW violence, individual or group. NPR is not exactly an objective source when it comes to L v R, I guess you know.

Actually we don't mean conservatives

[rsilvergun]

Conservatives want to keep things as is, unchanged. The Far right has taken over that term to disguise their radical agenda (I know, I hate that word too, but I don't have a better one for a group that want to make radical changes to our civilization).

There's an old line about the greatest trick the devil ever pulled and the Right did just that by branding "Conservative". Most folks are a tad on the Conservative side as soon as they have something to lose. By calling themselves that the Right hide their true nature.

Re:We have the opposite problem in the US

[LynnwoodRooster]

I didn't realize that Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim, Castro, etc. were right-wingers...

Again, you're missing my point

[rsilvergun]

US "Conservatives" aren't. They're Radical Regressives. Trying to regress society back to some imaginary 'good 'ole times'. They're borrowing the Rhetoric of true Conservatives in exactly the same way Stalin borrowed the rhetoric of Progressives; to mask ill intent.

Ignore what they say, pay attention to what they _do_.

Re:They're surprisingly well organized

[AmiMoJo]

That's a funny definition, considering the left does it's best to accommodate violent, expansionist Islam whenever it gets the chance.

How does this bullshit get modded up?

The left wants people treated fairly, not lumped together and treated as one group. Muslims, like Christians and Jews, are not one homogeneous group.

It's entirely possible to oppose Islamic values, morality and terrorism while still objecting to mistreatment or unwarranted discrimination against Muslims.

The rest of your claims are just slander.