111–120 of 284 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Accusing the police of trying “to appease the barbaric, Muslim, rapist hordes of men” by putting out a tweet in Arabic is not just "opposing immigration".
Yes, I'm sure if someone called Catholics pedophiles and backwards barbarians, they would be treated similarly. Or Muslims themselves making similar comments about homosexuals or Western women. Somehow these laws only ever seem to be used against conservatives.
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I don't understand your meaning, sorry. Do you mean would I want to see 'violent american black rap lyrics' banned? Depends on what is said I guess? If theres a song about 'kill all the jews' we've had enough of that shit here 70 years ago. Generally german courts are very narrow about what is Volksverhetzung. If you run afoul of it you are very far away from any sensible discussion. The law is basically "don't (1)in…
> I don't understand your meaning, sorry. Meaning if there's american rap song about killing people, do germans ban it? These violent lyrics seem to fall under the law as you described. Also, are violent american rap songs banned (in practice) in germany? Do germans have this same negative attitude to american "thugs"?
Songs about killing minorities might be banned, but then it's still about context. Artists generally have a lot of room and when they write stuff like that theres usually satire in play. Which would propably be okay. I don't know about any artists that got hit with Volksverhetzung.
On the other hand, I'd expect Songs about killing to get hit by youth protection laws which means they can't be played on the radio, can't be advertised and can't be sold to minors.
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'hate speech' is an oversimplification chosen by the media. The law acually forces large social media companies in germany to remove illegal* content from their site within one week. Context is that Facebook has been ignoring illegal* content on their site and generally made an ass out of german law enforcement, so they got a law to rein them in. *illegal: libel, Volksverhetzung ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksv…
Are you saying facebook is ignoring court orders from the German authorities to have content removed?
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It happened 70 years ago. Obama has a good line, something similar to: If you were in a restaurant in 1930s Vienna surrounded by great art, music and intellectuals you may have been forgiven for thinking that wonderful setting would continue on forever. Unfortunately, a short time later millions we're dying on a continent engulfed in war. When the stock market is up we think it'll keep going up. When we have peace we…
It would be naive to ascribe Nazi propaganda alone the role of the fire starter in WWII. The problem is that the Nazi propaganda fell on ears that eagerly wanted to believe it, so the Nazi leader was democratically elected before he seized the absolute power. If Nazi propaganda might have any noticeable success in today's Germany (or US, or wherever), it's not because of some crackpots from stormfront; they are a con…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_presidential_election,_...
The Nazis lied and cheated and murdered their way to power, make no mistake about it. And that was kind of like an onion, too, in that every layer of the Nazi apparatus deceived lower layers.
Apart from the intrinsic importance of things like poverty and unemployment simply because they hurt people no matter how people to react to it, what turned some people into sociopaths (and why it didn't others) is useful to know to prevent more coming into existence, and to leave the ones who aren't beyond the point of return a way out -- but it's also a destructive red herring when dealing with those who are beyond the point of return. They are eating chalk and holding up people who delivered themselves as hostages unto them, so you can have empathy they can only feign and use; and the question is, at what point does the tragedy of their hostages outweigh the tragedy of who they and their hostages will trample on, forever, if given half a chance.
I know it's cold and kind of heartless, but for many people who turns abuser after having been abused, you will also find those who have been abused even more, but did not turn to abusing others. It's not either person's fault or credit, but I can't cater to the first while ignoring the second. Insofar it's a zero-sum choice (and that's not generally the case, mind you, but it's also not never the case), I made my choice. Sometimes, the wheel that squeaks the loudest shouldn't get the grease, but simply should get replaced by a better or even no wheel.
Heh, I still can't believe they have "outlawed racism". That's like outlawing any other political opinion. How is that possible?
Racism is not a political opinion. Political opinions are along the lines of "are my taxes too high" or "do we spend more on parks or on police". A belief in the inferiority of another race isn't political, it's something else. I don't know what, but discriminatory and bigoted beliefs don't belong in political discussions or any discussions about how we govern ourselves or organize society.
Second you are right. Beliefs about differences between races aren't political. They are scientific. These are scientific question that are completely beyond politics. Your morality or political opinions have no impact on the truth value of scientific claims. Censoring things does not make them untrue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It happened 70 years ago. Obama has a good line, something similar to: If you were in a restaurant in 1930s Vienna surrounded by great art, music and intellectuals you may have been forgiven for thinking that wonderful setting would continue on forever. Unfortunately, a short time later millions we're dying on a continent engulfed in war. When the stock market is up we think it'll keep going up. When we have peace we…
It would be naive to ascribe Nazi propaganda alone the role of the fire starter in WWII. The problem is that the Nazi propaganda fell on ears that eagerly wanted to believe it, so the Nazi leader was democratically elected before he seized the absolute power. If Nazi propaganda might have any noticeable success in today's Germany (or US, or wherever), it's not because of some crackpots from stormfront; they are a con…
That's not really accurate; the Nazis got power not by outright winning a democratic election, but because the various other parties were more concerned about each other than the Nazis, and thus more willing to tolerate a Nazi-coalition government than to form a coalition against the Nazis; the Nazis never were elected to power on their own before seizing power; they actually lost a large number of seats in the election preceding their coalition government from the preceding election (after which no government was formed), and even in that preceding election they had only around 1/3 of the seats.
Nazis didn't come to power because a receptive populace gave them a mandate, they came to power becausea large enough minority of the more numerous elected not-Nazis were more afraid of each other than the Nazis.
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> I don't understand your meaning, sorry. Meaning if there's american rap song about killing people, do germans ban it? These violent lyrics seem to fall under the law as you described. Also, are violent american rap songs banned (in practice) in germany? Do germans have this same negative attitude to american "thugs"?
Songs about killing people are generally not banned because of Volksverhetzung. That law is specific about the 3 things I listed in me comment above. (3) is a very strong requirement because it means the song must be theoretically able to disturb the peace in germany, eg. incite riots or something equally drastic. Theres not much that can do that. Songs about killing minorities might be banned, but then it's still ab…
Many american rap songs do just exactly this, and it's not satirical. Sometimes rap songs do mentioning killing jews specifically although it is relatively rare. Most of the time it talks about killing other black people, which falls under the second part of the law you describe. Do Germans make a big deal about this? I'm not german, I'm just trying to understand the viewpoint.
Also, do germans find american thugs in low regard? One can argue they can be just as dangerous.
That term 'hate speech' - what does it actually mean? This seems like another assault on free speech to me and there is a danger in limiting the online Overton Window to a massive bland snooze fest. The current joy of the internet is being able to read all sorts of perspectives from 'sensible' to radical and I really hope that continues...I worry for all the citizen journalists and investigators who have been so magn…
> That term 'hate speech' - what does it actually mean? Read §1(3). https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/netzdg/BJNR335210017.html...
The problem with hate speech laws are, it means you can't insult everyone equally. If you call someone stupid, they could accuse you of a crime, but you're not calling them stupid because of their race. And I want people who actually are racist to talk, so I know who I don't want to be friends with. If they're all keeping their racist opinions to themselves, I might waste a bunch of time being their friends. And I ca…
As far as I can tell, that's not true of the German law in question, though if you think it is true of that law (not some abstract hypothetical “hate speech” law straw man), please explain how, citing the relevant provisions of the law and explaining how they produce the unequal results that concern you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand your meaning, sorry. Do you mean would I want to see 'violent american black rap lyrics' banned? Depends on what is said I guess? If theres a song about 'kill all the jews' we've had enough of that shit here 70 years ago. Generally german courts are very narrow about what is Volksverhetzung. If you run afoul of it you are very far away from any sensible discussion. The law is basically "don't (1)in…
> we've had enough of that shit here 70 years ago. you had a military dictatorship. it couldn't be opposed or contested by anyone, because you and/or your family would just be killed. german citizens couldn't stop the killing any more than russians could stop millions from being killed. that was the fundamental problem. dictators do as they please. criminalizing the speech of random bob under a democratic government…
Military Dictatorships don't suddenly appear out of nothing. My grandparents' generation chose to actively look away because they thought it won't get "that bad". They might have told themselfes they didn't know better - you know, afterwards - but you can't remove 6 million people out of a country of maybe 60 million and no one notices shit.
Well, it did get bad, and then some. We know that now, we can now look back and see how it began. It began with social insecurity and propaganda (populism). We can't fight social insecurity but we can fight propaganda and that is why we have § 130 Volksverhetzung.