> Also of note is that Germany already had and still has laws against numerous forms
> of speech, most notably anything that could threaten the public order, which you
> could mold into a justification to basically stop any speech.
Germany has no laws against "anything that could threaten the public order". This is just unsubstantiated nonsense.
There are laws against hate speech: "Volksverhetzung", a more direct translation: "incitement of the people", i.e. hate speech with the intent of causing mob violence or the persecution of minorities. There are also laws against disrupting the public order: "Erregung öffentlichen Ärgernisses", so "causing public offence", but those don't really target speech, they're more about taking your pants off in public and peeing on the sidewalk.
Also, neither of those laws are from the time of the monarchy.
> The Nazis made a lot of political capital because people wanted them banned and
> censored. Of course that was just political play and they set new standards for
> suppression of information and propaganda, but that came after they got into
> power.
The Nazis also made a lot of political capital because people
didn't ban them for democratic and free-speech reasons. As Goebbels, the Nazi's chief propagandist, himself said:
> Wir gehen in den Reichstag hinein, um uns im Waffenarsenal der Demokratie mit
> deren eigenen Waffen zu versorgen. Wir werden Reichstagsabgeordnete, um die
> Weimarer Gesinnung mit ihrer eigenen Unterstützung lahmzulegen. Wenn die
> Demokratie so dumm ist, uns für diesen Bärendienst Freifahrkarten und Diäten zu
> geben, so ist das ihre eigene Sache.
Translation:
> We enter the Reichstag [Weimar Republic parliament] to stock ourselves with
> weapons from democracy's own arsenal. We become assemblymen of the Reichstag to
> take down the spirit of Weimar with its own support. If democracy is so stupid
> to supply us with hall passes and diets for this disservice we do to it, then
> that is its own problem.
Your entire comment is a great example of the bullshit asymmetry principle.