Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Warning: Post contains expletives as part of an anecdote.) About 15 years ago I turned on the TV one day, zapped to the music channel and was faced, all of a sudden, with the face of Kid Rock. He was talking to some sort of host on the German channel when the following interchange happened: Kid Rock: You mean I can say anything?!? Host: Yes! Kid Rock: Anything at all? Host: Yes! Kid Rock: Ok, here it goes. Pussy-lic…
I think you have good points, I do think you're introducing a false dichotomy though. I'd prefer if there were no censorship on TV and there was guaranteed freedom of speech. I can definitely understand where you're coming from (in as much as any non-German can understand), but I do wonder if it's possible to allow hate speech and to fight it in other ways. Maybe not, but I do think it's an ideal to strive for. Also,…
The key, I think, is that one has to picture "the state" as non-static and plan accordingly. For instance, we have a court system, with the energetic and powerful Federal Court at the top, which is set up in such a way that it inherently favors human rights and freedoms above other concerns. So while the hard core of the Volksverhetzungs-laws remains un-touched, eventual feature creep is rapidly cut back by the court system.
This was designed into the German state, since there was acute awareness at the time that the laws of the Weimar Republic which could be used to curtail freedoms were instrumental in the rapid rise of the Nazi party.
It might well be that, without this process in place, free speech would slowly erode throught this law.