711–720 of 1001 posts
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The current chancellor is also a right-conservative jabroni, so don't equate what he demands to what the German people want.
> so don't equate what he demands to what the German people want The German people elected the parliament. The parliament elected Merz. The margin was narrow, but that was the decision.
Maybe the EU can open a book portal for the US. https://pen.org/report/the-normalization-of-book-banning/
There are a lot of books which probably shouldn't be in schools. I don't think children should be given copies of Mein Kampf or Camp of Saints, nor the random dark fantasy novels which are so popular today.
It feels disingenuous to pretend that school-book-choice is anything comparable to government level "book banning" when literally any of the books written about in that article can be freely checked out from any public library in the country.
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That was a overall very rarely occurring abuse of power of a politician in charge of leading local law enforcement. It was declared illegal later. And you take that as a proof for what about the whole of Germany?
>It was declared illegal later. You're missing the point. That's exactly how democratic governments cloak fascist behavior everywhere: The punishment IS THE PROCESS. People in Germany (and the UK and other places) have to self censor because they don't want to be visited by the police and then dragged through courts for months/years, even though it eventually gets thrown out and you get to walk away innocent, you sti…
Just look at any political thread in any social media in German language. There is plenty of criticism or even insults regarding government officials, without them getting raided. It is only extreme cases (often with calls for violence) which trigger LE. So the chilling effect is missing or at least it has little influence.
I mean… Spending tax dollars so that foreigners can watch porn without age verification sounds like a bad use of budget.
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It depends. One prominent figure of the right-wing populist party AfD in Germany has been called a Nazi. When he sued the originator the court decided that, considering the circumstances, was not an insult in the sense of the law.
That was argued to be a satirical skit rather than sincere statement I think. Which is quite an outlier but would be still probably quite interesting to compare with other cases. But in general if you were walking down the street or talking about something on the internet and somebody else called out or posted and said you are a nazi. Hate speech?
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Where do you live where you're allowed to express yourself without any form of approval? For instance, in the US, I cannot hysterically scream FIRE while running toward the exit of a theater, nor could I express a desire to cause bodily harm to an individual. Not that I would, per se, but if I did I'd be liable to prosecution for the damages caused in either instance. I'd have to get the approval of those involved (b…
The "shouting fire in a crowded theater" line is one of the most misunderstood pieces of legal dicta in US history. It comes from a case that was overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969). Under current First Amendment law, the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless it is directed to inciting "imminent lawless action" and is "likely" to produce such action. To illustrate how high this bar is: you can lega…
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Would educating people instead and giving them more options for information, not be better than banning access to information?
What if educating people takes decades and lies can be prompted in a few minutes?
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But part of Agency has just been defunded https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/19/us-funding-for...
This new "portal" will most likely only allow de facto government controlled sites like X.
It's a waste of resources, but please do it! The entire "European Union censors" narrative is a hoax [1], so the portal will achieve nothing, but you've got to do what you've got to do! [1] First, the EU countries have much higher World Press Freedom Index than the US. Second, once you start reading how little there is of the alleged "censorship" in the EU, you realize it's a no-brainer aiming to protect people.
I don't think the placement of the US on the World Press Freedom Index is necessarily informative of whether there's censorship in the EU. I'd expect they both rank higher than North Korea, but that doesn't tell us much either.
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> > And lies. > And truth. In short, propaganda. Propaganda (noun) : Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented…
This definition is so broad it basically encompasses all communication.