Comment by bloobloobloo
9 years ago
> the slippery slope that is always brought up never materialized.
Very true. Well, except maybe for that one time when Germany became an open-air rape camp under the noses of police who did nothing for fear of being accused of racism. That kind of sucked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year%27s_Eve_sexual_assaul...
And, oh yeah, there was that time they threw a lawyer in jail for defending a Holocaust denier.
http://www.dw.com/en/german-neo-nazi-lawyer-sentenced-for-de...
But otherwise, sure, unqualified success. Great example.
> And, oh yeah, there was that time they threw a lawyer in jail for defending a Holocaust denier.
That's not an honest reading of the article you linked. From the article, "[the lawyer] also signed a motion during Zündel's trial with "Heil Hitler" and shouted that the lay judges deserved the death penalty for "offering succour to the enemy" -- leading the court to dismiss her." She was a neo-Nazi herself.
How about this one then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germar_Rudolf
In other words, she didn't defend him the way you feel that she should have.
We'll just make a list of all the arguments that are okay to advance in court, so then lawyers know which ones are forbidden.
That seems like a good concept with no far-reaching implications.
You are generalizing well beyond the scope of the action.
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I have nothing to say really about your first point where you do nothing but speculate about police motives, but the second one doesn't prove anything either.
The second case is not a slippery slope because it does precisely what's codified in German law, nothing more and nothing less. The lawyer herself denied the holocaust and that's punishable in Germany. So the law was correctly applied. That has absolutely nothing to do with the slippery slope discussion.
> you do nothing but speculate about police motives
80 cops "failed to notice" over 1000 violent crimes taking place in a space about the size of a football field, over the course of several hours.
My "speculation" is, by far, the very kindest interpretation.
> So the law was correctly applied.
Let's hope so. Defending her is a crime so we'll never really know.
You can defend her if you can resist your urge to praise Hitler and deny the Holocaust yourself in court. Again, that's all transparent and clearly defined in German law, so it literally had nothing to do with the original slippery slope discussion.
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>Very true. Well, except maybe for that one time when Germany became an open-air rape camp under the noses of police who did nothing for fear of being accused of racism.
What an awful example and has nothing, what so ever to do with the laws against being a Nazi. Do you honestly believe the US has never avoided reporting something for fear of being labeled? Really?
The other example you gave was covered by others in the thread. Spoiler: it's a lie.
> nothing, what so ever to do with the laws against being a Nazi
You are very poorly informed. The laws against "being a Nazi" are generic "no bad speech" laws. Nazism is just their most well-known application. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung
> Spoiler: it's a lie.
A lawyer went to prison, for statements she made, in court, in defense of her client. That's not supposed to happen. It's not a feature.
Germany is a joke. The fact that it's even considered a country and not a US territory is beyond me.
If you have a US military base in your country you are objectively not a sovereign nation.