Comment by exe34
14 days ago
Am I understanding you correctly here - your idea of free speech is that people should be able to wear/use Nazi symbols proudly? That's what you mean when you say there's no free speech in Europe?
14 days ago
Am I understanding you correctly here - your idea of free speech is that people should be able to wear/use Nazi symbols proudly? That's what you mean when you say there's no free speech in Europe?
No you aren't understanding correctly, at all.
Both of those men used the Nazi symbol as a warning: "this policy seems bad in a totalitarian way, like what those very bad people did in the 1930s, so we shouldn't be doing that". They didn't wear these symbols, nor present them as a representation of their own beliefs, nor glorify them in any way. They used them as a compact representation of where they feared the slippery slope can lead.
Discussing history, learning from it and avoiding a repeat of it is a foundational justification for political speech. If Germans cannot point to their own past to warn about the present - and under the current German government they clearly can't because people who do keep getting prosecuted - then they cannot learn from it and might well repeat it.
All of this is obvious. The last two paragraphs were already very clear in my previous post. There was no way to interpret them the way you did, so I don't believe you are arguing in good faith. At his trial, CJ Hopkins pointed out that mainstream German media routinely printed the swastika on their front page in relation to the AfD, yet they weren't prosecuted under the same legal theory he was being prosecuted under. The symbols aren't really banned. The judgement, when finally read out, didn't make any mention of the defense arguments at all. It was a show trial and everyone knew it, including independent journalists:
https://www.velazquez.press/p/scandalous-verdict-us-author-c...
They did that knowing that Nazi symbols were banned in Germany. They did it on purpose to get in trouble with the law in order to conflate the two things: 1) using Nazi symbols, 2) criticizing government policy.
it's a classic motte and bailey approach, and I'm sure they're grateful to you for defending their demagoguery.
I already addressed your claim Nazi symbols are forbidden in the post you clearly didn't read (again).
It's darkly amusing that you guys have gone from "source?!" to "it's good that the provocative troublemakers are being punished" in the span of about 5 posts whilst you simultaneously flag kill FirmwareBurner. Nothing screams "we have free speech in Europe" like aggressive censoring of people who point out you don't.
Whatever dude. You can deny what's happening for a while, but one day you'll wake up and realize everyone around the world just sort of ambiently knows that Europe has become a totalitarian dictatorship.
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