[UnpossibleJim]

as unfortunate as it may be, you not only have to fight against the nazis ideals, but also for their right to hold them and speak them in a public forum, like any other citizen. That's from the history books about the country's founding.

[ebola1717]

Nope. Nazi speech is banned in Germany cause they learned their lesson.

[e9]

We all know Nazi are bad, no one in their right mind will deny it. But the way they are currently handled through violence and censorship is not right and downright illegal. You are feeding their anger instead of squashing their ideas. We are American citizens and should respect each others right for free speech and engage in civil debate over ideas we disagree. If we resolve to silencing and violence without debate how are we better? Have you talked to any Nazi? Are you sure they know history and what Nazi stands for? etc etc etc I personally haven't met one ever but when I do I won't punch them with a fist but punch them with debate.

[liberte82]

Nazis don't have ideas. They will jump from truth to lies as it suits them to win an argument. They do not live in the world of civil debate. Think of them as trolls from before trolls were a thing. They are not an ideology, they are a hate movement. Silencing them does not make their hate grow, they are already fundamentally about hate. They are a passion, not an ideology. Tell me what is the tax policy of a fascist? They have none, save that of whichever system they hijack en route to their only real mission, which is the elimination and persecution of their perceived enemies. We fought the worst war the world has ever seen to stop them because once they got rolling, they had to keep growing to survive. That's the nature of hate. They certainly weren't going to be stopped by debate.

From Sartre: "The anti-Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons. How entirely at ease he feels as a result. How futile and frivolous discussions about the rights of the Jew appear to him. He has pleased himself on other ground from the beginning. If out of courtesy he consents for a moment to defend his point of view, he lends himself but does not give himself. He tries simply to project his intuitive certainty onto the plane of discourse. Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side."

It seems that America is going to insist on finding out what fascism is really about the hard way.

[axedwool]

So in your estimation, Nazi hate is so powerful that even the example of World War 2 and seventy years of progress in racial equality was not enough to inoculate the vast majority of the people of the United States against it -- but passing a law against saying it in public will?

[liberte82]

Yes, it would help. It's been 70 years since WW2 ended and people are fast forgetting its lessons. Take an example, pretty much everyone agrees that ISIS uses the web as an online recruitment tool to radicalize young people and that they are very effective with it. This point is fairly non-controversial. Yet when the same point is made about extreme right-wing movements radicalizing young Americans, these concerns are largely not taken seriously. We expect our youth to be wise, discerning, able to think critically and immune to propaganda in a society that has steadily devalued education for decades.

"Hitler did nothing wrong" is a joke meme, until it isn't.

[ameister14]

I don't see open Nazis having a seat in government in any country where it is legal to advocate Nazi ideologies. On the other hand, Austria and Germany, two countries where that is illegal, have together 5 European MP's from their respective Nazi parties.

[e9]

so do you recommend banning all hate movements? As article points out "Those on the left face calls to characterize the Black Lives Matter movement as a hate group." Where do you draw the line?

[liberte82]

Note that I am calling for banning hate speech, not the groups themselves.

I would say that there needs to be evidence. We need to live in a reality-based world, not one that makes decisions based on feelings. If there is evidence of BLM making specific claims that calls for persecution or violence then the people making that speech should be charged under applicable hate speech laws. For example I did think that that "fry cops fry" chant or whatever it was from a couple years ago was an incitement to violence.

But overall: I don't think BLM is a hate movement just because some right-wingers want to say it is. But go off evidence and go case by case like we do in a just society.

Also to add: I see this "where do you draw the line" argument everywhere and it is fallacious. We draw lines all the time in our society. That is literally what law is. We outlaw murder, we outlaw theft, and many other things. And there are ambiguous cases that courts need to decide around all these things. Is assisted suicide murder? Is abortion murder? Is pirating theft? These are big questions that we face all the time as a society and debate and come up with answers for. Hate speech would be no different. We decide as a society what is hateful and it becomes law and then we set precedent through the court system. There are plenty of examples of successful hate speech laws implemented in other western countries to get us off to a great start.

[e9]

Those would be some tough laws to write. It seems like a lot of things that are hate related are very much feelings based and sometimes its just misunderstanding or ignorance. Separating feelings from hate would be tough and may have unintended consequences. Do you know of anyone who thought deeply about this topic?

[kadenshep]

>"Those on the left face calls to characterize the Black Lives Matter movement as a hate group."

Neat. You're going to need some proof or point to some core tenet of BLM that makes them hate group. Not that hard to do with Nazis.

No one is labeling random groups as being hateful or racist. It's literally in their (Nazi) stated ideology. The EFF should be ashamed of attempting to draw the comparison and bolster what is essentially a conservative narrative. It requires a good amount of willful ignorance or just straight up dishonesty to make it.

[liberte82]

Note: wow I got brigaded. From highly upvoted to negative in the space of an hour.

[anigbrowl]

First, it's not illegal - although it does raise interesting questions of where public space ends and private property begins.

If we resolve to silencing and violence without debate how are we better? Have you talked to any Nazi? Are you sure they know history and what Nazi stands for? etc etc etc I personally haven't met one ever but when I do I won't punch them with a fist but punch them with debate.

And what will you do if they respond by punching you with a fist? I have talked to a lot of nazis, and listened to them, and have been doing so a very long time. Individual people can abandon the nazi ideology; according to people in the deradicalization movement, the most likely triggers for doing so are the birth of a child (more so if a daughter), or receiving kindness/compassion from someone who is normally a target of theirs.

But the nazi ideology is explicitly predicated on the idea of violent struggle for dominance rather than peaceful cooperation, in contrast to most others. Those who adhere to that ideology and call for the subjugation of other races, genocide, or war are not engaged in debate; they are issuing threats.

[UnpossibleJim]

I thought we were talking about America, here. I might have been mistaken. Nazi speech, as well as a great number of things are illegal in Germany that aren't in America. We have completely different foinding documents, government policies and laws.

[ameister14]

Interestingly enough, Germany has a Nazi party and they have a seat in the European parliament.