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by Jacqued 2862 days ago
I must say I have not been jealous of the US in this regard. In my opinion the state should be able to silence fascists and neo-nazis and jail them for hate speech. Unlike the US, people in Europe have experienced first hand what happens when you tolerate and enable them.

Also I don't think you can call it "absolute freedom of speech" as some speech, like calls for murder of the usual fire in a theatre exemple, are indeed not allowed. The US also has libel laws & copyright laws. To me the main difference with European style freedom of speech seems to be tolerance of extremist political/religious speech.
3 comments
ramblerman 2862 days ago
Hate speech is a slippery slope, it's ill defined and you grant an awful lot of power to the people who get to 'define' the term.

A critique of islam could be considered 'hate speech'.

On the other hand I do agree that calls for violence/murder should indeed be punishable and are also far better defined to be taken up as law.

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Radim 2862 days ago
Isn't that the point though? Europe has experienced first hand not only "national socialism" (nazism), but also another type of socialism — communism. Still legal though, and going strong in Europe.

It's a grim comparison, but communism has actually produced a higher body count that nazism and fascism combined.

That US had traditionally granted free speech to all kinds of extremists, no matter the -ism, was truly remarkable and unique. Definitely a cause for wonder (even jealousy like OP says).

And the way they found to circumvent that pesky constitutional constraint by having mega-corp-in-bed-with-gvt monopolies do the dirty work, without breaking the letter of the law, is remarkable again. An elegant "hack".

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nasoieu 2862 days ago
(Eastern) Europe has also experienced what happens when communists are in charge, yet communists are not being persecuted in any way, while fascists or nazis are. Something else is going on. Case in point: this comment is being downvoted without any explanation.
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teh_klev 2862 days ago
> this comment is being downvoted without any explanation

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

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nasoieu 2862 days ago
I am not complaining about it, but I think it's relevant to the point: oppression of certain opinions. Otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned it.
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