[thu2111]

Yes, nazis should not be allowed to speak free. And no ramblings about privacy here on HN will ever change my mind.

That's why the left constantly describe anyone who isn't on the left as Nazis, even though they clearly aren't. Free speech requires absolutism - the moment you make an exception of the form, "well ... but not for them" suddenly the term is redefined and huge swathes of people are being dumped in that bucket regardless of reason or evidence.

I'd be happy to sacrifice my own privacy if we can root out the evil of racism, nazism, terrorism, and other things that absolutely everybody agrees are bad.

The people who talk about racism the most are by far the most racist people in society. They manage to be racist whilst claiming to hate racism by redefining it to not be about race, but perceived "power" where "power" is entirely subjective. Hence they can hate on white people whilst claiming to be fighting racism.

Again, the lesson is simple. All free speech must be protected to the absolute end. The moment you make an exception, leftists will en-masse attempt to redefine the word used to delimit the exception to encompass anyone who isn't on their side.

The right isn't above this sort of behaviour either, see the abuse of "terrorist" to mean random people in Afghanistan in the first years of the millenium. But I haven't seen much of that lately. As of 2021 this behaviour is definitely more common on the other side of the hall.

[a254613e]

Just so I'm clear, because English isn't my first language, saying that people shouldn't be allowed to advocate for complete extermination of complete groups of people based on their skin color or similar, somehow makes me a racist?

Besides, the whole "free speech must be protected to the absolute end" is such a stupid thing to insist on. Here in Germany that's not the most sacred thing, do you know what the article 1 of the german basic law is? "Human dignity shall be inviolable." - and guess what, we're not some dystopian racist hellhole.

[thu2111]

Literally nobody in the modern world is advocating for the "complete extermination of complete groups of people based on skin colour" with the possible exception of China in Xinjiang (although I guess that's based on religion rather than race). If they were, you would be right to identify them and call them racist.

The way these terms are actually used in 2021 has nothing to do with the classical definitions. Rather, Twitter warriors describe anyone who votes for Trump as a racist Nazi. The terms have become unmoored from their original definitions. And as a German I am sure you're aware that this problem of redefinition happens there too.

Here in Germany that's not the most sacred thing, do you know what the article 1 of the german basic law is? "Human dignity shall be inviolable."

German law is crap then. That statement is vacuous, means nothing and can be interpreted in whatever way the government wishes to whatever end the government wants. The US First Amendment is vastly superior and I'm not even American: it is crisp, fairly specific and applies to a very small group of people (Congress).

As for not a dystopian racist hellhole, no, Germany isn't. Neither is the USA, so using Germany to try and make a point about free speech doesn't seem very relevant. China is such a place, if the reports of concentration camps for Muslims in the west are true, and they also have no free speech. So the correlation between free speech and being non racist seems pretty good.