[vidarh]

People are completely within their rights to be intolerant up to the point where their intolerance does harm to others.

The preservation of liberty gives us all a right, and many would say an obligation, to persecute you when what you engage in puts others at severe danger of being stripped of liberty, or, worse, of life.

Not even the US allows unfettered speech for that reason, even as much as it goes further than most places in allowing harm to others.

[illuminerdy]

> "People are completely within their rights to be intolerant up to the point where their intolerance does harm to others."

We're talking about speech. Speech is not "harm". Nobody cares about your hurt feelings.

The limitations on speech in the U.S. occur when the speech directly results in ACTUAL harm (again, not just hurt feelings). That's why the U.S. has the most expansive speech protection of any country in the world. I can deny the Holocaust as much as I want. I can call mock "trans" people as much as I want. Because, again, your hurt feelings don't matter when you're talking about protecting speech.

[vidarh]

So you agree speech can cause actual harm, in other words, and hence the disagreement is only over where the line goes with respect to actual harm.

Germany has drawn in by considering the risk posed of another authoritarian regime as an unacceptable actual harm of allowing certain kinds of extremist speech, other countries consider the reduced feeling of safety and security or mental health consequences of harassment and abuse to be actual harm.

The US de facto considers things like many forms of defamation or false claims to be actual harm given that it renders a free speech defence moot in many circumstances, so it is clear that even in the US this actual harm does not need to be physical or direct.

I don't necessarily think Germany has gotten the balance right, but it's incredibly arrogant to think the US interpretation of harm is the only reasonable one.