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by vorprokuror 1044 days ago
Wow so jailing for the “wrong” opinion in the “rightful” country is ok, but jailing for the “right” opinion in the “evil” country is not? So broken argument
2 comments

> Wow so jailing for the “wrong” opinion in the “rightful” country is ok, but jailing for the “right” opinion in the “evil” country is not? So broken argument

Jailing a person who spreads the propaganda of the country that has invaded you, and also gives Russian intelligence the position of your military units?.

Absolutely the right thing to do.

Yeah more or less. Just without the quotes..

I mean we don't really blame US or Britain for jailing openly (pro)Nazi propagandists operating inside their territories during WW2?

OTH few people are willing to justify Nazi Germany imprisoning/killing opposition activists in Germany.

Of course Ukraine is deeply flawed country in many ways (just like US/Britain/etc. were back then) that doesn't mean that the war itself is necessarily morally ambiguous or that Russia's action aren't wrong/evil.

We should. Freedom of political speech either exists for everybody or you let the government - good or bad - carve out the chosen exceptions. There's a reason it was embedded in the American constitution.

>Of course Ukraine is deeply flawed country in many ways

The irony being that due to its history many of its flaws and values are very Russian in character. That includes imprisoning Lira for "informational terrorism".

I didn't realize that these Russian characteristics would be quite so popular on Hacker News though. Apparently freedom of speech isn't that important.

Absolutists tend to run into the walls of reality sooner or later.

Equating squelching propagandists of the invaders of your country to limits on freedom of speech shows that you don't actually understand that freedom of speech is a right, but not an absolute one, merely a shorthand for saying that you can criticize the government without ending up in jail. And in that sense spreading propaganda for an active belligerent enemy goes well across the limits set on free speech because it falls under 'aiding and abetting the enemy'. At some point in the not so distant past that got you a cigarette and a bullet, in that order. Freedom of speech is very important, as is a sense of reality and proportionality.