[FirmwareBurner]

The first one is bad indeed, but what's so "authoritarian" about the rest?

>https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2018/kw08-de-v...

Other European countries like Switzerland, also banned full face veils(burqas) in public. Try entering a bank, city hall, school, etc with a balaclava, ski mask or motorcycle helmet see how that goes.

>https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/304/1930412.pdf

Allowing the surveillance of minors if they show signs of radicalization? This to me makes sense under existing child protection laws. If kids are being raised in environments that are harmful to themselves and society, should we just sit by and let them get permanently wrecked till they reach adulthood, over a technicality? The earlier you can catch the issues the better for everyone and the higher the chance you can rescue the child. Existing child protection laws in Germany already allow the state a lot of power to take children away from parents if they're seen as unfit.

>https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/111/1911127.pdf

Taking citizenship away from those who voluntarily join terrorist organizations like ISIS? 100% agree with this, how could you not?

These are common sense viewpoints a lot of Europeans agree with, not authoritarian ones.

[tvier]

Controlling how people dress sounds pretty authoritarian to me. The fact that it's currently not acceptable to enter a bank with a covered face would indicate a law banning it in all public locations is not needed.

Taking rights away from people labelled as terrorists is a pretty standard way for governments to control viewpoints. It gives them the power to add any group they don't like to a list, and deport/imprison them with minimal judicial process.

I don't know enough about surveillance of minors to comment on that one.

[FirmwareBurner]

>Controlling how people dress sounds pretty authoritarian to me

You're making it sound like under these rules, the government can force you to wear GAP jeans instead of Levi Strauss, when in reality the government has always enforced laws on public attire in public to preserve decency and security.

Otherwise it would be tyrannical since I'm not allowed to go naked in public or wearing the loincloths and Tribal Penis Gourd of my ancestors near schools.

Similarly, burkas are a security risk in public since people could hide and smuggle weapons under that, or there could be men hiding underneath using it to enter female only spaces like bathrooms and changing rooms, or so much more nefarious cases.

Then on top of that, you also have the cultural and optics aspect, that burkas are a symbol of a backwards oppressive culture that's incompatible with western progressive liberal and feminist values that the west cherishes or at least pretends to.

[tvier]

You're throwing a bunch of straw man arguments out, which makes it a lot of work to actually respond to this whole post.

Rights are always on a spectrum with a large amount of grey area.

> burkas are a security risk in public since people could hide and smuggle weapons under that

This is silly. Everyone wears coats in the winter.

> there could be men hiding underneath using it to enter female only spaces like bathrooms and changing rooms

Is this actually a concern? AFAICT this isn't happening, it's just something that could theoretically happen, which doesn't make it a reason to decrease people rights. That would be another standard tactic for pushing authoritarian laws.

> Then on top of that, you also have the cultural and optics aspect, that burkas are a symbol of a backwards oppressive culture that's incompatible with western progressive liberal and feminist values that the west cherishes or at least pretends to.

This seems valid, but I'm pretty hesitant to force my cultural values on people. It hasn't gone well historically.

[FirmwareBurner]

>Is this actually a concern? AFAICT this isn't happening

How do you know it isn't happening if their faces and bodies are always covered? Did you undress all of them to check?

> it's just something that could theoretically happen

Welcome to the real world where a lot of laws are made to cover things that could happen precisely so that when they DO happen, there's a law ready to enforce. Why? Because if something CAN happen, it WILL definitely happen.

> but I'm pretty hesitant to force my cultural values on people.

I'm not. You come to my house, you follow my rules, you come to our country you follow our values, simple. If you want to live in the west and benefit from the western system that brings you free education, healthcare, justice, financial opportunities, welfare, freedom of speech, then you must follow the western values that built that system you came here to enjoy. Otherwise if you want to live like in Afghanistan, then go live in Afghanistan, not in our country.

Otherwise if you allow one flavor of imported oppressive cultures out of suicidal empathy, just so you don't "force your values on other people", then why not allow domestic oppressive cultures too, like fascism, nazism, communism, antisemitism, sexism, homofobia, etc? Why open your doors and only tolerate the foreign imported ones?

>It hasn't gone well historically.

Then you need to go back to the schools you went to and ask for a refund, because historically it definitely has. The federal government forced their values over the confederacy via war in 1865 and the US of today is better off from it. Allied powers forced their values over the Axis in WW2 and the world was better off from it. So many historic examples why you're wrong.

[tvier]

> I'm not. You come to my house, you follow my rules, you come to our country you follow our values, simple

I wish it was this simple, so badly, but that strategy has been tried many times before and it always ends in violence. First off, who is "our"? Is it the majority? That leaves every minority group vulnerable. Is it the most powerful (it usually is)? That leave everyone screwed. It all seems great, until you end up as a target. This is why we base our systems of rights to more universal, and not based on our ethnicity.

For example, some of the historical opinions of my fairly recent ancestors: All Jewish people should be dead; ditto for Homo/Tran-sexual; also the Irish; black people aren't humans; the middle east should be owned by Western Europeans, and if not, designed to minimize the chances of them forming successful nations; same for Africa

Seeing this as bad assumes you think hurting other people is bad, which I do. If you don't agree, then there isn't much to discuss, you are entirely correct withing your framework

> Otherwise if you allow one flavor of imported oppressive culture so you don't ":force yurt values on other people" why not allow domestic oppressive cultures too, like fascism? Why only tolerate imported ones?

Where I'm from being a Nazi is completely legal. We tolerate both. There is still an ongoing discussion about where to draw the line, but the standards are always higher than wearing clothes that you don't like. Germany may not tolerate Nazi's for obvious historical reasons.

I would recommend "They Thought They Were Free" for a more of a look into this. It's an interesting book.

Edit: This is not true, almost all laws are passed to deal with a situation that is already occurring.

> Welcome to the real world where a lot of laws are made to cover things that could happen precisely so that when they do happen, there's a law ready to enforce.

[FirmwareBurner]

>I wish it was this simple

Why isn't it simple?

>but that strategy has been tried many times before and it always ends in violence

Then don't import people of divergent/adversarial cultures who aren't willing to integrate into your country and are only there to extract the monetary benefits of your society without conforming to the laws, customs, social contracts, cultures and obligations that society requires.

If you only accept people who gladly accept your culture and values, there is no violence. History has proven this yet it seems like uncharted territory to some people. "you mean putting the fox in the hen house ends in violence?!"

>First off, who is "our"? Is it the majority?

It's the amalgamation of culture, history, collection of laws, constitution, 'Volk Geist' and the voice of the democratic majority of the citizens of the country where you choose to emigrate that compose the concept of "our country", which you need to accept when you choose move somewhere, or GTFO. You can't move to a different culture and expect them to accept your alien values that might go against theirs. Their values hold precedence over yours.

> That leaves every minority group vulnerable

No it doesn't, this is just an empty appeal to emotional manipulation.

In most western democracies, minorities and legal immigrants have the same human rights and equal access to healthcare, education, justice system, etc as everyone else so they're not "more vulnerable" just because they can't wear a burka in public. To receive those rights, it requires them to accept and conform to the laws and values of the society they chose to move to, like the law of not wearing burkas for example, or the law to tolerate LGBT people. Not wearing burkas in public is not making the wearer more vulnerable. On the contrary, foreigners wearing burkas in public makes the locals feel uncomfortable and vulnerable in their own country.

>For example, some of the historical opinions of my fairly recent ancestors: All Jewish people should be dead;

You see, since all your arguments are just empty appeals to emotional manipulation or moving the goalposts from laws banning burkas to somehow being similar to genocide of jews, I will stop the conversation here since you're clearly arguing in bad faith. I've already covered all your points with arguments, there's nothing more I can add. If you want to accept them fine, if not, also fine. Good day.

[coderenegade]

To play devil's advocate, isn't it illegal wear a swastika in Germany? How is wearing a burqa, a symbol of female oppression any different?

Freedom of religion only goes so far, because the culture of the host country takes precedence. To take it to the extreme, if there were a religion where part of standard practice involved assaulting women and children, we would obviously limit those practices.

[AnthonyMouse]

The ban on swastikas in Germany is an authoritarian law, it's just one which is popular enough there that there isn't enough support to repeal it despite it being an unambiguous constraint on speech.

Non-consensual violence is prohibited because it directly harms other people. Face coverings don't directly harm anyone and laws that exist only for the government's convenience are authoritarian laws. There are ways to investigate bank robberies even if the robbers are wearing masks and in fact a law against masks is fairly ridiculous because anyone willing to break the law against robbing banks would be willing to break a law against wearing a face covering, so such laws only afflict innocent people.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

I understand your point,but consider it a scar.

How would the world react if Germany decided to repel such law? It doesn't paint a good picture

[FirmwareBurner]

>The ban on swastikas in Germany is an authoritarian law,

With this type of logic, all laws authoritarian then, like speeding laws, theft laws, and anything else that prevents you from doing what you want to do becomes authoritarian.

[tvier]

No, all those things harm other people.

The ban on swastikas would be considered authoritarian because it's only purpose is to limit expression.

Considering Germany's recent history though, it seems like a reasonable response.

[Hercuros]

“Expression” is a bit of an overloaded word here. Carrying a swastika is considered similar to hate speech. Just like you cannot just make death threats in the U.S., even though you are just “expressing” yourself as long as you do not carry out the threat. Not saying those are exactly the same, but there are limits to expression, and spreading hate against large swathes of people is considered like that in Europe. Especially because that kind of speech can at some point turn into actual physical violence against the groups in question.

[avianlyric]

> Taking citizenship away from those who voluntarily join terrorist organizations like ISIS? 100% agree with this, how could you not?

Because governments shouldn’t be allowed to just wash their hands of any responsibility to a citizen, just because they don’t like their views, regardless of how extreme and vile those views maybe.

We have judicial systems for a reason. If someone joins a terrorist organisation, you arrest them and allow the justice system to determine the consequences. Allow governments to strip citizenships is effectively a mechanism to allow governments to avoid due process and their own judicial systems. Those are never healthy behaviours in any democracy.

Societies should deal with their own citizens properly, not just strip them of citizenship and declare them someone else’s problem. I have no idea why anyone would believe making it effectively impossible to ever leave, except by dying, terrorist organisation would be a good idea. That must ensure all members of terrorist organisations literally have nothing else to live for. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to ensure that all terrorist go out with a bang.

[FirmwareBurner]

>We have judicial systems for a reason. If someone joins a terrorist organisation, you arrest them and allow the justice system to determine the consequences. Allow governments to strip citizenships is effectively a mechanism to allow governments to avoid due process and their own judicial systems.

What are you on? Taking away someone's naturalized dual citizenship is done by the judicial system via due process according to the draft proposal, not on the spot by police or whatever nonsense you imagine it.

If only you would have skimmed the proposal paper before commenting instead of getting your knickers in a twist over stuff you made up in your head, you would have saved us all the wasted time.

>I have no idea why anyone would believe making it effectively impossible to ever leave

They can leave with their other citizenship, genius. This law applies only to dual citizens, since you aren't allowed to make citizens stateless, Einstein. It's even written in the proposal which of course you haven't read but have strong options against it.

[marcus_holmes]

> Taking citizenship away from those who voluntarily join terrorist organizations like ISIS? 100% agree with this, how could you not?

Given the UK's recent use of anti-terrorist legislation to arbitrarily classify a protest organisation as terrorists, this is really dangerous. If the government can classify any organisation as terrorists, and then remove citizenship from any members of that organisation, that is horrifying.

So yes, I very, very, strongly disagree with this measure, for very good reasons. How could anyone with any common sense support it?

[FirmwareBurner]

>Given the UK's recent use of anti-terrorist legislation to arbitrarily classify a protest organisation as terrorists

If your current laws allow for such oppressive abuse on the population without due process, then these new laws won't make things any worse for the people and you're fighting the wrong things here, if you think that taking citizenship away form registered ISIS members is the biggest problem.

[marcus_holmes]

I disagree completely. Citizens are protected by laws, such as the First Amendment, that are not applied to non-citizens (see the Julian Assange mess for details). If the government can designate a group of people as terrorists, and remove their citizenships for being terrorists, then they can additionally apply yet more tribulations on those people while not straying out of the legal protections afforded to citizens.

You keep saying "ISIS" like it's some magic incantation that makes everything else OK. Try saying "any organisation the government disapproves of" instead, and see how that fits your mental model of what's acceptable. For example:

> you're fighting the wrong things here, if you think that taking citizenship away from any organisation that the government disapproves of is the biggest problem.

I think you'll agree that this would be a big f**ing problem.

[FirmwareBurner]

> You keep saying "ISIS" like it's some magic incantation that makes everything else OK. Try saying "any organisation the government disapproves of" instead, and see how that fits your mental model of what's acceptable.

Which other organizations who didn't kill or committed acts of violence to people in order to be wrongly considered terrorists by the government in the same vein as ISIS was?

>I think you'll agree that this would be a big f*ing problem.

It isn't. In most western democracies, if not all, gaining dual citizenship via naturalization is a voluntary privilege, not a right, that can always be revoked for crimes such as being part of a terrorist group. It's part of the contract you sign when you apply for citizenship. As it should be. That's who the law is targeting.

Your primary citizenship gained via by birth or by descent cannot be taken away from you almost anywhere.

[marcus_holmes]

Precisely my point about terrorist organisations; Palestine Action did not kill anyone, yet the UK considers them to be the same category of organisation as ISIS.

If I read this right, you're thinking that only naturalised citizens would be affected by such a law; those with dual nationality that can be "sent back to where they came from". Which explains why you think this is a good idea.

That's not how citizenship works. If you allow for removing citizenship, then all citizens, regardless of "primary" nationality, can be made non-citizens. There's no second-class citizenship that can be revoked while still retaining a first-class citizenship that cannot.

[avianlyric]

> Your primary citizenship gained via by birth or by descent cannot be taken away from you almost anywhere.

I’m sorry but you’re badly misinformed here. There is no concept of “primary citizenship”, you’re either a citizen or you’re not. If your government has a right to strip your citizenship, then mechanism by which you acquired citizenship is relevant. The whole point of citizenship is to declare that everyone with citizenship has identical rights and protections from their government.

There has been one person in the UK who had her citizenship revoked for joining ISIS. She was a born in UK, and was a British citizen from birth by right of decency. She is now stateless, a citizen of no country. These are the actual laws you’re defending, the hypothetical laws that only apply to naturalised citizens don’t exist, and aren’t being proposed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamima_Begum

[FirmwareBurner]

No, it is you who are misinformed. According to your Wikipedia link she was a dual citizen so the UK had the legal rights to strip her of her British one and she was left with her Bangladeshi citizenship, so not stateless.

>However, the UK government contended that Begum was a dual national, also holding citizenship of Bangladesh, and was not therefore made stateless by the decision.

>However, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission found that as a matter of the Bangladeshi nationality law, Begum also holds Bangladeshi citizenship through her parents, under section 5 of the Citizenship Act, 1951.

[the_gipsy]

> Taking citizenship away from those who voluntarily join terrorist organizations like ISIS? 100% agree with this, how could you not?

Sounds great on paper, until it starts happening to X, which is your group, now suddenly a terrorist organization, and you happened to have joined in their view.

[FirmwareBurner]

>until it starts happening to X, which is your group,

With that logic we shouldn't ever punish or jail criminals because you too might be a criminal one day.

[the_gipsy]

No, by my logic we shouldn't take citizenship away, period. How can you be so dense?

[FirmwareBurner]

You can't take my citizenship away if it's my only one, you dense piece of concrete. Why would I fear that would happen to "my group"?

[the_gipsy]

So what's your point

[saubeidl]

If you find yourself agreeing with authoritarians, it might be time to reassess your views.

[FirmwareBurner]

So then would you want to live next to an ISIS member just so you're not agreeing with "authoritarians"? What's with this form of suicidal empathy?

Calling the people you disagree with as "authoritarians", "-phobes", "racist", "nazis" and all kinds of slurs, without any arguments, doesn't work in your favor or help the conversation in any way, on the contrary.

Agreeing with common sense takes doesn't make one "authoritarians".

Learn to do critical thinking and augmenting, instead of heard mentality parroting oppressive slurs against people you disagree with, just because you convicted yourself (or propaganda has) that you're on the right side of history, and everyone else with contrary viewpoints is evil reincarnate that needs to be crushed or silenced.

[somenameforme]

Authoritarian is often used as a pejorative strawman rather than as any particularly coherent concern. For instance Italy's Meloni was framed by the media, and people who still believe it, as being the next Mussolini, if not Hitler. In reality? Her time as leader has been largely inconsequential and relatively popular, especially contrasted against the leadership in places like Germany and France.

In general it's not authoritarians that are winning everywhere, but anti-globalists - which is disingenuously framed as authoritarianism. Globalist views were adopted on a wide scale, and they simply didn't lead to positive results, and so it's an ideology which is on the decline, ironically - globally.

[anonzzzies]

Globalist views didn't lead to positive results? Until very recent no one was complaining: everything was going up and everyone got better. Now it goed a little less and the underbelly starts whining. And of course people do believe misinformation. People who got a yearly raise over the inflation correction for a decade and now 'only' got inflafion correction whining its the globalist issue because some guy on tiktok explained it so well. Italy (or me personally for that matter) would be have been absolutely screwed without the EU and globalism, but keep listening to propaganda while I count my blessings and money globalist stylez.

[FirmwareBurner]

>Until very recent no one was complaining: everything was going up and everyone got better.

The stock market, and your housing and investment portfolios going up, didn't mean that everyone was happy, just the asset holders like yourself and those in your bubble but you're not majority of the working population.

You need to learn to differentiate between "the stock market" and "the economy". Working class people can easily be getting poorer while the stock market is going up. So of course they're mad.

>People who got a yearly raise over the inflation correction for a decade

Huh? Who? Where? When? Maybe in your tech bubble but in the real world a lot of people's salaries haven't kept up with inflation, let alone consistency get raises ABOVE inflation. In France for example the average pension is now higher than the average salary.

>while I count my blessings and money globalist stylez.

Top 10%er can't understand why those bottom 90% without assets who got screwed by globalism and saw their jobs offshored and salaries and savings obliterated by inflation caused by endless money printing are mad at the globalism that caused this massive wealth transfer from the working class to the upper asset owning classes.

You can't make this up. The sheer ignorance of reality of most people and the "fuck you I got mine" attitude is shattering. No wonder young people are flirting with communism.

[pezezin]

Man, I am reading this whole thread in utter disbelief at all the naive "defenders of freedom", and I have to say that I fully agree with every single one of your comments.

[saubeidl]

We've argued a lot on this platform before, but I fully agree with your post this time.

-- a young-ish person flirting with communism.

[somenameforme]

The current systems in many places are breaking, but communism isn't a solution. Because the main reason the systems are breaking is not because of the systems themselves, but of the people in charge of them. Communism faces the exact same issue, except in that case the people in charge have orders of magnitude greater power and the people orders of magnitude less.

In a contemporary democracy we could, at least in theory, completely vote out literally every single pro-corporate, pro-war talking head in the next election. Now of course this won't ever happen, but at least in theory its an option. By contrast in communism, if one ends up unhappy with the system you have very little ability to change it.

Furthermore, in a capitalist system one can even start a communist sub-society. In fact there are many communes throughout the country, at least in the US. But in a communist system, you can't simply start a capitalist sub-society. The centralized nature of the system entails limits on freedoms, to ensure that every person is contributing to society as a whole. And this, in practice, trends towards dystopic authoritarianism in terms of how non-compliant individuals are treated.

The reason that people always claim that various efforts at communism weren't "real" communism is because the concept and theory of communism doesn't, and probably cannot, survive first contact with the interests and whims of humanity. By contrast I'd look at the overwhelming majority of the history of the US as an argument for capitalism. It's only relatively recent times, particularly after 1971 [1], that things have gone so terribly wrong.

[1] - https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/