Hm, maybe I should explain: Denying the Holocaust is, at least in Germany, something much much more serious than spouting some other bits of random nonsense. It's not just another wacky political opinion. By denying the Holocaust you place yourself outside society, outside of the fundamental agreements that rule civilized interaction. You openly declare yourself an enemy of everything that civilization and society stand for, and I believe that acting against such enemies in a manner apt to prevent them from doing harm - actively marginalizing them by laws such as this one, for example - is at the core of defending our society. Wehrhafte Demokratie is an accepted concept in Germany, even if it may be very foreign to someone socialized in America.
A couple of points. Firstly, denying the Holocaust is not always an act of malice. Mostly it is an act of ignorance, the consequence of bad socialization. Stupid people saying stupid things, and they are no threat.
Secondly, you don't become an "enemy of civilization" by denying something like that, you're just trying to otherize and blame these people for Germany's sake. It's hypocritical to say that one believes in democracy and self-determination, and then to wield the police against people when they do that. The only protections worth having are for people whom are outside the accepted. The Nazis being evil does not undo that, and again some of these people aren't Nazis. People also should have the right to be evil so long as they follow the law. Better that we decide for ourselves than the state decide for us.
Thirdly, I'm familiar with Wehrhaft Demokratie, I just disagree with it. Or more accurately, I agree that we should protect democracy, but I disagree with the powers the German state granted itself to supposedly enforce democracy. Firstly, it's more a threat to democracy than an assistance of it. Germany gives itself the power to ban groups, abolish the rights of people, and exclude them from the bureaucracy if they are hostile to the state order. You might be alright with that when you've got a CSU-SDP monotony every election, but times can and will change. It's not even a slippery slope argument. It's just changing which direction the knife points in. If the goal is really making sure the Nazis or whomever next holds their mantel stay down forever, it would be better for Germany to forever deny itself those powers. Secondly, it's inconsistent. There are wars and genocides that make the Holocaust pale, but Germany doesn't particularly care because the guilt complex isn't about
those wars and genocides. These are not the signs of a moral principle, they're the signs of egocentrism. Hell, it took Germany until 2006 to recognize the Armenian Genocide (I wonder if all the Turks in Germany had anything to do with that...nah).
I will say that I approve of the right of resistance against tyranny, though.
See above, mostly. A couple of things though: Why do you think that speech and violence are competely separate spheres? That seems rather arbitrary.
They connect, but they do not overlap. Saying that speech is violence is yet another example of the philosophical and rhetorical creep that we've been seeing over the past century. The number of radical and second-wave feminist theorists who will give you a laundry list of things that are objectively not rape or even related to rape, and then say that they're rape (women's social conditions, capitalism, consensual sex with men, not accepting their arguments, etc), is proof enough of that trend. Though as to not pick on feminism I'll also point out any number of left and right libertarians who call statism violence, everybody who calls capitalism violence, everybody who considered disagreeing with them a violation of their rights, etc. We in the first world are so by and large insulated to actual violence that we turn hypersensitive and start identifying other things as violence because of how much we hear about it and how little we're exposed to it ourselves. I agree mostly with the current American test (I know I'm biased, but it works) that speech has to be active, credible, and specific in threatening violence in order to be dangerous enough to restrict. This applies to few situations besides leading a mob around and telling them who to assault.
MSH, I'm not American, I'm European, and not even that right-wing a European. Giving the state the power to jail people such as those discussed does not imply advocating throwing them all in jail to rot.
You do not have to have for-profit prisons and mandatory sentencing for this to be an issue. Sending someone to prison deprives them of their livelihood, as well as their relations livelihood and relation to them. No society is so benevolent that you can frame imprisoning people as something good for
them.The German neo-nazis are doing a fine job making themselves look silly, and our civil society is very effective at marginalizing them - that does not mean one should carelessly throw away another powerful instrument to keep them down.
Because what? What is going to happen if you do? And don't tell me rise up, because that's deeply implausible and doesn't happen in nations where it's not illegal.
(And no, fascist rhetoric does not work like that. If you want I'll go dig up examples, but I don't want to end up on more watchlists than necessary.)
It's a common enough rhetorical thread across fascist movements, but then again identifying pan-fascist trends has always been a problem for people more informed than us, so it's irrelevant.
Your last paragraph has me confused though: Do you seriously believe the ideological successors of the National Socialist German Worker's Party are against big government?
Obviously they won't be if they have power, but when they don't have power then the existing power apparatus is something to be undone. But also, my argument isn't that they have to be against big government, but rather that the paternalistic attitudes of some European states are inflaming far-right and fascist moments that would otherwise be left unsuccessful. It is a strong motivator to believe in them. Europeans aren't just turning psycho en mass, and there's a reason for it besides academic accusations of xenophobia.
Google 'NSU' if you want a bit of a shock.
Ah, yes, good old NSU Moterenwerke. But that's not shocking at all...
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Topic: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread (Read 1244271 times)