While I on principal agree with you about keeping books behind lock and key, I would like to point out one thing.
You’re making a fatal mistake when you underestimate the intelligence of some fascists. Assuming NeoNazis would just buy Mein Kampf as a gimmick is dangerous. And while M.K. may not be the most dangerous book ever written, and it doesn’t even need to serve as an example in this statement, I still think it is fair to say that there is such a thing as an intelligent racist or facist. And when they gain power, it can most definately become threatening to others.
Joerg Haider (Austria), anyone? Filip De Winter (Belgium)? Jean-Marie Le Pen (France)?
They would all be very good opponents of n’importe which politician in a debate. And they all have very, very sick ideas about how a country should be run.
Many nations would like to, and make attempts to restrict certain material displayed on the internet from servers within their on borders.
Nazism is not considered acceptable in some European states on a par(or maybe even worse than) child pornography, sites instructing folk how to build bombs, and there are others that could be added.
Some ideas and expressions of free thought are so offensive as to be likely to damage the rights and freedoms of others.
Organisations have been banned from all public access to information dissemination, the paedophile information exchange is one.Even the very idea of its values are not open for discussion and quite rightly too.
The right of freedom of speech are balanced against the rights of those who might be adversely affected by said free speech.
With the fall of the Berlin wall and the disparity in wealth in Germany which completely exposed as inefficient and outdated industries collapsed there was a massive upturn in the number of unemployed there.This has been a fertile area for the recruitment of neo-nazis and the threat is considered a very real one.
France has had its share of anti-immigrant feelings as have most European states, and some incidents have involved fatalities especially where the victims have been burned alive in their own homes.
Many if not all of the mob gatherings have been organised by neo-nazi organisations.
At the moment the dissemination of Nazi souvenirs is considered a live issue, people are being killed at the hands of Nazis.This takes the issue out of the realm of free speech and right into the arena of criminal law.
The ownership of Nazi materiel is considered as a significant part in Nazi culture. Nazi values are considered to be criminal and their excercise has resulted in murder.
If you want to do business in any country then you have to comply with that country’s laws wether you like it or not.
I am no expert on European politics but it seems to me that they have a more hands-on, practical approach to securing rights. Differences are examined and decisions are based on what works. Here in America, decisions concerning rights are based on who’s right. They are determined in court; tradition is what’s important. It is axiomatic here that empowering the government to change our rights would inevitably lead to their abrogation, as Daniel alludes to. How does Europe not fall into totalitarianism?
Presumably, they use different axioms.
In our past focused, backward peering political environment people rarely question the axioms of the mythic founders. Indeed they rarely question their words. At least, that’s my theory on how such silly rhetoric as “A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.” can go unchallenged for three days in Great Debates. If the names Jefferson and Madison weren’t appended to it I would think that by now someone would have pointed out that freedom and security are conflicting motivations.
All societies trade freedom for security.
Even so, Revtim, it also means that those who don’t care for open selling of Nazi memorabillia on the parts of the Internet they use, can use their freedom of speech to pressure the web sites from profiting from this activity.
I sure hope they apply this ruling to anti-DMCA and encryption-busting pages.
Well there are many people who collect WWII artifacts. Or say I collect plates from around the world. Maybe I think it would be neat to add a NAZI serving platter to my collection. I suppose those reasons might not make it so terrible to outlaw auctioning NAZI material. However I would consider it a serious violation of my freedom to express myself. I see no rational reason why a symbol should be outlawed.
Well fascist certainly have a right to express themselves as much as anyone else. And as I have already explained above those that buy NAZI artifacts are not necessarily fascist themselves. I own a few NAZI artifacts that my grandfather brought back from the war. Should that be illegal? If I want to sell them to a collector why should that be banned?
I’m not quite sure how that decision affects the situation, revtim.
If Yahoo still has a daughter company in France, and allows the Nazi paraphenalia to go up, then what’s to stop the French courts from applying the fine to the daughter corp., in France? The US federal court decision wouldn’t apply.
Wow how did I miss this one? This is my area of law! And it involves a US-Europe slanging match! My favourite!
This very issue of concern to people like me, because it runs the risk of balkanisation of the web.
If countries want their laws to apply on the web, then they would have to find the technlogy to seal off part of the web.
The web is supposed to be a cross-border mechanism for the exchange of information. Its founders thought no country would be able to regulate the web, and it would be an anarchical land of freedom of information.
This is simply romantic hogwash. Private international law has for years been sorting out whose laws apply where, and this will eventually spread to the web.
In fact it already has - courts simply deal with the web as falling in their jurisdiction, a la the French courts. For some interesting recent cases, try CPT’s excellent website.
A meeting earlier this year of a panel of experts from the Hague Convention tried to sort this issue out. Copyright laws are just too tough a problem to sort out- they gave up on that, for the interim, other than deciding that one set of laws alone shouldn’t apply to the web (ie. US laws). Contract law is also a difficult issue. There was a hearing on 24 October to go through the draft convention. Not sure how it went, yet.
Our American friends shouldn’t poke fingers - they assume that the right of freedom of speech is as universal as the internet, when in practice it patently is not. The web can facilitate free speech, just as the printing press does, but the web is not American, and is just as subject to the US constitution and its amendments as the French laws on peddling Nazi paraphrenalia as it is subject to Chinese restrictions on access and content.
If you were sitting in, say, Syracuse or wherever, and you contracted to ship something to someone in Amsterdam, then you would have to take into account the laws of Holland and of the US. So, no Nazi goodies because the laws of Holland says its bad: and no marijuana into the US because the US laws say no. “Stupid Dutch laws!” cries the American. “Stupid American laws!” yells the Dutchman. Why are people complaining about the French decision, just because it involves the internet? Traders between countries have been putting up with this for centuries.
Yahoo says, “Why should another country’s laws affect me?” Silly bloody question, if you ask me.
When you enact freedom of speech, you have to take the good and the bad. Simple as that. You don’t want Nazis to speak their views, but they wouldn’t want you to speak yours if they were in control. I say let them have freedom of speech. It will only allow them to show their illogical reasonings, and drive the vast majority of society against them.
When do we stop throwing history down the memory hole?
My father was tortured, starved, beaten, and had his leg compound fractured by a Japanese guard with a rifle butt and a bad attitude. His crime? He learned to speak Japanese during his four years* of captivity in Japan, that really pissed the guard off. The Japanese doctor who set his let against orders was shot. Please ban references to imperial Japan from all literature now. While you are at it, some Polish people in my mother’s family are still really pissed off at the Soviets (on par with their hatred of the Nazis).
The Nazis were horrid, no doubt. But, to throw away intellectual freedom to accomplish a “greater good” accomplishes greater evil. Book burnin’ is a redneck activity no matter where it is done. I love Europe. But the Euros have their heads up their asses on this one.
*(Yes, four years. My father was captured after crash landing on Jaluit Island soon after Pearl Harbor.)
As a German, I’d like to add my few cents of Euro currency. It is very interesting, first of all, how some of the American friends on this list mainly employ their right to free speech to make general insults of Europeans and their take on the freedom of speech. Great job, Beagle, for being so open minded about the thing.
Now, I would like to ask who ever said that America’s approach to free speech (leaving it virtually unrestricted) is correct? It is your approach, fine; and it has its historical roots, certainly. But it is no more correct, and no less correct, than the European way: both approaches have been ratified by democratic assemblies, and both could be changed by democratic assemblies. Both approaches have the majority of voters behind them. If we felt that we should be allowed to say “the Holocaust never happened” [on which statement there is a penalty in Germany], we could vote on it. But Germans by and large don’t feel that anyone should be allowed to say and propagate this.
Another example. It is illegal to sell Nazi memorabilia in Germany, and it is not allowed to display the Swastika in public. Of course, museums and historians may collect what they need; but the ban is usually used to eliminate pro-Nazi splinter groups, who are certainly a danger.
Again, it matters little whether you think this is a good practice, since it is a democratic practice.
The argument that banning Nazi memorabilia only adds to their attractiveness is nonsense. It makes them harder to get, it makes their use and display illegal, it allows prosecution of dealers and users, it increases prices. It’s the same thing with drugs – those are illegal too, even in the U.S. By the same logic, we should be allowed to procure drugs at will. Maybe, of course, we should, if the democratic consensus is that we should. As long as it isn’t, that’s the law, and this way it must stay.
Thank you Big E for your insight. You see, the Americans posting here are indoctrinated with their constitutional right of freedom of speech, to the point when they think that it should be a global right, unimpeded. Western democracies on the whole embrace freedom of speech - but Americans overlook certain specific cultural issues unique to other countries. Waving a Nazi flag isn’t a freedom of expression issue in Europe, as I understand it - its propogating racism. By way of contrast, most Americans should be aware that Europeans (and a number of other countries) regard capital punishment as an anaethema - the ultimate deprivation of human rights - and the US position on this as inhumane and hyprocritcal. I’m not trying to start a debate on capital punishment - I’m trying to point out that people of different countries have different perspectives on rights fredoms and liberties. Americans should recognise that and not become righteous when discussing the Nazi paraphrenalia issue: Europeans should recognise that and not become righteous when discussing capital punishment.
I confess to being a libertarian in the extreme when it comes to the marketplace of ideas. If you mention publishing detailed plans for the construction of a nuclear device or a how-to aerosolize anthrax book I might switch sides. Mein Kampf, in my opinion, does not rise to the level of nuclear plans. But, add one Hitler and some ruthless supporters unafraid to break basic laws* in a post-WWI Germany wracked by economic problems and, voila, WWII and the rest. Hitler could have been stopped by enforcing the laws against murder, not by banning Mein Kampf. However, even I see the need to stop information about weapons of mass destruction receiving wide dissemination. Certainly building a weapon of mass destruction should be, and is, a crime. I would argue, however, that one who advocates using weapons of mass destruction has a right to do so, however abhorrent that may be. Of course once someone advocates such a thing they should be closely watched by law enforcement authorities. In sum, punish the actor for illegal acts not the idea. For example, punish someone for painting a swastika on a synagogue (trespassing and vandalism) but not for printing or possessing a book which says that one should paint swastikas on synagogues(speech, albeit sickening).
Lurking in this topic is a debate about whether fundamental rights like speech - arguably the most fundamental right in a free society - should be subject to majority rule. I think your post begs for such a debate. Suffice it to say I don’t think that speech should be held to a majority rule standard. “Good” speech does not need protection.
My argument is that there are many “dangerous” ideas out there. I gave some examples of ideology gone wrong in my last post. Books concerning Manifest Destiny could be banned next. There is no limit to ideas that might lead to bad acts.
*Kristallnacht or the Night of the Long Knives are good examples.
This is not the way an average european would perceive it. Advising to paint svastikas on synagogue in a book or newspaper would be perceived as much as a racist insult and a threat against the jewish community than actually painting it. Actually, I’m pretty certain that the punishment would be more severe before any court for someone publicly calling for such an act than for someone commiting it. And indeed, what would be condemned would be the ideology, racist and anti-democratic represented by the symbol, not merely the vandalism. Painting staviskas on synagogues basically isn’t a genuine and random act of defacing a building. It’s a clearly a racist threat. It’s not the form of the act which is punished. It’s its obvious intent and ideological content. Stating that the act only should be punished, and only as tresspasssing appears to me as :
-Extremely formalistic and not taking into account the reality. I mean the intent and obvious meaning of the act.
-Totally ignoring the feeling of the people who (with extremely good reasons) feel deeply insulted and threeatened by this act.
In other words, it sounds to me very similar to someone not being condemned for death threats, based on his rights of free speech.
Yes, but people could need protection from evil speech. Basically, what you say proves the point made by the previous poster about the cultural difference between continental europe and the US concerning free speech. You held it as kind of “sacred” and assume it is a basis for democracy “which should not be subject to majority rule”. But :
-This belief is very peculiar, and a cultural trait. There’s no evidence supporting the fact that an absolute right to free speech is the most fundamental right and the most necessary for a democracy.
-Despite this belief, there are limits to your free speech. For instance I doubt that you could print death threats, as in my previous example, without legal consequences in the US. The frontier here is different. That’s all. The main difference is that you emphasize much more this right and refer to it much more often.
-There are areas where the “free speech” is actually more limited in the US. I think about obscenity laws, for instance. Also, the “beeping” of dirty words on the TV. I don’t know if the latter is legally mandatory or just implemented by the broadcasters to avoid shocking their public, but it appears quite silly here. And actually these are certainly not perceived as an evidence of a free country, but as an evidence of an undemocratic “moral majority” rule.
I’ve read also numerous articles in my newspapers about fundings received or not received by some cultural institution depending upon the kind of artwork (sexually explicit, for instance) they displayed. Or about public libraries or school libraries not buying books which could be considered as offensive. Or about the rating of movies, etc…And believe me, these articles weren’t comparing positively the supposed american “free speech” with its european version.
Should I come to the american debates about not burning the flag? Unthinkable here. You would be immediatly suspected of being an extreme-right activist or a retard if you advocated for forbidding it. About prayers in school? Suggesting such a think would be considered as a major attack against freedom of religion. Doesn’t mean that it would be true in any european country. Each has its own traditions.
Despite the great similarities between our countries, there are still differences. Cultural differences. But actually a lot of them are more formal than real, in the sense that it’s more the emphasis given to something than its reality which is important. Also, it mostly fall to the fact that people support what they’re accustomed do and frown upon or are defiant about what they aren’t accustomed to.
Some examples of such differences, just out of my head :
-A politician refering to god in half of his speechs? Are you joking? How could freedom of religion be guaranteed by such a religious extremist? Don’t even think for an instant about swearing on the bible. On the other hand, public funding of a private religious school isn’t an issue. Everybody is allowed to receive the kind of education he wants, isn’t it?
-Having a ID card? Yes, of course…why a law-abiding citizen would refuse to give his identity if requested by a police officer? And how someone would prove his identity to a bank, for instance, without it? Giving my SSN to someone else than my doctor? Do you seriously believe I will accept? What kind of secret database do you intend to feed? Or what kind of personnal information are you trying to find?
-An official document asking for my skin color? Let me call immediatly all the organizations fighting against racism and discrimination! It must be printed in all the newspapers and we must organize some major protest. And don’t consider for an instant asking for/keeping an information about my race if you’re a private organization, either. You would be buried alive under the lawsuits.
-Pasteurizing cheese/eggs? Why for? To avoid one fatality every other year? Why not forbidding food other than porridge just in case someone would choke while eating while you’re at it? Eating hormoned meat? I’m not that crazy…
-Having to give a 15% tip??? How a tip could be mandatory??? Of course adding 15% for the service on the bill is a perfectly normal practice…
-A ceremony to honor the flag in a school? That sort of thing only exists in fascist countries, certainly…
-Not being able to drink a beer before 21? Give me a break. But who in his right mind would allow a 16 y.o. to drive a car?
Of course, one would certainly easily find many other examples (I must add that the previous ones refer to my own country…they’re not true in all european countries). But I suppose you understand my point. People are strongly biased toward their own cultural habbits and peculiarities.
And even in the case of cultures as similar as the europeanS (stressing the S) and the american ones, they’re quick to think that if the custom, or even the speech is different, there must be something wrong with them.
A bit more perspective is necessary. And most often, one will notice that his own customs aren’t objectively better, or are perhaps better on a given point, but worse on another one he never really paid attention to because it is so “self-evident” to him. Or that these differences are actually much more formal than real, and fall down to a different way to express something basically similar.
Freedom of speech is one of the characteristics of a Western country, but it is self-evidentally not uniform across Western countries. To say that it is disregards local sensitivities. Even in the US, defamation is not permitted to be republished. If you were a blind-adherence advocate of freedom of speech, you would disagree and say that this is incorrect in principle, and likewise with the “fire in the theatre” example. There are limitations: the point is that the US and other Western countries’ limitations are not standardised.
Still waiting for someone to address those. Specifically, why Nazi symbols and not Soviet symbols? Is your test simply that someone is offended? If so, is there any meaningful freedom of speech under those conditions?
Note, I do not agree with the argument that a democracy is necessarily a free country. Hitler won an election. Notions of fundamental rights are necessary to protect minorities.
Nazis would agree, people must be protected from evil speech. This Historyplace link may not be legal in your European country, please consult your local speech police before clicking.