Another German chiming in: I tend to agree with **intention **– apart from situations leading to “imminent danger”, Free Speech is a right too valuable and too fragile to be narrowed down by even the best of, ehm, intentions.
The erosion of any civil right might start with a reasonable limitation, often described as a continuation or clarification of an already present restriction to avoid the “misuse” of the right, but far too often it leads to another restriction derived from the former ones and another and so on.
When the constitution states as clearly as possible that a civil right cannot be touched, the legislation has little incentive to pass any restrictive “clarifications” because the Federal Court of Justice will most certainly declare any of these unconstitutional.
The conservative German Chancellor and the Secretary of Justice, for example, have already said that the French “three strike rule” against downloaders of copyrighted material could not possibly be German law because of “both constitutional and political aspects”.
The “Recht der freien Meinungsäußerung” however seems to give the legislation – and public authorities - more wiggle room:
Article 5 (Freedom of expression).
(1) Everyone has the right freely to express and to disseminate his opinion by speech, writing and pictures and freely to inform himself from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by radio and motion pictures are guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.
(2) These rights are limited by the provisions of the general laws, the provisions of law for the protection of youth and by the right to inviolability of personal honor.
(3) Art and science, research and teaching are free. Freedom of teaching does not absolve from loyalty to the constitution.
(Original can be found here GG - Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland)
The problem is (2), of course. And though the bans surrounding Nazism do show some arguments in their favour, they have also led to, well, inadequate behavior of prosecutors and other authorities more than once.
Free Speech is a cornerstone of democracy, the less laws limiting it, the better.
And yet, intention, I wonder if Free Speech is as unlimited in the USA as you insist it is.
Why then are the networks allowed to beep over swearing when free speech should trump decency values?
Why can American forums ban members for what they said or how they said it if Free Speech were untouchable by anyone?
To me, it seems as if Free Speech were free unless someone says, “yeah, but not in my house.”
One addendum: although “Free Speech” is quite probably more limited in Germany as it is in the USA, that doesn’t mean that we are less free or less protected by our constitution – our documented rights mirror different histories, so they insist with varying fervor on specific civil rights.
The German Federal Court, for example, declared electronic voting unconstitutional based on what we know about its vulnerabilities (E-Voting Judgment – DW – 03/03/2009) – not surprising, given our experience.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if many Americans saw the benefits of such a stance … given their experience in the past years.
I think we all have to battle for our civil rights again and again – against well known dangers and new ones alike.
To clarify the reason why I mentioned the “three strike rule” in the first place while discussing “Free Speech”: One of the reasons why it would be most certainly declared unconstitutional by the Federal Court is (1) of Article 5: “Everyone has the right (…) freely to inform himself from generally accessible sources.”
Cutting someone off the internet would be a violation of this right.
So, while the German version of Free Speech has been limited by subsequent laws when it comes to expressing some opinions about the holocaust, most of the time it doesn’t fail to protect citizens from particular interests, like commercial ones.
I’m with intention on this. Neo-Nazis aren’t violent because they deny the Holocaust, they’re violent because they’re Nazis. Wouldn’t beefed up laws on rioting, hate crime, etc have the same effect without stepping on one’s free speech rights?
Thanks for the info, Kimstu. Dang, thats a surprise. It’s a topic for another post, but I’ve heard many people say that people of different races smell differently, and I certainly notice it. In any case, it’s just an example, there’s plenty of other instances where one person’s “truth” is another persons “lack of respect”.
No, I can’t imagine that. Every real professor of history - dotty or not - knows that the holocaust is a fact. Read Cecil’s article on how the holocaust deniers believe that if they prove one fact wrong, the whole thing will collapse (similar to creationists believe about Evolution), when in fact, there are mountains of evidence.
The laws were passed because the Fathers of the Grundgesetz took a look at the Weimarer Constitution (itself developed mostly from the idealistic 1848 revolution, that failed and therefore had no development of real life behind it) and looked where changes - amendments, if you like - had to be made to protect the citizens rights and democracy itself.
To quote Karl Popper “No tolerance for intolerance”.
I don’t know how to express it, but there’s no discussion possible between a lunatic and a normal person. It’s like a discussion between a creationist and a person who knows biology and evolution. One, the lunatic, arrives at his position by faith first, and then selectivly chooses facts which support his position (sometimes making things up out of whole cloth, or twisting facts), and ignores contradictory evidence. He also has no falsification test, his belief is circular. He doesn’t want to be convinced, because he believes he is right.
The same goes for Holocaust deniers.
Therefore a public discussion about whether the Holocaust did happen, or if it maybe wasn’t so bad, doesn’t happen because it’s not possible to have a rational discussion about irrationality.
If somebody has the opinion that pie = 3 exactly, because the Bible says so or because it makes geometry easier, then you can’t discuss this, because it’s factually wrong.
Frankly, I have a really hard time understanding the idea/practice in America of deciding a factual topic by majority vote or similar. The idea that if you invite two people from the opposite end of the spectrum - a creationist and a biology professor - into a talk show, that the truth will emerge somehow at the end (magically?) Here, people know that some things are true, period. Maybe that’s why there’s less discussion about “Is Global warming real?” and instead “What can we do about it?” It’s not “Should we teach the evolution controversy?” It’s “Are you insane that you want to publish ID in schoolbooks, stop it now!”
What does happen are discussions about the how and why and all the details of the Holocaust, though.
First, a lot of the problems we still have with Neonazis is that the police doesn’t take enough action - partly because they have absorved right-wing prejudices, too and turn blind eye (all crimes are committed by foreigners so all foreigners must be criminals), partly because of budget cuts with less cops; and the courts don’t act quickly because they are overfilled with too many cases.
Second, words can lead to incidences. Adults talk, and teenagers listen and go act. In the 90s, politicans not only from the right-wing parties, but also from the conservative CDU/CSU party were saying over and over again “the boat is full” and “the asylum seekers are sponging our money with welfare*”, until juveniles went and threw burn bombs into houses of asylum seekers (And the police didn’t stop them, and the average adult citizens stood around and clapped).
In some villages in the East, the neonazis have declared “ausländerfreie zonen” (foreigner-free zones). several years ago, an US sports team (I forgot which sport - hockey?) came to Germany for a competition, and in a bar, the black team member was insulted and then attacked (thankfully, his white team mates all came to his help immediately). Even during the soccer world cup, dark-skinned and oriental-looking people were warned not to go into certain areas, because their safety couldn’t be guaranteed.
Different topic, but same problem - words can kill: Dr. Michael Rath several years ago filled large halls with his speeches on how to cure cancer with his natural vitamins, and how the big pharma conspiracy was trying to keep that secret. He convinced the parents of young boy sick with dangerous cancer to try his vitamin therapy instead of normal chemotherapy. The state attorney tried to take the parents right of decision away because normal medical therapy offered better chances than charlatanerie, and if parents make bad decisions for their kids, the youth office has to step in and protect the children. But before a decision could be reached, the parents had fled to Mexico. The boy died shortly afterwards with basketball-sized tumor.
*technically, people looking for asylum do get welfare while waiting for the court process. However, they are also legally forbidden to find work because that could take jobs away from germans.
All these are dangerous incidences that spring from people with charisma telling others over and over again the “truth” about … and people listen and want to believe the simple solution, that it’s the foreigners fault, or that the Allies invented the Holocaust to keep Germany down, or that the International Jewish conspiracy is controlling the finances - all that disproven garbage.
IANALawyer. And your proposal sounds close to - I can’t help it - trolling for me. Do you believe any of the following statements? If yes, what evidence to the contrary would you accept? If none, then you would be a believer, not a seeker of facts, and I don’t know how to have a discussion about it.
If you don’t believe the following statements, why would you make them? For the fun of it? to provoke people? I would consider that kind of behaviour assholish.
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Next, here’s a variety of different statements about the Holocaust. Consider them in the light of contesting, minimizing, or justifying the Holocaust.
Factually wrong. Probably, by exaggerting trying to minimize it.
Factually wrong. Somebody who hasn’t even looked at the records to know that there are enough is not interested in facts.
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I think the real records were captured by the Russians during the war and hidden away, just like captured and took away the records, photos, and bones of He Who Must Not Be Godwinized (HWMNBG), and didn’t release them for a half century. I think we’ll never know how many were killed, but I figure it’s more than we actually know about from actual records. Say three million.
[quote]
Factually wrong. While the Russians took records from the areas they had control over after 1945, there are enough records in the different allied zones, and in other countries like netherlands, France etc.
Factually wrong. Logical fallacy - the jews didn’t die of the war, so it’s not related.
Inflated how much? And it’s not human nature when we have records and extrapolate from that using scientific methods by many different scientists in different countries. It’s an insult to the victims to hint that they are inflating the figures for their own purposes.
Factually wrong. Again, why are you so interested in changing the number? The neonazis play this game, too. First they attack the numbers, whittling them down, until only a handful of jews died naturally, and then they inflate the numbers of german dead because of the allied war actions, and then they conflate the two actions and figures, as if one wrong cancels out another wrong, and if ethics and morals are done by numbers, so whoever ends up with the most dead is the winner of the victim card.
Not so. Wrong is wrong, and another country doing something wrong doesn’t cancel anything. That’s why the Queen coming to Dresden was so important - the bombing was wrong, too.
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I think Genghis Khan killed so many people he made HWMNBG look like a pansy. Nothing HWMNBG did was important on that scale. Genghis raped and pillaged around the planet. He was way cool.
[quote]
Factually wrong. Ghengis Khan was a conqueror, but he didn’t set out for planned extinction. His empire was safe for all citizens. And if you truly think that raping and pillaging makes him cool, your standard of ethics is so far removed from mine that I don’t know how to discuss with you.
Also, your opinion of Dschingis Khan is not relevant to the facts of the Holocaust. Apples and oranges.
Factually wrong. As all the other statements, trying to diminish the figure is an attempt to lessen the crime.
Factually wrong, and of the track. If you are trying to quote typical Neonazi garbage, their line is that the Führer didn’t know about it, his underlings did all the bad deeds, he never signed anything, and if he had known, he would have stopped it.
Historical records prove it wrong.
Factually wrong. Building concentration camps wasn’t part of normal warfare. This line sounds very close to what the Turks are claiming about the Armenian genocide.
Factually wrong. Where would the Nazis have gotten so many Allied to execute? And how would after the war the authorities of three different countries - esp. the French, after the stopped being friendly to the Americans and thought of their own country again - collaborate in destroying records of soldiers? How would you silence all the relatives? Considering the big brouhaha the US makes of its quarter million dead from the Vietnam war (being silent about the 3-4 million dead Vietnamese, the majority of them civilians) the idea that one third of 15 million could be destroyed completly is absurd. Besides, they would have celebrated them as heroes; what motive would they have had to lower the numbers?
Factually wrong. Again, somebody who doesn’t know the most basic thing about the records - that seperate lists were made for german refugees, for each concentration camp, for missing /dead /captured soldiers (the last POWs were returned from Russia in the 50s - all accounted for, no missing Rambos) - isn’t interested in learning facts, or he would have opened one respectable book.
Last sentence wrong - rations were different between German citizens, Western Allied POWs, Russian POWs, Russian forced laborers and concentration camp inmates. (Even in there, difference for German communists and similar, and Jews).
Also, where’s the difference - if it is true, which I would have to look up - if the 6 million were killed quickly or slowly by working to death? It wasn’t inadvertent, if that was your point - the Nazis knew from the start and planned it that way to work people to death to get maximum benefit from them. (That’s also why the bones and hair and everything else was used). They only switched to gas and other methods when the people selected at the Ramp because they were unfit (too old, too young, too sick…) for work were so many that conventional methods would have taken too long.
Roma and Sinti (Gypsies is offensive) were killed in the Holocaust. The exact number is not known because if people were sent immediatly to the gas chambers, not every name was recorded. But to hint that the Roma and Sinti themselves lie about it today, that their own records and traditions and history doesn’t know about hiding and changing names, is an insult without basis. History professors know how to work with oral histories, and a few Roma and Sinti themselves have studied at University and know how to research and cross-check and verify stories and history for a full report. If you don’t accept the endresult of meticulous, years-long research on the basis of ethnicity of the victims, I don’t think anything will convince you.
I thought you were discussing the Holocaust, not the Russian prisoners and slave laborers? Comparing apples to oranges is not helpful in a rational discussion.
A, one of the favourite neonazi arguments: our enemies want to keep us down. Factually incorrect because records come from a variety of sources. Also playing the numbers game again.
When the Queen visited Dresden for the festivity of the rebuilt Frauenkirche, Neonazis used that opportunity to lament all the dead germans from the British bombings (which is correct - many civilians died), to claim it was a war crime (correct again - especially since England was not a dictatorship at that time and should have stuck to their ethics, not descended to Nazi methods of killing civilians on purpose) and then used that argument to claim that the numbers of dead germans were bigger than of dead jews, so the Germans weren’t really the bad guys (wrong. Bad deeds don’t cancel each other out. You don’t stop being a murderer whether you kill only 10 or as many as 30 of your neighbors family; and it’s not relevant how many your neighbor killed of your family. Dead people are dead, and murder is murder).
IANALawyer or Judge, so I can’t decide on the time. But I have heard and read similar arguments from Neonazis (aside from some you seem to have invented on your own) and they are all part of an argumentation line. It starts with one of the statements - how the numbers are inflated, or falsified, or it was far less, - and then develops into a whole chain of how the whole world is against us, keeping us down, and the reason people are out of work/ not getting paid enough /life sucks is because of the foreigners/jews/ blacks, so if we get rid of them, life would be wonderful.
And then bombs fly or heads get bashed.
Well, a hundred years ago, in parts of the South, killing a black person by lynching wasn’t considered a real crime, only a slap on the wrist. About 50 years ago, raping a woman wasn’t considered a real crime, if she wore a tight skirt, because she asked for it. So minimizing means pretending it’s not a real crime with intent to dehumanize and murder other human beings; no, not many died, other (german) losses are more important; they weren’t killed, they just died suddenly or other devices.
If you went walking along with your friend/girlfriend, and a person comes along with a knife and kills them in cold blood, but the defender says “Ah, he just stumbled with the knife he was carrying because he had just bought it, he didn’t mean it” and you know he meant it because he had made threats about wanting to kill your (insult) friend to make the world better - how would you feel about that? That’s minimizing.
Um, that’s not quite true. We have tried to explain that crazy ideas lead to violence; and that we want to protect the dead victims from slander/libel. You may not accept these reasons as satisfactory enough for limiting freedom of speech, but it’s not true that there are no factual reasons.
That’s what we try to do in the schools and with books. Unfortunately, there are a lot of dumb people out there who want to believe a comfortable world view and not facts, and teenagers and juveniles are very easily swayed (especially if it doesn’t come from the parents or school). But once their opinions are formed, it’s very hard to get them out of it - because the right-wing paranoia is so comfortable, it’s always somebody else to blame, and with one strong leader who makes decisions for everybody, you don’t have to worry yourself and make your own decisions.
No, not lies, but dangerous lies, lies with an agenda. Creationism isn’t outlawed, because it’s a fringe opinion (coming from fundie groups in the US that branch out to here), but it, too, has an agenda behind, a goal.
It’s not only about being offended by a nutjob (although I am offended to hear somebody dehumanize people), it’s about victims being insulted and rabble being incited.
So if your nutjobs spew their conspiracy theory about the US government all over the place, and some looney decides to get active against oppresion and blows up a federal building (like Timothy McVeigh for example) then the people he got his ideas from aren’t held responsible in any way at all?
The strange thing - talking about reality, not only the laws - is that free speech in media is limited in the US by the FCC which doesn’t allow swear words - even on shows for adults! It’s really jarring watching Daily Show and hearing a bleep becasue John Stewart said Fuck or Shit.
I think a more fundamental difference here is the cultural viewpoint between Americans and Germans (as far as I understand it). For Americans, the most important right is Freedom (first line). So the Freedom of speech is more important than for example honor. (libel/slander).
In Germany, the first sentence of the Grundgesetz is about Human dignity. All other rights derive from that. But not only our social structure of not letting people die of hunger or neglect or health issues, because that would violate human dignity; or the different approach to prison system; but also slander and libel and protection of the democratic society and the individuals in it are part of human dignity.
If somebody with a black skin or oriental face can’t walk the streets unmolested because of rabble rousers, we think the state through the police should step in and protect the individuals. (And it’s shameful when we fail in that regard, and gangs of neonazis hunt foreigners through streets).
Therefore, the right of the individual to voice his opinion is less important than the right of all people to live in a peaceful place without rabble-rousing; and the right of the victims to not have their memory besmirched after the hell they went through to be called liars for personal motives.
So, if our reaons aren’t compelling enough to you, it might be because you put different priorities on the rights than we.
Likewise, there are many instance of US law/culture that make us shake our heads in wonder at how you can allow that in a civilised society.
Actually, I think that’s one of the most often overlooked (by Americans) dangers in your system and culture: you think Nazis only wear swastikas, and that your democracy is stable (there seems to be a deep-seated belief that somehow democracy is ingrained in America itself). But your right-wingers (together with the fundies) have an extremly large support in the population - see all the people who listen and believe the aggressive radio hosts, or Fox News - ; your main parties are way over to the right; the fear of anything left is even more irrational in America than in Germany; patriosm (as precursor/gradual step to Nationalism) is widely accepted in America; and militarism/gung-ho methods are also venerated.
Nazis in America wouldn’t wear Swastikas and speak with German accent, they would wear the American flag pin and try to solve problems through war, call for all power to rest in one leader, make the press march in unison (all the better if the media is already pre-emptive doing it voluntarily), blame all problems no matter how complex on one group… well, I don’t want to derail this.
But your democracy isn’t immune or a working system if a large portion of your population believes that voting every 4 years is all there is to a democracy; if obeying authority is still more of an virtue than asking questions and being intelligent; that working for your own gain is more admired than working for the community; that a large part of people don’t even believe in the role and importance of having a state at all - I say your democracy is standing on weak feet because many people don’t understand that work is necessary to keep it going, and that not soldiers fighting russkies/moslems protect it, but citizens and judges and reporters.
Partly. From how I understand your linked pdf, I have trouble understanding the difference between “fighting words” that cause injury and normal libel/slander. Or do you not have any laws against that? Is it not illegal to call somebody an asshole?
Is the only resource to start a fistfight or walk away? What do you do if somebody insults your dead parents? Are you allowed to take them to court in place of your parents?
We have normal insult laws that violate your honor, but that doesn’t mean you call the police everytime somebody calls you a bitch. But if you want to take somebody to court because he called you an asshole - instead of starting a fight and be sued for bodily harm - then you can. Most people don’t because of the hassle invovled not worth the trouble, they reply in kind (‘fuck you too’).
if you call a police officer a motherfucker, however, you are not only insulting the person, you are insulting his uniform- the office he represents - and thus incur an automatic fine. (Not even words are necessary - “showing the bird”, that is, pointing your forefinger to your temple to indicate “you’re crazy/dumb/idiot” is also on offense to a police officer, no matter how many car drivers like to do it. I don’t know how much showing the stinky (middle) finger (the fuck you gesture) costs, but probably much more.
The Holocaust laws are extra on top of that, and one part is that the state assumes that the dead victims would want people who slander their names to be persecuted automatically, so the state attorney always steps up.
Whoa, you’re exaggerting a bit here. People don’t get killed by the government at all in Germany, because we abolished the death penalty after WWII. And they don’t get jailed for giving their opinion or criticiszing the government. I think in reality we have a much better media here, with less talk about Paris Hilton in main news, and lots of political reports that point fingers at where the government is screwing up.
The president could not bring you to court for disrespect of his office??? (He may not choose to for publicity reasons, but he doesn’t have the option?)
We think that people should be protected by the state and not need to protect themselves, because that favours only the strong. In the case of Phelps, he would violate laws against harrassment and slander of the dead and insult.
I wish you would stop doing that … I have a full work day (and my bosses want me to do my work not surf the net), and I don’t spend every evening in front of the internet for five hours.
IANALawyer, but to me, the intent is clear. Mengele was an inhuman monster, that’s proven by fact, so you can call him that. But if I put about that your grandfather was a serial killer and rapist and it’s untrue - libel/slander - then would you not feel insulted? Would you not wish to protect the memory of your grandfather as loving person who rocked you on your knees and worked in charity against lies?
I can’t even call this irony any more, but Niemölleris now surely rotating in his grave at that misuse of his poem, given that he even was put into a concentration camp.
I wonder in what words we can express to you the concept that discussion of the Holocaust itself in science or on the street is very different from denying that the Holocaust existed at all, or trying to minimize the number with an agenda?
Of course, the context of the laws is quite different - and context also matters. Germany is generally a free democratic country, while Russia has under Putin become a restricted authoritarian country (not totalirian yet, but that doesn’t seem to be necessary). It’s common for critical journalists in Russia to be shot on the street and no action taken by the police - that doesn’t happen in Germany.
And the Russians are very busy (again) rewriting their history because of the upsurge of nationalism under Putin, who likes paranoia as tool (and after the West failed them … shameful and dumb)
Of course, only 1) refers to an inhuman ideology that had “extinction of Jews” as central part.
2) is wrong because Christian ideology is too diverse (have you heard of the “Bekennde Kirche” ?) It’s also factually wrong because not all Nazis were Christians.
3) Is wrong again both because Jews were persecuted not only in Germany itself, but in the Ukraine and Hungaryand France and many other countries, local Neonazis/Anti-Jew forces were voluntarily formed by the population to also kill people.
Also, being German is no ideology.
Being held together doesn’t mean that you can remove the laws and things will function smoothly. It means that most (not all) of the population share a similar set of beliefs/ethics /morals of what’s a good thing to do and what’s not a good thing to do. Most people believe that stealing and killing is wrong, so therefore we have laws forbidding that. If laws were to be passed tomorrow allowing the killing of people taller than 6 feet (or whatever), most people would consider that law not only absurd, but wrong and would (hopefulle) do something against it.
Who claimed that censorship prevented Nazi restoration? Obviously, that denial of the Holocaust is illegal is only one arrow in a bunch of measures, together with education in schools about the Holocaust, trying to educate our people to be active democratic citizens and not passive consumers (though many groups want dumb consumers out of self-interest), having an active watchful media etc.
Removing one law won’t collapse the whole thing, but make it shakier.
Like the cutting of budget to save money by the Government to iniatives that combat Neonazis have led to an increase. (Groups that try to work with teenagers and get them out of the gangs; groups that watch and report activities; groups that provide counsel and help to victims of neonazi violence; etc.)
And it would be easier for us to fight the Neonazis if they couldn’t get their stuff so easily from Denmark and the UK and the US.
This is the second or more time that you make disparagaing remarks about Muslims. Can you please try to keep things civil and not exaggerated if you want a rational discussion about facts?
Or open another thread (maybe in the pit) to rant about Muslims? Because it’s not related to European Anti-Holocaust Denial laws.
But what makes you say my statements are legal? All of my statements “minimize” the Holocaust. You think they are legal. The law says they are not legal. It quite specifically bans statements that minimize the Holocaust. Yes, it is a mishmash of statements, it was intended to be. I wanted a wide selection of statements for people to choose from, so they could get the sense of how many ways there are to minimize a historical event which don’t lead to Nazis jumping out of the woodwork.
I’m not the one who has made the “debate over details” illegal, Tagos. You guys are. I’m not equating denial with details, I don’t have to. The law bans both, I talk about both.
Y’all started out by banning denial of the Holocaust. Now, you’re up to banning any attempt to “minimize” the Holocaust … but all of my statements minimize the Holocaust. Some of them say the Holocaust is so trivial it’s not even worth talking about … can’t get much more minimized than that.
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Once again - your statements weren’t points of discussion or for discussion they were denial of facts. Anybody who has started any kind of serious research on the Holocaust knows the basic facts, knows the main body of evidence, knows how historic science in general works.
First, the US system does have a jury composed of 12 common men does it not? And the jurors have to be so common, a complaint I’ve read several times is that they reject people with any kind of expertise about the upcoming case, because that would be undue influence.
Probably, however, Tagos wasn’t referring to the Schöffensystem of courts, because, like your jury, that only applies to some cases, but to our generally different system.
Unlike the US, where the two lawyers (state attorney and defendant?) are expected to confront each other with the judge simply presiding, and the decision to be based upon older cases; in Germany (and other European countries), the judges interpret the written law. Precedent cases are less relevant than the intent of the law as it’s written. And Judges use the common person standard.
Not stuffed, but reminded. Today more than ever, because the generation that witnessed the Holocaust and the Nazis and the World War are getting older and dying out, and the younger generations growing up have a hard time relating to how terrible it was. So we invite the witnesses to speak in front of school classes.
And taking over the responsibility means to do our best that it “Never happens again” not only with the Jews in Germany, but with Muslims in the US, or with Turks in Germany, or with … no singleing out a minority group to blame for all wrongs; no dehumanizing people; no erosion of human values in society to count only the monetary value to the greater good; no following one leader.
We try to watch and warn and stop. That’s our duty of atonment. And since your tone is continuously belligerent here: what has the US done about its crimes? Has the US ever admitted the genocide against the Native Americans? The crimes of Slavery? The war crimes in Vietnam? (It did take a long time, but appareantly, the US finally admitted the guilt in imprisoning thousands of Nisei during WWII).
And did you take any action to make sure that you wouldn’t repeat this mistake? What did you learn from the Vietnam massacres like My Lei to make sure this never happens again? What structures were changed after Abu Ghraib to prevent repetition?
A personal question, if I may. Are you interested in a rational, honest discussion? Because then, please dial it down a notch. I’m feeling irritated and don’t want to give in and rant back and become snarky, but your tone is too aggressive for a normal discussion for me.
And please stop insinuating intentions and reasons for not posting unless you have proof. Because you’re way off base.
Or do you want to rant and provoke and snark?
Also, there’s a time difference between the US and Germany, so if somebody doesn’t answer right away, they might be asleep, or working or watching TV instead of going online to discuss.
Also, do you know how many German dopers there are? Maybe half a dozen, two dozen if we count those who have said that they lived in Germany before or met Germans.
And Tagos didn’t make the decision about the law, it was made by the Fathers of the Grundgesetz, and none of the Judges in the Constituional court since have considered it illegal.
Where did Tagos say he was anointed by God to make decisions?
I only respond to this because you made allusions before for not posting. Your are quite wrong with the facts in your example; and Muslims aren’t related to the law about the Holocaust we were discussing. Please take it elsewhere instead of derailing this topic.
