Please tell me where in the Western World there’s a danger of communism taking over. Please show me how components of Communist ideology have as much as 30% appeal in many Western countries.
Besides, why are you comparing apples to Oranges? The question was to give reasons and explain the Anti-Holocaust-Denial laws, was it not? How do you get to “Let’s see what else we can ban?”
And Russia, during the Soviet days, already had a massive rewrite of history, and now the right-wringers are rewritting it again.
The Stone-Age communism of the Red Khmer was a terrible crime. Which is why there’s now an international court trying the people responsible for the killings in Cambodia.
Huh? How do get that? Yes, Germans were violently anti-Communist (like the US still today) and afraid of anything that smelled of left ideas, which helped to drive normal citzens to the right. But there was more than one reason for the rise of Hitler and the NSDAP.
So could please provide a cite, if you meant it seriously?
An apologist would be someone who tries to find excuses for the Holocaust. But I really don’t understand why we need to remind people especially of the dangers of Communism since Communists are always the bad guy by default. After all, many countries applauded Hitler in the beginning because he was anti-communist.
In Hollywood movies, until the fall of Communism, the bad guys that could be mowed down by the dozens by the hero without moral compunctions were unfailingly Nazis or Communists (those either Russkies with accents or Asians with sliteyes.) Now they have to kill aliens ruthlessly…
With Nazis, we have to watch out because their ideology is so appealing for the masses and the conservatives like to dally there and use the popularity. Too many politicans and populists think they can leech support by dancing to the right; instead they simply feed the extremists, and move the center closer to them.
The other parties in Weimar thought Hitler would be a usable, steerable fool, too, when they elected and appointed him and underestimated him.
I don’t think it is that much different. Stepping past the question of if Russia 2009 is more or less democratic than West Germany 195X (& noting that East Germany, where these laws now also rule had no say in them) then weather a law is made in a democracy or a full out dictatorship matters little – the law is still the same, and equally just or unjust. And basically they are both attempts to set up a truth by law. It, like the fellow Argumentation by Appeal to Authority, is basically a mistaken approach that convinces nobody – or at least ought not to convince anybody. And of course rejecting Soviet victory in WW-II is about as absurd as rejecting the Holocaust, and I suppose just as insulting to the tens of millions of Soviet citizens (more than was murdered in the Holocaust) killed by invading Hun armies. How can you say Holocaust denial is fair for Germany, while denial of Soviet victory is wrong for Russia?
I recognise Germany has a special history that makes such laws understandable. Context. I just don’t think they are a very good idea, and would wish Germany would stop trying to spread its national idiosyncrasies to other nations through the EU – just as I’d prefer if former East European countries kept their bans on Communist symbols to themselves. France its ban on Armenian genocide denial to itself. &etc.
I think Communism is much more widespread than Nazism. And of course I won’t have to tell you than in Germany you now have a popular political party – Die Linke - elected both to the Bundestag and the European Parliament. A party that is a merger of two other parties, one being a direct successor of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany – the ruling communist party of East Germany. In Denmark we also have a communist-ish party in the national parliament (a merger of three communist parties and a socialist party), while the Nazi party (which is quite legal) in the last election got a whopping 48 votes. So I think it is quite obvious which grouping has the most followers.
constanze, first, thank you for being the first person to actually approach my question.
I say “approach”, however, because you have not answered it. I don’t care if you are a lawyer, I’ve said that twice. I asked for your opinion as to which of these are (or should) be illegal under a law that makes “minimizing” the Holocaust illegal.
Instead, you’ve given your opinion as to which of them are true … interesting, but doesn’t answer the question. I know they’re not true. I made them up specifically that way, and I designed them to push the edges of the constraints.
I asked my question for a couple of practical reasons. The first is to illustrate the problems with trying to ban an idea. It is very difficult to specify exactly what you are banning.
The second is to show that many, many statements fall under that wide, vague umbrella of “minimizing” the Holocaust.
My own opinion is that all of the statements minimize the Holocaust, in different ways and with different justifications. But which ones are illegal?
So, I’ll ask again. Which of those statements do you think are illegal under a law that says it is illegal to “minimize” the Holocaust? And more generally, which of those statements do you think should be illegal?
For me, a law aimed at the general public should be clear enough so that the general public can understand what’s illegal and what’s not … and to date, no one has even begun to answer that question for me. Which statements could, or should, I be thrown in jail for?
I don’t mind a law that only lawyers can explain if it relates to some arcane business situation. But a law that we expect the general public to obey needs to be a law that the general public can understand. And to date, nobody has stepped up to explain these laws and what they do and don’t forbid.
In the US, the jury is not there to “moderate” the laws through common sense. US juries are only charged with determining the facts of the case. All they can say is “Yes, the defendant broke the law as it is written” or “No, the defendant did not break the law”. These are questions of fact, and cannot “moderate” the laws in any way.
From what you say (and please correct me if I’ve misunderstood) there is no more moderation in your courts on the basis of “citizen common sense” than there is in the US … what you have that the US doesn’t is that the judge can decide to use some kind of “common man” standard, but whether that represents the sense of the citizens depends on the judge, and not on the citizens …
However, I’ve been asking people to apply the “common man standard” to my statements above, and everyone (including you) has shied away from doing that very thing.
In the US, the jury is not there to “moderate” the laws through common sense. US juries are only charged with determining the facts of the case. All they can say is “Yes, the defendant broke the law as it is written” or “No, the defendant did not break the law”. These are questions of fact, and cannot “moderate” the laws in any way.
From what you say (and please correct me if I’ve misunderstood) there is no more moderation in your courts on the basis of “citizen common sense” than there is in the US … what you have that the US doesn’t is that the judge can decide to use some kind of “common man” standard, but whether that represents the sense of the citizens depends on the judge, and not on the citizens …
However, as an example of the difficulty of applying a “common man” standard, I’ve been asking people to apply the “common man standard” to my statements above, and everyone (including you) has shied away from doing that very thing.
As usual, I’m skipping everything after the fifth post just to enter my two cents’ worth.
I spent three years in what was then West Germany back in the mid-1970s, and my understanding of the German frame of mind is that most Germans were, back then, mostly ashamed of having allowed not just the Holocaust, but the whole Nazi phenomenon. I talked with elderly folks who had survived WWI, had endured the shame of the Versailles Treaty, had been thrilled by the rise of German nationalism, and then horrified by by its fruits.
It’s not inappropiate, in my opinion, to equate the Holocaust with American slavery, but one has to understand the differences between American and German freedom, especially in the mid- to late 20th century (again, as I understand it, having talked personally with those who lived it). The American ideal of freedom of speech is an absolute right. Btter hand-to-hand comabat before the Supreme Court of the U.S. often hinges on a single point, and SCOTUS often rules according to what the justices see as a absolute right under the U.S. Constitution.
European constitutions, on the other hand – and, again, I’m relaying impressions gained from those who are supposed to know about such things – are less absolute and couched more in a “let’s be reasonable about this” framework. The German freedom of speech is guaranteed as long as said speech doesn’t bring down the shame and disdain of the world upon Germany. If the U.S. had a similar attitude, George Bush would be in prison now.
The differences are cultural and historic. In many ways, the U.S. has the luxury of youth – as a nation, we’re still young enough to enjoy absolute rights. Germany, as the inheritor of the Holy Roman Empire, has no such luxury, and thus must temper its rights in the framwework of a well-known and closely-studied history.
Finally – and I hope this isn’t too cynical – one must view the differences as those between victor and conquered. Remember, Nazism resulted in the final and abject defeat of Germany, a defeat it hadn’t suffered before in its history. Even WWI didn’t leave Germany as the devastated and occupied hulk it was in 1946. Nazism was a tragedy inflicted upon the world, and only the Jews – and here I mean international Judaism, not just those tortured souls who died in or survived the Holocaust – suffered more than the German people themselves. As the “losers” of WWII, the Germans are forced to not just acknowledge the evils of Nazism, but to foreswear it forever in order to earn back the respect of the civilized world.
If the Confederate high command had been as persecuted and prosecuted as the Nazi high command was, if the horrors visited upon Africans in America were as revolting to southern whites as those visited upon Jews in Germany, and if the freedoms enjoyed by Americans were as circumscribed by reason as those enjoyed by Germans, the Stars and Bars would be as illegal in the U.S. as the swastica is in Germany.
This sort of attitude annoys me. The idea that fascist ideology is “so appealing to the masses.” Of course, the implication is that level headed, thinking, educated people like the poster are immune to the charms of the Nazis.
It wasn’t the German working class that elected Hitler…
You have to see this attitude within the context of 1949, not today.
Remember that Germany had once before gone from a lost war to new aggression in a short time, essentially by right-wing propaganda and denial (Dolchstoßlegende).
And I believe that this element of the Grundgesetz was not unwelcome by the occupying powers, who seriously considered making Germany a completely agrarian society without any independence not long before.
Of course there is no widespread right-wing movement today, in fact one of the parties of neo-nazi sympathizers (which is not forbidden) is currently in the process of self-destructing, and they are all reduced to the odd seat in state parliaments, with none of them with a role in federal politics in quite some time.
But a repeal of the law would be seen as a victory for neo-nazis, here and also internationally, where the denial is a rallying point with a strange force (see also the Williamson Vatican debacle), so I think it is here to stay for some time, and frankly it is no big deal in regard to freedom of speech.
Okay, my opinion as layperson: all of your statements are illegal under the law, because they all minimize the Holocaust. I don’t know why you worded ten different variations of the numbers argument, and the last one was truely weird - I’ve never heard that before, and I don’t know what you want to achieve with it.
I can’t tell you how much prison time you would get for saying them, because I’m not a lawyer or a judge. That’s not because aspects of the law are arcane, or because a common person should understand the law. I understand the law, and your statements are illegal. But the sentence is decided by a judge after trial, not before, because circumstances vary.
The judge might decide you are a harmless loony who doesn’t know what he’s talking about and give you a slap on the wrist.
He might decide that while you are simply a troll, by provoking people with these statements in public, you are dangerous, furthermore, your behaviour in court indicate that you would continue trolling, so he would sentence you to prevent trouble.
Or might he decide that you are an unreptent neo-nazi and give you the maximum sentence.
Generally, your statements can be grouped together as :
the numbers argument together with unreliable records: the numbers were inflated, the records were falsified.
comparision by tangent: other also committed crimes (often done with the german civilian victims of the air bombings by the West Alllies and the post-War ejection of civilians from Poland and Czechia.), often combined with changed numbers (we suffered more)
the last one is odd. I never heard it from a neonazi.
But the other types I have heard and read in neonazi argumentation. This is the basic building blocks of their arguments. They start out with false numbers to achieve the point.
My common man standard: your statements come from neonazi propaganda, not innocent ignorance, and therefore if you keep making them in public, it is forbidden and the police should do their job and prevent it. Clear enough?
So you simply accuse people of nefarious motives without any shred of evidence, and then try to weasel out with asking us to make up our own mind? I call that kind of behaviour wrong and bad.
How would you feel if I made similar allegations about the Founding Fathers, revered as they are in the US?
Um wrong, about East Germany. Upthread it was mentioned already - the Grundgesetz was passed provisionally, because the East Germans couldn’t vote on it, but after the reunification it was amended to include all 16 states and they had their say.
As for current Russia being less democratic than the Adenauer state - yes, it’s my impression that most people knowledgeable think this.
The courts that apply the laws and the police that enforce them are different in a dictatorship and in a democracy. That’s why I said context matters. Why did East Germany call itself democratic, even though it wasn’t? Because all dictatorships want to give the impression that they are wonderful and their citizens live pleasant lives. A lot of death penalties meted out by the infamous “Volksgerichtshöfe” during the 3rd Reich used not only new special Nazi laws but normal, pre-existing laws in a manner that had not been thought possible before (sentencing people for death for stealing some coffee, or making disparaging remarks about the army…)
It’s not about convincing people, or establishing truth. Truth was already established by historians and scientists, and it’s this truth that the judges then refer to. They simply want to take a tool away from the neonazis argumentation.
I didn’t say it’s wrong. I said context matters, and that because Russia is an authoritarian state with little regards for human rights in other areas or for people in general, that law can be used for bad purposes. While in Germany, the law has not been used to jail enemies of the state or willy-nilly, but carefully.
The normal parties tried to ban the right-wing NPD party (National party of germany) some years back*, but the court upheld that not all criteria necessary for forbidding a party were met. It was set up to be difficult on purpose, so the process couldn’t be misused. (One of the main reasons for the failure was the embarassing fact coming to light that a large number of members belonged to intelligence service - Verfassungsschutz - tasked with observing extremist groups threating democracy, and thus the court wasn’t able to distinguish between real neonazis and agent provocateurs.)
*several groups were against that move, claiming that having all your dangerous right-wingers in one group made them easier to observe, and banning the party would not make the members change their mind, but only drive them underground or to other right-wing parties. Also they claimed that a failure to ban would make the normal parties and the democratic process look bad and add fuel to the fires of the right-wingers.
For example, Turkey was considering passing a law (or has passed it in the meantime) that would forbid insulting the pride of the turkish state. Critics pointed out beforehand that this law would most likely be used against journalist and authors talking about the Armenian genocide. AGain, this is clear from context of the Turkish politicans talking about the law and the attitude towards the Armenian genocide.
I’ll try one more time to explain the reasons:
If a person commits a crime, ( or a child does a bad thing, like throwing a stone to break a window), there are several stages that must be passed (both individual for psychological reasons, and on a general level for society):
Admission of full cupability - yes I screwed up. If the kid is making excuses that the window was old anyway and the bitch who lived there deserved it, you will wait until he stops lying and being obstinate.
Apology and repetance - I’m sorry that happened, and if I had the choice, I would not do it again/make it undone.
Restitution - making amends as possible. A broken window can be repaired, but a dead person can’t be raised. Payment for the left-behind is only a small compensatiion.
Analysis - what’s the real reason things went wrong? What are you going to do to change the real reason behing it (not the superficial ones)?
People who stop before the first stage because they are busy making excuses will never reach the 4th stage. But “If we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it”. And thus Europe has laws not only against genocide, but also against denial of past genocide, because it’s part of the attitude that prepares the ground for later violence against certain people.
The founding fathers included slave owners, incompetents, liars, and sufferers from a wide catalogue the rest of the ills that the human body and mind is heir to. Make whatever allegations you like. Worst you’ll get from me is “Cite?”.
Regarding the passing of the laws in a variety of countries, in post-WWII ex-Nazi countries the population included a wide range of people. People who had opposed Nazism however they could. People who never said or did anything but disapproved of the Nazis. Lots and lots of ex-Nazis. Lots of not-so-ex Nazis. Plenty of “I never ever was a Nazi, I swear,” ex-Nazis, including some in positions of power People who had secretly fought against the Nazis at the risk of their lives. People who had made millions off of Nazism. People who had lost everything to the Nazis. Unrepentant supporters of Nazism who secretly cherished bloody dreams. People whose families had been destroyed by the Nazis. People who supported the trains running on time but deplored the violence. Destitute displaced refugees who still blamed the Jews. People who thought that He Who Must Not Be Godwinized didn’t go far enough …
Now, with that polyglot ensemble as a backdrop, please reconsider my statement:
As I have said before, one man’s truth is another man’s great insult. That the problem with your law. I would say my statement is true. You say is it an insult. That’s life. I suppose under your “can’t insult the dead” law I could be charged for that … but I digress.
Regarding Germany, at the end of the day what there were most of, more than any other group, were people who had truly looked at and actually seen the horror of what they had done as individuals and as a nation. People who had truly repented of the things done by them or in their name. People who said “Never again.”
I admire that greatly about Germany. It stands in sharp contrast to Japan, where the wartime atrocities are still not discussed.
And I agree with German laws about Holocaust denial. As near as I can tell, they refer only to any situation where a demagogue is whipping up a crowd to public disobedience, disturbing the public order. That’s perfectly understandable to me. It’s the other European Holocaust denial laws I have a problem with. In many of those, the crime is not using words to whip up a crowd to violence. The crime is in the mere utterance of the words themselves … for me, that’s a step too far onto very dangerous ground.
"I choose, by preference the cases which are least favourable to me - In which the argument against freedom of opinion, both on truth and that of utility, is considered the strongest. Let the opinions impugned be the belief of God and in a future state, or any of the commonly received doctrines of morality… But I must be permitted to observe that it is not the feeling sure of a doctrine (be it what it may) which I call an assumption of infallibility. It is the undertaking to decide that question for others, without allowing them to hear what can be said on the contrary side. And I denounce and reprobate this pretension not the less if I put forth on the side of my most solemn convictions. However positive anyone’s persuasion may be, not only of the faculty but of the pernicious consequences, but (to adopt expressions which I altogether condemn) the immorality and impiety of opinion. - yet if, in pursuance of that private judgement, though backed by the public judgement of his country or contemporaries, he prevents the opinion from being heard in its defence, he assumes infallibility. And so far from the assumption being less objectionable or less dangerous because the opinion is called immoral or impious, this is the case of all others in which it is most fatal.”
villa, thank you kindly for the John Stuart Mill quote. The passion of the man is evident.
I particularly liked this one:
It fits perfectly with the following little morality story, which I have crafted to explain my objections to the German Law that criminalises disparaging the memory of the dead.
Suppose a guy I’ll call “Bob” comes up to me at a party and says "Your dead grandfather was an evil man. My dad said when he was a boy growing up in your grandfathers orphanage, your grandad would pinch him and hit him when no one was looking. Your grandad said if my dad told, he’d go straight from the orphanage to prison.
“That’s nonsense,” I reply. “He was a kind and generous man. I have letters from former orphans praising him. He got civic plaques. I have testimonials from pastors and businessmen commending his work.”
I try to get Bob to change his mind. I tell him of everything my “Poppa” did and what a good person he was. Bob won’t listen. He says he’s going to publish the story and distribute it. I ask him not to, to respect the honor of my good Poppa’s memory.
Bob says no. He’s going to publish.
Fortunately, I live in Germany, so I whip out my law law book and show him this:
I tell him he can’t disparage my Poppa’s memory, or I’ll take him to court.
Here the story forks.
On the one fork, Bob sees reason. He doesn’t want to get hauled into court. He’s not happy about it, but he’s a law abiding man, and he agrees not to publish his scurrilous allegations. My Poppa’s memory is not denigrated. End of that fork of the story.
In the second fork of the story, Bob won’t listen to me. He prints out his story, starts handing it around. I plead with him to stop, I appeal to him. Bob won’t stop.
So, I haul him into court. It’s a good German court, with a learned and reasonably wise judge (appointed, not elected). He listens to Bob’s story. He listens to my story. He reads the testimonials and letters from orphans and priests and businessmen and all. At the end, he rules …
What? $500 fine? One month in jail? Forty hours of community service? Nothing but a stern admonition?
Whatever, doesn’t matter, because at this point the story forks again.
In the first fork, Bob listens to the judge. He pays a fine, gets a suspended sentence, and decides it’s not worth it. He gets on with his life, and the memory of my Poppa is unsullied.
In the second fork, Bob listens to the judge. No fine, community service. He completes his required twenty hours of community service, and decides “Fuck that!”. He writes it all up, his whole story, and gets on the web. He finds most of the kids from the orphanage, grown now. He circulates it to all of the kids from the orphanage that he can find. And in the process of becoming acquainted with them, and talking it all over with them, it all comes out, every ugly part. And I have to face the fact that several of them were sexually molested by my beloved Poppa and his friends. Including some of the businessmen and priests who wrote the letters … and that’s the end of my story.
I invite the readers to draw whatever morals they like from that story.
I leave the reader with some questions:
In English and US law, you cannot libel the dead. I am free to say that Winston Churchill was a racist. (He appears to have been, as one part of an enormously complex man.) In German law, his relatives could take me to court for that statement.
Is that a reasonable role for any Government to take, curator and arbiter of personal history of dead people?
Is that a proper power for any Government to have, to punish someone for their opinion?
If I had indications and suspicions that my Grandfather might not have been a good man, but I wanted to keep the family honor unbesmirched, would I be less likely or more likely to support the German law?
History has an ugly habit of revealing that some saints were sinners and vice versa. Does the German law help or hinder this process?
Does the German law meet John Stuart Mill’s definition of the “assumption of infallibility”?
For me, my honor is very important. So I understand the Europeans having honor as a central core of their legal system. And I understand the utility of laws of libel and slander.
Where I part company with the Europeans is that when I’m dead, you can talk all the trash you want about me. I don’t care. History will judge me, and good and bad opinions of me are part of that process.
Another story, this time a true one. Through a series of misunderstandings and coincidences, I was talking to a guy on the street in Dakar, Senegal. In the old days Dakar was a major capital of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. There’s museums and the like. We got to talking about slavery and racism, and he said something to me I’ve never forgotten.
“Maybe your grandfather did something to my grandfather … but what’s that got to do with you and me?”
I found it particularly poignant given that my great-grandfather worked in his youth on his uncle’s trans-Atlantic slave ship … and given that his daughter, my grandmother, was the most honorable and egalitarian, least racist person I have ever had the honor to know …
And nothing anyone could ever say, true or false, would change my memory of her. Say what you will about her, she heard much worse in her lifetime. During the Depression, sometimes black people would come to her back door to ask for a job, or for food. She wouldn’t talk to them there, she asked them to come around and knock on the front door, so she could receive them properly.
Nothing you could say about her would be worse than what the good New England ladies said about her for that kind of heresy …
Let the dead worry about their reputation, let the dead bury the dead.
Upthread a ways, someone excoriated me for introducing Muslims into this thread.
I did so because I see no practical difference between the following two laws:
I see either as an unwarranted and improper intrusion of either religion or government into what you and I can say or write. Probably worth a thread of its own. Just wanted people to know it was not a random selection. Back to the subjects at hand.
Huh? You agree? Then why were you arguing against it the whole time?
Maybe you could finally answer my earlier question: why do you want to make statements as your earlier ones in public at all? You seem to indicate you don’t believe in them. You also indicated that you aren’t interested in the factual truth, so not a scholarly debate (and then you would have to word and phrase them differently).
To me, it sounds as if you want the right to be a jerk and act a troll … in order to act like a troll, regardless of how many neo-nazis misuse that right.
See, reasonable people over here understand that rights don’t exist alone in an idealistic state free from everything; instead, they come attached with duties.
And generally the rights a democratic state gives the people are limited when people want to use those freedoms to overthrow the state and/or take those freedoms away from others. That’s what Popper meant when he said “No tolerance for intolerance”.
And that’s also why some quotes from a guy living in a time before totalitarian dictatorships existed doesn’t convince me. One of the problems the Weimar Republic had was that its constitution was modeled on the Paulskirche, based on 1848 Revolution - but that failed and was never put into practice. So the constitution wasn’t tested, but written by idealistic people who believed that everybody else wanted democracy, since it was obviously a good idea that everybody wants it. Reality was that many people in Weimar wanted to get rid of it and return to the old (better) times, for many reasons, but because there were no safeguards, citizens couldn’t go to court for their freedoms against the Ermächtigungsgesetz (empowerment law) and Reichtstagsbrandgesetz (Burning law) taking away most of their rights.
Instead of rebutting your whole little manufactured tale, I’ll point out where you seem to misunderstand the term “disparage the dead”. If Bob produces evidence for what he says about your Poppa - then he can publish. If Bob doesn’t have evidence, or if he simply calls him names like “asshole” - then that’s disparagment.
If Winstons Churchills writings or speeches show him to make racist comments or have a clearly racist attitude, then it’s not disparagement ot call him a racist. The same goes if you call a living person a racist to his face or in the newspapers if you have proof.
Insulting somebody to his face like calling him asshole or jerk is considered an insult by a reasonable person, and there’s no objective standard of proof that could be applied to that.
Calling a dead person an asshole in a newspaper is thus disparagement. Calling somebody a liar without proof is disparagement.
And you seem to have misread me - I didn’t say honor plays a big part in European system. I said that human dignity is the big part in the German system (because it’s our first sentence), and honor is a subset.
Of course, that ties in with a generally different outlook towards the questions “What’s the duty of a state, why have a state at all?”. Over here, reasonable people believe that a state is a society, a community of people who help each other, not of individuals uncaring about everybody else. We believe that each person living in a civiliszed state gives up (as part of the social contract) the “Gewaltmonopol” monopoly of force/power to the state (in the form of the police) which protects everybody. Thus we don’t need to run around armed like in the Wild West where Sheriffs couldn’t stop the bad guys, we have police. (The idea that a court declares that it’s not the job of the police to protect the citizens like an US court ruled when a citizen sued the police for not preventing a crime is completly flabbergasting to us. Why have a police at all then?)
And one of the main duties of the state, with laws and police and courts, for human dignity, is to protect the weak ones, the ones who can’t defend themselves. If, as many Americans seem to believe, the state should govern as little as possible, since the free market can do better, so almost every service is outsourced to private companies; and that for example if you’re insulted, you either defend yourself or swallow it, but you can’t use the court to help you - then we consider it the rule of the strong, close to anarchy, not a system of justice, and I wonder why you still have a state at all. Why not turn your country completly into a company? Even the army is outsourced to private enterprises, police is replaced by private security companies and self-armament, and courts are staffed by partys influenced by large donations.