> Not just Americans, the rest of Europe also thinks that Germany's "freedom" of speech laws are a bunch of horse manure and are laughing at Germany.
Do you have anything to back that up? This doesn't represent my experience, so we basically end up in a situation of anecdotes vs anecdotes, in which case we can't really argue this point further, I'd say.
> All other western democratic countries already have that, minus Germany's Stasi speech censorship, it's called libel/slander/defamation laws, except unlike Germany you actually have to prove in court that untrue comments caused you some form of harm (monetary or otherwise) and not just hurt feelings to your "dignity" whatever that is.
Right, but how does that protect your freedom of expression? If you have to prove you have experienced harm, that makes it very hard to argue that people shouldn't send you death threats. There is no real harm that happened because of that, but it regularly stops people from doing their political work. Heck, people get letters sometimes from AfD associated organisations, that their sexual orientation isn't welcome in Germany and that they will soon "fix" that: https://www.mimikama.org/afd-drohbrief-an-kirche-gefahr-oder...
Insults, threats and verbal attacks are not essential to having a discussion, as such it is very much possible to just word things differently and make the same arguments without forcing other people out of the discourse by making them feel endangered. It's not censorship if you just restrict how people word things. It might fall under censorship to disallow threats, slander and insults, but frankly do you really consider those essential to free speech? Freedom in a society always has limits. Your freedom ends when it restricts the freedom of others. And why would that be different just because you send someone a threat via a letter or post it online instead of punching them in the face? Both of them result in someone being scared of expressing their opinion.
> What's the exact definition of "dignity" here? It just feels like a synonym for "hurt feelings" from the context on this thread. I don't agree that free speech and facts should be blocked just because someone(usually a rich/powerful criminal) claims their feelings are hurt. Like that German politician who had comments regarding his documented Nazi/Stasi past blocked because it "hurt his dignity" even though that was the truth. This is just a legal loophole for criminals to hide their crimes from the public and doesn't really protect anyone innocent. Basically state legalized censorship.
"dignity" here is hard to define exactly, as is the case with most constitutions. But no, it is not hurt feelings. You can hurt someone's feelings in a lot of ways without it being malicious. As such there is often discussion around what this part of the German constitution actually means, but in general the consensus is that it means the state has to make sure its citizens can live a humane life. This means people shouldn't be the target of excessive cruelty (i.e. torture) and should in general be able to live their life as freely as possible without encroaching on other people's freedom.
You are understanding it as "hurt feeling" because of the framing in the video at the root of this thread. That's because the video overly focuses on certain aspects of how Germany "polices" the internet. It barely touches on how many politicians, political activists and minorities are often the target of threats, because people assume the internet is a lawless place and the anonymity and physical distance encourages them to act even more violent than they would likely dare to act in person. That's not hurt feelings anymore, people's free speech is actively getting repressed by a constant flow of threats online.
Yes, there are examples of the laws getting misused in that area. But there are plenty more examples of where that isn't the case, that you just don't hear about. Also very rarely it is the case that politicians can hide their past because it "would hurt their dignity". In most cases it is argued that the interest of the public outweighs the individuals rights in those cases. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are not the rule.
Take the US for example where they are removing large volumes of books from libraries. That is censorship. Germany does that also to a lesser extent with its "index", but those are few books and other media and they have to go through a proper process to do so and often you can still get access to annotated versions of that media. Your understanding of censorship seems to be, that it should be absolutely legal to call for violence against immigrants. No, it shouldn't be. Either actions against immigration go through the parliament, possibly by having democratic protests about that before it as well as discussions, or they simply don't happen. You don't incite violence against others to get your political will, that isn't free speech, you are sidestepping the democratic processes, that we protect the free speech for. And you are possibly making people fear for their lives, in what world should that be acceptable?
> I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. Based on the prosecutors in that video showcased and what you just explained, it has the exact opposite effect: Germans have let themselves ruled by fascist speech police who controls what they can and cannot say in public, but have gaslit themselves into thinking that it's somehow justified because "m'uh dignity", which is just criminals exploiting the law to escape public scrutiny for their crimes and for the state to censor speech.
You ALWAYS have to think about what is okay to say in public. You wouldn't want to blurt out all your passwords either and thinking before you say something does little harm. It is not that hard to not be racist and to not use insults and intent also matters when such cases are judged. And such "speech police" does not exist. There are still courts involved and you can't just bring up any Facebook post and have someone end up in prison over it. Most of the time nothing happens anyway, because the police argues it is too hard to figure out who was behind a specific post.
You are arguing criminals are exploiting this law, please back that up with some statistics, that you aren't just picking a few examples and extrapolating from that. You are arguing entirely on an emotional level removed from facts, some of them have even been listed in the video. If there are thousands of cases and several of them have been presented in the video (where they are showing racist and similar posts), then clearly it can't just be criminals exploiting the law. Or do you take offence with those examples as well? Do you think it should be legal to be racist on the internet?
And I already said those laws aren't flawless. There are plenty of cases where they were used in ways, that I don't agree with, for example how people got fined for reposting an anti-fascist meme, because it included a swastika and they weren't the original author. But that doesn't mean those laws don't do more good for society than bad. I think the German laws around this are better than absolutist free speech laws, that don't keep people accountable for what they say. And as I said, I am open to discussing that, but I also said to stop picking only one or two examples to support your narrative without understanding the context around it.
Nothing you said falls under those laws and would get you a visit by the police. Also to my knowledge the Bundespolizei isn't even responsible for that, it's up to each state's police. You haven't attacked me personally and you didn't incite violence or anything. I might think some of your specific expressions are rude and that you are fluffing up your language to push an emotional narrative instead of arguing based on facts, numbers and examples, but that's nothing that represses or attacks me.
And while you say you have "actual free speech", I simply disagree with that. You have one interpretation of free speech, but I don't think it is easier to voice your opinion in the US. Platforms tend to just censor you for including a link to signal or you get deprioritised by the algorithm for talking about climate change. You ban books for corrupting the youth instead of just putting an age limit on them (and tbh, the rules how you select those books are pretty dubious imo). Heck, you are even removing artworks that could relate to certain topics. The US is silencing certain views and imo that is a lot more censorship than where in Germany you are mostly limited in how you express your views. So imo it is the US that is deluded about how free their speech actually is. Maybe instead we can focus more on the topic and facts then and appeal less to emotion in the discussion?
I'm not reading all that, can you please post this in a meme format and then we can judge it based on whether or not you get swatted by the police. JK. Your comment is just mental gymnastics to justify how existing German laws are somehow not a threat to free speech even though the end results and actions of the state and abuses prove that they are.
Let me quote German law on the matter:
"Freedom of speech is granted by Art. 5 Section 1 GG. It mainly protects opinions but also facts relevant to forming opinions, unless those facts are proven false or intentionally false. Freedom of Speech can be infringed acording to Art. 5 Section 2 GG for protection of ones honor, visible in Section 185 and Section 188 german penal code, that punishes insulting. When free speech and protection of ones honor collide, the court has to weigh, which in a specific case is more important."
TL;DR: no matter how much copium you sniff, you actually don't have freedom of speech in Germany.
So in Germany your speech is not protected from the government anymore and is entirely subject to opinion of judges and the public. To some extent Germans do not even have freedom of expression because the guilt culture makes people default to calling illegal migration critics Nazis so nobody speaks publicly about this.
I'm your east side neighbour, not an American. Our speech here has much better protection, you'll only get in trouble if you make threats or call for violence (as it should be), not for calling politicians "a willie" or "an old woman", because we remember our oppressive communist past and worked to not repeat that level of government censorship, while Germans tried so hard to "not be Nazis" that they put their heads so far up their own ass that they turned back into the same Nazis they say they're fighting. Crazy shit really.
Again, I would suggest you stop picking particular examples without context. The case where a politician was called "willie"/"Pimmel" was a senator overreaching and as a result the police dropped the case: https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/hausdurchsuchung-pimmelg...
Of course it was still a scandal, but it is not like anyone had to pay a fine over it or went to prison.
Yes, there are limits to free speech in Germany, when it encroaches on other people's freedom of speech. But that doesn't mean there is no free speech and the examples you pick are mostly cases where someone tried to use those rules against free speech and failed. So they actually show the opposite, you can't just sue someone for their opinion. Only if their opinion encroaches on other people's freedom. I don't think I am the one doing mental gymnastics here. Yes, insults generally don't fall under free speech in Germany and neither does inciting violence, but I simply don't see that as a problem, since you can express opinions also without including direct insults. So from my perspective I can only see you arguing, that insulting other people should be protected by free speech, which we can disagree on, but is a very small aspect of free speech from my perspective and imo even one that harms free speech in the long run.
Do you have anything to back that up? This doesn't represent my experience, so we basically end up in a situation of anecdotes vs anecdotes, in which case we can't really argue this point further, I'd say.
> All other western democratic countries already have that, minus Germany's Stasi speech censorship, it's called libel/slander/defamation laws, except unlike Germany you actually have to prove in court that untrue comments caused you some form of harm (monetary or otherwise) and not just hurt feelings to your "dignity" whatever that is.
Right, but how does that protect your freedom of expression? If you have to prove you have experienced harm, that makes it very hard to argue that people shouldn't send you death threats. There is no real harm that happened because of that, but it regularly stops people from doing their political work. Heck, people get letters sometimes from AfD associated organisations, that their sexual orientation isn't welcome in Germany and that they will soon "fix" that: https://www.mimikama.org/afd-drohbrief-an-kirche-gefahr-oder...
Insults, threats and verbal attacks are not essential to having a discussion, as such it is very much possible to just word things differently and make the same arguments without forcing other people out of the discourse by making them feel endangered. It's not censorship if you just restrict how people word things. It might fall under censorship to disallow threats, slander and insults, but frankly do you really consider those essential to free speech? Freedom in a society always has limits. Your freedom ends when it restricts the freedom of others. And why would that be different just because you send someone a threat via a letter or post it online instead of punching them in the face? Both of them result in someone being scared of expressing their opinion.
> What's the exact definition of "dignity" here? It just feels like a synonym for "hurt feelings" from the context on this thread. I don't agree that free speech and facts should be blocked just because someone(usually a rich/powerful criminal) claims their feelings are hurt. Like that German politician who had comments regarding his documented Nazi/Stasi past blocked because it "hurt his dignity" even though that was the truth. This is just a legal loophole for criminals to hide their crimes from the public and doesn't really protect anyone innocent. Basically state legalized censorship.
"dignity" here is hard to define exactly, as is the case with most constitutions. But no, it is not hurt feelings. You can hurt someone's feelings in a lot of ways without it being malicious. As such there is often discussion around what this part of the German constitution actually means, but in general the consensus is that it means the state has to make sure its citizens can live a humane life. This means people shouldn't be the target of excessive cruelty (i.e. torture) and should in general be able to live their life as freely as possible without encroaching on other people's freedom.
You are understanding it as "hurt feeling" because of the framing in the video at the root of this thread. That's because the video overly focuses on certain aspects of how Germany "polices" the internet. It barely touches on how many politicians, political activists and minorities are often the target of threats, because people assume the internet is a lawless place and the anonymity and physical distance encourages them to act even more violent than they would likely dare to act in person. That's not hurt feelings anymore, people's free speech is actively getting repressed by a constant flow of threats online.
Yes, there are examples of the laws getting misused in that area. But there are plenty more examples of where that isn't the case, that you just don't hear about. Also very rarely it is the case that politicians can hide their past because it "would hurt their dignity". In most cases it is argued that the interest of the public outweighs the individuals rights in those cases. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are not the rule.
Take the US for example where they are removing large volumes of books from libraries. That is censorship. Germany does that also to a lesser extent with its "index", but those are few books and other media and they have to go through a proper process to do so and often you can still get access to annotated versions of that media. Your understanding of censorship seems to be, that it should be absolutely legal to call for violence against immigrants. No, it shouldn't be. Either actions against immigration go through the parliament, possibly by having democratic protests about that before it as well as discussions, or they simply don't happen. You don't incite violence against others to get your political will, that isn't free speech, you are sidestepping the democratic processes, that we protect the free speech for. And you are possibly making people fear for their lives, in what world should that be acceptable?
> I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. Based on the prosecutors in that video showcased and what you just explained, it has the exact opposite effect: Germans have let themselves ruled by fascist speech police who controls what they can and cannot say in public, but have gaslit themselves into thinking that it's somehow justified because "m'uh dignity", which is just criminals exploiting the law to escape public scrutiny for their crimes and for the state to censor speech.
You ALWAYS have to think about what is okay to say in public. You wouldn't want to blurt out all your passwords either and thinking before you say something does little harm. It is not that hard to not be racist and to not use insults and intent also matters when such cases are judged. And such "speech police" does not exist. There are still courts involved and you can't just bring up any Facebook post and have someone end up in prison over it. Most of the time nothing happens anyway, because the police argues it is too hard to figure out who was behind a specific post.
You are arguing criminals are exploiting this law, please back that up with some statistics, that you aren't just picking a few examples and extrapolating from that. You are arguing entirely on an emotional level removed from facts, some of them have even been listed in the video. If there are thousands of cases and several of them have been presented in the video (where they are showing racist and similar posts), then clearly it can't just be criminals exploiting the law. Or do you take offence with those examples as well? Do you think it should be legal to be racist on the internet?
And I already said those laws aren't flawless. There are plenty of cases where they were used in ways, that I don't agree with, for example how people got fined for reposting an anti-fascist meme, because it included a swastika and they weren't the original author. But that doesn't mean those laws don't do more good for society than bad. I think the German laws around this are better than absolutist free speech laws, that don't keep people accountable for what they say. And as I said, I am open to discussing that, but I also said to stop picking only one or two examples to support your narrative without understanding the context around it.
Nothing you said falls under those laws and would get you a visit by the police. Also to my knowledge the Bundespolizei isn't even responsible for that, it's up to each state's police. You haven't attacked me personally and you didn't incite violence or anything. I might think some of your specific expressions are rude and that you are fluffing up your language to push an emotional narrative instead of arguing based on facts, numbers and examples, but that's nothing that represses or attacks me.
And while you say you have "actual free speech", I simply disagree with that. You have one interpretation of free speech, but I don't think it is easier to voice your opinion in the US. Platforms tend to just censor you for including a link to signal or you get deprioritised by the algorithm for talking about climate change. You ban books for corrupting the youth instead of just putting an age limit on them (and tbh, the rules how you select those books are pretty dubious imo). Heck, you are even removing artworks that could relate to certain topics. The US is silencing certain views and imo that is a lot more censorship than where in Germany you are mostly limited in how you express your views. So imo it is the US that is deluded about how free their speech actually is. Maybe instead we can focus more on the topic and facts then and appeal less to emotion in the discussion?