Below is my column in The Hill on the speech by French President Emmanuel Macron and his calling for the United States to join France in a crackdown on “fake news.” Our members were either clueless or complicit in this thinly veiled call for speech regulation on the Internet. However, there is growing pressure from Europe for the United States to abandon its long commitment to free speech — a call that is being heard by a rising number of academics and politicians. I love the oak (which has disappeared) but the advice in far more invasive for this country.
French President Emmanuel Macron has won the hearts of many Americans, from his planting a tree at the White House to his passionate speech before a joint session of Congress yesterday. For civil libertarians, however, one moment will remain chilling and lasting. It is when Macron called for a joint war against “fake news” and declared, “Democracy is about true choices and rational decisions. The corruption of information is an attempt to corrode the very spirit of our democracies.”
While both Democratic and Republican members were on their feet in rapturous applause, Macron used code familiar to free speech advocates, and it is the antithesis of democratic values. Indeed, it is a mantra that has been used to roll back free speech in Europe, where leaders are about to do the same to the press in new internet regulations. While long rejected in this country, leading American politicians and academics appear eager to adopt this coded pitch of censorship.
Over the course of the last 50 years, the French, English and Germans have waged an open war on free speech by criminalizing speech deemed insulting, harassing or intimidating. In France, a politician was convicted for complaining about the rising number of immigrants children flooding the public education system, while a comedian was charged for making jokes insulting to Jews. In England, a boy was held by police for holding up a sign reading “Scientology is a cult,” while the government there is moving to make “wolf whistles” a hate speech crime this year.
In Germany, a minister was banned from social media for calling an author an “idiot,” while a comedian was charged for making fun of Turkish authoritarian leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Others have been charged for criticizing homosexuality as well as particular religions and religious practices. After decimating free speech in their countries, these countries are leading an effort to regulate the Internet and punish “fake news.” What is particularly maddening is that they are asking citizens to give up more free speech and free press rights in the name of democracy, just as Macron did this week before our gleeful, starstruck members of Congress.
Recently, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, appeared in Austin, Texas, to encourage Americans to join the European effort to force tech companies to censor hate speech and be subject to government regulations or fines for violations. Once beyond the sound bites, however, the real impact of these laws becomes apparent. Consider the new European Union strategy for fighting “fake news” last week. The East Stratcom Task Force compiled a hall of shame of 3,800 news articles that it highlighted as the type of “fake news” that must be targeted.
On the list was a Post Online article that called Ukraine “an oligarch state with no independent media” and raised the country’s horrific record in World War II against Polish Jews. Brussels and many European countries have maintained a strong pro-Ukraine stance. The article was listed as “fake” even though it was based on a lecture delivered by a journalist who had spent time in Ukraine and is a view shared by many. Russia, China, Iran, Turkey and other authoritarian nations have embraced “fake news” as the justification for their own crackdowns on dissidents.
The United States has long been a bulwark against this anti-free speech trend but that could be coming to an end. Leading American voices are now advocating a crackdown on hateful or fake speech in the name of tolerance. A group of college deans has called for the rejection of a broad array of speech as hate speech, including words that “spread” or “provoke” or “create” “animosity” and “hostility.” They simply declared, “Hate speech does not equal free speech,” and left the definition of what constitutes hate speech for later. We have seen how that discretionary power is used on our college campuses where a wide array of free speech is now regularly punished as either hateful or a form of “microaggression.”
Free speech itself is now often denounced as not a liberty to protect but an oppression to be resisted. At the College of William and Mary, classic liberalism, which favors free speech, was denounced recently as “white supremacy” in stopping an American Civil Liberties Union speaker from defending free speech. Democratic National Committee deputy chairman, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), recently posted a picture holding the “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” which espouses the “anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase … that says I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Others rationalize such tactics in the name of free speech itself. The dean of City University of New York School of Law, Mary Lu Bilek, recently declared that students who prevented a conservative professor from speaking on campus were acting in the fulfillment of free speech values. Bilek essentially insisted that disrupting the speech on free speech was free speech. It reveals the twisted logic overtaking our schools.
This is not just a liberal problem exclusively. Former FBI director James Comey was recently stopped from speaking by a conservative activist. Many conservatives are also seeking the termination of California State University professor Randa Jarrar after she appeared to celebrate the death of former first lady Barbara Bush in offensive comments on social media. This is why the ecstatic reception given Macron is so worrisome. There is a growing audience in the United States for declaring certain speech as unworthy of protection or a threat in itself. In the meantime, there are bipartisan efforts in Congress to limit Internet speech and impose European-style liability on Internet providers and sites.
Before we protect free speech by killing it, however, Americans should look at what Macron and his colleagues have done in across the Atlantic in achieving “true choices and rational decisions.” Macron helped plant a lovely European oak on the White House grounds and we should keep it. However, Marcon’s effort to plant the seed of European speech regulation should be rejected as an unwelcomed and invasive species.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
Somebody better warn ‘The National Enquirer’ and anyone else who’s been running ‘Aliens meet with President ——-‘ for decades. More to the point, I can’t help but wonder what it is about people like Macron, people who continue to define “true choices and rational decisions” as agreeing with them. It’s the heart of this endless BS about ‘fake news.’ Junk like ‘Pizzagate’ and Facebook pages don’t represent a threat to truth and rationality, regulations of the sort backed by Macron and his collaborators here do. They use vaguely defined terms like ‘hate speech’ and ‘extremist’ to encourage self-censorship. Congress applauded Macron’s plea? Every celebrant in the room is of the same mind as Keith Ellison.
Using my dwindling right to free speech – I comdemn the attack on Iran and Syria. Iran did not sponser 9/11. Saudi Arabia, the country who we are helping kill Yemen’s children, who beheads people for homosexuality and drug crimes, who tortures–that nation’s government players are who attacked us on 9/11. Israel, the likely bomber, stands accused of war crimes. The have snipers shooting unarmed proetesters and laughing about it.
The US arms ISIS, and many other terror organizations around the world. We are the world’s arms dealer, the lords of death and destruction. The USGINC. is considered the bigest threat to world peace.
These three countries overlords seek war. We the people do not all want their wars. They keep the profits and everyone else’s children keep the dead bodies and ruined lives.
Donald Trump. Most people who voted for you believed your lie that you would quit regime change. That you would focus on making America Great Again. You are a weak man, a man who doesn’t have even the memory of kindness or honor. Where you an honorable man you would stop this madness now.
Instead you have relished the money and power of neocons. Shame on you, shame on neocons, shame on war mongers. Our wolrd needs peace. It needs justice. It doesn’t need your, MBS, and Bibi’s hideous violence. Peace and Justice Now. Stop the madness.
Jill fancies that there is war in the world because you can buy weapons manufactured in the United States.
Another recent outrage:
“Hate Crime Policing In The Idiocracy – Part 2”
http://participator.online/articles/2018/04/hate_crime_policing_in_the_idiocracy_part_2_20180427.php
Looking at a particular case where a young woman was prosecuted for using a word we cant mention
“Freedom of Speech?”
What about the rest of the Constitution? Central planning, redistribution of wealth and social engineering are all patently and irrefutably antithetical and unconstitutional.
– Free enterprise is free of Congress per the “commerce clause.”
– Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1 limits the power of Congress to tax merely for “general Welfare,” omitting and, thereby, excluding any power of Congress to tax for any and all forms of individual welfare.
– The right to private property precludes “Affirmative Action Privilege,” unfair “Fair Housing” laws and discriminatory “Non-Discrimination” laws.
Socialist liberals have illegally nationalized the private, free market charity industry and imposed the principles of the Communist Manifesto on America.
People must adapt to the outcomes of freedom. Freedom does not adapt to people…dictatorship does.
The Constitution IS freedom.
Someone put George back in his cell until he has studied the Federalist papers.
Oh, I see. Fundamental Law as the Constitution is false. The Federalist Papers hold dominion and constitute U.S. fundamental law and, incidentally, allow the salient principles of the Communist Manifesto to be implemented in the United States? If the Constitution established Marxism, why did Marx write his Communist Manifesto when there was absolutely no need to do so?
Wait. Are you an omnipotent “judge” with the immutable universal power of “interpretation,” the ability to “legislate from the bench” and the power to nullify the legislative and executive branches?
You’re a genius!
George – I don’t think David Benson has actually read and studied all the Federalist Papers. If he had he would remember that some conflict with others. The authors are not always on the same page. Basically, the Papers were the Selling of the Constitution. The wrote what they need to get it passed in each state.
Politicians are ultimately the greatest threat to liberty.
No, Judges and prosecutors are.
Who creates the laws the judges and prosecutors enforce?
Alexander Hamilton –
“[A] limited Constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing … To deny this would be to affirm … that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”
Depends. Is a person abused due to an egregious piece of case law, due to discretionary acts of the judge and / or the prosecutor, or due to the statute itself? George Zimmerman wasn’t put through 18 months of hell by the Florida legislature.
The pithiest quote from the Cambridge Analytica “sting” video is: “It doesn’t matter if it’s true; it only matters that it’s believed.”
And “belief” translates into manipulable votes. The American Founders established a restricted-vote republic maintaining the value and clout of the vote. The “poor” were never intended to vote and it is absolutely insane to allow public workers to vote. Would there be any guesswork as to the result of allowing freed slaves to vote? The Founders rightly knew they would all “sell” their votes. They have.
“Democracy is about true choices and rational decisions. The corruption of information is an attempt to corrode the very spirit of our democracies.”
He means like he and Trump just did with Syria’s chemical weapons. That story is falling a part, but hey, lies told by the State that result in bombs is just good business. Ask Wolf Blitzer!
The attempt to have the State control the news, to keep citizens stupid is exactly what estabished powers would like very much. It lets them rob the treasury of the people and it makes citizens bloodthirsty for more wars. No thank you.
If they really meant Fake News they’d be censoring the MSM everyday. But some lies are more equal than others. When did citizens need protection from hearing ideas? When reality started to come out about how corrupt the established powers really are. It’s why Assange is in isolation and it’s why we just aren’t allowed to think for ourselves. We might start thinking that alliances with Israel who is using snipers to kill unarmed Palsetinians is wrong. We might think Saudi Arabia is beheading people faster than ISIS, killing and starving Yemenis and it’s all with the help of the US and the UK. Nope, we need to bomb Iran! That’s what Pompeo will be saying soon enough.
War criminals against free speech. That’s what Macrone is really advocating.
“…entitled to vote…”
The American Founders established a republic not a “democracy.”
b (1) : a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing
Voters in 1789 were male, European, 21 with 50lbs Sterling or 50 acres.
________________________________________________________
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the canidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy–to be followed by a dictatorship.”
― Alexander Fraser Tytler
_____________________
What is wrong with America, you ask?
Invaders, the “poor” and public workers are allowed to vote.
@Jill April 29, 2018 at 1:51 PM
“ ‘Democracy [according to Macron] is about true choices and rational decisions. The corruption of information is an attempt to corrode the very spirit of our democracies.’ [Yes, and it’s up to rulers to get their subjects’ minds right.]
“He means like he and Trump just did with Syria’s [alleged] chemical weapons. That story is falling apart, but hey, lies told by the State that result in bombs is just good business. Ask Wolf Blitzer!”
Even if there had been credible evidence of a chemical weapons attack in Douma, that wouldn’t have begun to justify a bombing attack on Syria. The aggressive attack on a sovereign state was criminal, and if there had been chemical weapons in the bombing targets, the casualties would have dwarfed those alleged in Douma.
“After all, if the US, France, and the UK really did bomb a building filled with chemical weapons, there would’ve been thousands—-possibly tens of thousands— of bodies to show for it.” [Emphasis in original]
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-25/opcw-investigators-found-no-evidence-chemical-weapons-syrian-facilities-bombed-us
It’s comforting to know that the same sound military logic prevails to which the Vietnamese were treated during the US-led war on their country: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Reblogged this on The Inquiring Mind and commented:
Well worth reading
Comey wasn’t stopped from speaking. Why do you lie this way?
What you’re not acknowledging is that 100% of the impetus for this comes from occupational sectors whose electoral vehicle is the Democratic Party. That’s the educational apparat, the faculties, the bar. If you did acknowledge that, it might get uncomfortable in the faculty rathskellar. You might also have to ask what their thinking says about their self-concept and what the implications of that are for democratic politics. You’re dedicated to not going there.
@Insufferable April 29, 2018 at 11:46 AM
“Comey wasn’t stopped from speaking. Why do you lie this way?”
I suggest that you’re saying more about yourself here than about the objects of your scorn.
To accuse JT of lying, rather than of expressing himself carelessly (or perhaps even ignorantly) is an accusative judgement of his motive on your part, a notoriously fertile ground for psychological projection.
In point of fact, Comey was stopped from speaking, albeit for only a short time, until the disruptor of his talk was appropriately escorted from the premises.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/383891-far-right-activist-interrupts-comey-book-event
As a long-time reader of JT’s blog, it’s become apparent to me that although an unquestionably principled advocate of free speech and other civil liberties, as well as a knowledgeable expositor of many legal issues, he is embarrassingly careless in his writing about virtually any topic, including freedom of speech. Like fellow civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald, JT is a much better speaker than writer, but to impugn without dispositive evidence the motives of either, if and when they err is simply to risk exposing one’s own motivation.
Needless to say, the same psychological dynamic applies with respect to your generalizing judgement of the “occupational sectors” and their “electoral vehicle,” whose many different members undoubtedly have, individually and collectively, a multiplicity of motives and tactics of varying ethicality in their approaches to freedom of expression and other social issues that they address.
I know where I got rent-free space.
Senate Democrats thoroughly disgraced themselves when they unanimously voted to repeal and replace the First Amendment on 9/11/14. The vote was taken because they had whipped their base into a frenzy about Citizens United. Citizens United was the boogie man they created to justify giving power to 536 people in a far away capital to restrict the political speech of the other 320 million of us. Yes, it was a theatrical “show vote”. They knew when they cast the disgraceful votes the First Amendment would not be repealed. But it clearly signals their priorities that they intend to restrict speech in coming years if Americans are dumb enough to give them enough political power to do so.
If anybody wants to know what how truly inconsequential Citizens United has been, read the written remarks free speech hero Floyd Abrams gave to the Judiciary Committee when he was called to testify in hearings leading up to the Democrats disgraceful vote. The whole thing is a good read, but here’s the penultimate paragraph describing the dollar impact Citizens United has had:
“Further, Citizens United has not caused any massive rush of spending, corporate or otherwise.
While it is true that a few corporations have made large contributions to Super PACs
from entities taking the corporate form, figures from the FEC, Center for Responsive Politics,
and Campaign Finance Institute reflect that such contributions are extremely rare. In general, the
corporations that have contributed to Super PACs are far more “Main Street” than “Wall Street”
in nature. In fact, not a single Fortune 100 Company appears to have contributed even a cent to
any of the ten highest-grossing Super PACs in either the 2010, 2012, or 2014 election cycles. To
date, the only significant Super PAC contribution from a Fortune 100 company appears to have been a $2.5 million dollar contribution from Chevron to the Congressional Leadership Fund (ranked 13th in total receipts) in 2012. Two other Fortune 100 company contributions Super PACs – Express Scripts, Inc. and Walgreen Company each made a $5,000 contribution to JANPAC, a Super PAC supporting Arizona Governor Jan Brewer. This insignificant level of corporate giving bears no resemblance to the tidal wave of corporate money from enormous corporate entities predicted by the government in its Citizens United brief. And based on figures from the FEC and the Center for Responsive Politics, as well as the Campaign Finance Institute, while the rate of overall spending has increased since the Citizens United ruling, the rate of increase has been consistent with that of past years. As Jan Baran has pointed out, the total amount of spending in presidential years after Citizens United “rose, although at a rate no higher than in previous elections. In fact, the highest rate of change occurred between 2000 and 2004 (51%)
while the rate of increase from 2008 to 2012 was 20%.”
http://www.medialaw.org/images/medialawdaily/abramstestimony.pdf
So, over three election cycles one company, Chevron, donated $2.5 million to a SuperPAC that wasn’t even ranked in the top ten of SuperPACs in terms of the amount of money it raised. And a couple of companies made $5000 donations to Jan Brewer’s PAC. At least through 2014, that’s it. For perspective, it’s common for each of the two major political parties to raise and spend $1 billion each on their presidential campaigns. The National Retail Federation estimated Americans spent $9 billion on Halloween candy in 2017. But Democrats want to wreck the First Amendment because one company donated $2.5 million to a minor PAC? I don’t believe it. I think Citizens United is the Trojan Horse.
The convenient excuse so 536 people can repeal the First Amendment and claim for themselves the power to restrict political speech of 320 million people, then with help from an activist judiciary begin the process of censoring other types of speech the status quo/ruling class don’t like.
===================
Until Democrats get the power to repeal the First Amendment, the far bigger threat is from the corporatocracy. The First Amendment, while it lasts, protects us from government censorship. But it can not protect us against progressive Silicon Valley oligrachs who decide what speech they will allow on their monopoly platforms and how to present it.
Google employees made more trips to the Obama White House than anybody else not affiliated with the administration. It’s reasonable to infer that the White House and Google plotted ways to curtail certain types of speech on the internet, to promote other types of speech, and how to manipulate users. Read the chilling pieces The Washington Post has written showcasing the research of Dr. Robert Epstein, who has been researching how we’re being manipulated by the progressive tech oligarchs. Or watch a video of one of his recent speeches about his research. Here’s a short one of an interview he gave to Tucker Carlson.
$84 million laundered by the DNC into Clinton’s Victory Fund. Shhh, don’t tell anyone. They might spend $100 million and reelect Trump. 🙂
“unanimously voted to repeal and replace the First Amendment on 9/11/14.”
Hyperbolate much?
I got a good chuckle out of that and promptly ignored the rest of your overlong comment.
Free speech is not free. As a nation we have seen this before, the thing that is different today is when a indefensible pathological liar con-man tells a nation that it is fake news of things he personally does not like and one third of the nation agrees. Trump and his sycophant willfully blind supporters will have a wake-up call and they still won’t believe that they were lied too.
As a nation we have seen this before, the thing that is different today is when a indefensible pathological liar con-man tells a nation that it is fake news of things he personally does not like and one third of the nation agrees.
There is nothing different. This has happened before and will happen again. I will even agree (without any data to support) 1/3 will blindly agree with Trump, 1/3 will blindly oppose him, and 1/3 will know the difference. I happen to believe the numbers are closer to 25/25/50 respectively.
I think your numbers are spot on. but the people that know the difference has grown. The pain that Trump will leave behind will split Americans apart. Just as it was a “Intelligence Failure” with Dubya. Some will not ever believe the truth.
You’re a fine Dunning Kruger exemplar.
Good post by JT. Free speech is like putting the best home security system on your property. It’s our best detector of threats against our life, liberty and property. Restricting speech would be taking away that security system and leave us exposed to unknown threats until it’s too late to act.
Ever since the invention of Gutenberg’s printing press, the powers who have had the money to own one have always had their way with the masses. Bad ideas by bad politicians became good ideas, good for everyone because, well, anyone who dissented wasn’t heard unless he had his own printing press. In other words, dissent didn’t matter to the moneyed because dissenters without a printing press had no voice. The population at large didn’t know there was any dissent, much less any dissenters at all.
Thirty years ago when the seeds of the internet were planted, the moneyed embraced the WWW for its incredible potential to deliver free advertising, to eliminate costly printing and postage, and to expand local markets to global markets.
What the moneyed did not see was the potential for the internet to put a free Gutenberg Press in the pocket of anyone who could own a smartphone. A politician’s bad idea now remained a bad idea because a lone dissenter’s voice went viral from a basement somewhere in Middle America. A single voice could bring a GM to its knees for a faulty ignition switch, which had gone unnoticed by the public because the mainstream media, rigged by the moneyed, hadn’t done its job.
So, yeah, the moneyed today view all dissenters as Luddites derailing bad ideas, such as open borders, from becoming good ideas. For the moneyed and their legions of short-sighted minions, there are simply far too many Luddites to deal with anymore. They all are eager now to scrap the First Amendment to silence dissent.
Censorship can’t stop dissent anymore than gun laws have stopped massacres and school shootings. If law enforcement can’t stop online fraud and identity theft, it can’t stop anonymous dissent either. The moneyed and their short-sighted minions have no way of winning, short of scrapping the entire internet, which would be tantamount to scrapping themselves.
Good post vinegart.
@vinegart April 29, 2018 at 9:39 AM
“A single voice could bring a GM to its knees for a faulty ignition switch, which had gone unnoticed by the public because the mainstream media, rigged by the moneyed, hadn’t done its job.”
I second Olly’s kudos re your comment, but I have a small quibble with the sentence above. The mainstream media had essentially “done its job,” which, among other services to the Corporatocracy, is to suppress information of public interest in order to protect from embarrassing publicity and financial loss one of its major members, General Motors.
“To ensure support for its operations and views, the CIA [one of the clandestine agencies of the Corporatocracy] clandestinely recruited [in Operation Mockingbird] American journalists and media outlets, funded the creation of student and cultural organizations, launched purely propaganda-based print media, and, ultimately, worked its way into political campaigns and employed similar methods abroad.
Mainstream outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, and many others, actively and willingly disseminated propaganda disguised as news — through suppression, censorship, and selective focus, etc. — in the interest of the government. [Emphasis added]
“Mockingbird covertly influenced national opinion for years, nefariously planting the CIA’s narrative on the unwitting collective public mind before finally being at least partially exposed over a decade later. It wasn’t until a congressional investigation in 1975 that the putative full extent of the program was revealed. Although the CIA claimed it would no longer recruit journalists and media organizations into its fold, Mockingbird has oft been rumored never to have stopped.
“Besides the revelations in this article concerning the FBI, documents revealed the government actively tried to influence public thought about Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, in 2011.
“It would seem that Mockingbird endures to this day — and whatever premise the government claims as reason to become the American media — the public remains, for the large part, its oblivious, captive audience.”
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/fbi-impersonate-media-mockingbird/
Thanks, Olly! And, Ken, you make a good point, which prompted me to think of Ralph Nader, who probably predated covert infiltration of the press, explaining why there haven’t been many of his likes, at least until recent time and the explosive growth of the internet. I heard Ralph on the radio recently, and he is most certainly alive and well, every bit as much against corporate greed and exploitation of consumers as much as he was back when he went after the Corvair, I think, whatever that was.
Nous ne sommes pas amusés.
The freedom of speech is like most freedoms, contingent on the circumstances. To espouse Nazi concepts in the US can be seen as an example of extreme and niche activities, that the vast majority see as an example of that very small percentage of the population that is missing some bricks. Not the same scenario in Germany. Imagine a Charlottesville in Dusseldorf. The US is developing its freedoms, just as are most other countries. For too long a time it was punishable to speak favorably of Communists and their concepts. America was closer to a ‘threat’ then. Europe is far more impacted by immigration and its negative aspects than the US. Free speech that incites violence in a situation where the kindling temperature is high comes under the determination of the government as to whether or not the price is worth it. Just as a society will drift to one extreme and allow ‘free speech’ that results in the loss of life, property, or other freedoms, that society will drift to the other extreme and curtail dangerous ‘free speech’ and unfortunately include some that is much less dangerous. Ultimately it is for the society through the government to reach that middle ground. In the end, it is always about the middle ground; either extreme leads to a loss of freedoms. It is one thing to choose death if there is no liberty for one’s self and another to choose death for others.
Freedom of speech must include speech that we abhor. The government deciding what is acceptable speech sends chills down my spine, what a terrible idea.
Wildbill, you are spot-on. I share your thoughts and feelings.
Of all the government overreach and progressive hysteria I read about these days, the abrogation of free speech is the one that scares me the most. Some of us are old enough to have actually learned in high school about Germany and Italy in the decades before World War II and actually knew Holocaust survivors. We know that the suppression of speech and the imprisonment of journalists who didn’t toe the party line was when the Nazi’s were able to seize power. For well over 200 years we’ve survived an early war against England, a Civil War, two world wars, McCarthyism, and other regional (nonsensical) wars with the 1st Amendment intact. This is surely not the time to shred it. Following Europe’s example is not something we as a free nation should do.
Our society is marching towards another civil war. I’ll be on the side of the Constitution as it was originally written and understood.
@Ivan
I welcome to coming breakup of the United States, hopefully conducted in a peaceful manner. Let the lefties have their multicult, socialist utopia. I won’t cry a tear for them when it becomes another South Africa or Brazil.
antonio
Communists and Fascists despise free speech. They can’t take control if we have it.
@issacbasonkavitch
You mentioned Charlottesville. Are you talking about where the antifa attacked protesters who simply wanted to preserve Civil War era statues?
Or where antifa maced and attacked their opponents?
Or where the police forced demonstrators into the path of the anfita and left them unprotected?
No, you aren’t talking about any those things. I read your posts regularly and I would bet money you support antifa and their activities. Or are at least would make excuses for them.
Just be honest and admit you favor European/Canandian style hate speech laws. At least I would respect you for it
Antonio
I’m not quite sure what you mean by “imagine a Charlottesville in Düsseldorf”…….neo nazi groups take part in demonstrations in Germany all the time.
Riesling, You are our honest and respected reporter from Germany. Always appreciate your knowledge.
The O.B.I.T security monitoring system would be a good choice for this savage despairing planet. The friendless, demoralized flotsam will fall without even a single shot being fired.
There are some excellent Twilight Zone episodes on MeTV these days that when first shown seemed so outlandish. Not any longer.
Maybe we need to imprison everybody because everybody says stuff that offends others.
I am not happy he is here and I am less happy his wife is here. He is an affront to all freedom loving people. Put me down as Not a fan.
He was the French establishment’s best hope contra Marine Le Pen. He’s a man who knows how to seize a moment, I’ll give him that. He’s also addled by an odd sexual perversion, which accounts for the fact that at least one of his three step-children is older than is he.
Here’s hoping that somewhere in France there’s a conventional conservative with a history of running a large apparat and willing to enforce the immigration laws and arrange for the departure of France from the EU. You won’t need Marine, who has no important skills and is tainted in various ways.
Macron is a frog.
Sprech frie or forever hold your piece and always leak on wiki.