For years, we have discussed the unrelenting attacks on free speech in Europe with the expansion of hate speech laws and the general criminalization of speech, including international speech crimes. Some in the United States would like to follow down that dangerous path (and universities are reinforcing the view of the need to regulate speech). The implications of such anti-speech policies are evident in Germany where a survey, conducted by the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach(and published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) found that only 18 percent of Germans feel free to express their views in public. It is the most vivid example of how Europeans are learning to live without free speech. Undeterred, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the successor to Angela Merkel, is now calling on greater limits on free speech during election periods — a concept that would normally be viewed as counterintuitive outside of the new European model.
Notably, over 31 percent of Germans did not even feel free expressing themselves in private among friends. Just 17 percent felt free to express themselves on the Internet and 35 percent said that freedom to speak is confined to the smallest of private circles.
Even at the height of the Stasi, citizens were not nearly as controlled in East Germany. It is the irony of our times. It has been otherwise liberal governments that have succeeded with authoritarian regimes failed in getting people to give up their free speech rights. All in the name of fighting intolerance . . . by codifying intolerance to an ever-expanding range of speech.
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. We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, (here and here and here and here and here and here and here) and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). There are encroachments appearing in the United States, particularly on college campuses. Notably, the media celebrated the speech of French President Emmanuel Macron before Congress where he called on the United States to follow the model of Europe on hate speech.
I readily admit to following the classic liberal view of free speech. The solution to bad speech — even hateful speech — to more speech. It is free speech that allows people of conscience to contest the flawed and hateful ideas of bigots. Germany has proven the fallacy of changing minds through threatened prosecution. While I am certainly sympathetic to the Germans in seeking to end the scourge of fascism, I have long been a critic of the German laws prohibiting certain symbols and phrases, I view it as not just a violation of free speech but a futile effort to stamp but extremism by barring certain symbols. Instead, extremists have rallied around an underground culture and embraced symbols that closely resemble those banned by the government. I fail to see how arresting a man for a Hitler ringtone is achieving a meaningful level of deterrence, even if you ignore the free speech implications.
We recently discussed how Germany is extending its criminalization of speech to the Internet. Germany imposed a legal regime that would allow fining social networks such as Facebook up to 500,000 euros ($522,000) for each day the platform leaves a “fake news” story up without deleting it. Governments have finally found a vehicle to get citizens to allow them to curtail or chill speech — ironically in the name of facilitating “real news” or “truth.” It is perfectly Orwellian and Merkel’s latest contribution to the erosion of free speech in the West.
The view of Germans that they are living without free speech would be of little surprise. What is most disconcerting is that they seem to reconciled to living without this basic human right.
There is a danger in placing limits on free speech, free expression and, ultimately, freedom of thought. Some propose that expression be controlled in some subjects around race, religion, gender and even vaccination. Incredible that, already, Stuff NZ prohibits discussion about some aspects of climate change. Such control is catastrophic as it prohibits opportunity to question. Limiting enquiry hobbles evolving thought. Progressive, open debate or stagnant, closed minds?
Once a socialist, always a socialist. I don’t care whether you’re a right wing socialist or a left wing socialist, both philosophy’s suck.
Germany even employs civil servants operating under a false name in social affairs offices. They are protected by police and the rotten Munich Roland Freisler Court. All criminal complaints against them are turned down. They confiscate mobile phones without court order. There is no free speech in Germany.
Here are the details: https://meinjobcenter.blogspot.com/p/egmr.html
A superb column. Sadly, I think the US is going to go the way of CENSORSHIP, BIG TIME.
I recall when Justice Kagan was being examined for the position and she had written that “Hate Speech” was not protected by the First Amendment. Even the ACLU is now not championing freedom of speech. And Die Welt a couple of years ago had an interview with Bettina Aptheker she and her father, who was a pforessor, Herbet, started the “Free Speech Movement” at Berkley . She told Die Welt in her interview that there should not be free speech for “Nazis” whatever that means.
Now it was GOOD for Communists to have free speech but not anybody to the right of Kamala Harris.
And frankly I think the US Constitution will be a worthless document which it is nearly already.
So free speech will be GONE, the right to own firearms will be GONE, and then they can do, well to quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“…had murdered sixty-six million in Russia from 1918 to 1957.”
Now we will FIND OUT, won’t we, whether history repeats itself.
The basis of all this is german #PresseKodex12.1 racism taboo gag order, that is obeyed and enforced world wide.
That is the topic sincerity.net
truthrevolution.net calls for opposition
As long as we don’t fight this fundamental law that restricts #TrueSpeech, we must not wonder if that cancer spreads further and further
If you do not have the right to say what you think, for good or ill, you are not truly free. Freedom to say what you want is one of the most basic of human rights…fast disappearing from the West.
The consequence of such a loss is foreseeable.
It’s less a matter of right (though Germany harasses dissidents) than of social inhibition. The trouble is, there’s no good reason for that inhibition. People are clamming up because liberals are head cases and bullies.
This must also include the right to say what you (might) don’t think. Sincerity must not be a test.
The rise of Hitler, the Nazi Party and the joinder by many Germans in the Holocaust is a true picture of how evil certain aspects of Germans, Germany, Austria, and even parts of France are. The laws against Germans joining together for another Reich are necessary.
The people are not to be trusted.
And yet America, Britain, etc. are allowed to commit similar atrocities scot-free? What’s your opinion on the disappearance of Native Americans and the Australian Aboriginals?
Neither has disappeared.
My apologies. Thanks for pointing that out.
I was merely trying to ask why today’s Germans should continue to be saddled with guilt when other nations, particularly today’s Five Eyes nations, have done similar atrocities.
In the 80’s I dated a gal whose family were refugees from Communism. Her father told me matter of factly than one never discussed controversial issues with someone that you did not know well and trust.
Publicly people praised the Communist Party and its progressive leadership of society, the yearly record grain harvests and the ever rising standard of living.
They did so while having to carry a “just in case” bag so as to be able to buy whatever might be for sale in the stores on any given day.
Publicly, we are forced to praise multiculturalism, unlimited mass immigration, the sameness of the sexes, gender being a social construct, race being the same, etc. and if one dissents openly in the least there are those who will make it their business to destroy you, both professionally and financially.
But communism collapsed due to its own contradictions, as will the multicultural West. A society can be built on misunderstanding and lies only for so long.
The emperor has no clothes!
antonio
Germans might feel they’ve lost the freedom of speech, but the entire EU has spoken out through the vote against a German-dominated ruling class.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/28/europes-shocking-right-turn-opportunity-united-states/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=b27014f3cf-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-b27014f3cf-79248369
Angela Merkel is a barren, futile woman who was steeped in communism in East Germany. Merkel has no raison d’être other than the acquisition of power for power’s sake. The freedom and rights of individuals are an incidental potentiality that have no relevance to Angela Merkel.
The American thesis is Freedom and Self-Reliance which the American Founders described as natural and God-given. Under the Constitution, individuals are free and government is severely restricted and limited; government exists solely to facilitate the freedom of individuals. Americans may conduct any “pursuit of happiness” in the free markets of the private sector.
Merkel and communists everywhere are the direct, mortal enemies of Freedom and Self-Reliance.
wave your hand in a vaguely roman salute and you end up in jail in Germany
no exaggeration; many people jailed for this over the decades. here’s one little article by someone on the topic.
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/didnt-know-this-giving-the-nazi-salute-in-modern-day-germany-is-punishable-for-up-to-3yrs-in-prison.html
that says a greek soccer player gave a roman salute once and then got banned for life from the game. wow!
i wonder why is this old gesture so utterly threatening to the powers that be in germany and Europe that it’s a felony crime?
why, so many years after the third reich was utterly crushed, and Germany suffered such a horrible postwar misery, and so long later doe people in Germany one of the richest countires in the world, do the people so widely appear to retain a sympathy for it? I just ask, not sure why. it may be a complex inquiry.
which inquiry is not available for public debate in germany “For the duration”
And this is what the left wants to happen here in the US. In a mere thirty years they have gone from staunch defenders of our civil rights to wanting to take all those rights away. Thank god for the great wisdom of our founding fathers. Thank god for the gun.
Um, no, and see the work of Gottfried Dietze on this point. You did have liberal organizations who concerned themselves with the harassment of political dissidents, but the notion of ‘civil rights’ has suffered for 80 years from escalating adulteration. A ‘civil right’, properly understood, is an immunity which derives from your status as a citizen. That immunity is from the depredations of public employees, from the depredations of private persons acting with the connivance of public employees, and from the depredations of private persons attempting to prevent you (by force or fraud) from undertaking actions in your capacity as a citizen. It did not stop meaning that, but it also came increasingly to incorporate restrictions on other people’s property rights, freedom of contract, and freedom of association.
Um, yes, I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s when the ACLU fought for the rights of the KKK to march and gather in public…when we fought the Republicans who wanted to ban flag burning…when we fought for Howard Stern’s right to speech on the public airwaves. Now everything is reversed. To deny there has been a sea-change in the left since the 70/80’s is to deny reality itself, but that’s the modern left for you.
See Wm. Donohue’s work on the ACLU, and his commentary on it’s priorities ca. 1987. Per Donohue, it’s always been devoted to political agitation through litigation and has never been thoroughly devoted to defending civil liberties broadly recognized if not oecumenically recognized.
There’s a reason that Nat Hentoff and Alan Dershowitz were by 1988 disgusted with the organization. Neo-Nazis marching through Skokie, Illinois aren’t a serious threat to the ACLU’s political goals, and that controversy was just another opportunity by ACLU lawyers to tell ordinary people that their sensibilities didn’t matter. Operation Rescue was a threat. See Nat Hentoff’s columns on the ACLU’s otiose reaction to the hook-and-crook efforts to suppress that organization.
Please note also that free speech is a right which derives from the deliberative processes of government not based on dictatorial authority. Howard Stern using vulgar language over the airwaves is not a component of civic life, and any legal controversies he’s ever faced are, again, just another opportunity for the public interest bar to stick it to ordinary people.
I was a member of the ACLU(and NRA). I left the ACLU in the 90’s and I’m still an NRA member. I lived through it all and I know, first hand, the history.
My criticism is directed at the culture of the left and it’s abandonment of the principles we all(on the left) claimed to hold dear. I’m talking about people who once claimed George Carlin as their hero, but now embrace a counter ideology. The culture of the left has been turned on it’s head…it’s something out of the Twilight Zone which we also grew up with.
You say: “free speech is a right which derives from the deliberative processes of government.” Bollocks. Our right to free speech comes from nature(god). It is innate. Only slaves think their rights come from the government.
Bollocks. Our right to free speech comes from nature(god). It is innate. Only slaves think their rights come from the government.
I suggest you go back and read what I said (which is not what you fancy I said).
If my memory of Stanley Rothman’s research into the New Left and Irving Howe’s memoir of having interviewed prominent figures among them (in Rothman’s case, ca. 1970, in Howe’s, ca. 1965) what their descendants are up to is unsurprising. Neither Herbert Marcuse nor Saul Alinsky were advocates of deliberative institutions and practices.
My point is that the leftist culture I grew up with has completely reversed…that’s all.
Ivan. God and nature somehow failed to enforce this right throughout the hundreds of thousands years our species has been on earth. If you’re looking for rights from god, good luck, but I’ll stick with our government.
Government can infringe on your rights or help secure them. It does not give you your right. The difference is fundamental…Thomas Jefferson and all the founders agreed on the importance of this very principle in case you’re unaware. I understand that people on the left don’t care about these issues…our Constitution.
Don’t try to make sense with Anon.
In the absence of dictatorship or enumeration in the Constitution, “…others retained by the people…” could ONLY have been provided by God and nature.
_____________________________________
9th Amendment
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Of course, political correct, social justice warriors, the offense over nearly any perceived slight is nothing but a power grab to control and limit speech.
Trump’s election was a nation saying to hell with such limits. He can be pompous, egomaniac, childish twitter insults but he is not the cause but a reflection of a nation that said enough to using these tactics to end free speech.
Pretty horrifying, but then I self-censor here in America. I don’t feel like being punched by a leftist. Moving out of CA helped.
Mute might be better than self censored else you might show your bias.
Notably, over 31 percent of Germans did not even feel free expressing themselves in private among friends.
Well, a great many of our friends and relations are partisan Democrats. Partisan Democrats aren’t very reasonable. We all have other things to do than discuss public affairs.
The question is whether you “feel free” in expressing your political views in private. It seems like you don’t.
Wonder why only 18% of Germans feel free to speak freely? Maybe because one can go to jail for expressing the wrong view in public regarding the “rapefugees”.
Welcome to the dark side, Professor Turley!
Long live free thought and expression.
antonio
For all their EU and UN talk of freedoms, what none of these nations have is the concept of “We the People” having unalienable rights. Until they understand that difference they will continue to be subjects of whatever government is imposed on them. A note to Americans, we are in peril of losing our precious rights to a pernicious progressive dogma that would have us subjects rather than free citizens in a nation of We the People.
Pretty much the left owns this. We had 70 years ago excesses in the definition of sedition and contrived harassment of people who were mostly just pests. We also had chronic trouble in regard to the enforcement of obscenity law, in part because our courts do nothing well. I think what we’re facing today is qualitatively different.
What you see here is a professional-managerial element (most particularly judges) who fancy they are the school administration and everyone else is of the body of pupils. The proper response on the part of the public to this is to put that social element firmly in its place. If you want to know who is to blame, Prof. Turley, it is people just like you. If you want to know what is to be done, it is to take away tools by which people just like you make their influence felt.