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In a coordinated campaign across 14 states, the German police on Tuesday raided the homes of 36 people accused of hateful postings over social media, including threats, coercion and incitement to racism.
Most of the raids concerned politically motivated right-wing incitement, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office, whose officers conducted home searches and interrogations. But the raids also targeted two people accused of left-wing extremist content, as well as one person accused of making threats or harassment based on someone's sexual orientation.
"The still high incidence of punishable hate posting shows a need for police action," Holger Münch, president of the Federal Criminal Police Office, said in a statement. "Our free society must not allow a climate of fear, threat, criminal violence and violence either on the street or on the internet."
The raids come as Germans are debating the draft of a new social media law aimed at cracking down on hate speech, a measure that an array of experts said was unconstitutional at a parliamentary hearing on Monday.
The measure, championed by Justice Minister Heiko Maas for passage this month, would fine Facebook, Twitter and other outlets up to $53 million (50 million euros) if they failed to remove hate speech and other forms of illegal content.
The left ladies and gentlemen.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by idiot_king on Monday June 26 2017, @02:07AM (16 children)
I won't belabor this: This is actually a good thing.
Assume you want to send a message to a group of people you think are a threat. A group of people who choose to operate in the shadows of society and use the veil of anonymity to push their sleaze and hate. What do you do? Well, if you are the state, out of a myriad of options, the best one would be send a loud and clear message about what will and will not be tolerated. Thrasymachus, in Plato's Republic, argued essentially that "might makes right." The problem here is knowing whether the people to whom you are "sending the message" (i.e., to whom you are applying the "might") are actually morally in the wrong. Combined with a modern sense of dialectic, we have an answer.
This is the key difference between Unser Drumpfenfurher deporting helpless undocumented citizens and disintegrating loving families, and Chancellor Merkel kicking Nazi scum in their proverbial rotten teeth. The Undocumented Citizens are the ones who actually contribute to society and keep things running at the bottom, while the spoiled white Nazis behind their computer screens are the ones leeching off of mommy and daddy and spewing hate, draining the very life out of society with their lazy "rhetoric."
These two examples are NOT interchangeable for that reason, and thus Germany is justified in scaring the panties off of these huff-n-tuff Nazi crybabies. If they cared so much about their society, maybe they'd be willing to fill roles often staffed by immigrants instead of sitting in their hate-filled playpens all day playing with their own feces.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @02:27AM (4 children)
Hit the carriage return TWICE.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday June 26 2017, @02:38AM (2 children)
And now g_weg is trying to censor all of us who, along with Matt Damon, prefer the "wall of text"! I blame TMP. Besides, that is not enough, you need a line holder, or the blank line will be ignored, just like the Nazi leanings of certain Soylentils.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @02:54AM (1 child)
No, just a friendly suggestion.
the "wall of text"
Some folks will just skip over a comment that is the slightest bit difficult to read.
Want maximum readership? Make it easy.
Once your text blob is over 100 words, a paragraph break is about due.
At 200 words, it's way past due.
you need a line holder, or the blank line will be ignored
The default format is Plain Old Text.
With that, my suggestion works just fine.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 26 2017, @10:42AM
Yes. Yes we most certainly will.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @02:41AM
When you log in.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @03:14AM (3 children)
So you're in opposition to freedom of speech, then. Even if these people are morally in the wrong, that doesn't make the government morally right in suppressing their speech. Sleaze and hate in the form of speech should not be illegal, no matter how sickening it is. This is the true test of whether someone is committed to the principle of freedom of speech; it's easy to say you support freedom of speech when the speech is either something you agree with or don't care about, but you are only truly tested when it's speech that you find morally reprehensible.
Too bad they don't give examples of the speech and we're only left with vague descriptions such as "threats, coercion and incitement to racism." It's insane that "incitement to racism" is even illegal, but this is Germany we're talking about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @03:38AM (1 child)
The American concept of freedom of speech isn't a universal truth.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @07:28AM
Of course it's not. Otherwise, this article would not exist and we wouldn't be discussing these injustices. I have no interest in your 'Country X will respect people's freedom and Country Y will violate it, and that's just fine' excuses. Our values are irreconcilable.
Also, America isn't without its censorship. We still have FCC censorship, free speech zones, rules against bomb jokes in certain places, and a number of puritan restrictions on free speech (see the Miller Test); all of those violate the Constitution. So, it's not that I follow the American concept of freedom of speech, but that I am a principled advocate of free speech. Authoritarians will never understand that position.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @07:03AM
Easy for you to say, you fucking criminal! We know where you live, AC! We know what you like to eat! We know when you got to sleep, and we know the name of your dog! Now, you pathetic, criminal sympathizing cretin, am I engaging in free speech? Or am I trying to get you to fucking shit your pants knowing that in the middle of night, men with those creepy Brit Guy Fawkes masks could just roll up on you and , , , just saying! Free speech, y'all! Yeah, I thought so. Fucking coward. Hate speech is violence, not speech, and this is why each and every white surpremecist needs to be rounded up, put into a secure facility, and subjected to gene therapy that will give them dark skin, and a bigger dick. White genocide! It's on, it's real, and its free speech! Yeeeee-haaaaa! (note: nothing in this post is to be taken as an actual threat, against any real AC, living or deceased. No sub-human whites were harmed in the making of this post. Violence is always wrong. Peace out.)
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday June 26 2017, @04:05AM (6 children)
Thanks.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @09:41AM (5 children)
I refuse to live in Wyoming! Never!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 26 2017, @10:44AM (4 children)
You're thinking Utah.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 26 2017, @09:04PM (3 children)
Looking at who allowed you to vote for Jill Stein, [cloudfront.net] I'd say North Carolina, Georgia, and Indiana, which wouldn't even let you write in her name, are the major Authoritarian shitholes in USA.
South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Nevada are kinda Authoritarian shitholes.
They didn't print her name on the ballot but there was a write-in spot.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 27 2017, @10:45AM (2 children)
Putting her name on the ballot in OK wouldn't have helped her any. She might have got 1% of the state. If only Johnson and Stein had been on the ballot in OK, she still wouldn't have broke 15%
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 27 2017, @06:59PM (1 child)
A peculiar fact:
The was a time when Oklahoma was a Red state (with a completely different meaning from today).
It was quite Anti-Capitalist and Anti-Authoritarian.
In 1921, Socialist Eugene Debs got 17 percent of the vote there [google.com] when he ran for president.
In 1917, the Socialists in Oklahoma were instrumental in The Green Corn Rebellion [wikipedia.org], an assault on DC, against the draft, which had been reinstated for WWI.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday June 28 2017, @02:07AM
The times they are a'changin'.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.