Europe, Boring Until it's Not

[heydaralon]

Free speech goes well beyond Mein Kampf or whatever. It allows you to think and live the way you want.

Europe does not really care about freedom sadly. I think it is a situation of historical precedent. Half of Europe was under commie control for 50 years. Before that, much of it was under the rule of fascists. The fascists fizzled out in the 70's. The commies in the late 80's and early 90's. There is really not much of a liberty record on this continent.

Ironically, Americans, who enjoy far more freedom than anywhere across the Atlantic used to view the above argument I made as common sense. They haven't even endured the horrors of thought control the way your continent has. Yet our superior liberty-based culture has endured and we have prospered. I don't get it. We have gotten complacent in a way.

You guys should be the liberty fanatics not us, based on what you've been through. I guess you are so used to govt tyranny, you can't even envision a scenario where that is not the way to solve problems. To the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Oh well...

Not my problem. I'm not ever going to Europe.

[heydaralon]

One more thought Monte. Baader Meinhoff, and Italian Commies used to blow up shit in Europe, kidnap politicians, hijack planes, and murder civilians. Should we ban leftist literature to prevent that from happening again? Communism has killed far more people, and last far longer than Nazism, with Red genocide deniers enjoying tenure in every University in Europe. My not ban that literature? If Mein Kampf is getting banned in the UK, Das Kapital and Commie Manifesto need to be double banned. In Canada, Antifa goons assault elderly people. We should ban their blogs, websites, and news broadcasts to prevent further bloodshed.

[Montegriffo]

One more thought Monte. Baader Meinhoff, and Italian Commies used to blow up shit in Europe, kidnap politicians, hijack planes, and murder civilians. Should we ban leftist literature to prevent that from happening again? Communism has killed far more people, and last far longer than Nazism, with Red genocide deniers enjoying tenure in every University in Europe. My not ban that literature? If Mein Kampf is getting banned in the UK, Das Kapital and Commie Manifesto need to be double banned. In Canada, Antifa goons assault elderly people. We should ban their blogs, websites, and news broadcasts to prevent further bloodshed.

I'm not happy with any literature intended to divide society and incite hatred. Especially when it is based on lies.
The left doesn't get a pass, neither do Jews or blacks or Arabs. The elderly don't have the right to incite hatred towards the young, the young don't get to do the same towards the aged. Women shouldn't be allowed to spread hate against men any more than men should be allowed to do it against women. Straight, gay, bi-sexual, asexual, pansexual, clever, stupid, disabled, able-bodied, rich, poor, Northern, Southern, Loyalist, Republican, whatever I don't care. Hatred leads to discrimination, making someone ''other'' makes them a target for weak-minded, easily influenced, dangerous people.
Maybe it is the centuries of division and violence between people that have made the Old World less tolerant of hate. The worst excesses of fascism, communism, imperialism, sectarianism and every other ism have happened right here on our doorstep. The naïveté of unlimited freedom of speech is balanced by the realpolitik of its consequences. Pragmatism over ideology.

The right to incite hatred is not a right worth fighting for IMO.

[PartyOf5]

All of the anti-Trump memes and comments you post could be considered inciting hatred against Trump or his supporters. You need to be silenced before some easily influenced person reads and acts out on those posts.

[StCapps]

...and the book, along with other hate speech, legitamised the persecution of Jews until it reached the point that not persecuting them made you an outcast.
No one is born hating Jews. Bigotry is learned behavior. Arabs don't just wake up one day hating the West to the point where they will strap on a suicide vest. They are whipped up and encouraged by hate preachers and ISIS propaganda.
Incitement to hatred serves no useful purpose for a society.
Speeding at 100mph past a school will not end in the death of children every time but the small chance of it resulting in death makes it unacceptable to society. Likewise inciting hatred will not turn everyone into a Mosque shooter but the few cases where it does makes it unacceptable.

This is not the hill to die on, my friend. You have a unanimous consensus against your views. Time to re-evaluate.

Much as I value the MHF consensus, nothing will convince me to argue for a person's right to incite hatred.
It is not a right that any person needs.

Every single one of your posts could theoretically lead to someone being radicalized, that doesn't mean you should be banned from posting on the off chance that it does.

[TheReal_ND]

One more thought Monte. Baader Meinhoff, and Italian Commies used to blow up shit in Europe, kidnap politicians, hijack planes, and murder civilians. Should we ban leftist literature to prevent that from happening again? Communism has killed far more people, and last far longer than Nazism, with Red genocide deniers enjoying tenure in every University in Europe. My not ban that literature? If Mein Kampf is getting banned in the UK, Das Kapital and Commie Manifesto need to be double banned. In Canada, Antifa goons assault elderly people. We should ban their blogs, websites, and news broadcasts to prevent further bloodshed.

I'm not happy with any literature intended to divide society and incite hatred. Especially when it is based on lies.
The left doesn't get a pass, neither do Jews or blacks or Arabs. The elderly don't have the right to incite hatred towards the young, the young don't get to do the same towards the aged. Women shouldn't be allowed to spread hate against men any more than men should be allowed to do it against women. Straight, gay, bi-sexual, asexual, pansexual, clever, stupid, disabled, able-bodied, rich, poor, Northern, Southern, Loyalist, Republican, whatever I don't care. Hatred leads to discrimination, making someone ''other'' makes them a target for weak-minded, easily influenced, dangerous people.
Maybe it is the centuries of division and violence between people that have made the Old World less tolerant of hate. The worst excesses of fascism, communism, imperialism, sectarianism and every other ism have happened right here on our doorstep. The naïveté of unlimited freedom of speech is balanced by the realpolitik of its consequences. Pragmatism over ideology.

The right to incite hatred is not a right worth fighting for IMO.

You can't incite hatred. That's a stupid meme where Hitler is magical and able to hypnotized the populace. Hatred is learned over periods of time. We don't come in to the world hating anyone. We can not be tricked into hating someone. It's a response.

[Manwithnoname]

So anything written or spoken that can radicalize someone needs to be outlawed? The Old Testament? The Quran? Historical documentation of the Nazi war crimes, Mein Kampf, The Worker’s Manifesto?

Difficult to argue that Mein Kampf didn't lead to the persecution of the Jews and ultimately the holocaust.

Have you ever read it? Even senior dyed in the wool nazis admitted it was unintelligible. I doubt that book inspired anyone to do anything but fall asleep

[BjornP]

Monte, if you read a first hand historical account describing - and justifying - a past genocide, will you suddenly find genocide legitimate?

If you read Mein Kampf or just a bit of it, would you suddenly find the notion of gassing the Jews legitimised?

If you read an ancient Assyrian royal mural commemorating the defeat of enemies, would you suddenly think: "Hmm, impaling your political opponents seems to totally legitimate"?

We're not talking about whether I will be influenced by incitement to hatred.
We're talking about whether the shisha bar shooter was influenced by it.
His browsing history and his manifesto seem to indicate that he was.

If we are talking about your fellow citizens, which we are, we are also talking about you. If you believe "hate speech" litterature "incited" him to commit his murders, then any and all can be "incited" by the same litterature. If a Bader-Meinhof terrorist in the 70's could be incited to hate capitalists by reading the Worker's Manifesto, that's surely also a piece of litterature that ought to be banned, right?

You cannot justify laws that ban specific speech by only citing that 0.0001% of the population might be likely to commit violence based on that speech or litterature. There has to be a credible, reasonable, substantive and proportionate reasoning behind taking such a drastic step as limiting people's freedom of speech or products of speech (writing/art/etc.). If that shisha bar shooter carried out his murders after he read some nazi litterature online, but anyone else reading it don't suddenly feel compelled to kill Muslims over it, then the true, objective reason behind him choosing to kill was not really the litterature.

What you are engaging in, is faulty logic. Like inducing that "Aristotle was Greek. Aristotle was wise. Ergo, being Greek makes one wise" is faulty logic on several levels. You got some facts, but are incapable of determining which results in what outcome and why. Like a medieval king who observes that his fortunes started dwindling when he started using this fashionable, new, Southern European little utensil called a "fork" to eat his dinner. Whereupon he bans forks in his domain. Vague impressions of correlation is not causation.

[StCapps]

There has to be a credible, reasonable, substantive and proportionate reasoning behind taking such a drastic step as limiting people's freedom of speech or products of speech (writing/art/etc.)

Not to Montegriffo there doesn't. To Monte, that burden is on those who don't want their freedoms taken away, not on those who want to take other's freedom away. If those who don't want their freedom's taken away can't think of a reason why not (that he accepts), then it doesn't matter that he can't think of good reason why they need their freedom needs to be taken away. Monte airs on the side of taking freedom away if he can't think of a good reason why they should have that freedom, the government can be trusted to only limit freedom in credible, reasonable, substantive and proportionate ways, any suggestion that they can't is simply because you don't care about addressing the issue and want people to suffer so you can have your precious freedom.

Monte simply cannot be reasoned with on freedom of speech, he's a knee jerk anti-speech authoritarian who think he knows best for everyone else and the government should enforce that vision on everyone.

[TheReal_ND]

One more thought Monte. Baader Meinhoff, and Italian Commies used to blow up shit in Europe, kidnap politicians, hijack planes, and murder civilians. Should we ban leftist literature to prevent that from happening again? Communism has killed far more people, and last far longer than Nazism, with Red genocide deniers enjoying tenure in every University in Europe. My not ban that literature? If Mein Kampf is getting banned in the UK, Das Kapital and Commie Manifesto need to be double banned. In Canada, Antifa goons assault elderly people. We should ban their blogs, websites, and news broadcasts to prevent further bloodshed.

I'm not happy with any literature intended to divide society and incite hatred. Especially when it is based on lies.
The left doesn't get a pass, neither do Jews or blacks or Arabs. The elderly don't have the right to incite hatred towards the young, the young don't get to do the same towards the aged. Women shouldn't be allowed to spread hate against men any more than men should be allowed to do it against women. Straight, gay, bi-sexual, asexual, pansexual, clever, stupid, disabled, able-bodied, rich, poor, Northern, Southern, Loyalist, Republican, whatever I don't care. Hatred leads to discrimination, making someone ''other'' makes them a target for weak-minded, easily influenced, dangerous people.
Maybe it is the centuries of division and violence between people that have made the Old World less tolerant of hate. The worst excesses of fascism, communism, imperialism, sectarianism and every other ism have happened right here on our doorstep. The naïveté of unlimited freedom of speech is balanced by the realpolitik of its consequences. Pragmatism over ideology.

The right to incite hatred is not a right worth fighting for IMO.

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