Mandatory jail term for Nazi salute under new hate crime rules in Australia
(www.independent.co.uk)
from MicroWave@lemmy.world to world@lemmy.world on 06 Feb 2025 13:07
https://lemmy.world/post/25217408
from MicroWave@lemmy.world to world@lemmy.world on 06 Feb 2025 13:07
https://lemmy.world/post/25217408
Summary
Australia has enacted strict anti-hate crime laws, mandating jail sentences for public Nazi salutes and other hate-related offenses.
Punishments range from 12 months for lesser crimes to six years for terrorism-related hate offenses.
The legislation follows a rise in antisemitic attacks, including synagogue vandalism and a foiled bombing plot targeting Jewish Australians.
The law builds on state-level bans, with prior convictions for individuals performing Nazi salutes in public spaces, including at sporting events and courthouses.
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Fucking finally. Good shit Australia. Doing better than most. Watch Elmo throw a hissie fit. Pathetic
I hope he tests the waters there and Australia follows through.
Don’t kid yourself. Australia is also an oligarchy where corporations get most of what they want passed within days/weeks, with little to no debate, while popular or inconsequential policies are given months or years of debate (so the murdoch/oligarch propaganda machine can distract the public and tell them how to think).
There is no chance in hell either major party would imprison an American dictators right hand man. They’re both corporate whores at heart, with little/no virtue.
Don’t import this “both sides” bullshit just because you see everyone saying that about the US.
Criticising governments is fine, but Albo’s government is a polar opposite to LNP.
Any politician needs to function within our capitalist society. If you don’t like that, have a revolution and return us all to agrarian communism. In the mean time the PM needs to keep corporate Australia ticking over. That said, there’s a reason Labor has such deep ties to Australia’s unions. Labor has very consistently improved wages and terms for employees, while LNP wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.
Labor got me two pay rises, basically pays for my daily coffee.
That’s just in this term though.
There’s a ratchet effect over many decades.
Agreed.
I’m so sick of this absolutist free speech bullshit that wants to make room for terrorist ideologies to hide.
There is no free speech absolutism. Dare to criticize him or make fun of him and you are banned and ostracized. It’s a Nazi enablement pure and simple.
He’s a free speech absolutist- when it comes to his own speech.
It’s kinda weird to sort of start rolling back to where some type of conservatism is actually a good thing. I don’t want to identify as a conservative, but I definitely want to conserve institutions of justice and whatnot and not have them corrupted by right-wing crypto cucks.
For what it’s worth, politics is more complex than conservation and change. The status quo is what got us here, so we must to better than merely conserve.
Now make it retroactive and with universal jurisdiction.
Retroactive laws are a horrible idea
*Unless applied in benefit
That’s true, then it can be good
I know you’re joking, but we do not want retroactive laws
The funny thing is that the Nuremberg Trials were based on retroactive laws. Nothing the Nazis did was technically illegal, so they were prosecuted on the basis that their actions were decided to be crimes after the fact.
What?
In WW2, the concentration camps and the Holocaust didn’t break any German or international laws. This is the first case where the charge of crimes against humanity was used.
Surely kidnapping and murder were illegal.
Nope. They were perfectly legal as they were ordered by the government.
Good. I’m glad Australia drew a hard line.
A hard line angled up at about 45 degrees.
So this is Australia, but imagine we did something like this in the USA. A Nazi salute is a form of hate crime against Jewish people, would it also be illegal to use Racial Slurs?
Even Jewish people defend Nazis right to free speech:
aclu.org/…/the-skokie-case-how-i-came-to-represen…
But go ahead & tell everyone how saluting is a hate crime. Now imagine your right to protest, or say something negative about the President being taken away because you didn’t like free speech.
To be clear, the article calls the salute a hate crime. I’m restating it in my comment since it’s relevant to my question.
How did that work out for them?
Was there another Holocaust or something I don’t know about during the time in this article?
Not quite yet - the US is currently in the Night of Long Knives phase of allowing Nazis to come into power, so perhaps soon.
Why, did the first one not count?
Many countries do have hate-speech laws, and law against Nazi propaganda.
As usual intent and context matters, but I don't see why you should defend the right to use racial slur in a racist manier
Because it isn’t physically violent. Black Democrats are out there making racial comments about white people as well. I don’t think they should be locked up, do you?
That’s generally how it works in countries with hate speech laws, yes. Civilisation doesn’t work when civility is required only of a subset of the population, no matter its shape.
Also for the record in Germany the salute doesn’t qualify as incitement to hatred, at least not without further context, it’s plain and simply use of a symbol of an outlawed organisation, which is punishable if it is done in the furtherance of the goals and aims of that organisation. Same law applies to e.g. 1%er badges. I think there’s “gang symbols” type legislation in the US, so why the sudden pearl-clutching when the violent goons signalling each other happen to be Nazis? It’s a criminal organisation having had their official structures banned still trying to organise, that’s illegal.
I’m not pearl clutching. I’m a free speech absolutist. I support cosplay Nazis right to free speech just like I support people’s rights to call cops pigs, etc. Also gang signs aren’t illegal.
You’d be surprised how many times free speech has benefited Democrats. Remember how many up votes praising Luigi Mangione got, now those same people want to eliminate free speech. Good luck to them. I’ll just sit here & watch as I get downvoted into oblivion. Not like they bothered actually studying history.
Not what anyone is talking about.
You mean the party that co-created the conditions that made that happen. Both of the parties are complicit in turning the country into an oligarchy. The US is completely cooked politically speaking, you’re not a standard or role model for anyone. Your completely fucked-up political culture and completely absent standards of civility are part of that. Not a thing you should be proud of.
Where are you from? America has become the most successful superpower due to free speech. Go ahead tell us how much we suck. Maybe you should go look in the mirror first though.
Have you watched the news lately.
Yes. I also saw a lot of fascist Democrats this last election unable to figure out why no one wanted to take orders from them. You think the oligarchy cares about the laws? No one enforced the law.
Burning a cross on someone’s lawn isn’t physically violent either. So I guess you’re okay with it?
So you illegally trespass onto someone elses’ property which is their safe zone to commit arson & vandalism? You are allowed to burn all the crosses you want on your own lawn as long as it doesn’t violate fire codes where you live. That is free speech. Really dumb argument by you BTW. Do you want to be locked up for it cause you don’t like free speech?
You can burn a cross on a sidewalk in front of someone’s house. That is not trespassing or vandalism or arson and is exactly how the KKK has gotten away with it in the past.
And yes, I do want them to be locked up for that. You are either okay with it or didn’t even consider the possibility that a sidewalk is a public space.
Apples and oranges. A nazi salute is not a racial comment. It’s a signal of allegiance to extermination (which, by the way, extermination is physically violent).
The idealistic fantasy that we should permit the intentional organisation of Nazism is not an effective way to preserve liberty of speech. Australia has no intention of becoming the failing pseudo-liberalist state that the USA is. So if the law doesn’t stop them, our communities will continue to step up and silence them ourselves.
Why would it? One does not imply the other.
Also, a Nazi salute isn’t just a slur. It’s (at least) signaling that you want a bunch of groups exterminated (Jews are one of those many groups).
Trump puts tariffs on Australia…
And Musk to block Starlink from Australia.
gosh, how we let the weird kid gather so much power…
He’s gonna get starlink to burn insects like with a magnifying glass. Maybe the Jewish space lasers were Nazi space lasers all along.
They’re projecting like always.
In their defense, that’s the only thing lasers know how to do.
Wow I never thought about this but would not be surprised at the development. If you vertically integrate the company that controls the satellites, the company that launches them into orbit, the govt that oversees it all, etc, you could just send whatever up there, especially with hundreds of launches and satellites.
What a nicely timed distraction from issues like housing, cost of living and health.
Albo was definitely always going to pass these laws even if Zionist gangs hadn’t staged the attacks across Australia to create the headlines that triggered these laws.
Definitely wouldn’t happen here in Oz!
Soon protesting or advocating against the genocide in Gaza & speaking out against ethnic cleansing will be considered a hate crime too. Remember, this is what you wanted when you said no to free speech, regardless if it was something that offended you.
I heard they throw you in jail for stabbing someone, what’s next, throwing you in jail for buying a knife? Stop this slippery slope! #allowstabbing #freestabbingabsolutist
Yeah makes no sense & you sound like an idiot. Maybe they should lock you up for what you just said.
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One year’s mandatory jail term for any “hate-related offenses” seems a bit far imo. Should be just a fine at least for first offense *on the lightest end, unless it’s some physical attack and stuff like that.
a paywall for a moral breach sounds like a horrendous idea
If you consider a fine just a paywall then do you feel like there should be jail sentence for all traffic violations too, for example? A bit ridiculous, imo.
A fine works if it’s a significant amount of the finee’s net worth, but because fines are not scaled proportionally to finee’s net worth (or even scaled at all) it’s my opinion that these things just work as a paywall, including things like traffic violations.
You definitely can scale fines for income. We have that in Finland for more serious traffic violations: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine
I just don’t believe the severity of the crime here at the lowest end calls for a year in jail. A fine, a hefty one, would serve the purpose better.
interesting, that kind of fine would be nice for us to have in Australia. i agree with you honestly, a fine for something like this would be good as long as it’s hefty and proportional to income
You’re playing into the paradox of tolerance. Don’t do that.
Why stop at jail time? Why not execute them?
Edit: the point is to consider what level of punishment is appropriate, not to actually execute anyone.
What level of punishment is appropriate?
Sure! What’s worthy of more punishment, stealing packages from your neighbors doorstep or doing a Nazi salute? How about assaulting someone and mugging them? I think those are both worse than a nazi salute and deserving of more punishment. A Nazi salute wouldn’t affect me at all except to be annoyed at their idiocy. Beating me up or stealing my stuff definitely impacts me. I don’t have a clear idea of how much punishment is reasonable, but probably something less than the punishment for petty theft. That’s my two cents.
I asked you what level of punishment is appropriate. You did not answer.
And it’s nice of you to have the privilege to not be affected by a Nazi salute. Jews like me don’t have that luxury, because many of us have personally experienced what comes next. And I don’t mean during WWII.
I didn’t really answer because I’m not quite sure. I suppose i have a hard time imagining what category of actions or words should be punishable with jail time. Maybe hate speech? But then how do you define hate speech? And how do you limit the growing list of things defined as hate speech? Seems too easily politicized, like they could be repurposed as blasphemy laws or something. I guess i tend toward those not being punishable offenses because of their subjective nature. A nazi salute might cause me to roll my eyes, but cause you a ton of distress, regardless of the actual intent of the person doing it. Maybe they did it without knowing what it meant to you, or maybe they thought it was funny, or maybe they were trying to normalize and legitimize hatred of Jews. It could be any of those or something altogether different. There is far too much subjectivity or room for error.
The world may never know.
Also, this:
None of those things make a Nazi salute acceptable. Literally nothing makes it acceptable. You’re now on the level of people who have been defending Elon Musk for it, I hope you realize that.
Dude, if a 15 year old kid is messing around with his buddies and throws up a salute, it should not be punishable. If a 30 year old autistic guy throws up a salute because he never understood the context or meaning behind it, he shouldn’t be punished. I can theorize a hundred examples that wouldn’t be deserving of punishment, but are actually simple misunderstanding or ignorance. And that’s the problem. I don’t think it’s acceptable, but I also don’t think it’s punishable through government actions. Social pressure should be sufficient to correct ignorant behavior in cases like this. Do you think it’s more just to punish an innocent man wrongly, or to let a guilty person go free? Do you feel confident in the justice system ability to determine guilt accurately?
You’re now using the exact excuse people made for Elon Musk.
Can you tell me about all these autistic people who go around giving Nazi salutes inadvertently? Because there are a lot of autistic people in my family and that doesn’t seem to be amongst their symptoms.
Elon is mature enough and to know better and I’m not defending him. But my argument is not that they would do it inadvertently, but that they would do it without understanding the significance. I feel like you keep trying to bully me into a position I don’t hold…
It is impossible for me to bully you over Lemmy. It is possible to say offensive things about autistic people, though. Maybe you shouldn’t. Unless you have an actual example of this happening.
You are intentionally mischaracterizing my stance and then being preachy and condescending about it. It’s pretty annoying so I’m going to move on.
I am not mischaracterizing anything. I am asking you to give an example of what you’re talking about.
Clearly you can’t. You apparently don’t understand what autism is.
If you actually wanted to understand my point, you would have a long time ago. It’s not that complicated.
Your point was based on something that doesn’t happen, and an offensive suggestion.
Pragmatic constraints.
It’s nothing to do with paradox of tolerance to think a year’s mandatory jail time for a year is pretty ridiculous for any “hate-related offenses”.
I’m against in general of just throwing people into the slammer and hoping that fixes the issues. Punishment should fit the crime and some dipshit doing some Nazi salute isn’t worth a year in goddamn prison. Give them a hefty fine for first time, sure, but a mandatory sentence of a year for any such offense, just seems too far.
That’s basically a tax on not being rich enough to be a nazi, which… well.
Do you think the same about any traffic violation or all fines in general? We should throw people in the jail for a year, mnimum, because otherwise it’s just a tax on not being rich enough for the crime?
Come on now. I’m all for having tougher sentences on the high end for hate related offenses, but a mandatory minimum being year in jail for any such offense, even some dipshit doing a Nazi salute and nothing is else, is just too much. It’s like said, dipshit behaviour but hardly worth a year in jail. And it probably won’t solve the issue anyway. Just putting people in jail seldom does imo. Yanks have already tried that.
Not all “legal offenses” are crimes. Legal systems have categories for a reason. Got caught loitering in the act? That can quite simply be solved by just have you go back to pick up your trash. Some things should not be punishable with jail, some others should, nazism clearly belongs in the later category.
Lemme let you in on a secret:
Yanks don’t send people to jail to “solve crime”. They don’t want to “solve crime”. They fill jails to have a cheap abusable workforce. They’ve even come out saying it openly out loud. Why do you think it’s black people or homeless people 90% of the time?
If that’s what you feel makes a difference for my argument, let me ask:
“Do you think the same about any crime in general? We should throw people in the jail for a year, mnimum, because otherwise it’s just a tax on not being rich enough for the crime?”
Do you think people behind this think this will solve hate? I just don’t think this sort of mandatory jail sentences will do any good. To me it makes a lot more sense to have a wider scale in punishments. This just feels like it’s reacting a bit panicky into what’s happening in the world with more to soothe people’s minds than to actually do something meaningful to change things.
Are you equating doing a Nazi salute to parking in front of a fire hydrant?
They were saying that fines are just a barrier for the poor, so I was asking if that holds true for all fines. That was the actual point you missed.
But sure, in the sense that neither should carry a mandatory jail sentence for a year, they’re the same.
I would love to hear your suggestions for stopping people from being openly Nazis because nothing else seems to have worked so far.
Will you get rid of them entirely? No. Can you force them to shut the fuck up with their hateful Nazi sit if they want to be a part of society? I think this will sure help.
But my family tree’s lack of forks does give me a bit of an unfair anti-Nazi bias, I admit.
This isn’t about people being just openly Nazi but for any “hate-related offense”. If you want to tackle any such thing you might need to look into the root causes of the issues and try to fix those, including tackling concerns from the people who become hateful, such as living conditions, education, that sort of stuff. So much like with criminality. That’s a lot more work than just the “tough on crime” approach of throwing everyone into jail for a year, minimum, and hoping that will work (or rather trying to show to your voters that you’re doing something).
It will be the same as anywhere that already has this sort of laws, people will be less obvious about it while the same hate and message is out there. I don’t think this will affect anything that giving tougher fines wouldn’t and it would cause more negatives than that does. You could even have stricter punishments for repeat offenders and do fines as day fines. But prison for a year for any such offense? The scale seems off, especially when you consider that the maximum for terrorism related stuff is six years.
“Less obvious” means fewer recruits. I’m not sure why you think being less obvious is just as effective as being overt.
“Recruits”? The concern isn’t people joining something, it’s them agreeing with the message. Less obvious approach already works just fine (probably even better than direct approach) all over the world in selling the message and the hate, so if you think this mandatory year of jail will have much of an effect on that, I have a few other “tough on crime” approaches to sell to you. Might even declare War on Hate in style of War on Drugs.
As usual, people want tough and immediate measures, forgetting about a longer term approach and working to tackle the causes of why this messaging sells so well.
Oh I don’t think it’s just as effective. It’s not as effective, it’s even more so since it’s easier to get people to agree if you start small and then drop hints slowly. Obvious approach will just drive people away. You don’t start with "sieg heil kill all the untermensch ", you start with something small, saying how foreigners are stealing your jobs or making the housing market suck. Then you can guide them in the direction you want without ever saying it. And shit like that is almost impossible to go after in any sensible way, without a risk of punishing people on very questionable grounds.
Sorry… you think that averting people from joining Nazi groups is unimportant? You think they’re more dangerous as individuals?
I’m sorry but where in my reply did you get those ideas?
The concern is literally them joining something. One bigot alone has very little power.
Multiple front page Reddit articles about this as well. Look at the downvote ratio compared to discussions. Israel just pulling the strings as usual & everyone is falling for it, as they plan to take over Gaza & call you all Nazis for opposing it.
Curse you, Israel! How dare you get people to call those doing Nazi salutes Nazis in Australia with your… kabbalistic magic?
More like Israel why do you show your population non-stop propaganda & conscript them to join your military & engage in psyops & social media influence on your behalf. This is all verifiable on Wikipedia BTW with references.
Also no one cares that they get called Nazis. I care when you start locking people up for expressing themselves in ways that are non violent. Lock up all the Nazis assaulting people you want, but when you start assaulting people for what they wear or hand signs they make, then you become the violent criminal.
Sorry… which are you saying, that Israel’s behavior forces people to make Nazi salutes when they otherwise wouldn’t or that everyone who makes Nazi salutes is secretly an Israeli operative?
Also, a Nazi salute is a pretext to violence. You want to wait until someone is actually beaten to death before the arrests start?
No, I’m saying that Israel runs psyops.
You know what is actual violence? Punching people in the face. Everyone has the potential to become violent. That doesn’t mean you can go around punching everyone in the face. Go ask the cops they’ll help explain it to you if you need help understanding the concept.
…and the authoritarian emerges from their shell.
Oh right, you are pro criminal. I forgot that you defend the rapist.
You will not find a single quote of me ever defending any rapist. You can search my entire history and not find one.
You either know this and are lying or never checked and are lying.
Why do people insist on lying about me to my face?
You called me authoritatian for mentioning police. Your idea of having no police is a very pro-rape thing to say. If you don’t like it then don’t call me authoritarian for mentioning law enforcement.
I have no idea why you think that makes it okay to lie about me, but I called you an authoritarian because you wanted me to go to the police.
That’s what you said.
And for some reason you think that justifies lying about me defending rapists. Have you considered therapy?
You’re lying about me by calling me an authoritarian bruh, and you know what increases crime like rape? Having no law enforcement.
Asking someone who applies the law if your theory that you can be violent towards people that haven’t committed a crime is the smartest thing you can do before you go commit crime.
I based it on the literal words you used. Which I quoted.
What are you basing your claim I defend rapists on? Did the elves tell you about it?
You called me authoritarian for telling you to ask the cops about your theory of being allowed to commit crime because you think someone may have the potential to become violent… If you think people should be able to commit crime cause they feel like it & that talking to cops is authoritarian, then you support rapists. Do you believe that & if so you support rapists.
Got it. The elves told you.
The therapist thing was projection. Got it.
Nice try, but when you’re in therapy and suggest someone else also needs therapy, it is not projection.
When I am misinterpreted and upset about being misinterpreted, I don’t accuse other people of supporting rapists… but I am sorry I misinterpreted you.
I have a feeling you will not apologize for the claim that I defend rapists. In fact, I fully expect you to double-down on it.
Either that or walk away as if this conversation never happened.
But please do surprise me.
You called me authoritarian because I said you should ask the cops a question. You want an apology for what I said then apologize for what you said.
What?
I literally apologized:
I misinterpreted you as saying something authoritarian. I was wrong. Again, I am sorry.
Let me guess- apologize again but do it in the right way. Anything but either prove that I support rapists or admit I don’t.
Don’t worry though, I will just bring up the fact that you have yet to prove I support any rapists like you claimed whenever you talk to me from now on. Just so you won’t forget that you lied about it and wouldn’t go back on the lie. Unless you finally do. I won’t be holding my breath.
Okay then. I misinterpreted you as saying talking to police is authoritarian as being pro-crime, therefore enabling rapists. I was wrong. I am sorry.
It was not a misinterpretation and you know it. You said it as a deliberate insult.
But I you saying you “misinterpreted me” as “saying talking to the police is authoritarian as being pro crime, therefore enabling rapists” is the closest you will ever come to admitting that I do not defend (not enable, defend) the rapist.
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But then admitting what you actually did was accuse me of being a proud Trump supporter would be too honest of you, so I’ll take what I can get.
I’d say be better, but you won’t.
I bet you also won’t say anything about the fact that you claimed someone who is in therapy is “projecting” when they say someone else needs therapy either, but I’ll let that one go.
Being against cops altogether does enable & defend rapist from punishment. I wish you the best in your therapy though.
You can talk to your therapist about it.
That’s a bit too much. That’s a country with Gallipoli battles being matter of national myth, right? And they use it the way of praising WWI Ottomans as a worthy enemy. That’d be Young Turks, that’d be the genocide of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks in those very years.
Jail for a salute seems a bit unbalanced.
The point is to jail people you disagree with by whatever means palatable to the general public. You can’t just run around jailing people, you have to have a reason.
Nazis aren’t “people you disagree with”. They’re anti-social violence-worshippers, and in this Australian context, terrorists grooming children. The main Australian neo-Nazi group literally had leadership get caught applying for a job in disability services when they said they only wanted to work cases for young boys[1]. ASIO have emphasised the decreasing age of NSNs membership. Their strategy, like many neo-Nazi orgs, is to indoctrinate and recruit disaffected and alienated teenagers.
Well, as im sure you are aware, once a label is given power, then it can and will inevitably be used for other purposes. If you can jail people who have been labeled as nazis or terrorists or whatever, then it’s just a matter of time until that label gets abused.
Acting like it’s just any old salute is weird.
Sending people to jail is a great way to make sure they don’t spend time embroiled in Nazi ideology on every level. Probably the best way to make sure someone never comes in contact with a single particle of Nazism, is to send them to prison.
(Can you tell I’m american?)
Honestly what else is there to do? These people aren’t exactly going to change their minds, and letting them display hate in the name of free speech is only going to help them mobilize and elect more trumps in the world.
Well I say it elsewhere, but we need to really start to rethink carcerial justice as a solution to social problems. It doesn’t help, it just compounds the contradictions that lead to problems like crime, fascism in the first place.
I understand we can’t just snap our fingers to make it go away. But The first step is discussion.
Lets discuss freeing violent rapists.
No.
I don’t know we do it, but I think addressing the root causes as to why people are drawn to hate groups or hateful beliefs would be better. Eliminating the symptom doesn’t solve the problem.
It’s a hell of a lot harder to join a hate group if you can’t identify any members to find out who to sign up with.
They can still easily identify each other online, social groups, clubs, etc. I would think that’s how most of these people get together anyway, and not from some rando on the street throwing up a nazi salute. Making the gesture illegal also doesn’t solve why people are this way. It doesn’t solve the problem. It just covers it up (imo).
I have no idea why you are so convinced that people are just as likely to join hate groups when they don’t know that they exist, but okay…
Because, as I said, they find each other online, in social settings, etc. Shit, the Aryan Brotherhood started as a prison gang. Banning the salute isn’t going to keep people from knowing about hate groups because that’s not how they find out about them to begin with.
I’m not arguing against banning hate speech, I’m just saying that that alone isn’t going to fix the problem. We also need to figure out why people are drawn to this stuff. Is it poverty? Lack of education? Lead in the drinking water?
Yes, no one is denying there are other ways to do it.
What you seem to be suggesting is that if you eliminate literally the most easy way to find who to sign up with when it comes to joining a hate group, it won’t make a difference.
What exactly do you think the point of public advertising is? Aesthetics?
No, I don’t think banning the nazi salute will make much of a difference as far as hate group recruitment. I also don’t think it would be easy, at least in the US. Mileage may vary in other countries, of course.
I'mIn American prisons are white, black, Latin superiority gangs.Yeah, but most of the people I imagine pulling a Nazi salute “as a joke like Elon (were so hilarious haha look at those [insertracialslur])” might be deterred from pulling their shitty “joke” if it actually means prison time automatically. It doesn’t matter if it’s just like a week. Try explaining to an employer why you didn’t attend the important meeting you had because you sat in jail for a week for a fascist “joke”.
I mean free speech is a deeply contradictory concept, which i largely support, however, people having the “right” to harm others as fascists mean to do is not a human right but a right of domination, which I am actively and deeply set against. And prison justice is just a “right” to harm others, only one that we are conditioned to live with.
It does create an opportunity for a little irony, which I can’t pass up.
But part of my criticism is not just “Nazis exist in prison” but “carcerial justice is just as fascistic as anything we associate with fascism” which never gets even thought about let alone discussed anywhere but the fringes of the prison abolition movement.
And things like prisons and police, the existence of many kinds of crime, particularly property crimes, need to be considered historically contingent, so that no matter how much we want to just delete all prisons they do serve as a solution to contradictions that arise within our society. So that the struggle to abolish carcerial punishment has to be simultaneously replaced with something better. Which is just and worth fighting for.
Getting rid of heil Hitler hand gestures in public might prevent the public proliferation of “signs” of fascism, the actual causes of it are institutional and function in cooperation with systems of institutional racism, Etc., and until those tendencies are abolished, and that is the worst expressions of class domination within capitalism, fascism will always be a problem to contend with.
In other words, we have fascism because we have prisons. Or rather, the underlying logic of fascism is just the underlying logic that justifies carcerial justice, taken to its natural conclusions.
So its not just irony, its like a double irony
Yeah because it’s childish strawman. Of course it’s not the same to have to spend a day in a drunk tank because you lost control and were kicking off mirrors from cars as it is to be marched into a gaschamber.
That’s false equivalency.
Also, if you had ever picked up a single philosophy book, you’d know how much positive and negative freedoms and the right of the government to impose those on others is actually discussed. It’s like >95% of what philosophy has been going on about for the 1000 years.
Not really. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogue
Fucking roflmao, literally. Well I didn’t drop to the floor but I did roll around giggling a bit on my chair. I would suggest reading “Leviathan” from Hobbes, but since I know you won’t, here’s a video sort of summarising Hobbes’ thoughts, by a professional philosopher called Alain de Botton and his channel “School of Life” POLITICAL THEORY - Thomas Hobbes
Alain de Botton omg and you thought I was funny.
Anyway you completely missed my point wrt false equivalence since both things are true. Its called nuance, dingus. I believe in the continual progress of human spirit, similar to Hegel’s formulation of freedom, but I’m a materialist and Marxist, not right wing liberal like Hobbes. Because believe it or not society has progressed since the 1680s when the ascendent English bourgeoisie seized control of the British empire and needed rational justification for their rule – which Thomas Hobbes Leviathan is. Its a piece of political philosophy, and certainly worth studying. I haven’t read it and might not, but I know others that have. I get the gist I don’t need Alain de Buttman’s watered down baby philosophy for online babies, please and thank you.
I’ve read thousands of pages of philosophy. You’ve watched thousands of hours of vaush and destiny. We are not the same. Come back when you’re capable of making a point or having an adult discussion. I’ll be here.
Actually if you could point to the place in the book where he argues definitively for carcerial justice over other forms, effectively addressing arguments that have come since from intellectuals like Michel Foucault and Angela Davis, as well as the abolition movement more broadly, that would be super helpful to a big dumb idiot like me a hurr durr
Oh you’re laughing at it because he’s so familiar to you because it’s the most “hardcore” philosophy you’ve ever engaged with? Yeah, I assumed as much.
That’s why I assumed you wouldn’t read “Leviathan” and from all your writing it’s clear you never have previously. Or even listened to a summary. Perhaps had those playing in the background, pretending like you’ve been listening to them.
The way you can’t distinguish a thought from the philosopher who brought it up shows that you larp as being read instead of being read.
Oh you most certainly do. It would definitely improve your skill on larping as a philosopher if you had the ability to pay any attention.
Thanks. That got rid of some phlegm. THOUSANDS of pages you say. Wow. That must be like… at least a half a dozen books. :D
We’ll continue the conversation when you understand how asinine your earlier garbage is. If you weren’t an egoistical teenager who’s all about what other’s perceive for them to have read and done and actually put import on understanding the things people say to you, you would at least skim what the Leviathan is about so you’d know what point I was making. But the fact you’re incapable of even understanding that means that I’m simply not interested in anything you have to say as you have zero intellectual curiosity. That sort of youthful egoism is fine, as long as it’s driven by actual intellect.
Yours isn’t.
Your previous comment. It looks a bit like how ridiculous it looks to you to now look illustrations of what people in the late 19th century thought the 21st century would look like. Firemen with flappy wings and whatnot. It’s utterly ridiculous because you know that would be the absolute worst way to go about flying. Either the wings would have to be absolutely massive or go really fast and still they’d be much worse than most other options we have for personal flying we can already achieve, like the jetpacks. The reason I’m saying this is that is what it looks like to me when reading your “arguments”. I can see how someone ignorant of political theory might formulate a naive theory like that, but the theory itself is utterly ridiculous and wouldn’t work because of facts you do not seem to know.
If you have even the tiniest bit of intellectual curiosity, you’ll look up what the Leviathan is about (while remembering to distinguish between an author and an idea) and then you’ll see why your earlier assertions are laughably naive.
Why are you so rude and mean? I actually have an interest in philosophy, which you apparently do too? But I don’t use it to like make people feel stupid. I’m nobody. I’m just like a guy with a job and a family that reads hard books. I’m proud of what little intellectual accomplishment I’ve made, and I encourage others to study. But dude I don’t fucking care about reading Leviathan! I’ll read books by people who have read it, but not Alain de Botton because he is a turd, but despite a good measure of intellectual curiosity, more than most in my life at least, it isn’t something that will come up for me. I’m glad you got so much out of it. made it into your whole identity maybe, but it hasn’t come up for me in the way that will lead me to read it, at least not yet! All I can say if on my very long reading list, it isn’t on there and I don’t see that changing this year.
This book is so important and crucial to your point yet you can’t point to a single line or paragraph to support your non existent arguments, which amount to “ur dum”. Why not demonstrate how great a book it is by quoting a passage that is relevant? L
I’ve read more than 6 philosophy books in the last 6 months. You are strawmanning me, because I’m not who you have delusionally convinced yourself that I am. Its completely unnecessary and not at all about the topic at hand.
I’m neutral and you’re reading into it.
If you find it offensive that I caught on about you actually not having the authority which you pretend to have on the subject, then the “hostility” is from your own non-acceptance of your ignorance, not me calling out your hypocrisy. If you don’t pretend to be an expert falsely, people can’t shame you for falsely pretending to be an expert, can they?
Then don’t make statements like
Because it DOES GET DISCUSSED, you just “don’t fucking care” to read the discussion.
Just to alleviate the “you’re so mean” thing, the point here is very shortly that you can not have a society without some sort of a government. That probably sounds very authoritarian, because lots of people don’t use these words in the same context as they’re used in the philosophical discussion of politics. It’s because any society that comprises of more than three members will have some sort of rules. And those rules will then be enforced in some way. And that is the question they try to answer in these HUNDREDS OF YEARS OF PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION that isn’t hidden anywhere and accessible to pretty much literally everyone in the world through the miracle of the internet, which you claim doesn’t exist.
They do explore the alternatives. Pretty much all of them. You should just start with Hobbes because he sort of started the conversation because it was around the time belief in the “divine right of kings” was already faltering. And since you “don’t fucking care about reading Leviathan”, you might put on the “baby philosophy” or whatever you called it (seems you’ve cleaned up your answer a bit) from de Botton and quickly listen to the cliffnotes on what he thought about it from a guy — who is making pop-philosophy videos, yes, but — who also is a professional philosopher and is objectively communicating their ideas rather skilfully. As that will save you time on reading the centuries of books on the matter as you can get the cliffnotes or sort of “previously on:” so that you can get to the book that you’re more interested in reading but which comments a lot on the earlier works which you may or may not have read.
Like 14 years ago or something I had just recently seen Slavoj Zizek, and I enjoyed his analysis (and honestly just his person.) So after watching some of his speeches and the The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema and The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, I decided to pick up a book of his. It’s genuinely the only book I’ve ever just given up on, as back then I was nearly as read and it made so many references to specific ideas of specific earlier philosophers, that I spent like a few days getting through just the first pages as I had to teach my self so much stuff backwardly before really understanding what Slavoj was trying to say. I also tried reading it without doing that and it was fine, you can keep up the context somewhat, but I noticed after a chapter or two that I had gotten something wrong on a fundamental level and had been getting some tiny idea wrong for a few pages and it had coloured my read of it and I had to do it all again.
So, because Hobbes is one of the fundamental thinkers on the subject, despite his own personal political views, he does make good and fundamental points about society. They’re not too complex, so you honestly don’t need to read the entire book. Fucking read a wiki-article what do I care. I’m just trying to point out that because you’re trying to make spending a night in a drunk tank “as fascist” as marching people to a gas chamber, you don’t seem to have a too nuanced understanding of the necessities of certain control measures in a society.
Google “State of Nature” to start with idk.
Like idk how you’d expect me to politely inform you of just how wrong you were in that statement because it would require me to author a succinct reply that would still convey hundreds of years of philosophical ponderings which you thought didn’t even exist?
edit that wasn’t exactly that “shortly”. well, to me it was, but I gather other people perceive it differently sometimes
This thread is a fuckin roller-coaster of back and forths!
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3b3741a9-bd92-4744-bea9-d173feb0ba69.gif">
I do think it’s funny that they accuse you of being mean one comment after they insult you.
Your should’ve seen it before he edited the impulsively rotten childish comments like “baby philosophy” or something about de Bottons pop-philosophy videos. They’re pop-sci on YT sure but for that format, rather good for the very basics and he covers a lot of significant topics, ideas and authors.
Good luck with that happening and allowing Nazis to be Nazis right out in the open.
Nazism, and I’m not sure why you don’t know this, is the opposite of progress.
I’m not false equivocating in order to take the fight off of fascism, both things are true. My point is we don’t fight fascism by allowing courts to make performative gestures outlawing performative gestures, its done by organizing against the worst tendencies of capital. By all means ban Nazi salutes it won’t affect anyone I associate with, and if it did I would no longer.
Lots of people seem to think having a slight criticism is the same as trying to bad faith rhetorically muddy the waters to give space for fascism. But no, that’s what liberalism does, consistently.
Alain de Botton did some really good philosophy videos, maybe for the BBC.
Recommended.
It’s illegal to do it “in public”. So doing it at work is perfectly fine, as long as it isn’t a public place.
Alright. Make me a video of you giving the salute to to your boss during work hours and we’ll see how it goes.
Maybe he works at Tesla? Hell probably get a raise and employee of the month trophy.
As if he ever saw Elon while working at the factory floor, loltz. And the manager might not take too kindly, no matter who they work for. Lots of them prolly got their job before Elon went batshit insane. Or took mask off, whichever. Or pre- crippling ketamine addiction. Idk.
It was a joke, chill bro.
Well both can be true.
I did understand it was a joke but also yes I wish I could but there’s laundry to do and a genocide to stop.
Woosh
Work like at a business open to the public?
Obviously not on the street, but on private business premises.
Like disturbing the peace laws.
I was joking but it seems people don’t understand humor.
Yes, I’m famous for not understanding humor.
Everyone on Lemmy knows me as a 100% humorless person.
I sat on a jury recently and a large part of the case had to do with prison culture. It’s so incredibly sad how accurate this is.
My dad was a prison guard, I’ve thought about some of these dynamics a lot over the years.
The main Australian neo-nazi organisation has known connections to ‘bikie’ gangs, so you’ve hit the mark here too.
The best answer, while it’s still an option, is to continue community anti-fascist action against them. [enjoy1] [enjoy2]
Someone performing a Nazi salute is already a Nazi.
Making the gesture illegal is a clear communication to all Australians that we will not tolerate this ideology.
Yeah. How about from 1948?
Yeah its bad, but jail time for it?
It’s actually really easy to not be a nazi.
Does your arm inadvertently do Nazi salutes or can you refrain from seig heiling in public like any normal person?
Where did I say that I do that or that I think it’s okay? Or are you so blinded by rage that you have to go to this?
Please quote what you think I said that suggests I am showing any rage.
Yes.
Can Canada do this too?
See, I am overall against any and all limits of free speech but…
Yeah. Context matters. And in current world context, good job Australia, hope outher countries take notes.
Literal hate crimes, I’m all for. A gesture with your arm gets you 12 months? That’s too much, regardless of its origin or meaning.
I’ll say, likely wasting my digital breath, I do not support any sort of Nazi bullshit or affiliates. But truly, outlawing gestures is a next level, knee jerk reaction to a problem they don’t know what else to do to solve.
It’s a nazi fucken salute mate. What part of it isn’t a hate crime?
The part where it’s raising your arm at an angle. You dislike it because of what it means and signifies, but imagine some group took ‘flipping the bird’ to align with their ideology and in 20 years your kid gets arrested for flipping someone off.
Obviously a silly example but you have to look past the context and think about what are we really doing here? Jailing people for a gesture?
That’s fucking wild.
While without context I’d agree that banning a gesture is a bit much, especially with such steep measures, I think that in a world when one of the de facto co-leaders of major if not the main world superpowers openly does nazi salute twice, we need to up the guard and cut this shit in the bud.
And as you said - we don’t know how to solve USA becoming a nazi state rapidly. Nobody does. And third reich ain’t gonna hold a candle to USA if they decide it’s time for blitzkrieg. So doingall we can to damage and reduce nazizm where we still can is admirable.
I generally don’t do “slippery slope” arguments, and I also dislike invoking the “paradox of tolerance”, but I will say that I think the messaging here is important.
To me, it’s not “just a gesture”. It’s a very clear and intentional demonstration of ideological alignment, and it’s an ideology of hate and intolerance.
I’m absolutely ok with expressing, as a society, that we will not accept this ideology amongst us. If they want to scuttle around through the cracks like cockroaches then so be it.
The problem is application of this kind of law tends to be highly subjective depending on who is in power. This law is ironically ripe for abuse by fascists. This type of free speech should be met with universal scorn, shaming, and ostracism, not jail.
Yeah nah. Any law is ripe for abuse by fascists.
To me the law is less about punishing Nazis and more of a clear statement that as a society we find this ideology unacceptable.
Fair point, best explained response yet.
You sound like those cops who tell victims of domestic violence that there’s nothing they can do until lives are being threatened.
Cool dude. You sound like a battered house wife that sticks up for her abusive husband.
If you read the article, just a gesture with your arm does not land a person a 12-month prison sentence. It needs to be in public and in combination with: hateful speech, or a hateful act. It seems to be an add-on for specific types of hate crimes.
Excellent, then I’m all for it.
So Elon Musk would’ve been in the clear.
Actually I don’t think so, because not only was it on a public stage, he also used racist dog whistles during his speech. If Musk had zeek-hailed like he did during that speech, in Australia, it’s possible he would have gotten 12 months.
Knowing my luck, I’d get 12 months for having my arm at an unfavourable angle while giving directions.
That’s where you lost me.
I don’t really understand this whole “free speech” thing. If it were ww2 would you be worried about nazis having free speech or would you do what needed to be done?
This isn’t WWII, we aren’t in war. By letting go of free speech you are letting goverment tell you what is ok to talk about, and by doing that you allow them to expand taboo. In times of need like today, that is necessary evil, however normally that is something out of horror.
For example, whether you agree or not, at the end of WW II communism was seen as almost as bad as nazizm, and in USA I think, may be wrong, that it was seen as worse. What’s bad is that every social policy is coupled with it mentally. If free speech wasn’t a thing, USA could tell it’s citizens that talking about nazizm, communism, social policies or unions is strictly forbidden under threat of, at least, financial fine.
Oh boy do I have news for you about what the US did without laws to anyone considered communist. Free speech has and will never be absolute, so it is up to us to determine what is allowed and what is not.
There it is. I’ll bet criticizing Isreal is considered anti-semetic too. Meanwhile Aboriginals still don’t have rights.
You may want to quote some more of that bit, bud. It was a FOILED BOMBING PLOT targeting Jewish Australians.
How is Israel relevant?
But yes, native people always seem to get the shaft, no matter where you are. Again though, not relevant in this thread surely.
Sorry what rights don’t Aboriginals have ?
I’m gonna be generous and assume the original commenter meant “Aboriginals on average have significantly worse outcomes compared to non-aboriginal Australians due to historical persecution”
That’s a fair and accurate statement.
“Aboriginals don’t have rights” is false, hyperbolic, and unhelpful.
The thing is this just makes it “cooler” among the Nazis because now it’s illegal. It plays right into their persecution complex. It also opens up a legal morass of trying to define a hand gesture in court. To me this seems like it’s fighting the symptoms and not the underlying problems.
Only until they are caught.
Then they become martyrs for their group.
A Nazi/Hitler salut was always illegal in Germany after WW 2 and courts figured it out what counts as a nazi salute and what not (it often comes down to context i guess).
Nonsense.
Courts are good at figuring out what constitutes an illegal action. It’s what they’re intended to do and what they have been doing since the dawn of civilisation.
I don’t really care what Nazis think is “cool”.
It’s addressing the underlying problem by communicating the seriousness of the threat of fascism to everyone.
I hope you’re right but I’m less optimistic about courts.
Remember that Hersant idiot from a few months back did the salute outside a courthouse.
He was found guilty, judge gave no fucks: www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-08/…/104443118
Judges could have biases of their own whether they realise it or not.
I feel like this copypasta is mandatory here:
I first saw this on reddit
Also this idiot performing a nazi salute outside court after just being sentenced, got busted. What a nimrod.
“No charges to be laid over alleged Nazi salute made by officer at Victoria Police academy”
amp.abc.net.au/article/104796744
Cops get to be a little Nazi as a treat.
Yeah. There’s not a lot of information there though. Who really knows what happened.
Maybe the police covered it up. Maybe it wasn’t a Nazi salute.
This guy was pretty emphatic. I mean there was nothing about how she’s a good officer or maybe a misunderstanding or whatever. That was a sincere and direct statement of position and intent to prosecute any offenders.
I think a distinction can be drawn between this and what Australia is reported to have done. Imo, this is an example of social intolerance, and I’d argue that there is a sharp distinction between that and policing behavior through the use of governmental force. So, I don’t see this excerpt as being a supportive argument for Australia’s new law; I see it as being an example of how the issue can be handled socially.
That’s a fair point. I didn’t really post it thinking “this anecdote supports this law”. I just think it’s worth remembering the insidious manner in which these organisations encroach on society.
Obviously laws are intended to be policed through governmental force, but they’re also a communication regarding what a society considers acceptable.
For example, if a society legislates that the age of consent is 16, then people being charged with statutory rape is only a small part of the impact of that law. In Australia we literally have police giving presentations in schools to ensure that teenagers are aware of the laws that exist to protect them, and how something that might seem innocent to a 15 year old (like sending your crush a photo of your boobs or something), can have dire consequences. In summary, the existence of the law is society standing together and sending a very clear message that some behaviors are unacceptable, a formalisation of social intolerance if you will.
Fascist organisations have been successfully recruiting, and it seems like they’re gaining momentum. Sure some bar might be able to keep skin heads out, but “soft” social intolerance very obviously is inadequate.
The thing is, these groups don’t start with hatred right off the bat. A normal kid might see a fascist organisation as some kind of boys club. Cool iconography, loyalty, camaraderie, whats not to like? The existence of this law will ensure that people are aware of the depravity of this ideology and reduce their ability to seduce recruits by deception.
That this isn’t necessarily true: For example, if a society is ruled by a tyrannical government, then there is a divergence between the laws imposed on the citizenry, and what the citizenry thinks is socially just.
Sure ok but in a democracy the presumption is that law makers have the support of the public.
In this specific case most (maybe all?) Australian state’s and territories have already enacted similar laws, the federal law just reinforces them. That doesn’t really seem tyrannical?
For my own reference, do you have any empirical sources to back up the claim that opinions sympathetic to fascism are accelerating? I’m not disputing your claim — I just like sources.
No.
Presumably, this is under the assumption that education and awareness are insufficient means to that end.
It’s not really an assumption. Clearly, education and awareness has been insufficient.
An Australian anti-fascist perspective: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ2KvtlLJyQ
Good. This needs to be worldwide. They need to reeducate the people as to
A: Why the Nazis were bad beyond ‘they wanna kill people!’ Their utter disgust of science and technology, and how their social policies were actively fucking over their own people in addition to others. B: Just how incompetent the Nazis were, and were far from a hyperefficient machine. C: Just how bad they were at science and despite their demonization, West Germany was never fully denazified and how many former Nazi officers returned to work as politicians and military officers.
There is a plethora of books written before and during WW2 that showcased just how evil the Nazis were and how fucked their society was. They also need a review of Mein Kampf and how Hitler dictated it. Exactly like how Trump dictated the Art of the Deal to a writer and did not write it himself.
My suggestion of one book written during the Nazi Era is Education for Death by Gregor Ziemer. The society it showed was really, REALLY fucked. How anyone could think this was a paradise is beyond me. Most modern fascists, with their donut bodies and chinless faces would be the types considered feeble and probably sterilized as a ‘charity’.
I don’t see how mandatory jail time helps with “They need to reeducate the people”
People tend to get further radicalized in prison, not less.
If you want to Re-educate people you need to invest in education in the first place.
Once someone buys into Nazi rhetoric it can take decades to deprogram them. How do you suggest this to be done when it takes far shorter amount of time to spread their rhetoric?
Their point is that not only does jailing them not deprogram them or prevent them from spreading their rhetoric, it is more likely to have the opposite effect.
That is a poor point and allowing it to spread is the reality we are actually facing.
Case in point. Germany has been tightly controlling this for several decades. Is their society now overran by Nazi rhetoric? The answer is no.
That example proves the first users point. The answer to the German question is that they spend a great deal of money on having an excellent education system, and spend a lot of time educating their youth with an honest, unflinching look at the history of Nazism and fascism.
I’m not even saying don’t throw people in jail, I’m simply saying it is pure idiocy to believe that will do anything at all to help the underlying problem.
I think it was more that they had their country completely flattened due to them being fascists, and didn’t want it to happen again.
Being German, unfortunately the answer to that is yes, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum, it’s because the media and politicians have been courting right wing ideologies over the past 20 years to an extent that things have become normalized that should have never been normalized, e.g. framing asylum seekers as „migrants“ and adopting dehumanizing language against them, which has led to us having AFD polling at 20% and CDU at 30%.
CDU has recently collaborated with the right wing extremist AFD to push through a proposal for an anti-migration bill that violates our constitution. There has been an uproar but CDU and AFD actually polled higher after this. Our country is in deep trouble and we’re moving into a very scary direction.
Thank you for that perspective. It is sad to see all that diligence being chipped away.
Corps always swing right…darn.
Some people need to be separated. This isn’t about censorship, it’s about group dynamics.
Let’s take it from both angles - just to avoid politics. A disruptive kid in a classroom affects every other kid. Get rid of that kid, and suddenly the whole classroom improves. Everyone can agree to that.
The other side - a company has a pro-union worker. Shitty company doesn’t like not controlling their workers, so they find a way to fire them.
Back to the Nazi, separate them from the rest of society. We don’t need them.
Permanently. Like how we permanently separated Nazis from the rest of the world in the 1940s.
It depends upon whether Australian prisons are focused on rehabilitation or punishment.
Jail doesn’t work for Nazis. The world learned only one things solves the “fascism problem”.
facists are deadend for humanity
Operation Paperclip.
Those were the exceptions. When it came to things like medical science with experiments on POWs and concentration camp prisoners they were so abysmal it wasn’t funny.
First, I despise the fucking Nazis and Communists. The disgusting human experiments that were conducted by the Germans and Japanese were gobbled up by the Allied medical professionals.
you can just call them fascists
They were useless scientifically and did not yield usable results. I will get you a paper proving it later.
As an American, this feels wrong on the surface with our broad first amendment and all.
But when I think about it with my morality-enabled brain? Fuckin’ strewth mates! Get those cunts!
They do not give a rat’s fuck about YOUR freedom of speech and expression, and have been fighting in every single legal and illegal manner to suppress it. At this point in time it must be acknowledged that there needs to be that limit on them to force them back into being a small pathetic group that they were and to hopefully allow society to outgrow them in the future.
They will be ‘so much for the tolerant left’ so matter what you do, and they will actively censor anyone and anything they don’t like also no matter what. Liberals have been highly prone to hiring fascist and bigoted nutjobs in order to allow for a more ‘balanced’ perspective, but any attempt to make them hire more liberal minded people for their own platforms is brushed aside without a second thought. That shit doesn’t work on them. They want access to your stuff while also 100% forbidding you from even looking at their stuff.
No disagreement on the reality of the evil bullshit going on around here, that’s for sure. It was just a throwaway line on my part to set up the comment, but as always the devil is in the details.
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Send nazi pig Elon there on a one way flight.
Hey now! Australia is probably sick of everyone just sending criminals there!
Yes that’s how corruption works
I used to be a person that believed very strongly in freedom of speech and that anything which was categorized as a philosophy or belief shouldn’t be censored.
However, after seeing how hard fascism has taken hold in America, I’m beginning to change my mind.
Freedom of speech was created so citizens could feel safe criticising the government, not so they could spout hatred about people who were different to them. You can say whatever the fuck you want, up until it makes others unsafe, that doesn’t mean oh they say bad words and im offended, or i don’t like them promoting that candidate over the one i like that has christian* values. No, that means you words and actions intentionally incite hatred and violence.
All this hiding behind free speech shite thats been happening for a very long time has just given the shit cunts the courage to be shit cunts. And now because the US shat the bed and its been spreading the world, the rest of the world needs to sanitise.
There’s something to be said for that, knowing they are shit cunts.
It’s crazy watching the left throw freedom of speech under the bus as soon as people start saying things they don’t like.
Really makes me proud not to consider myself a liberal at this point. Ya’ll are nuts.
100% unregulated free speech would benefit the rich disproportionately. Is there no line for you? No nuance to how speech functions in our society?
American fascism is unique because it solely exists to distract the working class from their exploitation by the ruling class.
In other words, it’s cool to be a useful idiot because that’s what makes rich people richer the fastest.
Kudos to Australia. Leon Hitler should travel there, have his arrested and deposited in the middle of the Great Australian Desert.
Any good tech companies in Australia? How hard are the citizenship requirements if you avoid all the Mel Gibsons?
I can’t see this actually happening since people who continue to commit crime, are re-released on bail.
Redefining the freedom of speech can be a slippery slope. It will depend upon who is in power and their personal views. Hate speech is something that can be targetted. There would need to be statutory limitations to prevent misuse of the legislative principles. If the Germans can do it right, so can we, wherever we live.
Slippery slope
Maybe Musk should take one of his Boeing Cyberplanes to Australia
I don’t think this behavior should be socially tolerated; however, I don’t think it’s a good idea to police it through the use of governmental force.
My thoughts exactly. I have absolutely no sympathy for Nazis, or anyone else who thinks mass murder and genocide were good policy. But one of the things that makes a free society different from Nazi Germany, is free expression. If we limit free expression to only things the people in charge want expressed, no matter how noble the intent that starts us down a very dark path very quickly.
The way we fight Nazis and racism is not by beating them up or jailing them. It’s by teaching each other and our children why they are wrong, by learning and understanding what it is like to have racism directed against you. And thus, we defeat racism not with force but with empathy.
As far as I’m concerned, this is the sort of policy that would make Hitler proud. It’s the sort of policy that would be enacted in Nazi Germany, or Soviet Russia.
How well did that work out for us this time? We have concrete evidence that this is not enough and that we need to try something else at this point.
There was a lot more going on in Germany leading up to WW2.
Neo-nazis don’t have to deal with the Treaty of Versailles in 2025, for example.
Because the man you don’t like got elected we should shred the 1st Amendment right of free expression? Or do I misunderstand you?
Oh it absolutely is.
If you don’t think it should be socially tolerated, then great, regulations are how we enforce social tolerance in a manner that isn’t just “I don’t like you, please stop, but also I won’t do anything to you if you keep doing it.”
Furthermore, and this is something you’ll probably see brought up a lot when using that talking point, there is a paradox of tolerance that cannot be avoided when it comes to issues like Nazism. Nazi rhetoric is inherently discriminatory and intolerant. If you allow it to flourish, it kills off all other forms of tolerance until only itself is left. If you don’t tolerate Nazi rhetoric, it doesn’t come to fruition and destroy other forms of tolerance.
Any ideology that actively preaches intolerance towards non-intolerant groups must not be tolerated, otherwise tolerance elsewhere is destroyed.
(This mini comic explains the paradox well, as well.)
<img alt="" src="https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/e357fb95-7bc8-4e4b-9a94-8bdb02f3f489.jpeg">
I think a more forceful alternative could be being something like “I wont allow you into my place of business”. I think one could also encounter issues with finding employment, or one could lose their current employment. Social repercussions like that can be quite powerful imo. I think the type of tolerance that’s damaging is the complacent/quiet type where one simply lets them be without protest.
Ah yes, not letting Nazis buy from a business, at the business’s will, dependent on every single individual place of employment all knowing they’re a Nazi and actively choosing to deny them business and employment, as opposed to… just locking them up so they don’t have a chance of their views being spread in the world. Truly, the “more forceful alternative.”
I only meant more forceful than your only stated possibility:
Okay, let’s throw that out then, and look at this objectively. Social shunning or unemployment does not discourage something more than imprisonment, because not only does imprisonment do all of those things, it also restricts individual autonomy altogether, and is thus a more harsh punishment than just denying someone business or employment. Stating that businesses rejecting Nazis will somehow be more of a punishment than arresting them is quite irrational.
Especially when you consider that businesses look out for what will make them the most profit, not what’s socially right/wrong. If the Nazis had more money than the non-Nazis, then substantially less businesses would do anything to stop them, whereas ideally, the law doesn’t care how much money you have, and if you break it, you go to jail. Obviously the wealthy are able to skirt many regulations using money, but there are many that they can’t. If a billionaire stabs someone in broad daylight, they go to jail regardless.
I don’t agree that this is necessarily true. For example, what of the case of a tyrannical government? Society may be accepting of a behavior, yet the behavior may be an imprisonable offense. Therefore something being an imprisonable offense doesn’t necessitate that it be a socially shunned behavior (by the majority).
Hm. Your statement “If the Nazis had more money than the non-Nazis” is an important distinction; however, I think it also crucially depends on the distribution of nazis throughout the populace (assuming the society in question in governed by a majoritarian democratic system). The statement “If the Nazis had more money than the non-Nazis”, I think, infers the potential of monopolistic behavior in that ownership of the market becomes consolidated in the hands of those who are nazi-sympathetic. In this case, assuming the nazis were a minority of the populace, the government would step in as it must prevent monopolistic market behavior to ensure fair market competition ^[1]^; however, if the nazis were a majority of the populace, I fear the argument is moot as they likely would be the ones creating the laws in the first place ^[2]^, assuming they had a monopoly on power (as if they didn’t, it’s plausible that the minority with a monopoly on power would revolt), and I think it would be plausible that they would create a market regulating body that is favorable to nazi-sympathetic entities.
References
1. “Capitalism”. Wikipedia. Published: 2025-02-08T16:40Z. Accessed: 2025-02-08T22:13Z. URI: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism. - ¶1. > […] The defining characteristics of capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, [competitive markets], price systems, recognition of property rights, self-interest, [economic freedom], work ethic, [consumer sovereignty], decentralized decision-making, profit motive, a financial infrastructure of money and investment that makes possible credit and debt, entrepreneurship, commodification, voluntary exchange, wage labor, production of commodities and services, and a strong emphasis on innovation and economic growth. […] 2. “Majoritarianism”. Wikipedia. Published: 2025-01-15T01:23Z. Accessed: 2025-02-08T22:19Z. URI: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majoritarianism. - ¶1. > Majoritarianism is a political philosophy or ideology with an agenda asserting that a majority, whether based on a religion, language, social class, or other category of the population, is entitled to a certain degree of primacy in society, and has the right to make decisions that affect the society. […]
The government rarely actually steps in, even in cases of demonstrable monopolies. This is very easy to see in our world today, and will always be the case as long as you live in a capitalist system. Capitalism grants power to the capital holders by allowing them to buy the means of productions, restricting the power of workers to mobilize against corporate action, elect representatives not favorable to capital owners, etc. It causes anti-monopolistic tendencies to waver, because in a system built on being able to buy up businesses, capital concentration is the design, not just an unintended side effect.
A group of people do not need to be the majority of the population to hold drastically more wealth, and thus a direct ability to impact the choices of businesses. See: the top 1% of wealth holders owning 30% of wealth, and the bottom 50% of wealth holders owning just a few percentage points.
<img alt="" src="https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/22accfa8-3181-4974-a18c-b63d2c193888.png">
Critically though, we need to look at the possibility of such a drastically negative outcome occurring in both of our possible systems. In mine, Nazism simply is not given a chance from the start. It is not given the opportunity to even attempt a power grab, because those who publicly spread the ideology are imprisoned.
In yours, they are given the ability to spread their ideology, still get employment and buy goods at sympathetic businesses, can gain functional societal acceptance by accumulating wealth, and so on. Your system does less to stop Nazi ideology from spreading than mine does. It is fundamentally less hostile to Nazis.
Now, I’m going to try consolidating my responses to all your other replies in this one comment, since I want to try and keep this tidy.
They can do so, but they are less effective. We as a society, generally, hold distaste for people who do murders. If we lived in a society where nobody was ever imprisoned for murder, would we see less murder? Of course not, because the only consequence to doing so would be social shunning, but you would still be free to do whatever else you please in your life, and if you’re a person that doesn’t care what people think of you, or can surround yourself in a community of like-minded murderers, then social shunning does nothing to disincentivize you from murdering more people. Imprisonment exists for a reason, that being it is more effective than other means of preventing behavior, such as social shunning.
The exact same logic applies to Nazism. The ideology, after spreading far enough and gaining power, inevitably leads to outcomes that most of us would find highly undesirable, such as the genocide of entire groups of individuals, and thus should be treated as such, with the strongest force possible to reduce the chance of it spreading by as much as possible.
Sorry if I was unclear by what I meant here. I meant specifically that imprisonment isolates you from the rest of society, by locking you up either in a cell block with very few other people to communicate with (relatively speaking) or by putting you in solitary, with no people to communicate with. You objectively have less ability to interact with other human beings, and have been “shunned” as a result. Or at least, you experience similar effects. (Social deprivation, being placed in situations only involving other people rejected from the common populace, etc) Again, apologies if I was unclear.
I would like to clarify that I am not advocating for tolerance. It’s quite the contrary. I am advocating for very vocal intolerance of these groups and their behaviors. It is simply my belief that governmental force is not a necessary means to this end, not to mention that it is incompatible with the ideas of liberalism ^[1]^, which I personally espouse.
References
1. Title: “Liberalism”. Wikipedia. Published: 2025-02-02T19:43Z. Accessed: 2025-02-08T05:47Z. URI: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism. - ¶1 > […] Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. - Policing speech is incompatible with the freedom of speech.
Liberalism has proven ineffective at keeping fascists out of power I say we do something else.
If I understand you correctly, you are saying that you think the current government (USA) is fascist. If so, would you mind describing exactly why you think that? Do note that I’m not disputing your claim — I’m simply curious what your rationale is.
You can’t out-auth a fascist without becoming a fascist.
If you’re going to do something like jail subversive elements, you best make sure you can’t be considered a subversive element yourself.
Saying we shouldn’t police those behaviors is actively stating that you want to tolerate them, just via legal means rather than solely social ones. You say you don’t want to tolerate them socially, but when it comes to any actual legal intervention, suddenly, they should be tolerated. If saying they shouldn’t be stopped using the force of law isn’t tolerating the behavior more than saying we should stop them using the force of law, then I don’t know what is.
Then you should reconsider your ideology. If your ideology allows Nazis to face no legal consequences for being Nazis, while you simultaneously state that you don’t believe they should be tolerated, then you hold mutually contradictory views.
If you don’t think their views should be tolerated, you should support actions that prevent their views from being held and spread. If you don’t do that, then you inherently are tolerating them to an extent.
Yes, I agree that not using governmental force would be more legally tolerant — as you mentioned above:
(referencing your other comment for consolidation purposes)
So what we’ve established is that:
Your stance is categorically "I don’t think Nazis should be able to say the things that make them Nazis, and I’ll be mean to them about it and hope businesses shun them, but I won’t actually stop them from doing that."
So, what is your reasoning for why they should be shunned socially, but not legally? Why is it more beneficial to allow them to say specifically what they say, as opposed to preventing that by force?
I think this begs the question — is it certain that social intolerance wont prevent, or is likely to not prevent these ideologies from accelerating in adoption?
It may depend on what you mean by “beneficial”, but, generally, I’m not necessarily arguing that not imprisoning those espousing nazi-rhetoric would be more “positive” than the alternative, I simply fear the risks of going the route of governmental force outweigh the benefits. I fear tyrannical overreach, and I think a liberal approach, while not perfect, may be the best means to stave off this outcome. But, at least we have experiments like Australia, which can be examined from a distance.
Philosophically, the question becomes rather uncomfortable for me to answer; I personally don’t feel that I can be certain that my views are moral, so I tend to prefer the option that ensures the largest amount of ideological freedom. I understand that the paradox of tolerance is a threat to that idea, and it should be resisted, but I’m simply not convinced that imprisonment is the best antidote.
This is a loaded statement — it depends on what you mean by “being Nazis”.
Generally speaking, espousing/engaging in the support of many harmful beliefs traditionally held by Nazis, and generally fascists more broadly since Nazism is just a branch of fascism, such as:
Practically speaking, I think it would probably make the most sense to judge whether somebody is a “Nazi” legally, by requiring at least a few of these tenets to be met before any trial could take place to prevent false imprisonment and the like, but as these views are objectively harmful to society, I don’t believe they should be allowed to flourish, full stop.
If you don’t support imprisoning people who hold these views that directly lead to the death of many innocent people, the taking over of people’s land/homes, the destruction of democratic systems, and the elimination of entire races of people from populations, then you are inherently tolerating their beliefs.
To me, it feels like you are conflating some things here: I draw a distinction between how I try to conduct myself (and, by extension, how I think society should conduct itself), and how I think a government should conduct itself. Any common overlap, while it may theoretically draw from the same core personal beliefs, is more of a coincidence in practice, imo. Yes, I think that society should not socially tolerate any of these behaviors, and I think that society should take an active position to socially oppose them; but I don’t believe that a government should take action unless the well-being of an individual is actively under threat.
I could be wrong in my interpretation, but all of your examples seem to simply a be a difference of opinion (no matter how abhorrent and unpalatable an opinion may be). I don’t believe that one should be legally punished for a difference of opinion. The only one that may have some legal ground, in my opinion, as I currently understand your examples, is
but that would depend on how you are defining “support”.
I do the same thing. I don’t apply every possible way I conduct myself to how I think the government should regulate people’s actions, but when it comes to Nazism, I specifically believe the government should intervene, not because I personally wouldn’t do what they’re doing, but because their actions are observably, categorically harmful to society.
So you think society should oppose them, but when an institution to represent the will of society has the power to oppose them, you now no longer believe it’s justified to oppose them. You’re contradicting yourself.
Any furtherance of a Nazi agenda puts every individual in a free society under threat by its very nature. If you allow a Nazi to spread their rhetoric, you increase the likelihood of an actual fascist regime happening that harms millions, if not billions.
We fine people for speeding all the time even if they don’t kill someone in a car crash, because we know that if more people are speeding, the likelihood of a car crash will increase, and that is obviously undesirable if your goal is to preserve human life.
We should do everything we can to prevent Nazis from gaining any power, whether through political office or social relevance, because we know that when they are allowed to do so, the likelihood of a fascist regime existing that is harmful to the preservation of human life grows.
My opinion is that we should nuke X country and kill all of its citizens. I will spread this message, attempt to gain support for it, and hopefully get to a point where a member of the movement can gain political power that allows them to launch those nukes. Should I be allowed to do so, or should I only be stopped once I’ve already gained the power to launch those nukes, and have my finger over the button? After all, it’s just a difference of opinion.
Opinions can be harmful, not just because they can cause legitimate mental harm to those in the immediate vicinity on the receiving end of that rhetoric, but also because they can lead to harmful outcomes, that would otherwise not exist had the opinion not been allowed to spread.
If you support censoring/imprisoning those who hold that belief, then you support doing so to Nazis. If you don’t support doing so to Nazis, then you don’t know what Nazis do, or stand for.
This is yet another example of you holding contradictory views, where in one case you’re okay with the thing being stopped, but the moment someone with the “Nazi” label does those same things, you begin to drop your support for actually doing anything meaningful to prevent the ideology from spreading.
I support social actions that prevent their views from being held and spread.
I think you’ve made a fair point. I think, in this case, it depends on how you are defining freedom of speech ^[1.1]^. Freedom of speech doesn’t negate one’s freedom of association ^[1.2]^; it simply states that one should be free to express themselves without fear of censorship ^[2]^. Censorship requires active suppression of speech ^[3[4]]^; I argue that if one chooses to not associate with someone, they aren’t actively suppressing their speech. So, more to your point, allowing the nazis to express their opinions is an exercise of freedom speech. Being intolerable of nazis is an exercise of freedom of association (eg choosing to not associate with them) and freedom of speech (eg vocalizing one’s distaste of them).
All that being said, this makes me consider whether, philosophically, one’s political positions also apply to how one personally behaves. I think it could be said that one’s political philosophies derive from one’s personal morals.
References
1. Title: “Liberalism”. Publisher: Wikipedia. Published: 2025-02-02T19:43Z. Accessed: 2025-02-08T01:53Z. URI: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism. 1. ¶1. > […] Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, [freedom of speech], freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion. […] - Liberalism espouses freedom of speech. 2. ¶1. > […] Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, [freedom of assembly], and freedom of religion. […] - Liberalism espouses freedom of association. 2. Title: “Freedom of speech”. Publisher: Wikipedia. Published: 2025-02-03T14:50. Accessed: 2025-02-08T01:55Z. URI: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech. > Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. […] 3. Word: “Censorship”. Publisher: Merriam-Webster. Accessed: 2025-02-08T01:56Z. URI: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship. - §“noun” > <img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/616b565d-f308-4907-a518-7000ebe7f37d.png"> 4. Word: “Censor”. Publisher: Merriam-Webster. Accessed: 2025-02-08T01:57Z. URI: www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censoring. - §“verb” > <img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/89985303-6936-4f3f-b315-f86508fc5084.png">
Yes, it does. The extent to which I support any individual’s freedom of speech only extends until that speech causes demonstrable harm. Unfettered free speech has no beneficial social utility compared to free speech that has restrictions for things that cause great social harm.
People often get caught up in the idea of “free speech = good, therefore anything I disagree with should still be allowed to be said,” when it doesn’t actually provide any value to let them do so, and actually harms society in the process. People have the right to say almost anything they want, but if we know the things they’re saying inevitably lead to fascist systems of power that oppress and kill millions, then restricting their free speech as much as possible is always justifiable, because doing so directly reduces the chances of people dying unjustifiably.
Do we really want to mandate jail time though? It seems like maybe fines would be effective? I’m not in favor of inventing more ways to fill up for-profit prisons with non-violent offenders.
Fines are generally not as effective as we’d like, because fines only affect the poor. If you’re wealthy, a fine is nothing to you. If a working class person espousing Nazi ideology were to be fined, say, $10,000, that could possibly make them bankrupt. If Elon Musk was fined $10,000 every time he said something directly aligned with the Nazis, he’d still be a multi-billionaire.
Now, sure, we can adjust fines as a percent of income, for instance, which helps, but generally speaking, the loss of autonomy (imprisonment) discourages bad behavior more than the loss of money, thus it tends to be a better way to prevent given behaviors from occurring.
I understand, and I agree to an extent, but I think if the problem is the for-profit prisons, we should focus on not having for-profit prisons, rather than not prosecuting what should be crimes just because the current prison system is quite bad.
Nazis are inherently violent. They may not directly harm an individual, but the ideology revolves around harm coming to other groups. (e.g. how the Nazis killed Jewish people, advocated for the death of homosexuals, etc) When someone supports Nazism, they directly support an ideology that effectively mandates the death of many.
In the same way that I believe health insurance CEOs should be considered murderers when they deliberately implement bad algorithms that deny claims for the sake of shareholder profit, even though they didn’t directly cause a death, I believe that people who support ideologies that can lead to the death of many should be treated maybe not as someone who has done a murder, but as someone who allowed the means for a murder to happen, knowingly, gladly, and deliberately.
What you want is the government to enforce what you think the standards should be.
What you will get is the government enforcing what the government thinks the standards should be.
I disagree with the fundamental premise of your argument, and I cite the results of the last election is the foundation of my own.
This argument boils down to “You want the government to do a good thing, but bad people can abuse the government to do the opposite.” Sure, that happens sometimes.
But following your logic, I guess all laws shouldn’t exist then. After all, if we give the government the ability to do anything against any citizen, they might use it in a bad way! This argument is fundamentally unworkable, because it doesn’t just apply to enforcing rules regarding speech, it applies to all rules.
Yes, I believe the government should enforce the standards I believe are correct. No, I do not believe that simply by enforcing such standards the power is magically granted for them to use it incorrectly, in a way that they wouldn’t be capable of had my preferred regulation not been implemented. Whether Nazis are or aren’t allowed speech won’t stop a bad government from simply censoring acceptable speech, if the government is acting in bad faith. They will do so regardless of if anti-Nazi speech regulations were in place prior.
Should we never attempt to implement any positive policy if it grants power that could theoretically be abused?
You’re not following my logic.
That conclusion does not arise from my arguments.
I am saying that the law should be objective. “The speed limit is 35mph” is an objective law. Yes, it can be abusively enforced, by allowing some people to go 55, while stopping others at 36.
Contrast, “Disturbing the peace”, a purely subjective law. Cops apply that law to do pretty much anything they want, to anyone they want, at any time they want, with zero consequences. The only objective factor is your presence in public: It’s pretty hard to argue you were disturbing the peace from the comfort of your own home.
Concepts as nebulous and vague as the ones we are talking about here are as broadly and subjectively enforced as “disturbing the peace”. The Nazis could claim you are in violation of your laws if you support “pedophiles” (by which they mean “trans”). Or supporting “enemy invaders” (by which they mean “immigrants”). Even mentioning “Luigi” could qualify as a violation.
Never give the government a power that you would not give to the Nazis.
Nazism, however, can be more objectively defined than single-word terms, as you’ve used here.
For instance, if someone says the words “Heil Hitler” while raising their hands in a traditional Nazi salute, there isn’t exactly room for a fascist to go “weeeeelllll but you saying ‘black lives matter’ with your fist up is the same thing, actually,” if the law explicitly states that saying the exact words “Heil Hitler” while raising your hand in that salute is the specific thing required to get you imprisoned. Laws can be more objectively defined than “pedophiles,” “supporting enemy invaders,” or “Nazis.”
Nazis simply ignore the law. Trump is quite literally doing it right now, He’s passing executive orders he doesn’t actually have the legal capacity to enforce, which is then leading to things like congresspeople being prevented from entering buildings they have a right to enter, or databases being given to people without legally required security credentials. They don’t care what the law was, they care what it will be once they’re done screwing with it.
Whether or not you pass a law prohibiting explicit behaviors that are categorically harmful to society will not change whether or not they are then capable of manipulating the laws to do what they wanted to do to you regardless.
It will, however, heavily reduce the chances of them coming into power, and having the ability to misuse any laws or power they may have in the first place
And yes, it obviously does. You stated that we should not censor Nazis because Nazis in power later on could use that law to suppress others. The same logic applies to any other regulation or prohibition. We shouldn’t pass gun control legislation because it’s possible someone uses it to take the good people’s guns away. We shouldn’t imprison people for rape because someone could redefine what rape means to mean non-married people having sex. We shouldn’t jail pedophiles because they could redefine trans people as pedophiles simply for existing.
It’s the same logic all the way down. There is nothing different when it comes to imprisonment for Nazi-aligned speech/actions, or other dangerous speech/actions. All of them can be prohibited to an extent, even though there’s a possibility that the power dynamic could then be reversed later on by the same group of people being prohibited.
Look, I’m not going to keep going on this because I think it’s clear neither of us are changing our stances. Send a reply if you want, I’ll gladly read it, and give it some thought, but I’m done trying to continue a conversation if you think we shouldn’t try to stop Nazis because Nazis could possibly get in power and stop us instead. That applies to any regulation against any group that could possibly come into power, and I would encourage you to look back at the examples I provided, stop, and think about just how different the logic really is to the idea of censoring Nazis, because I think you’ll find it is, in fact, not different at all.
Then “HH” isn’t a violation. “88” isn’t a violation. They avoid the specific phrases, speak their hatred in any other terms not explicitly listed.
They laugh at the pointlessness of your law, then someone - maybe you, maybe them - expands that law to cover more and more hateful words. Then one of you takes the next step, and allows the government to decide an unlisted word is hateful.
No, it won’t. All you are doing is granting them powers to use against you when they do come into power.
Do you even understand the concept of fascism? It is an authoritarian ideal. Fascists thrive on the exercise of political power over others. They need the power to oppress, to subjugate. They need you to become oppressive. They need you to exercise your power to suppress them, so that when they do manage to get elected, you have set that precedent for them to use against you.
The way you destroy the Nazis is by ensuring your society values liberal ideals, and summarily rejects authoritarianism in all its forms. You can’t out-auth a fascist without becoming a fascist yourself.
well put. i still thoroughly disagree with you, mind, but this comment clicked my understanding of this argument.
Would you mind outlining why?
because giving them wiggle room in the law will only allow for them to destroy that legal protection for everyone else. thats literally what they advocate for.
I think it should be legal to do exactly one free punch on anyone who does a nazi salute.
I say two
Question for everyone supporting this: do you think saying women can’t think for themselves should be classified as hate speech?
Asking for a friend.
Because if you don’t see the nazis, then it’s OK that they’re nazis
Would, say, an actor playing a Nazi officer in a movie be protected from this?