Germany does not intend to silence anti-refugee posts. Germany wants to stop illegal incitement of hatred. Such as promoting or even threatening to burn down asylum centers, to hurt or even kill refugees and those that help them.

Those are not just words, asylum centers are being burned to the ground, refugees are attacked, just recently some were killed on the border the EU, just yesterday someone tried and almost suceeded in killing a politician who helped refugees.

You have to be insane to support this as free speech unless you support these nazis.

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

— Widely attributed to H. L. Mencken

Would HN be better if personal insults and death threats were allowed, would it improve the exchange of ideas and the expression of opinions?

Yes. Your idea of a personal insult is my idea of spirited debate. I've been warned twice in the past few weeks by HN moderators because I've used similes that they've found offensive. Honestly? I find that offensive. They'd better censor their censorship.

I'm no stranger to insults, I can take what I can dish, but I also think this is true: everybody can argue their point without being personally insulting (some, like me, take getting hellbanned a bunch of times, others just do it straight away), but not everybody can look past the insults and focus on the points made. So a free-for-all this excludes people who simply don't like being insulted while gaining nothing when it comes to the content of the discussion, the arguments.

FWIW, I'm not a huge fan of downvotes, and I don't even like things being ranked by upvotes. But the rough spirit of focusing on substance and backing up claims, that I like.

I think you will find many people disagreeing with you on that. In Germany it's even illegal to insult people because in Germany dignity is considered to be a human right just as much as freedom of speech is.

Clearly, Germany has failed - If people had any dignity, they wouldn't need a government to protect it.

The minister in talks with Facebook called the content "ideological trash" and "right wing nonsense" so it's pretty clear it's not just limited to incitement of violence.

The incitements of violence in question definitely qualify as ideological trash and right wing nonsense.

It's already happening.

This is what the US internet looks like, post-Arab Spring.