The FDP, CSU, AfD and indeed large parts of the CDU want to have a debate about immigration. The CSU represents around half of Bayern, some 6 million people. The FDP, CDU, and AfD together represent 56% of the votes in the last election.
Even prominent voices on the left want a debate: Sigmar Gabriel, who until recently was head of the SPD, wants to have a debate. Sahra Wagenknecht of die Linke also wants to have a debate. Heck, there's even a prominent green politician, Boris Palmer, who wants to have debate.
So: what planet are you living on?
> Additionally, there is no debate if you call for violence against minorities.
On this we agree :)
Additionally, the AfD (who are the ones complaining about censorship all the times) don't actually want to have any debate at all, because they kinda have no content. They just play the fear of the masses and want to display themselfes as victims of the majority or whoever.
Weren't they already in concentration camps? https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2015/01/31/germany-housin...
A majority deciding something doesn't make it just, as you as a fellow German should know best.
Do you mean would I want to see 'violent american black rap lyrics' banned? Depends on what is said I guess? If theres a song about 'kill all the jews' we've had enough of that shit here 70 years ago.
Generally german courts are very narrow about what is Volksverhetzung. If you run afoul of it you are very far away from any sensible discussion. The law is basically "don't (1)incite violence (2)against Minorities in a way that is (3)able to disturb the public peace". These three things are impossible to do without generally being a dangerous ass. We don't want people like that.
you had a military dictatorship. it couldn't be opposed or contested by anyone, because you and/or your family would just be killed.
german citizens couldn't stop the killing any more than russians could stop millions from being killed.
that was the fundamental problem. dictators do as they please. criminalizing the speech of random bob under a democratic government isn't doing much of anything, and these laws mean nothing to a dictator.
what actually matters is having a democratic government that is beholden to the citizenry. if anything this speech criminalization is a theater of sorts that makes you less safe.
Military Dictatorships don't suddenly appear out of nothing. My grandparents' generation chose to actively look away because they thought it won't get "that bad". They might have told themselfes they didn't know better - you know, afterwards - but you can't remove 6 million people out of a country of maybe 60 million and no one notices shit.
Well, it did get bad, and then some. We know that now, we can now look back and see how it began. It began with social insecurity and propaganda (populism). We can't fight social insecurity but we can fight propaganda and that is why we have § 130 Volksverhetzung.
i'm honestly not even sure what this means. could you rephrase?
> Military Dictatorships don't suddenly appear out of nothing.
sure. they usually seize power, though not always. and they tend to follow some kind of instability. after ww1 germany was in terrible shape. blockades during the war contributed to hunderds of thousands of people starving to death. the economy was in the gutter, inflation was out of control - before they got it under control 1 us dollar was equal to 4 trillion german marks. there was violence in the streets between political parties. the reichstag fire. concentration camps started with political opponents. the night of long knives was all about murdering political opponents and even allies who were deemed too influential and thus a risk.
being so absurdly reductive to just say 'hate speech' is primarily or even secondarily responsible for the formation of military dictatorships seems almost insulting. it's theater, an appeasement of sensibilities that leaves people more vulnerable to repeating the past than rational assessment of history.
Removal from the general population was an overt policy (and overtly not all that different than what the Western allies did with suspect populations identified by ethnicity.) The actual conditions to which Jews and others were removed, even prior to the implementation of extermination, was not overt.
No one was trying to conceal the removal of disfavored segments from the general population.
That is not correct. Most Jews in Germany were sent to work camps and used as slave labour for local factories. Check out this response: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3mnglz/did_t...
Generally Germany knew, or at least had an idea that something was wrong. Everyone who tells you differently is selling you an agenda.
Meaning if there's american rap song about killing people, do germans ban it? These violent lyrics seem to fall under the law as you described.
Also, are violent american rap songs banned (in practice) in germany? Do germans have this same negative attitude to american "thugs"?
Songs about killing minorities might be banned, but then it's still about context. Artists generally have a lot of room and when they write stuff like that theres usually satire in play. Which would propably be okay. I don't know about any artists that got hit with Volksverhetzung.
On the other hand, I'd expect Songs about killing to get hit by youth protection laws which means they can't be played on the radio, can't be advertised and can't be sold to minors.
Many american rap songs do just exactly this, and it's not satirical. Sometimes rap songs do mentioning killing jews specifically although it is relatively rare. Most of the time it talks about killing other black people, which falls under the second part of the law you describe. Do Germans make a big deal about this? I'm not german, I'm just trying to understand the viewpoint.
Also, do germans find american thugs in low regard? One can argue they can be just as dangerous.
To be hit with Volksverhetzung you need to meet all three criteria. If you have musicians that do, they better not play a gig in germany or they might stay here for a while longer. When not talking about Nazism (they have proven 3, so the bar is a little lower) to hit (3) you need to build some movement. Maybe found a local KKK? Generally there needs to be a bit more than just talk.
> Also, do germans find american thugs in low regard? One can argue they can be just as dangerous.
The average german propably doesn't care much about them. Some teenagers propably liked their idealized lifestyle. But they've propably grown out of that by now. I don't know what modern day teenagers like anymore =)
We don't really have gangs and they are propably seen more as a social problem than one for law enforcement. A symptom of the huge inequality / divide in american society.
Which American rap songs, specifically, have incited riots or similarly drastically disturbed the peace, in Germany or elsewhere?
Maybe you could get rid of it by having better ideas?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-prop...
Checking in from the US, where that mindset transcends age groups and economic status.
Even comfortable old folks, for example, can be convinced that aggressiveness is required.
If you were in a restaurant in 1930s Vienna surrounded by great art, music and intellectuals you may have been forgiven for thinking that wonderful setting would continue on forever. Unfortunately, a short time later millions we're dying on a continent engulfed in war.
When the stock market is up we think it'll keep going up. When we have peace we can't imagine war. History is not a straight line and destructive ideas can still take hold in the wrong conditions.
It's well documented, and covered in most of the histories regarding the rise of Nazism, that a not insignificant part of why the party was able to gain traction was that there was already an environment of political violence and suppression. The SPD, KPD, and Freikorps were fighting in the streets well before the Nazis were relevant (the 20s. The fighting dates back to the end of WW1 and through the Weimar period).
There was similar violence in Austria at the time including a small civil war in the mid 30s, probably not what one would call a great and peacful environment for appreciating art and music.
If Nazi propaganda might have any noticeable success in today's Germany (or US, or wherever), it's not because of some crackpots from stormfront; they are a consequence, not the cause. The cause should be addressed instead, first by assuming its existence. (No, I'm not going to discuss any probable causes here; I'm trying to show the logic, not to make a political case.)
That's not really accurate; the Nazis got power not by outright winning a democratic election, but because the various other parties were more concerned about each other than the Nazis, and thus more willing to tolerate a Nazi-coalition government than to form a coalition against the Nazis; the Nazis never were elected to power on their own before seizing power; they actually lost a large number of seats in the election preceding their coalition government from the preceding election (after which no government was formed), and even in that preceding election they had only around 1/3 of the seats.
Nazis didn't come to power because a receptive populace gave them a mandate, they came to power becausea large enough minority of the more numerous elected not-Nazis were more afraid of each other than the Nazis.
That wasn't exactly irrational, the Nazis were not the first or only party in Germany to be engaging in widespread violence. The Communists, for example, were a real and actual threat. Mass street violence and assassinations were common in Weimar Germany even when the Nazis were nobodies.
Nor did I say that it was (at least, based on information available at the time; it may have been strictly irrational in rational choice terms, where rationality implies optimality based on the actual future consequences and not merely anticipated ones.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_presidential_election,_...
The Nazis lied and cheated and murdered their way to power, make no mistake about it. And that was kind of like an onion, too, in that every layer of the Nazi apparatus deceived lower layers.
Apart from the intrinsic importance of things like poverty and unemployment simply because they hurt people no matter how people to react to it, what turned some people into sociopaths (and why it didn't others) is useful to know to prevent more coming into existence, and to leave the ones who aren't beyond the point of return a way out -- but it's also a destructive red herring when dealing with those who are beyond the point of return. They are eating chalk and holding up people who delivered themselves as hostages unto them, so you can have empathy they can only feign and use; and the question is, at what point does the tragedy of their hostages outweigh the tragedy of who they and their hostages will trample on, forever, if given half a chance.
I know it's cold and kind of heartless, but for many people who turns abuser after having been abused, you will also find those who have been abused even more, but did not turn to abusing others. It's not either person's fault or credit, but I can't cater to the first while ignoring the second. Insofar it's a zero-sum choice (and that's not generally the case, mind you, but it's also not never the case), I made my choice. Sometimes, the wheel that squeaks the loudest shouldn't get the grease, but simply should get replaced by a better or even no wheel.
The Nazis also lied and cheated and murdered, but it wasn't necessary for their rise to power; until they went about abolishing democratic institutions altogether, they could have worked entirely with above-the-board means.
So you may claim, and I disagree. Importantly, "they could have" != "they did".
of course we somehow manage to always blame the masses or the populists, but they rarely are the ones initiating the cycle
Nazism and other German nationalist movements were repressed early on by (generally communist) mob violence and later on by the state. That led directly to the rise of brownshirts (to counter the mob) and the radicalization of the Nazis - when people see that their belief system as being oppressed by the law, some of them conclude that when legitimate paths to power are denied, violence is justified.
The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J Evans covers the rise of the Nazis in great detail, and it didn't happen because Nazis were going around with hate speech.
This has been one of the many justifications for free speech for a long time. In general, I think the "but Nazis!" argument against free speech should be viewed with immense suspicion - it basically boils down to a pretty serious antidemocratic sentiment; you can't let people talk, because then they might convince the plebs to vote for Nazis.
Look at it from an outside view. Tibet was taken over by China and they are intentionally flooding it with Chinese immigrants. The goal is to destroy Tibetan culture and eventually assimilate or replace the Tibetan people. Liberals seem pretty upset by this and even consider it literal genocide. If a Tibetan is angry at Chinese immigrants and says something insulting to them, is that hate speech?
What does this matter at all? How does the GDP of Germany change anything? If Germany was poor it would be different?
>Germans do not find themselves in the same predicament as Tibetans, by any stretch of the imagination.
How exactly is that? It looks like exactly the same thing to me. The native population is being completely replaced with immigrants. It's a tragedy.
If it were poor and were being coercively restructured by some outside hegemonic power (as many argue Tibet is) then yes of course that would make a difference.
The native population is being completely replaced with immigrants.
Germany's immigrant population is 10-12%, and last time I looked everyone in the German government was German. It's impossible to take your hyperbole seriously.
I don't think the outside power is relevant to the argument. The effect is the same whoever does it. To some conservative rural German, the government may very well seem like an outside hegemonic power.
As far as economic success being relevant. Tibet's economy is growing rapidly. Eventually they will be as rich as Germany today. Yet their population will be almost completely replaced and their culture gone. Economic success doesn't make up for it.
>Germany's immigrant population is 10-12%
40% of German under 5's are immigrants (http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/09/21/germany-40-percen...). They have a 2-3 times higher fertility rate than the native population. And the rate of immigration keeps increasing and is already unsustainably high. Germans will be a tiny minority of Germany in just 2 generations.
I can't help counterfactual perceptions.
40% of German under 5's are immigrants (http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/09/21/germany-40-percen...). They have a 2-3 times higher fertility rate than the native population. And the rate of immigration keeps increasing and is already unsustainably high. Germans will be a tiny minority of Germany in just 2 generations.
Breitbart is one of the poorest sources you could possibly cite and you do your credibility no favors. Some immigrants have higher fertility, but it's a distribution, not a monolith. Also, immigrant fertility tends to revert to the local mean within a couple of generations as fertility is inversely correlated with economic stability, which is why it's lower in the recipient population to start with.
Your idea that Germans will be a tiny minority of Germany's population within 2 generations is laughable. socioeconomic behaviors do not generally follow the exponential trends you imagine, but are often better mapped by a sigmoid function. I strongly suggest you try reading a textbook on demographics instead of getting your analysis from Breitbart.
>Some immigrants have higher fertility, but it's a distribution, not a monolith.
The distribution is irrelevant. On average they have 3 to 4 kids per coupe and natives have less than 2.
>immigrant fertility tends to revert to the local mean within a couple of generations
By then it will be far too late.
>immigrant fertility tends to revert to the local mean within a couple of generations as fertility is inversely correlated with economic stability
Religious minorities tend to have much higher fertility rates even within first world countries. Look at Mormons or Orthodox jews. Poverty is not sufficient to explain the high Muslim birth rate. And it's high even among the second generation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/world/europe/germany-twit...
> In a tweet on Sunday, the lawmaker, Beatrix von Storch, questioned the decision by the police in the western city of Cologne to put out a message in Arabic, as part of a multilingual campaign to promote the theme of this year’s New Year’s Eve festivities: “Celebrate — with respect.” The message was also posted in English, French and Persian. The festivities in Cologne, in Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, draw thousands every year.
> “What the hell is wrong with this country? Why is the official page of police in NRW tweeting in Arabic,” Ms. von Storch wrote on Dec. 31. “Are they seeking to appease the barbaric, Muslim, rapist hordes of men?”
> Her comments were particularly provocative because Cologne was the site of a rampage on New Year’s Eve 2015, in which hundreds of men groped, assaulted, harassed or robbed women. Many of the men were asylum-seekers or other immigrants, and the attacks on women fueled criticism by the Alternative for Germany, which argued that Ms. Merkel should not have opened Germany’s doors to so many foreigners.
> Facebook later removed that post, Ms. von Storch told her followers. She vowed not to be silenced by the new law, but to continue to “call out problems by name.” She went on to insist that the young men who had sexually harassed German women were “not Protestant Swedes, not Catholic Poles, not Orthodox Russians, not Jewish Israelis and not Buddhist Thais. The overwhelming majority of them are young Muslim men for whom women and followers of other faiths are second-class citizens.”
It seems to me that, in context, this is an inflammatory statement, and somewhat a silly one (why does that mean they shouldn't put it out in Arabic?), but given that she was commenting on a situation that did literally involve rapist hordes of men who happened to be Muslim, I have trouble accepting that a country could justifiably declare that speech illegal. It's even more disturbing to me given that she's apparently a prominent politician and the government is looking into charging her for this statement.
Where did you see this? From what I can tell, the government (public prosecutors) only said they received a bunch of complaints. Nowhere did I see they were looking into charging her - nor would that be possible without lifting her immunity.
> Prosecutors must now decide whether there is sufficient evidence of criminal action to open a formal investigation that could lead to charges, Mr. Willuhn said. But before that step can be taken, Germany’s Parliament would have to lift immunity.
From the article I linked above.
"German atheist runs afoul of country's rarely enforced blasphemy laws after he was fined €500 for driving around with anti-Christian slogans on his car"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/121...
No... But thats pretty bullish of you.