1. The document is NOT Nazi propaganda. It was the short document which described a proposal to isolate German soldiers who have spent too much time in Paris, as they might have caught VD from prostitutes. This was a common problem at the time that also affected the US troops on leave there. He did not provide any commentary on the subject in his post, but noted in his blog that it's a ridiculously overzealous notion to send soldiers all the way to the eastern front, just because they spent time in Paris.

2. He questions whether the Russian Facebook mods that censored him were Nazi supporters, exactly because the document in question makes Goebbels look like an idiot. So yes, that's a good faith question to raise.

I believe it was a tongue-in-cheek accusation. But the line of thinking was that this piece of text should be considered so embarrassing to Goebbels due to its obvious wrong headedness, that somebody sympathetic to him or the Nazi movement might want to hide it to avoid the embarrassment.

That was my reading, although I'm not as unsympathetic to Facebook's moderators here as he is. He wrote that "I did not comment on any of Goebbels’ words, considering them to be so obviously preposterous that its sheer absurdity rendered any additional commentary redundant," and...really? If you are a moderator charged with flagging pro-Nazi commentary on Facebook, you have undoubtedly seen post after post after post after post of "obviously preposterous" Nazi propaganda that people not only take at face value, but cheer for and put on signs and organize rallies around. When a moderator comes across this particular Nazi propaganda posted as-is with no commentary, it's nice to believe that they'll think "ah, perhaps I should stop now and deeply research this man, and consider that he is a Russian academic who has written papers on German-Soviet interactions and conflicts leading up to World War II, which I should now read the abstracts of in order to determine where his personal sympathies might lie." But they won't. Because that's not really their job.

I’ve had people get pissed at me for trying to explain a political issue. “Just tell me what is correct and how to vote!!”

Zero interest in comprehension.

These people would do very well in any sort of cult.

It read like hyperbole meant to emphasize the need for Facebook to publish a credible reason when they remove material.

That is, not giving a reason invites speculation.

"literal Nazi propaganda"

Do you think this document makes the German military look good?

Well, I don't, but that doesn't seem like the right rule. I also certainly don't think that, say, genocide makes the speaker (whether Goebbels or a modern-day advocate) look good, but that hardly seems like a reason to permit people to post advocacy of genocide!

The very definition of extremist ideologies is that they are extremist, and that reasonable people who haven't been infected with it don't agree. But - by and large - we don't see that as a reason to allow open advocacy of extremism. Clearly Goebbels had a target audience in mind that he thought could be convinced to agree with him.

So I think a rule "You cannot post things by Goebbels that advocate Nazi ideology" makes sense, and I think a rule "You cannot post things by Goebbels that advocate Nazi ideology, unless reading and pondering that document would leave the average reader less convinced of the merits of Nazism" does not make sense.

Here in Germany "Mein Kampf" is illegal to sell. I was always amazed that it was available in the US (or so I heard). I guess they took "free speech" serious.

I guess the public opinion has changed on that one by now.

Personally I think it is better if such things can be accessed and discussed, so that their arguments can be properly refuted.

(Facebook is a private company and can do what they want, of course).

> Here in Germany "Mein Kampf" is illegal to sell.

It's not that simple. (in short, unedited and uncommented reprints are problematic (but not directly established as "illegal to sell" currently I'd say), pre-1945 printings are fine, commented editions exist and are fine)

A commented edition was published recently (within last two years), but iirc it was the first of its kind?

Edit: pasting comment to post below here, because HN doesn't let me post

It seems this state of affairs was quite convenient for the government, and when the copyright expired, they decided to continue making it not legally available: https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/adolf-hitlers-mei...

Seems to be true that it could be sold in antique shops and offered in libraries (not sure if any did offer it).

Until 2016 all new printings were stopped on copyright grounds by the state of Bavaria. Hitlers registered address at time of death was in Munich, so the state of Bavaria acquired his assets and used that to stop printings (internationally not often successful, and with the exceptions of US and GB, where the rights had been sold to Random House by Hitlers publisher), but 2016 (70 years after death of the author) the copyright expired. Copyright was fairly straight-forward legally, commented editions now are too.

Why go as far as usa when it's readily available at libraries and for sale in many many European countries? Even some versions with comments are legal in Germany itself.

Because it is a point about free speech in the USA (facebook being a US company), not availability of the book in other countries.

Significant events in US history, such as the Abolitionist movement, women's rights, the Civil Rights era, et cetera, would not have been as easily accomplished without freedom of speech being defined the way it has been in the US.

The fact is, you can't have freedom of speech if your also not allowing people to engage in hateful speech, no matter what most "progressives" would tell you.