Technically true, but without context, easily misunderstood. It's illegal in Germany to promote or advocate for illegal acts. Since Russia attack on Ukraine is an illegal act, it's illegal to promote or advocate for the war, and this includes the Z symbol.
Also "incitement to illegal conduct and imminent lawless action" is also illegal in the U.S. it just gets interpreted a little different.
> There is only one country on earth that has decent free speech and it's the US
Except for nearly all the other countries in Europe, Canade etc.
It's practically true, and there is nothing to "misunderstand" there, unless you try to create such a misunderstanding by claiming this comes out of some kind of "general ban", when it's actually a very specific ban German states started putting in place [0].
Case in point;
> Since Russia attack on Ukraine is an illegal act, it's illegal to promote or advocate for the war, and this includes the Z symbol.
The US attack on Iraq was also illegal, yet that didn't lead to German states banning the V symbol for Victory or any other US symbols, or US media, getting banned.
Which is not the only example of how most about this is purely political and not in any way based on impartial interpretation and application of laws for human rights and "justice" [1].
[0] https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2022-03/z-symbol-rus...
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/08/germany-could-have-deli...
But it does, it's just that to prevent a misuse, any ban on symbols (which are used to advocate or promote something criminal) a separate law is needed to prevent misuse and allow judiciary overview. That's an additional protection.
> US attack on Iraq was also illegal
That's a fair point (and I agree on the illegality), and I would actually like this to be challenged in the court and see a decision. However, the Russian flag is not banned, just the Z symbol as a symbol for this war. If there was a symbol for U.S. drone strike or the invasion of Iraq we could be talking about something more concrete.
The Z symbol exists for the same reason why the V symbol existed on US military vehicles in Iraq; It's mainly a friendly fire and unit identifier as Russia and Ukraine use a lot of the same mechanized equipment.
While the Anglo V also stands for V as in "Victory" and even has a hand sign associated with it, it's a whole campaign dating back to WWII and Winston Churchill [0].
Me and many of my schoolmates would flash it at US military convoys passing our bus at school trips in the 90s. The soldiers were always super happy about it, while we thought we were signaling "peace" to them.
Ultimately the V would morph into a Chevron with different orientations to distinguish what military group a vehicle belongs to [0], but there is a whole propagandist history behind the Anglo use of V, overlapping very much in the same ways of military necessity as the Russian Z does.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20150708011459/https://time.com/...
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-significance-of-the-invert...
However, when a country doesn't allow you to promote or advocate for war crimes, then it's "only the U.S. has free speech", go figure.
But I agree with your more general point that Americans should be a bit less smug about the superiority of their free-speech rules.
I think both have their historic reasons, place and differences.
Ability to advocate for illegal, repugnant, or offensive ideas or acts is in fact the entire point of free speech, so being able to do it is an essential right.
In summary, those basically are high treason, murder/manslaughter, assault, robbery, counterfeiting, creating fire/explosions/radiation, destroying/interference in infrastructure (planes etc.).
Back in the day, noone prevented same-sex partners to marry in Germany in front of a religious congregation which allowed that according to their rules. They just couldn't get the marriage certificate from the State.
As for the illegality: it would make gay marriage an impossible act, because the legal framework to marry two men (or two women) from a legal standpoint (which includes the marriage certificates and the rights and responsibilities associated with it) would not exist. A public official who wrote a marriage certificate for a same-sex couple in 1999 would not have committed a crime, he or she would just have written an invalid form which would have had no legal bearing (and the public official would probably have been reprimanded).
Something you cannot do by definition cannot be illegal.
I'd say its more than a little different. The US definition is pretty narrow and immediate. You can't get on a megaphone and tell a crowd to go kill some guy right now.
>Except for nearly all the other countries in Europe, Canada etc.
It's all down to opinion of course but those nations do not have sensible freedom of speech. They pay lip service to the idea but will gladly jail people for saying things the government doesn't like but otherwise harmless or victim less.
Except for exceptions, such like making some kind of threat against the president.
> will gladly jail people for saying things the government doesn't like but otherwise harmless or victim less.
Can you show me such examples for lets say Germany?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/15/angela-merkel-...
It's practically true, and there is nothing to "misunderstand" there, unless you try to create such a misunderstanding by claiming this comes out of some kind of "general ban", when it's actually a very specific ban German states started putting in place only recently [0].
Case in point;
> Since Russia attack on Ukraine is an illegal act, it's illegal to promote or advocate for the war, and this includes the Z symbol.
The US attack on Iraq was also illegal, yet that didn't lead to German states banning the V symbol for Victory or any other US symbols, or US state media getting banned.
Which is not the only example of how most about this is purely political and not in any way based on impartial interpretation and application of laws for "human rights and justice" [1].
[0] https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2022-03/z-symbol-rus...
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/08/germany-could-have-deli...
None of them has free speech. Free speech is a binary thing - either speech is free, or it isn't. The moment you face criminal lawsuits for saying the wrong things, you do not live under a Free Speech regime. To my knowledge, the only country which does this correctly is the US.
Many countries claim to have Freedom of Opinion - which is a different concept from Freedom of Speech. Under a "Freedom of Opinion" regime, you can hold any opinion that you like - but some you need to keep to yourself.
Your proposed rule might be unpractical, since it would disallow the U.S. government from from saying anything about free speech for at least 30 more years (see [1] and [2]).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...
Suffice to say that censorship was pretty prevalent through the history of Germany and it did not provide the advantages some had hoped.
And the allies did censor speech that is true.
> The representative of the Allied forces admitted that the order in principle was no different from the Nazi book burnings, although unlike the burnings, the measure was seen as a temporary part of the denazification program.
In that case the measure can be understood as the country was full of Nazi propaganda and alternative media was more or less dead. But it was indeed temporary and the Allies also wrote Germany's constitution, which explicitly forbid censorship.
Lies and incitements to violence were a significant factor in Hitler being able to assume emergency powers, so you could argue that Germany learned a valuable lesson from one of its dictators.