From: "Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com>
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 94 14:50:23 PST
To: danisch@ira.uka.de (Hadmut Danisch)
Subject: Re: Oh No! Nazis on the Nets
In-Reply-To: <9402102126.AA09063@deathstar.iaks.ira.uka.de>
Message-ID: <199402102247.RAA20412@snark>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Hadmut Danisch says:
> 
> > Could I publish a newspaper containing Nazi propaganda in Germany?
> 
> What do you want to hear?
> 
> If I say yes, then you call the german Nazis. 

Untrue. In the U.S., you can publish a communist newspaper. Are
americans communists? No. You can also publish a Nazi newspaper. Are
americans all Nazis? No.

> If I say no, then we have no press freedom in your eyes.
> 
> Give us a chance to have 'press freedom' *and* to protect us
> against Nazis.

You can't do that via censorship.

> > No?
> > 
> > Then everyone doesn't have the right to produce a newspaper, does
> > everyone?
> 
> Don't mix this! 

Why not?

> Whether *everyone* has the right to produce a newspaper and
> whether you can print *everything* into a newspaper, are two different
> things.

Ultimately they aren't.

> Can we allow to print everything into a newspaper? No, not
> everything.

In the U.S., I can print everything in a newspaper. The only exception
that has any significance is that if I print a story that deliberately
(note the word deliberately) lies about someone with intent to cause
them harm, they can sue me. However, the government cannot in and of
itself intervene in the content of newspapers.

> For example you are not allowed to call for hating other races,
> but this is not special for the press. This is everywhere.

Indeed, but this is in contrast to the U.S., where you are allowed to
say anything you like.

> > Restrictions on speech ultimately backfire, providing oppressors with
> > mechanisms to silence opponents. Protection from Nazism must come from
> > strong respect for the freedom of all to express themselves and live
> > as they wish so long as they do not harm others, and not from
> > preventing the dissemination of "dangerous" ideas. 
> 
> Spoken well, but far away from reality. 
> 
> If you see 100 Nazis and 10.000 people. The 10.000 don't have a job,
> don't have money, don't know what to do and are not the intellectual
> elite. They have a lot of problems and don't know where the problems
> came from and how to solve them. Now come 100 Nazis and tell them,
> everything were the fault of ugly, stupid foreigner, which steal
> their jobs, rape their women and are bad by nature, they should be
> killed or thrown out. 
> 
> Now you see, that a lot of these 10.000 are going to believe this.
> Many of them come from the German Democratic Republic and they learned
> to believe everything anyone tells them. Other just want to beat anyone.
> 
> Do you want to do nothing and let them continue until it is too late?
> Didn't we have this before?

The problem is not free speech. The problem is the cultural notion
that it is right and proper for the government to intervene in
people's lives to "fix things". What you are doing is enforcing that
concept. It is not up to you to dictate what those 10,000 people are
allowed to read. They are adults and deserve the same consideration
that everyone deserves.

On the other hand, what you are doing is teaching the 10,000 people
that it is right and proper to oppress ideas as evil, to ban words, to
throw people in jail for what they have to say. You are also making
them far more interested than they otherwise would be in these words
that you will not let them hear. You are also creating a legal regime
under which when totalitarians take power they can ban the words of
democrats USING MECHANISMS THAT DEMOCRATS PUT INTO PLACE.

You are not succeeding via this method in stopping the spread of
totalitarianism. What you are doing, however, is succeeding in
becoming a totalitarian.

> > Only when a neonazi
> > attempts to beat someone up or set fire to a building does his action
> > become the legitimate subject of prosecution. 
> 
> No, then it is too late. When building are burning, people die. 
> Some turkish people died because their house was set on fire. You can't
> bring them back.

You seem to have missed an obvious point: the people are dying right
now even with censorship. Obviously censorship of neonazi propaganda
has not succeeded in stopping the murders. On the other hand, other
countries like the U.S. have not had widespread attacks against
foreigners in spite of the fact that I can pick up any sort of book I
want at any bookstore. Is it your contention that Germans are
irrational beings seperate from the rest of the human race that cannot
be trusted to make up their own mind about the evils of Naziism?

Since censorship has not stopped the right in Germany, perhaps you
could try the alternative approach, which is to try to convince people
that Naziism is wrong?

> > The oppression of
> > communication or of ideas, regardless of how repugnant, is
> > incompatible with a free society.
> 
> A free society must be able to defend. If the target of the
> communication is to stop the society beeing free, a free society
> can't accept this. A free society must be free to *stay* free.

Once you stop communication, you are not free any more. You have
already lost.

Perry