Brexit: The DT Poll

[scottc]

This is why I stopped responding to Redmaus, too.

Yeeeeep.

[Muirium]

Uh-huh, uh-huh.

[Halvar]

@adhoc: kbdfr has explained this before, but you don't seem to get the difference.

"Incitement to hatred" in the German criminal code (translation to English):

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/engl ... html#p1241

Section 130
Incitement to hatred

(1) Whosoever, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace

1. incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origins, against segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or

2. assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning an aforementioined group, segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population, or defaming segments of the population,

shall be liable to imprisonment from three months to five years.

(2) Whosoever

1. with respect to written materials (section 11(3)) which incite hatred against an aforementioned group, segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population which call for violent or arbitrary measures against them, or which assault their human dignity by insulting, maliciously maligning or defaming them,

(a) disseminates such written materials;

(b) publicly displays, posts, presents, or otherwise makes them accessible;

(c) offers, supplies or makes them accessible to a person under eighteen years; or

(d) produces, obtains, supplies, stocks, offers, announces, commends, undertakes to import or export them, in order to use them or copies obtained from them within the meaning of Nos (a) to (c) or facilitate such use by another; or

2. disseminates a presentation of the content indicated in No 1 above by radio, media services, or telecommunication services

shall be liable to imprisonment not exceeding three years or a fine.

(3) Whosoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or downplays an act committed under the rule of National Socialism of the kind indicated in section 6 (1) of the Code of International Criminal Law, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace shall be liable to imprisonment not exceeding five years or a fine.

(4) Whosoever publicly or in a meeting disturbs the public peace in a manner that violates the dignity of the victims by approving of, glorifying, or justifying National Socialist rule of arbitrary force shall be liable to imprisonment not exceeding three years or a fine.

(5) Subsection (2) above shall also apply to written materials (section 11(3)) of a content such as is indicated in subsections (3) and (4) above.

(6) In cases under subsection (2) above, also in conjunction with subsection (5) above, and in cases of subsections (3) and (4) above, section 86(3) shall apply mutatis mutandis.

Examples:

(A) Criticizing the government (= free speech):
"Angela Merkel is a traitor to the German people"; "The boat is full"; "The government is corrupt"; "The refugees will take over our country on the long run".

(B) "Incitement to hatred" (= punishable):
"Let them all drown in the mediterranean"; "Burning down refugee homes is self defence"; "Shoot refugees at the border to scare them off"; "All muslims are potential suicide killers"; "Jews are greedy frauds"; "1 million rapefugees invaded Germany in 2015"
You have to make these statements in public for them to be punishable, "in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace", whatever that means in 2016.

Your examples are cases of people being prosecuted for suspectedly doing (B), and as far as I see, none of your sources even claims them to be (A), only you do that.

Probably most Germans agree that there is some slippery slope with this section of the criminal code and it can be abused, and especially it's a matter of opinion at what point the posting of hate statements on social media begins to be "capable of disturbing the public peace", but it's pretty clear that there is a difference between hate statements towards refugees, muslims, jews, "North Africans" or whatever group and "criticizing the government".

[Muirium]

Half way through the poll now. I'll be voting next week. 42 votes so far. 6 between the two sides. The percentages actually look quite a lot like what I expect the referendum result will be. It's not getting wider, let's put it that way.

[adhoc]

Halvar, can you please remove those statements from your post? I won't quote them and I genuinely do not wish for anyone to have a visit by the police on their homes.

I understand Germans are more relaxed and trusting to their government, but we still remember how fast the government can twist the laws and turn their back on you. Slippery slope is very real.

Sorry, I am simply not as trustful. Risking anything over this worthless online debate is not worth it. I see some people have taken it personally, but I really only see it as casual banter. I am positive this debate would have been much more relaxed in real life as well.

[Muirium]

Halvar: fuck this fool, keep 'em,

[Redmaus]

What you provide is gossip entirely plucked out of thin air, nothing else.

This is why I stopped responding to Redmaus, too.

I'm not the one that links people to Salon Fohat

[adhoc]

Halvar: fuck this fool, keep 'em,

I can pretty much guarantee his post will still be here in 5 years. Are you sure you can guarantee for his government in 5 years?

[cookie]

Me as a minority living in Germany am very positive about how Germans handle freedom of speech, I also like the fact that "Incitement to hatred" is taken very serious here. I am also more than glad Germans do not practice freedom of speech like the Muricans do otherwise the right wing scum could brainwash citizens with their propaganda.

Also I can totally understand people who refuse to trust in the current system here due to the past.

I am more afraid by a general up-rise of nationalism in Europe, which sadly is becoming a reality right now

Anyway, I've read the article Muirium has shared with me and I must say that after sincerely considering those arguments I still believe that it would be a bad idea to leave the
On the other hand I'd be very interested how the UK would develop outside the EU in the next 10 years

[fohat]

I'm not the one that links people to Salon

What is Salon?

[Muirium]

A bar for dyslexic cowboys.

[andrewjoy]

1. with respect to written materials (section 11(3)) which incite hatred against an aforementioned group, segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population which call for violent or arbitrary measures against them, or which assault their human dignity by insulting, maliciously maligning or defaming them,

(a) disseminates such written materials;

(b) publicly displays, posts, presents, or otherwise makes them accessible;

(c) offers, supplies or makes them accessible to a person under eighteen years; or

(d) produces, obtains, supplies, stocks, offers, announces, commends, undertakes to import or export them, in order to use them or copies obtained from them within the meaning of Nos (a) to (c) or facilitate such use by another; or

So under german law the bible and the Quran should be banned then . I approve

[Muirium]

You forgot the Torah, Adolf…

[andrewjoy]

You forgot the Torah, Adolf…

Never looked into that one so i don't know ether way if it would break the german law.

The other two most definitely do.

[seebart]

You forgot the Torah, Adolf…

Never looked into that one so i don't know ether way if it would break the german law.

The other two most definitely do.

You're not in Germany and you're not a german citizen Andrew so...

Left-right-who-cares-I39m-just-here-for-the-cat-videos-meme-30273.jpg (55.61 KiB) Viewed 4149 times

[kbdfr]

Thanks to Halvar for trying in a very comprehensible manner to make it clear to adhoc what the difference is:

@adhoc: kbdfr has explained this before, but you don't seem to get the difference.

"Incitement to hatred" in the German criminal code (translation to English):

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/engl ... html#p1241

[here the law text]

Examples:

(A) Criticizing the government (= free speech):
"Angela Merkel is a traitor to the German people"; "The boat is full"; "The government is corrupt"; "The refugees will take over our country on the long run".

(B) "Incitement to hatred" (= punishable):
"Let them all drown in the mediterranean"; "Burning down refugee homes is self defence"; "Shoot refugees at the border to scare them off"; "All muslims are potential suicide killers"; "Jews are greedy frauds"; "1 million rapefugees invaded Germany in 2015"
You have to make these statements in public for them to be punishable, "in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace", whatever that means in 2016.

Your examples are cases of people being prosecuted for suspectedly doing (B), and as far as I see, none of your sources even claims them to be (A), only you do that.

Probably most Germans agree that there is some slippery slope with this section of the criminal code and it can be abused, and especially it's a matter of opinion at what point the posting of hate statements on social media begins to be "capable of disturbing the public peace", but it's pretty clear that there is a difference between hate statements towards refugees, muslims, jews, "North Africans" or whatever group and "criticizing the government".

I think it is of no use, because adhoc obviously is not interested in a real discussion,
but all the same I'm going to look at the 32 links he provided.
Who knows, perhaps someone really was arrested for criticizing the German government and I just did not know

[kbdfr]

First of all, here is a quote of adhoc’s post with the links which, after first refusing to, he finally provided as an answer to my post:
"I accept your offer [quoting you] "the arrests were done, I can search for more sources for you"
In the quote I added numbers to his links for reference. In addition, I marked red a point where he is just lying: I never said or implied that "the internet is invalid" or "all media is invalid except the only one I read". The first one was an obvious joke by Muirium, the second is a reproach made to me by adhoc himself and just repeated here as if I ever had said anything of the kind, which of course is not the case.

Naw man, it's just that arguing with you is pointless. You're convinced, your arguments are bullshit (the internet is invalid, all media is invalid except the only one I read, etc.). Just let it go man, enjoy the utopia.

1 - http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/04 ... dia-posts/
2 - http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2 ... bsite.html
3 - http://www.infowars.com/germany-orders- ... dia-posts/
4 - https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=54550
5 - http://www.amren.com/news/2016/04/polic ... dia-posts/
6 - http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/11/12 ... -anti.html
7 - http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-new ... rnet-posts
8 - http://rightwingnews.com/top-news/alert ... s-germany/
9 - http://planetfreewill.com/2016/04/07/ge ... t-posters/
10 - http://www.dw.com/en/berlin-police-raid ... a-18845429
11 - http://libertyunyielding.com/2016/04/07 ... dia-posts/
12 - http://www.therebel.media/berlin_police ... cial_media
13 - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ ... book-posts
14 - http://madworldnews.com/german-politici ... -refugees/
15 - https://www.cnet.com/news/germany-is-pu ... -internet/
16 - http://madworldnews.com/germany-censorship-facebook/
17 - http://louderwithcrowder.com/facebook-h ... 1hBjpF94wE
18 - http://sputniknews.com/europe/20160201/ ... rship.html
19 - http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01 ... te-speech/
20 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/eu ... story.html
21 - http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/15/93291 ... nt-refugee
22 - http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europ ... SKCN0UW25C
23 - http://universalfreepress.com/2016/merk ... e-created/
24 - http://www.independentsentinel.com/soci ... ensorship/
25 - http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/face ... ee-speech/
26 - https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts ... olicy.html
27 - https://www.rt.com/news/316821-xenophob ... ld-rights/
28 - http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/12/1 ... migration/
29 - http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-m ... posts.html
30 - http://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-arr ... 1461072108
31 - https://jonathanturley.org/2016/01/08/g ... on-speech/
32 - https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/0 ... te-speech/

Links 1 and 3 to 12 all report about the same: ten flats raided in Berlin end of 2015 because of hate postings on Facebook. Interestingly enough, while link 1 cites the serious German newspaper Berliner Morgenpost as its source in the very sentence where it says " Nine suspects were arrested", in this source and in other German press there is not a single word about anybody having been arrested. On the contrary, Bild for example states "’There has been no arrest during the police action on Thursday morning’,a spokeswoman said".

Link 2 reports two persons being arrested as responsible for the contents of Altermedia, the website of a banned organization, as being "responsible for its content, which included banned Nazi slogans, denial of the Holocaust and incitement of violence against foreigners", which of course is more than "criticizing the German government". By the way, it also states three other suspects were not arrested - although they will no doubt have "criticized the German government".

Link 13 is about Pegida founder Lutz Bachmann having been condemned to a fine of €9,600 for hate speech on Facebook (the prosecution wanted 7 months imprisonment). So here again, nobody was "arrested for criticizing the German government"

Links 14 to 17, 19 to 29, 31 and 32 are all about the German government taking steps against hate speech. Nothing there about any "people arrested".
Some of these links contain a few interesting things, though. In 16 you can read about the "Marxist Obama regime" and "corrupt criminal governments of Hussein Obama and the EU", 23 also calls Obama "Hussein Obama", 32 has nothing to do with Germany but is about France taking action against hate speech.
27 (while still having nothing to do with allegedly arrested people) alarmingly states a comment by the German association of lawyers that "Posting xenophobic views online in Germany could cost you your job & child", correctly naming its source (the serious German newspaper Die Welt) but partially incorrectly reporting the contents of the source referred to.

Link 18 is about journalist Wolfgang Herles saying that many media sources follow "instructions from above". Apart from the fact that Herles was obvioulsy promoting his new book and that he said the exact opposite in the next interview, it has nothing to do with people allegedly "arrested for criticizing the German government"

Link 30 says already in the title: "Germany Arrests Five Suspected of Anti-Immigrant Attacks". Only the beginning of the article can be read without subscribing to the site, but one can see it is about the "Gruppe Freital", which is suspected to have committed at least 3 bomb attacks - which is bit more than "criticizing the German government".

- - - - - - - - - -

So what remains?
Nobody, absolutely nobody, was "arrested for criticizing the German government".

adhoc, can you acknowledge that?

[adhoc]

I can acknowledge you're hanging onto an exact word that I literally wrote. I can respect that, because I do the same.

I could tell you, that I wanted to show Germany does indeed go after people who write things deemed not OK by the government (so they weren't arrested, but only had their homes raided) and how I'd rather see the government trust it's own citizens to make a filter of these people (which we actually already do), but you're not after a discussion either, you're after a witch hunt.

It's the same as with water discussion really, you didn't care for a discussion, your goal was to point out how my entire stance for being against water privatization is wrong, because water system in Berlin isn't fully private, but only part of it is.

Just in case you're actually looking for an opinion, I'd say ignoring the extremist posts on social media would be more effective anyway. People would filter them out and they'd be ignored, socially rejected. Now you're just making martyrs out of them. Perhaps I'm wrong, I'd ideally rather see always less of government than more.

[seebart]

...that I wanted to show Germany does indeed go after people who write things deemed not OK by the government (so they weren't arrested, but only had their homes raided)...

Do you have ONE specific link about that? Just one please, really.

[adhoc]

In light of the topic, there actually is some backpedaling.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu- ... m-36485464

I wonder how many more such news will pop up before the actual vote.

@seebart yeah man, I posted them already.

[fohat]

So under german law the bible and the Quran should be banned then . I approve

And this is what ISIS/Daesh is striving for: the final destructive showdown between the cultures of the regressive "religious" world and the progressive secular "modern" world.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... ts/384980/

[seebart]

@adhoc yeah man just post that one again, I can't find it in all your links.

[Muirium]

@Fohat. Yup. Andy's not alone in believing that and being oblivious to the fascism in what he's saying. Sadly, it's entirely mainstream here to think that mainstream Islam is exactly the same thing as Isis' lunatic end of the world ideology. Thanks, media. You're doing us such a service for your page views.

[adhoc]

1 - http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/04 ... dia-posts/
3 - http://www.infowars.com/germany-orders- ... dia-posts/
4 - https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=54550
5 - http://www.amren.com/news/2016/04/polic ... dia-posts/
6 - http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/11/12 ... -anti.html
7 - http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-new ... rnet-posts
8 - http://rightwingnews.com/top-news/alert ... s-germany/
9 - http://planetfreewill.com/2016/04/07/ge ... t-posters/
10 - http://www.dw.com/en/berlin-police-raid ... a-18845429
11 - http://libertyunyielding.com/2016/04/07 ... dia-posts/
12 - http://www.therebel.media/berlin_police ... cial_media
Links 1 and 3 to 12 all report about the same: ten flats raided in Berlin end of 2015 because of hate postings on Facebook.

kbdfr filtered them out for us

[seebart]

Do you have ONE specific link about that? Just one please, really.

[adhoc]

Just pick one seebart. Any one. If you can't choose, click the #1.

Does this REALLY not bother anyone here?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-0 ... ree-speech

[kbdfr]

[…] Just in case you're actually looking for an opinion, I'd say ignoring the extremist posts on social media would be more effective anyway. People would filter them out and they'd be ignored, socially rejected. Now you're just making martyrs out of them. Perhaps I'm wrong, I'd ideally rather see always less of government than more.

"ignoring the extremist posts on social media"?
If I had done exactly that here, i.e. ignored your posts, you would still triumphally assert that the German government arrest people who criticize them, which is absolute bullshit, and others would believe it and repeat it.
So "ignoring the extremist posts on social media" would not be "effective", but suggest it is OK to post them.

[seebart]

So why don't you just sum up for us what you really think about the EU and Germany without any links. I mean your own opinion? What should be changed?

A question for you adhoc: if a person in Slovenia plans extensive hate crimes involving multiple murders and this person writes and announces such plans and the authorities find out, do you think they might start watching that person or just say...nah it's just his/her right to free speech don't worry he/her won't kill anyone!REALLY?

[fohat]

Just pick one seebart. Any one. If you can't choose, click the #1.

Does this REALLY not bother anyone here?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-0 ... ree-speech

kbdfr already discredited #1 as being false.

As far as definitions of what speech is protected and what is forbidden, the criteria are, and must be, almost impossibly vague.

For example, and not really a trivial one, the exact same words coming out of the exact same person's mouth, might be interpreted with opposite results.

For example, said drunk, in a bar, at midnight, they might get a laugh and then be ignored.

Said the next day, sober, at noon, in a room filled with angry people, they might be taken very seriously.

[seebart]

adhoc with your last incoherent answer I'd say you have a very personal specific deep hate towards Germany and the European Union (which is fine and I'm sure you have your reasons) but your arguments do not make sense and simply repeat the same online links. It is impossible to prevent certain crimes by just ignoring them as "the right to free speech" and doing nothing. If that were the case worldwide we would have anarchy and random civil wars combined with much more powerfull gangs and organized crime groups. "Tought police" does not exist, although in nazi-germany it did. You mean censorship. Not the same thing. If you do not plan a crime and just announce your opinion you will not get arrested in Germany, even if your opinion happens to be racist. Otherwise the German police would have to arrest 100.000 + people right now.