politics

Do explain. It seems to me they’re winning.

The way we have before? Maybe crack open a history book & read about the civil rights movement? Or read about the Enlightenment era development of liberal political philosophy leading to Western governments founded on individual rights, rule of law, liberal democracy, secularism defeating authoritarian & traditional governments in opposition to all of it.

Whats your view on Germany then?

Misguided, wrong, and slipping into trouble.

[…] In 2021 politicians tightened the rules further, worried by the spread of abuse and disinformation on social media. Courts may now punish insults against politicians especially severely, if their work is “significantly impeded”. In Mr Bendels’s case the court ruled, dubiously, that an impartial observer would not be able to tell that the image of Ms Faeser had been altered. That ensured her right to protection from defamation was given priority over his to freedom of expression.

Prosecutors are happy to argue that defamation may impede politicians from exercising their duties. A Bavarian court has ruled that insults “beyond the absolute minimum of respect” can be punished. And more may be to come. The governing agreement between Germany’s incoming coalition partners pledges to empower a regulator to crack down on the “deliberate dissemination of false factual claims”.

Last year police searched the flat of a pensioner who had shared an image on X calling Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice-chancellor, an “idiot”. Mr Habeck had filed a criminal complaint about the image, although the prosecutor was acting on a separate notification.

[…] Germany is not an outlier in freedom-of-expression rankings. But it is not just foreigners who are worried. In 2024 just 40% of Germans told Allensbach, a pollster, that they felt able to express themselves freely. The figure has halved since 1990 (see chart).

In Germany, as in America and elsewhere, free-speech crusades are often regarded as the preserve of the dissident right. Mr Bendels is close to the hard-right Alternative for Germany party, which often complains that its views are unfairly suppressed. Yet left-wing activists, especially pro-Palestinians, have also fallen prey to police and prosecutors. Police in Berlin have shut down conferences and demonstrations in attempts to see off hate speech. Academics who supported pro-Palestine students have been threatened with a loss of funding. The risks to free expression do not go only in one direction.

While the US has many flaws, its free expression policy isn't one of them. Its policy is more coherent & faithful to those liberal philosophic foundations that limit expression more closely to the harm principle (eg, threats, imminent lawless action, defamation). It was crucial to the advances of the civil rights movement.

Giving an authority power to decide which harmless expression we're allowed to observe or produce is what authoritarians do. And no, offending someone isn't harm.

My advice is to quit lazily threatening everyone by arguing civil rights are the problem, and to use those civil rights (& civil disobedience) to organize & get shit done like the activists of before.