> In the decade from 1923 to 1933, the Nazi propaganda magazine Der Stürmer — of which Streicher was the executive publisher — was confiscated or had its editors taken to court no fewer than 36 times.
Streicher and his fellow editors were already active members of the NSDAP (Nazi party) during the 1920s. Streicher and other editors were taken to court, yes, but the assertion that it was for the content of his magazine and not actions like the Hitlerputsch is not something I can find support for in any source.
> Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, points out that cases were regularly brought against individuals on account of anti‐Semitic speech in the years leading up to Hitler’s takeover of power in 1933.
Antisemitism was alive and well in the Weimar Republic, the claim that people were taken to court for antisemitic speech is another one that I can't find a source for. People were taken to court for violence against Jews, as they were still full German citizens in the Weimar Republic. I looked up the passages of the Weimar Republic constitution around religion and freedom of assembly and there is nothing about hate speech or similar kinds of discrimination. One of the major causes of increasing violence against Jews was Der Stürmer and similar publications, because they could be circulated without impunity.
In fact, I looked up Alan Borovoy's quote, he said:
> During the 15 years before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on anti-Semitic speech.
I find this number of 200 interesting, because 200 is roughly the same number as Jewish cemeteries that were desecrated between 1923 and 1933, and makes me suspicious that he's taking court cases about desecration and equating them with hate-speech - which are obviously not the same things.
> In einer regelrechten Schändungswelle wurden zwischen 1923 und 1932 fast 200 Fälle registriert [1]
Sorry it's in German, but it should be easy to translate. In any case, the passages you posted have no substance other than a quote from one guy that from anything I can see seems to be conflating two different things to support his argument.
It was popular to say, but I challenge the idea that people have somehow become less tolerant of speech they disagree with than, say, Christians in the 1980s or the US government during the Red Scare.
"Is this person defending free speech in favor of liberty? Or because his anti-liberty extremism won't be tolerated otherwise?".
It works both ways so this isn't a practical way of looking at implementation of free speech. You can't keep a system that doesn't protect itself free forever - propaganda travels faster and further than truth, and I doubt the founding fathers wrote the first amendment with mass media in mind.
You can start the argument of who gets to decide what should be allowed and what shouldn't, and in the current political climate (at least in the USA) the answer to that is obviously nobody. Ideally those decisions would be made during a time of cultural unity, where a whole nation can say "These are our values that we want to write in stone", like Germany did with the new constitution in the 20th century where it put well-defined limits on what kind of speech should be forbidden.
It's doubtful if that kind of unity is even possible in the USA anymore, so I'm worried that, on a long enough time-scale, unfettered free speech will inevitably lead to tyranny of a kind because there is no system in place to protect it.
There's no historical reason to think that not supporting extreme speech will lead to fascism. There are historical reasons to think that curbing extremist speech protects democracy (see the Weimar Republic).
I dunno if I'd agree that it's a small vocal minority, zero-tolerance to anybody questioning the current dogma is seen everywhere where trans acceptance is a focus. Ten years ago I was told, by trans people, that there are physical differences between trans and cis brains. Say that today, and you get kicked out of LGBT spaces for being a transmedicalist or truscum.
I have no idea whether it's true or not because you can't even find research on the subject because of how absurdly politicized the topic is.
Gender politics is a cancer on the left, even though I agree with it, it takes up so much time and energy away from things that would benefit everybody including trans people, like universal healthcare, better employee protection laws and better, more available education. Such a small percentage of the population has been the center point of so much discussion and debate, and for what benefit? All I see it doing is give the right-wing more ammunition to harden their bases.
I can't misunderstand what doesn't make any sense.
> We have a destination in mind. We know it's down this dark and rainy road. I can't foresee every twist and turn on this road and I am able to be at peace with that.
When people say "they're at peace" with things like this in the context of religion, it usually means they've replaced the importance of the here and now with valuing the beyond and the ephemeral. Things in the here and now just aren't that important because God or Jesus will take care of things. I would argue that being at peace when you're in danger, driving down a dark and rainy road, would make you a much worse hypothetical driver. To be a bit snarky, I for one wouldn't want my driver thinking in the back of his mind that if we all die in a crash, it's no big deal because it was God's plan anyways.
You're gonna say that that's not what you do, but that peace has to come from somewhere, and from what you've been saying it sure sounds an awful lot like the peace comes from absolving yourself of responsibility for things that you can't control, even if they are still your responsibility to handle.
No it doesn't, political change is simply impossible without massive financial backing, which is why policies that benefit the classes that don't have a lot of money have to jump through all those hoops you mentioned to eventually get the money behind it.
Diversity of skin color is not meaningful change in the slightest if all the policies stay the same. They're just hiring different faces to say the same things.
I can't believe you're unironically using the crack epidemic (that ravaged poor minority communities and was caused by the US government) to justify the War on Drugs (that ravaged poor minority communities and was caused by the US government).
The REAL SOLUTION is boosting the lower classes and making life better for everybody, but that's too expensive to try, so wasting trillions and ruining minority and poor lives is better. /s
That's not reasonable at all. Forensic science and surveillance technology has made gigantic bounds in the past 50 years, as has almost every other aspect of crime fighting. We've busted mafias, dispersed organized crime syndicates (you know, the REAL bad guys) and made education more widespread than ever. It's gotten a lot harder to do serious IRL crime undetected (cyber crime is a whole other story). Giving a bunch of young latinos and african americans horrible mandatory minimums in lieu of addiction treatment has very arguably contributed to slowing down the decrease in violent crimes.
A huge portion of them, considering just how much of our prison system is filled with first-time non-violent offenders. Also considering the socioeconomic effects of even a misdemeanor drug conviction at a young age, a lot more career criminals could've been prevented by not sending them to prison in the first place.
> On Tuesday, two House Democrats introduced legislation that would decriminalize all drugs in the U.S., shifting the national response to a public health model. The measure appears to have zero chance of passage.
If that isn't just the perfect description of politics in the US, I don't know what is. I don't know what your political ideology has to be to think the War on Drugs is a good thing, after all the money wasted, all the lives lost, all the people pointlessly locked up for things half the country can now do openly and legally.
The most common-sense things don't even have a chance at passing because our government is barely hiding that they're all either corporate stooges or obstructionist trolls anymore.
> So when you accuse them of being these terrible things, they resent you.
These people have been resenting everybody that isn't like them since they were forced to give up their slaves, this is just the newest thing they're resentful about. They will always be resentful towards a system that doesn't make white people top dog by virtue of skin color.
> and everyone thinks the other side is entirely responsible
This is more "both sides are the same" rhetoric that is only used to empower the fringe beliefs and extremism in the American right. The whole developed world is more or less on the same page regarding science, except the American right. That's not a political divide, that's a sign of a fringe party full of extremists.
> because I can do it without the anxiety of uncertainty of the outcome
That's like saying you're fine driving at 90mph in the rain because Jesus is on your side. You're choosing to not feel the true weight of your responsibility because it's easier to just "have faith" that Jesus will take the wheel. That doesn't sound strictly better at all, that sounds irresponsible and immature.
So you heard from a second-hand source that productivity at a bank tanked, and that's making you think that negative WFH productivity is the norm? Maybe base your opinions off a little more information than a friend's story.