Marvin's post also makes the classic confusion of the issue of state censorship backed with police powers, which was not an issue with Weimar, where Hitler got only a short prison setence for a terrorist attempt to otherthrow the government and where Brownshirt terror (never mind Nazi speech) went unpunished the complicity of the authorities, and of protest by citizens' groups about other speech, which was what some of the German left attempted, mixed with self-defense against Nazi attacks. The latter is an exercise of free speech, not censorship, It's not censorship to day, we citizens hate what you say and despise your views;' it is censorship if the government prevents you from speaking or prosecutes your speech.
--- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
> Marvin:
>
> > If the German left had succeeded, as it
> desperately tried to
> > do, in breaking up Nazi meetings and preventing
> them from
> > using "the same platform as everyone else" to gain
> power,
> > would your objections still hold? Does free speech
> elevated
> > to the level of a principle - "no matter how
> dangerous or
> > provocative" - take precedence over what resulted,
> in part, from its
> > exercise: the subsequent wholesale massacre of
> Jews, gypsys,
> > homosexuals, the disabled, and political
> dissidents? Not for
> > me. Of course, like everything else where abstract
> principles
> > are concerned, there is a slippery slope, which is
> why I
> > think all principles have to be rooted in context.
>
>
> Marvin:
>
> I made a "new year's resolution to limit my
> participation in silly internet
> debates that have no rational resolution, an I also
> have been cited for
> overposting, so this is my last posting this day. I
> think you seem to
> forget that the fascists in Germany and Italy won
> not on the power of their
> ideas, but by the power of their paramilitary thugs
> and financial backing of
> the elites - factors that have nothing to do with
> free speech or lack of it.
>
> Today's neo-nazis and assorted vermin have nothing
> even remotely comparable
> to the material resources that the Italian and
> German fascists had in the
> 1920s and 1930s. They are basically a small bunch
> of violent nuts with
> crazy and unpopular ideas. The best way to counter-
> them, if that is really
> necessary, is to let them speak and demonstrate and
> revel how weak and short
> on ideas they are. Censoring them only adds
> gravitas to their cause, casts
> them as "martyrs" and creates an illusion that they
> have something
> "powerful" to offer - so "powerful" that it must be
> censored. I think that
> the posse of commissars who call for censorship
> actually do them a favor by
> wanting to censor them - this gives them publicity
> and there is no such
> thing as 'negative publicity.'
>
>
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