Home » Free speech for Nazis: policies in the US and Europe compared

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Free speech for Nazis: policies in the US and Europe compared — 21 Comments

  1. About the Millenials and that 2015 poll, there’s this article: “That Was a False Alarm on Millennials and Free Speech”:

    A bit of digging into past poll results shows that this just wasn’t an unusual result. Yes, broad attitudes over free speech change over time – more on this in a bit – but there’s a general pattern to how Americans answer these questions: They’ve shown over and over again that they favor free speech in theory, when asked about it in the broadest terms, but they also tend to be fairly enthusiastic about government bans on forms of speech they find particularly offensive (what’s considered offensive, of course, changes with the times). On this subject, millennials are right in line with reams of past polling, and it would be wrong to hold up last week’s results as an example of anything other than an extremely broad tendency that’s existed for a long time. …

    Washington Post polling director Richard Morin writing in 1998:

    In 1938, the American Institute of Public Opinion surveyed a national sample of American adults. The institute asked respondents whether they believed in free speech or not, and of course 96 percent said they did.

    But in subsequent questions, it became uncomfortably clear that Americans would place many limits on free speech. Fewer than four in 10 — 38 percent — said they would allow “radicals” to meet and speak. Even fewer would grant those rights to Communists or fascists.

    Likewise, during the height of the Red Scare in the 1950s, Harvard sociologist Samuel Stouffer conducted a national poll to measure support for free speech. Two-thirds said a Communist should not be allowed to speak. And nearly as many, 60 percent, said an atheist should not be allowed to speak.

  2. There is principle and there is practice.
    The Millenials have been subjected to Leftist brainwashing all of their young lives, by their “educators”, whether they attended public or private schools. It makes no difference. One must not offend the collective.

  3. Thanks for catching that, Huxley, and providing the correct link. I need to remember to always check the links before posting.

  4. Those who would deny the right to speech they find offensive are fashioning the chains of their own enslavement.

  5. Ann:

    But in the poll I cited, there were clear generational differences in the percentages wanting to block speech. The oldest generations supported free speech most strongly, and in each successive generation the percentage of blockers increased.

  6. Years and years of indoctrination by leftist teachers from the age of five until adulthood is the main reason why the younger generations less favor civil rights. It’s also why we are going to see less of the political ‘changers’ that Neo speaks of here so often in my opinion.

  7. “The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.” — Tommy Smothers

    Don’t like what you are hearing? Retreat to your safe space and open the play dho can and hug a teddy bear. This is how darkness begins.

  8. Ann: This is such an apples and oranges comparison, I don’t know where to begin.

    Yes, there always have been Americans who effectively want to limit speech but today’s millenials are unusual in the breadth and intensity of that impulse.

    In the past Americans said they supported free speech but if you peeled a layer down you found they weren’t keen on few a specific exceptions like communists, nazis, atheists, flag burners, or pornographers.

    But when it was pointed out in law, editorials and demonstrations that such speech ought to be allowed, those Americans shrugged and gave it up because they really were for free speech.

    They weren’t going to start doxxing, harassing, firing or physically attacking others for speech. They weren’t overturning statues they didn’t like or seeking to reform every public space according to their agenda. They weren’t talking about a thorough overhaul of the first amendment. They weren’t supported by university administrators or prominent newspapers.

    We’re in a whole new ballgame now. The pendulumn is swinging away from freedom and young people are driving that change which is also unusual in modern American history.

  9. ‘To each his own’

    ‘Live and let live’

    ‘It’s a free country’

    These were all sayings I remember hearing as a kid from adults proudly. Whether in word or deed I would argue that the younger generation doesn’t truly believe those things anymore.

  10. It is good you are providing people with some European background on why Nazi accusations are so important there.

    It is also a type of the same thing for why it happens here. Emulating Europe is a pretty big pattern for Leftists.

  11. I’m pretty much a first amendment absolutist. But I always thought this position was part of an elite consensus, and that many American have views more consistent with Antifa, albeit often in regards to different expressions.

    Including Donald Trump:

    Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag – if they do, there must be consequences – perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!

    https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/803567993036754944

    On this issue, I see that in 1995 62% of Americans favored “a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress and state governments to make it illegal to burn the American flag”.

    By 2006, that number was down to 56%.

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/23524/public-support-constitutional-amendment-flag-burning.aspx

    So this indicates we are improving. But we still have a majority outside the Elite Free Speech Consensus…including Trump.

  12. But in the poll I cited, there were clear generational differences in the percentages wanting to block speech.

    Neo,

    Not block speech full stop, but block offensive speech about minorities.

    The oldest generations supported free speech most strongly, and in each successive generation the percentage of blockers increased.

    This may be a function of the younger generation thinking racism is more offensive than older folks do. Switch to a different speech, lets say flag-burning, bible-burning, porn, etc…and we may see the correlation go in the other direction.

  13. Geoffrey Britain Says:
    August 23rd, 2017 at 6:08 pm
    Those who would deny the right to speech they find offensive are fashioning the chains of their own enslavement.
    * * *
    Nice twist on the original.

    “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.”–Abraham Lincoln, letter to H.L. Pierce, April 6, 1859.

  14. parker Says:
    August 23rd, 2017 at 7:41 pm
    “The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.” – Tommy Smothers
    * *
    One can find wisdom in the strangest places sometimes.

    Release the Yo-Yo Man!

    I suppose the line “if you get an outfit you can be a cowboy too” is now cultural appropriation.

  15. huxley Says:
    August 23rd, 2017 at 7:48 pm
    Ann: This is such an apples and oranges comparison, I don’t know where to begin.

    Yes, there always have been Americans who effectively want to limit speech but today’s millenials are unusual in the breadth and intensity of that impulse.

    In the past Americans said they supported free speech but if you peeled a layer down you found they weren’t keen on few a specific exceptions like communists, nazis, atheists, flag burners, or pornographers.

    But when it was pointed out in law, editorials and demonstrations that such speech ought to be allowed, those Americans shrugged and gave it up because they really were for free speech.

    They weren’t going to start doxxing, harassing, firing or physically attacking others for speech. They weren’t overturning statues they didn’t like or seeking to reform every public space according to their agenda. They weren’t talking about a thorough overhaul of the first amendment. They weren’t supported by university administrators or prominent newspapers.

    * * *

    Or maybe we just didn’t have the internet then to find out what they were doing. The pre-tech equivalent of doxing the Royalists during the Revolution got pretty brutal, and I suspect we can find instances of all your examples during the Civil War (it wasn’t really very civil, after all).

    However it IS a change of the polity within living memory.

    Griffin Says:
    August 23rd, 2017 at 7:59 pm
    ‘To each his own’

    ‘Live and let live’

    ‘It’s a free country’

    These were all sayings I remember hearing as a kid from adults proudly. Whether in word or deed I would argue that the younger generation doesn’t truly believe those things anymore.

    * *
    I would add “sticks and stones can break my bones but words cwill never hurt me”.
    The younger generation doesn’t believe them because it was never taught them, or so it appears.
    They were not prevalent in many pre-American-Constitution societies either.

    PS:
    here’s a thoroughly chilling article about Facebook=surveillance (although the author is predictably anti-Trump in his casual asides).
    https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n16/john-lanchester/you-are-the-product

  16. The example from Hitler’s history was unfamiliar to me, but the principle has been hashed around on the internet for some time now. The Left profited from the PR of Suppression back in the McCarthy back-lash, but doesn’t seem to think it can happen when they are in the role of the Suppressors.

  17. The suppression of communists against Americans was strong, even during McCarthy, Aesop. Check out Bella Dodd’s School of Darkness, available online in its entirety.

  18. i disapprove of bigotry but i will defend to the death bigots’ right to hate and express their hate peacefully peacefully

  19. The Millenials believe they have the right to read everyone else’s mind, when in truth they don’t even have the ability to do so, let alone have any “rights” that may extend from such an ability.

    They do, however, have the ability to commit large-scale murder, even genocide, for imaginary reasons, and are gradually warming up to that as their best real-world alternative. They can’t know what you’re thinking, or make you think what they want you to think, but they can declare that you have committed a capital thoughtcrime, and have you executed without trial, as soon as they manage to panic our civilization into granting them the political power to do so.

  20. Tatterdemalian Says:
    August 24th, 2017 at 1:30 pm…, but they can declare that you have committed a capital thoughtcrime, and have you executed without trial, as soon as they manage to panic our civilization into granting them the political power to do so.
    * * *
    It’s not all, or just, Millennials. This strain of tyrants is an on-going virus, the under-current in all ages, resurgent from time to time when they can convince the public to believe their cover stories of “it’s all for your own good” long enough to gain control.

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