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In 1944, my father was arrested in Berlin for a double crime of being a semi-Jewish enemy and Hitler. He was imprisoned and enslaved in the infamous Buchenwald camp, where he almost survived the “extinction by labor” Nazi brutal programme and was scheduled for involuntary sterilization. To his good fortune, and mine, the US troops released Buchenwald a day before its scheduled proceedings.
I dedicated my life to the advocacy of freedom of speech, as history shows that history is the most important engine for securing human rights. But if Margaret Brennan, host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” is right, when she claimed in Germany last week that “free speech was weaponized to do genocide,” it was a powerful censorship. It will be a debate. Sadly, she was wrong.
To be fair to Brennan, she repeated the assumptions that were too general. The Nazis seized power among the German Weimar Republic because of their tolerance against hateful rhetoric. However, historical records violate this assumption, so it often means thatWeimar’s misal accusation. ”
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in fact, There was a law Criminalizes hateful and discriminatory speeches in Weimar Germany. These laws were strictly enacted, including opposing major Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Julius Strycher and even Hitler himself. Hundreds of Nazi agitators have been found guilty of group defamation, incitement to violence by “class” and humiliation to religious communities. Similar bans on Nazi radio programs, newspapers, gatherings and speeches have led to countless prosecutions.
CBS host Margaret Brennan says freedom of speech has sparked the Holocaust. (Screenshot/CBS News)
No matter how positive their intentions are, these German hate speech laws backfired in a Nazi public relations coup that claimed they were punished to speak the truth to speak power. Streicher’s anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, for example, became so popular that it was confiscated.
Hitler’s ban on speaking is guided Poster depicting him As a free speech martial artist, the text that has his mouth closed and complains that “only the 2 billion he on earth might not speak in Germany” is the text that complains. Masu.
What’s worse, when the Nazis seized power, they used these same laws to silence and imprison the enemy. This experience illustrates the inherent flaws of the limitations regarding so-called hate speech. The concept is inevitably subjective, which gives the enforcement authority essentially the power to restrain speech. .
Sadly, the example of modern hate speech law goes as expected, so there’s no need to look for Germany itself. Recently, six German police officers have launched a dawn attack at the man’s house due to his ocky tweet about the hypocritical acts of government officials. In 2024, pro-Palestinian rally closed over concerns about possible hate speech, even if the suppressed message was in foreign language.
Particularly troublesome is Germany’s regular punishment for messages that include so-called “hate speeches,” even if the message satirizes and condemns it. In 2021, for example, Cologne’s prosecutors launched lawsuits against the mayor of Colon and members of the Jewish community as they shared photos of anti-Semitic posters.
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The intention was to condemn the ongoing issue of anti-Semitism. That’s why the message that accompanied the tweet reads “Anyone who thinks that way, has no business anywhere else in Cologne or our society.” Still, the prosecutor said it was his duty to investigate, as German law would absolutely prohibit the distribution of hate speech, regardless of its intent.
Similarly, Germany’s strict Internet censorship law, which came into effect in 2018, punishes anti-immigrant tweets by leaders of Germany’s far-right Alternative Party (AFD) party, as well as tweets by journalists and human rights activists. It was used quickly. It satirized and criticised them.
Hitler’s ban on speaking out led to a poster depicting him as a free speech martial artist, and his mouth was closed and complained, “Only the 2 billion he on Earth might not speak in Germany.” The text saying it complains.
Despite Germany’s strict censorship regime, the steady rise of the AFD party in political support and power tragically reflects the events of the Weimar era. In fact, they even amplify them.
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I literally owe my life to the end of the Holocaust. If the evidence shows that censorship may have avoided it, I support censorship. However, there is no such evidence.
Rather than trying to censor speeches that we hate and fear the consequences, we all have a moral obligation to speak up actively towards them. By silence of that expression, we cannot suppress hatred. You need to face it head-on. There are no shortcuts.
