Hermit wrote: ↑Mon Jan 14, 2019 2:40 pm
Forty Two wrote: ↑Mon Jan 14, 2019 12:57 pm
Hermit wrote: ↑Mon Jan 14, 2019 9:47 am
Forty Two wrote: ↑Fri Jan 11, 2019 6:49 pm
If the person speaking about fascism isn't using force, there is zero justification for using any force against him or her.
Your theory fails because fascism has exploited freedom of speech in the past, then suppressed it. And then resistance was futile.
Actually, that isn't how fascism took hold anywhere. Too much freedom of speech never resulted in fascism.
Yes it did. After the miserable failure of the Beer Hall Putsch
which wasn't speech. It was part gunfight.
in 1923 Hitler decided to attain power by other means.
He went to prison, along with a host of other Nazis. Germany outlawed the Nazi Party. So, the remaining Nazis formed the National Socialist Freedom Movement as a way around the outlawing of the Nazi Party, along with the Frontbann (which was the cover name for what really, underground, was the SA). After the ban was lifted, the Nazi Party reformed, stronger for the ban, in 1925.
The NSDAP won control of the parliament of the Weimar Republic through elections.
Actually not. In May, 1924 ,the NSFM I mentioned won 6.5% of the seats in the Reichstag. In December, 1924, they lost seats, down to 3% of the seats. In 1928, the reformed National Socialist German Worker's Party (Nazis) won a whopping 2.6% of the seats in the Reichstag. In 1930, they hit 18.5% and in November, 1932, 33%. In January, 1933, Hindenburg NAMED - APPOINTED - Hitler Chancelor, as a result of negotiations with the German National People's Party and former Chancellor Franz Von Papen.
Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933 within the existing constitutional framework.
Appointed by President Hindenburg, not elected.
Two months later he manipulated parliament to grant him the ability to govern without parliament via the emergency law, and only then was the end of freedom of speech abolished.
That doesn't mean it's freedom of speech which caused the rise of Hitler. Plainly his rise to power was political, not a matter of free speech.
And, when he got into power, he made sure he got Parliament to do what could not happen in the US - simply vote away freedom of speech. Had they had a free speech constitutional provision which Parliament could not vote by majority to curtail, Hitler would not have had the power to do that.
And, note - how many people compare Trump and his cohorts as Nazis and akin to Hitler. They're in the government now. Do you want to vest them with the power to get rid of hate speech and dangerous ideas? Who do you think they would think need to be silenced under that rubric?
In the next elections, held in November 1933, the NSDAP won 661 out of 661 seats. Gleichschaltung followed in 1935. The party flag officially became the German flag, Germany's Jews were stripped of their citizenship and the 1000 year reign of the third German empire commenced.
Hence a very good use of a bill of rights with protection against the majority will and the State's will. A free speech provision. Freedom of assembly provision. An equal protection of the laws provision would have helped out quite a bit.
Further, just look at who the people who think as you're advocating call "Nazis." Christina Hoff Somers is included. Milo Yiannopoulos. Donald Trump. Trump Jr. Jordan Peterson. Anyone who protests against LGBTQ issues. The list goes on and on. Some people say ANTIFA, despite the name, act like Nazis. So, when ANTIFA's opponents get power in a country that will allow such censorship as you suggest, all it takes a vote of Parliament to censor ANTIFA. There is large faction that has beat the drum to have ANTIFA designated by the State as a "domestic terrorist organization."
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar