Re: Oh No! Nazis on the Nets

["Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com>]

Hadmut Danisch says:
> 
> > Yes, read that note again. Who cares about 42,000 right-wing extremists in
> > a country in which the government is so fascist to make it illegal for
> > someone to tell you how to start your own paper? And just in case you were
> > wondering: Germany is considered a democratic country. Now you know where
> > the US under Clinton is heading.
> > 
> > -=T.A.Z.
> 
> Of course, the right-wing is a problem. But a *lot* of people care.
> 
> BTW: TAZ is the name of a german left-wing newspaper. This newspaper
> exists because everyone in Germany has the right to make a newspaper.

Could I publish a newspaper containing Nazi propaganda in Germany?

No?

Then everyone doesn't have the right to produce a newspaper, does
everyone?

I feel it is a fundamental right to be able to publish whatever
newspaper one would like to publish, and I say that as a Jew who lost
most of his family to Nazi murderers in the second world war.
Restrictions on speech ultimately backfire, providing oppressors with
mechanisms to silence opponents. Protection from Nazism must come from
strong respect for the freedom of all to express themselves and live
as they wish so long as they do not harm others, and not from
preventing the dissemination of "dangerous" ideas. Only when a neonazi
attempts to beat someone up or set fire to a building does his action
become the legitimate subject of prosecution. The oppression of
communication or of ideas, regardless of how repugnant, is
incompatible with a free society.

Perry