[RD] What does free speech mean?

[Timsup2nothin]

It's a valuable skill up until it isn't.

Killing?

 

[uppi]

Yes.

The victorious powers could have easily liquidated them. But they had "certain skills" that were desired.
So we made a deal with darkness. Allowing the waffen-cancer to survive into the new post-war world.

The only thing you would achieve by killing 8 million Nazis would be to prove that they were right.

 

[Farm Boy]

Killing?

In the myriad sets of abilities that society does so? Yes.

But can't forget position either. The right plant in the right field in the right season, if out of row, is a weed.

 

[AmazonQueen]

The only thing you would achieve by killing 8 million Nazis would be to prove that they were right.

As always you'd have trouble identifying them. Still it would've been ridiculous to suggest in 1945 that free speech for Nazis was a requirement for rebuilding democracy.
What could sensibly be done was denazification and re-education.
What took place was fairly limited due to the Cold War starting up and the West German government wanting to return to business as usual even if it meant ignoring inconvenient truths about some of its citizens.

 

[CurtSibling]

It isn't "their valuable skills" that keep civilized people from embracing "hey, let's just liquidate eight million people."

When I mention skills, I was more nodding towards the space race and the West's espionage showdown with the USSR.

The only thing you would achieve by killing 8 million Nazis would be to prove that they were right.

Sorry. You'll have to give me more than that to feel any sympathy for monsters who made human ash bricks.

 

[uppi]

Sorry. You'll have to give me more than that to feel any sympathy for monsters who made human ash bricks.

I don't expect any sympathy, but I do expect not becoming the monster yourself.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I meant is this free speech from the viewpoint of official laws, or what is acceptable in civil circles of political correctness?

Don't know. Maybe that's the point of this thread.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1st amendment is actually fairly specific and more limited than you'd be given to believe hearing discussion about it. IMO it's too weak. From a search:

• Freedom of Religion.
• Freedom of Speech.
• Freedom of the Press.
• Freedom to Assemble Peaceably.
• Freedom to Petition the Government for a Redress of Grievances.

But there are immediately identifiable problems even with this. It is possible to pass laws that prohibit religious activities, thereby at least partially restricting that religion. Similarly, laws/actions have been passed/done whereby people serving as press (independent news sources) are suppressed by mainstream media sources. Insofar as the government passes laws to accomplish this, it is technically not upholding freedom of the press at all.

Even in the context of thread topic, "freedom of speech" has some troublesome interactions. I've pointed out in other threads that "obscenity" isn't protected. But we could define anything as obscenity, in principle, bypassing this rule. Consider, say, discussion of abortion to be considered "obscenity" after it's banned or something. We functionally have precedent for the US government doing something like that already. The other exceptions are less controversial in my mind. But they do imply that if we can demonstrate similar harms by other types of speech, you could make a case to drop free speech protections for them too. This requires a standard for "harm" yet to be established, and one which would almost certainly have excluded "obscenity" in the first place as too vague/broad/intangible.

 

[Lexicus]

The only thing you would achieve by killing 8 million Nazis would be to prove that they were right.

So if they were killed it would prove Jews really were subhuman filth bent on destroying the Aryan race, that Slavs were subhumans and deserved extermination, and so on? What exactly do you mean by this comment?

 

[cardgame]

You can't be mean to Nazis because they didn't do anything to deserve it, this is bigotry smh

 

[Cloud_Strife]

You can't be mean to Nazis because they didn't do anything to deserve it, this is bigotry smh

If you hit a nazi that makes you as culpable as them, apparently.

 

[CurtSibling]

Nazism was a death cult - It's truest expression was a global destruction, the literal "twilight of the gods." So by wiping out such cult members, you are actually doing them a favour.

The Aryan fanatics were quite rightly toppled, but as was pointed out, killing them all in a vengeful reprisal would result in one slaughter machine being replaced with another...

We must aspire to be higher creatures than the jackbooted bullies.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yeah, and nobody I've read is saying the allies should have killed 6 million more people after WWII was done, unless I guess you would like to forward the suggestion. Just as nobody is saying go leik naaaaaziehs.

Some people are considering the possibility that if we hanged camp guards maybe we should have also hanged rocket scientists. And some people seem to be considering government restriction on legal advocacy around age of consent.

 

[Zardnaar]

Most of the rocket scientists wouldn't have been culpable in any event.

That statement doesn't apply to Von Braun who had blood on his hands in terms of procuring slave labour.

V2 killed more people than building than than being used as a weapons system.

 

[Farm Boy]

Of course they aren't culpable. That's how it works. I Am Become Death, but yeah.

 

[Zardnaar]

Of course they aren't culpable. That's how it works. I Am Become Death, but yeah.

Most of them were to junior and had no participation in the crimes if the Nazi regime.

My 8 million number was the size of the Nazi party. Where do you draw the line though? Conscript in Wehrnacht, an engineer designing a tank, the factory boss who got sent slave labour, the worker on the factory floor making the weapon, the worker on the German train system, members of the Hitler Youth? Do you execute every German male over the age of 10 and the female members of the Nazi party and any female who worked in a war industry?

I don't have a good answer to who you prosecute some higher ups didn't participate in the worst crimes of the regime but we're in command of German soldiers but didn't give any orders to murder themselves. Who lives who dies?

 

[Farm Boy]

War is by definition murder. Oppenheimer knew what his creation would do. The generals knew what their soldiers were going to do. Hell, the US military knew what was going to happen over Dresden. Some of the pilots/bombardiers refused to drop load without finding something that could be justified as industrial. It still happened. None of it's clean. But that isn't the point. The point is that the rules always change depending on what "useful" abilities the person being discussed has.

 

[CurtSibling]

Do you execute every German male over the age of 10 and the female members of the Nazi party and any female who worked in a war industry?

At the very least, it would have sent a robust message to Stalin not to dicker with the West.
How different would Europe look in 2019 without Germany as a viable core?

 

[Farm Boy]

Shittier. There's a correct answer to that question after 70 years, and it's "shittier."

 

[innonimatu]

The only thing you would achieve by killing 8 million Nazis would be to prove that they were right.

Most of them were to junior and had no participation in the crimes if the Nazi regime.

My 8 million number was the size of the Nazi party. Where do you draw the line though? Conscript in Wehrnacht, an engineer designing a tank, the factory boss who got sent slave labour, the worker on the factory floor making the weapon, the worker on the German train system, members of the Hitler Youth? Do you execute every German male over the age of 10 and the female members of the Nazi party and any female who worked in a war industry?

I don't have a good answer to who you prosecute some higher ups didn't participate in the worst crimes of the regime but we're in command of German soldiers but didn't give any orders to murder themselves. Who lives who dies?

At least all the leaders should have been killed or left to rot in jail. The generals, the whole lot of them. Most of the officers of the army. They were guilty of wear crimes, of violating every convention on war including the Germany had signed, of mass murders and the subsequent cover up. Relaying and carrying out orders to that effect while in a position of power. They enthusiastically obeyed those orders, in many cases apparently with sadistic pleasure. And plenty of soldiers, perhaps most, happily followed them. This wasn't done by a handful of nazis, it was done by millions of germans, it could not have been done otherwise. By the end of the war the survivors from this lot of criminals were prisoners of the allies, and the allies had the evidence and the means to put them on trial and sentence them.

But because many tens of millions of germans knew very well they were guilty of having enthusiastically followed them, been willing participants in the whole genocidal project, and all the allies had use for Germany in their new cold war, they were released and allowed back into positions of power in the "new Germany". The west, and also some in the East. There were millions of lifelong nazis at heart in Germany, regretting only their defeat.