A_Wanderer
ONE love, blood, life
No I do not think that the Nuremberg judges were wrong in sentencing him to death. Inspiring that hatred layed the groundworks of the holocaust and was an enabling factor, but even when he knew that atrocities were taking place he did not stop. The absence of remorse in deed is also an important factor here.
There is a very large gap in the situation though, on one hand we are talking about a prominent member of the Nazi leadership who had knowledge of what was going on and continued to produce propaganda to aid the effort to exterminate the Jewish people. All of this was done as an apparatus of the Nazis and their fascist regime. I do not think that that the argument of free speech applies in propaganda, by its very nature it is the antithesis of free speech. He produced propaganda to meet a genocidal end with knowledge and as such bore some responsibility.
I think that that contrasts against a revisionist historian who promulgates lies, an anti-semitic agenda and filed a libel suit against a critic. All in all he is a disgusting human being, but thankfully his own agenda has been his ruin and by loosing the libel suit he has been economically ruined and any legitimacy he may have enjoyed has been annihilated, and all done without having to censore the mendacious bastard. He alone is not responsible for inspiring crimes, he doesn't appear to have knowledge or crimes going on today like Streicher had of the extermination of the Jews. We are dealing with different thresholds here.
Free speech is a liberty. Liberties can be positive or negative (complimenting an activist versus injecting heroin). In application of liberties they should obey the no-harm principle, ergo an action that infringes upon the rights of others (e.g. stealing, which violates property rights) should not be allowed. Free speech is speech that is not incitement to violence. I think that an example of free speech is "Fuck the Cartoonists Who Blaspheme the Prophet", now some of the followers of Omar Bakri Mohammed had signs and speech threatening death upon the cartoonists and threatening terrorist attacks - that language is inciting violence (something that deprives others of their rights) and does not fall under the same banner of free speech. Reconciling the limits of free speech versus incitement can be done logically and consistently within the confines of the no-harm principle. Under this anti-religious speech that does not incite violence against those is acceptable. Another important line is racist langauge versus ideology. Religious belief falls under ideology, ideology is not static, it is not inherent, it can change - for those reasons attacking religious belief is different than attacking other races - which is inherent, which is genetic, which cannot change (if I identify as Anglo I would have a hard time passing off as Malay). I think that one might be able to justify racial vilification legislation if it was properly crafted and there was extremely good cause, but I cannot see how any religious belief can be offered that form of immunity.
There is a very large gap in the situation though, on one hand we are talking about a prominent member of the Nazi leadership who had knowledge of what was going on and continued to produce propaganda to aid the effort to exterminate the Jewish people. All of this was done as an apparatus of the Nazis and their fascist regime. I do not think that that the argument of free speech applies in propaganda, by its very nature it is the antithesis of free speech. He produced propaganda to meet a genocidal end with knowledge and as such bore some responsibility.
I think that that contrasts against a revisionist historian who promulgates lies, an anti-semitic agenda and filed a libel suit against a critic. All in all he is a disgusting human being, but thankfully his own agenda has been his ruin and by loosing the libel suit he has been economically ruined and any legitimacy he may have enjoyed has been annihilated, and all done without having to censore the mendacious bastard. He alone is not responsible for inspiring crimes, he doesn't appear to have knowledge or crimes going on today like Streicher had of the extermination of the Jews. We are dealing with different thresholds here.
Free speech is a liberty. Liberties can be positive or negative (complimenting an activist versus injecting heroin). In application of liberties they should obey the no-harm principle, ergo an action that infringes upon the rights of others (e.g. stealing, which violates property rights) should not be allowed. Free speech is speech that is not incitement to violence. I think that an example of free speech is "Fuck the Cartoonists Who Blaspheme the Prophet", now some of the followers of Omar Bakri Mohammed had signs and speech threatening death upon the cartoonists and threatening terrorist attacks - that language is inciting violence (something that deprives others of their rights) and does not fall under the same banner of free speech. Reconciling the limits of free speech versus incitement can be done logically and consistently within the confines of the no-harm principle. Under this anti-religious speech that does not incite violence against those is acceptable. Another important line is racist langauge versus ideology. Religious belief falls under ideology, ideology is not static, it is not inherent, it can change - for those reasons attacking religious belief is different than attacking other races - which is inherent, which is genetic, which cannot change (if I identify as Anglo I would have a hard time passing off as Malay). I think that one might be able to justify racial vilification legislation if it was properly crafted and there was extremely good cause, but I cannot see how any religious belief can be offered that form of immunity.