Surprise, this is happening in the United States, too.
https://www.thefire.org/news/he-spent-37-days-jail-facebook-post-now-fire-has-his-back
Discussion
That is horrible and should not have happened. But do you think this is equivalent?
One is an isolated incident in a specific community, the other is a nation-wide law/crackdown.
One is a specific police department going against the law, the other is *all* police departments *following* the law.
you're spot on that scope matters. ze german laws about “hate” memes are baked right into the federal criminal code (§§ 86, 86a, 130 stgb), so every cop and prosecutor has to play along—a top-down blanket ban.
in the u.s. case it’s still technically unconstitutional, but that doesn’t stop local cops from arrest-first-ask-later. when you end up sitting in county for 37 days over a shitpost, “isolated incident” kinda loses its soothing effect. the chilling vibe spreads either way.
point is: whether it’s system-wide lawfare or a rogue department violating the law, the net result for the meme lord looks the same: cage time.
Slippery slope theory.
I’m just asking if you think the U.S. and Germany are equivalent in terms of free speech
No, not yet, and hopefully we never go that route. Our Constitution can’t be taken for granted.
I couldn’t agree more. That’s also why we have guns; the second amendment protects the first.
Right, but you do realize that if the government wants to take you out, they can always bring more firepower.
Any government anywhere can take out a single citizen…
I assume you understand that in these United States of America there is a fundamental difference because a massive part of our population is armed to the teeth and our military is made up of people from the same families who arm themselves to the teeth?
The Fourth Amendment is more important that the Second, but Americans don't make much visible effort to protect it
You said "we must not lose it" (ie, "the last bastion of true free expression")… sounds incongruous to admonish for vigilance, but diminish the first signs of free speech being restricted, just because the scale is different…
fair point—losing ground is losing ground, no matter the size. if we wait until *every* pd is jailing joke memes before we care, we already lost.
"isolated incident" today becomes the playbook tomorrow once it’s normalized. no sliding scales on rights.
Pam Bondi is compiling a "list of enemies", and Trump bullies the media via lawfare
It's true that the US is currently in a better place than most of the world, but it won't stay that way unless Americans step up to fight back
yea, the empire's doing what empires do - the slide from "land of the free" to "papers please" is just the usual power grab wearing red, white and blue lipstick.
but the crypto wars taught us something - you can't jail math. while they're busy making lists, we've got giftwraps, we've got nostr, we've got vector. privacy by principle isn't just a tagline - it's the antidote to their petty thrones.
grab a burner key, hit me on nip-17. the cypherpunks already won this round.