We have come to the point where comments in here is accusing an other HN commenter of being a shill and doing Whataboutism. Maybe we should take a step back and focus on what, if anything, the disagreement is about?
How would you formulate a general law which forbids only neo-nazi organizations and neo-nazi demonstrations? The first thing that comes to my mind is a law against organizations that write that they intend to use violence, but then you just end up with organizations that don't explicitly write that down anywhere but still practice it. If you applied it more flexible, like for example that any organization which members ever express an intention of violence, you would very fast find that doing a test run on history would catch a much large number of organizations than intended.
You could define it as "anything classified as a terrorist group by the state", but again many groups has been classified as such in the past, the state has occasionally change their mind, and animal right activists is an famous example that the FBI classified as "serious domestic terrorist threat". That leaves the system that Germany currently have, and leaves the details to the legal system to figure out what is nazi and what isn't.
I think there's two paths that seem like they might be worthwhile to pursue:
1. Remove the "imminent" requirement of the incitement restrictions on free speech. Currently, speech is already prohibited if it's an incitement to imminent lawless action and is likely to result in lawless action. I personally don't see all that much reason why "Go kill that specific jew with this bat" is substantially different than "All jews should be killed".
2. Ban specific iconography such as swastikas, white hoods, etc. I don't think frankly this is all that effective, supremacists can easily just take on a new symbol. But there's precedent in other countries and I don't think there's a slippery slope if every icon requires seperate prohibitions.
Note in both of these cases these ban the speech / symbols themselves, and not the groups. I don't think there's any way you can ban an organization altogether in any reasonable way.
> Ban specific iconography such as swastikas, white hoods, etc
Funnily enough the ADL has done this for a long time (well, not specifically ban but add icons to their list of hate symbols) and have been criticised for recently adding Pepe the frog to their list. I'm sure we've all been on the internet long enough to see someone with a Nazi Pepe profile picture so it clearly is used in reference to the alt-right, but at the same time it's just a generic crap meme that's been hijacked. What stops other symbols that have more meaning than a stupid meme (like the swastika, which originates from Hinduism I believe) being banned in legitimate use because it's been hijacked by Nazis?
That has very little to do with banning the symbols or not though. The swastika was highjacked regardless of whether the symbol was banned. It's unfortunate, but I don't see much of a solution beyond resisting any attempt to highjack important symbols before they're associated primarily with Nazis / white supremacists / whatever.
If your point is that banning will also restrict the non-racist interpretation of that symbol, context and reasonable interpretation when enforcing these laws can be used. I'm no expert on Germany / other places that ban iconography, but I would guess that a swastika clearly used in it's original context would be allowed to be displayed.
Sounds reasonable. Here in Sweden we have both, through we also have organization which people would identify as Neo-Nazism, and they also demonstrate and get into fights with counter-demonstraters.
How would you formulate a general law which forbids only neo-nazi organizations and neo-nazi demonstrations? The first thing that comes to my mind is a law against organizations that write that they intend to use violence, but then you just end up with organizations that don't explicitly write that down anywhere but still practice it. If you applied it more flexible, like for example that any organization which members ever express an intention of violence, you would very fast find that doing a test run on history would catch a much large number of organizations than intended.
You could define it as "anything classified as a terrorist group by the state", but again many groups has been classified as such in the past, the state has occasionally change their mind, and animal right activists is an famous example that the FBI classified as "serious domestic terrorist threat". That leaves the system that Germany currently have, and leaves the details to the legal system to figure out what is nazi and what isn't.