> I feel like these things are not on the same spectrum.
As somebody living in a country with pretty heavy "caps on free speech", Germany, it's very much both on the same spectrum [0].
Because the reasons for those "caps" are very much the same reasons why India shut down the large scale: To reign in dissidence and control the Overton window.
The South Korean National Security Act [1] is another, rather blatant, example for this kind of "thought legislation" that also doesn't shy away from straight-up banning and censoring media.
So some political activist used his free speech right to make some inconsiderate comments about historic events, and then numerous other public figures used their own free speech rights to point out that they disagree with those comments, and his publisher used their right of freedom of contract to cancel his book publishing deal.
Where exactly is the "caps on free speech" here? According to the article no legal or police action was taken against him? Should the people who disagreed with his comment have been prevented from criticizing him in public? Should book publishers be required to publish anything from anyone?
I am not sure what your example from Germany is supposed to show. The author was not persecuted, his publisher simply stopped selling his book. This seems vastly different to India turning off an entire communication channel.
> The author was not persecuted, his publisher simply stopped selling his book.
If you ignore how that whole episode completely side-tracked from the topic the author was actually interviewed on, climate-catastrophe, and how the German government has been rather opposed to that whole movement, then the end result was very favorable for the German government which originally cried wolf over it.
And all it had to do was accuse him of something he actually didn't do, based on an interview that wasn't even publicly published at that point.
Or we can just act like him getting depublished for talking sense is a completely rational and normal thing.
As such I consider it a rather apt example of how these kinds of "speech caps" can be abused to influence the Overton window.
And while it might not be as blunt as just cutting off information access wholesale, it's much more devious in its actual manifestation due to the large-scale acceptance of it, while denying that it leads to any self-censorship.
I have a hard time agreeing with your assessment here.
Roger Hallam called the holocaust "just another fuckery in human history" in the context of past atrocities that left millions of people dead. Germany's foreign minister Heiko Maas criticized this statement which is a given as the Holocaust is viewed as an extraordinary and not at all common event in Germany (and by many historians globally too). Also it's a relatively recent event. That said, it's not Germany's government that pushed for Hallam to not be able to publish his book.
If you live in Germany, you do of course know that politicians of the AfD party have said similar things without any persecution whatsoever. There are former high ranking neo nazis who work in high offices in this party. After the elections in Brandenburg, Andreas Kalbitz was interviewed on multiple TV stations despite his past as a neo nazi. AfD politicians are regularly invited to political talk shows, newspapers publish anything they say or tweet, Thilo Sarrazin published teaser chapters of his book in leading newspapers across the whole political spectrum. Germany's left-center newspaper Die Zeit asked whether rescuing refugees at sea is worth it not too long ago.
I do not see where anyone in Germany is being "depublished" for saying things that go against your perceived current. The Ullstein publishing house declined to sell the book after his comments. Other publishing houses might have decided differently. There is no evidence of the government pushing this anywhere from what I can see.
How this is in any way more "devious" than what the Indian government is currently doing in Kashmir and to protesters is absolutely incomprehensible to me. And I do take the latest developments in the WDR choir scandal as much into account as I do Richard Gutjahr's open letter about the BR and extreme right-wing mob attacks which was published yesterday. These things are not on the same spectrum at all.
> Roger Hallam called the holocaust "just another fuckery in human history"
Prefacing it with "almost.." but apparently everybody just glosses over that word because that wouldn't be conducive to the narrative of "Roger Hallam is a secret neo-Nazi who relativizes the Holocaust, everybody should shun him and his views!".
You drawing the AfD into this, and how they can supposedly openly deny the Holocaust without consequences, is not just dishonest, as it completely embezzles the resulting controversy, it also fits neatly into the "Hallam is like the AfD" narrative.
While completely embezzling that a large part of what feeds the AfD is a counter-culture movement that's getting tired of constantly getting slapped with the "Nazikeule". That's not to say that this is always undeserved, often enough it is deserved, but quite regularly it's used to shape the discourse because anybody who talks about the Holocaust without going "Yes, that was the most horrible thing in human history ever, and will forever remain the most horrible thing" is treading on very dangerous ground, as Roger Hallam had to find out.
> There is no evidence of the government pushing this anywhere from what I can see.
So the foreign minister of Germany is not part of the government? He didn't use his public position to help start, and legitimize, this witchhunt? That whole episode didn't make Roger Hallam a Persona non grata among the German branch of the ER?
I did not claim the AfD denied the Holocaust as that's illegal in Germany. But Gauland from the AfD famously called the Holocaust "Vogelschiss" which is not far away from Hallam's "fuckery", is it? Was he persecuted? No. Was he "depublished"? No. He's still interviewed, whatever he says is still reported on, he still has a platform, he was not removed from any social media either, he had no consequences to face whatsoever.
I disagree with the naive assessment about the AfD you're portraying here, but alright. Especially in connection to what just happened last week with the WDR and this week with the BR and Gutjahr's open letter.
>So the foreign minister of Germany is not part of the government? He didn't use his public position to help start, and legitimize, this witchhunt? That whole episode didn't make Roger Hallam a Persona non grata among the German branch of the ER?
So if the German foreign minister criticizes a public activist's take on the Holocaust that to you is a witch-hunt? So Hallam bears no responsibility here? Who is allowed to criticize him then?
It is comical how you think this episode is almost more devious than what's happening in India at the moment. It shows to me a complete lack of perspective. But let's agree to disagree then.
> But Gauland from the AfD famously called the Holocaust "Vogelschiss" which is not far away from Hallam's "fuckery", is it?
It's very far away from calling it "almost just another fuckery" particularly when the context of that statement was other genocides and the prospect of the climate-catastrophe making all of them look rather small-scale.
> I disagree with the naive assessment about the AfD you're portraying here, but alright. Especially in connection to what just happened last week with the WDR and this week with the BR and Gutjahr's open letter.
It's not at all a "naive assessment", you only call it that because it contradicts the popular narrative of "Every single one of them is just a neo-Nazi, so none of them have any valid points".
It's a narrative that leaves certain political issues completely in the hand of the AfD, by painting these issues as topics that supposedly "Only AfD neo-Nazis would talk about", like the financing of public broadcasting and how it over proportionally encumbers single-person households.
No other party actually has that on their agenda, and that most certainly won't change because by now that whole issue has been "sullied" by the AfD.
Then there's the reality that the AfD abuses the stigma of certain topics to gain popularity trough controversy, literally gaming the system that's supposed to keep them marginalized.
> So if the German foreign minister criticizes a public activist's take on the Holocaust that to you is a witch-hunt? So Hallam bears no responsibility here? Who is allowed to criticize him then?
The German foreign minister did that on the basis of an interview that wasn't even publicly available at that point. So nobody could actually read the full context of Hallam's statements, but plenty of people ended up reading Mass unique take on it.
How Mass got hold of the interview prior to publishing? Nobody knows, and apparently nobody even cares because who would want to defend somebody who supposedly relativizes the Holocaust? Certainly nobody in Germany, because that would be the equivalent of character-assassinating yourself.
>The German foreign minister did that on the basis of an interview that wasn't even publicly available at that point. So nobody could actually read the full context of Hallam's statements, but plenty of people ended up reading Mass unique take on it.
How Mass got hold of the interview prior to publishing? Nobody knows, and apparently nobody even cares because who would want to defend somebody who supposedly relativizes the Holocaust? Certainly nobody in Germany, because that would be the equivalent of character-assassinating yourself.
Maas linked to the article when he made his statement on the issue. The article was already available:
The AfD started as an anti-euro party. Most people who look at the party somewhat objectively don't think it's only filled with neo nazis. The five hundred op-eds about how Union and SPD missed the mark and have to take the "besorgte Bürger" seriously were all published in media across the political spectrum.
But it's absolutely obvious that the far right wing part of the party has won over control. It's also obvious that people with neo nazi affiliation do exist in the party and a person with strong ties to the scene like Kalbitz even leads the party in one of their most important states. Look at their last party meeting. Look at Petry leaving, Lucke - the party's founder - leaving a lot earlier. Your assessment of the AfD is extremely naive as this party is consistently talking about putting caps on the freedom of the press. Just look at Höcke's comments after his interview on ZDF this summer.
To your other point, no, I don't think Gauland's comment was all that different in what triggered the response. Again though, what kind of persecution did anyone here face? Is there a travel stop to Germany for Hallam now? Was his interview removed? Is he now not allowed to sign a book deal with another publisher? What terrible fate did he endure? You think this is more devious than what's happening in India. I've rarely read a more first-worldian approach than this.
We are very divided on this. I don't think you're being very objective here, you seem to fall prey to simplistic notions like "Nazikeule", and your perspective does not sound all that thought out to me.
As somebody living in a country with pretty heavy "caps on free speech", Germany, it's very much both on the same spectrum [0].
Because the reasons for those "caps" are very much the same reasons why India shut down the large scale: To reign in dissidence and control the Overton window.
The South Korean National Security Act [1] is another, rather blatant, example for this kind of "thought legislation" that also doesn't shy away from straight-up banning and censoring media.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/20/extincti...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_(South_K...