Why do some laws make saying &quot;Heil Hitler&quot; illegal when other laws allow freedom of political speach? In the German Federal Republic is illegal to say &quot;Heil Hitler&quot; which is basically a restriction of laws relating to one's freedom of opinion, freedom of speach and political freedom. Why does the German Federal Republic have these seemingly contradictory laws?
Any country is their own sovereign There is no international law that demands any state to allow anyone free speech of all kinds. Remember that your rights end where the rights of others [incl. society] begin. And in Germany, the right of the society is defined as being not subjected to the symbols of illegal organizations, especially ones that try to violate the liberal democratic basic order Also, Germany is not alone in banning the sentence or the accompanying gesture. They are also illegal to various degrees in Austria, Switzerland, Slovakia, The Czech Republic, and Sweden. It also can be illegal in the US, if disturbing the peace. The sentence is an identifier for a banned organization The sentence is certainly illegal if spoken to express certain things. However, it is legal to be used for example in art (films) and is commonly found in lecture material, as one example of how the nazi party identified. But how? People are often confused, but the rule is actually somewhat easy: If you display any symbol of a banned, unconstitutional organisation (under § 86a StGB) like any of the logos of the Nazi Party and spiritual successors (those with a red bar: banned!) or even the PKK, then you are acting in an illegal manner. And unless you have an exception to claim, the determination can be done entirely on a factual basis by looking at the circumstances. Indeed, the mens rea requirement is so minimal (because the law is written in a way that there is none needed!), that posting photos of a swastika tattoo can get you convicted for jailtime Exceptions However, I mentioned exceptions. Those are in § 86a StGB(3), pointing to $ 86(3)&amp;(4) [eng]: (3) Die Absätze 1 und 2 gelten nicht, wenn die Handlung der staatsbürgerlichen Aufklärung, der Abwehr verfassungswidriger Bestrebungen, der Kunst oder der Wissenschaft, der Forschung oder der Lehre, der Berichterstattung über Vorgänge des Zeitgeschehens oder der Geschichte oder ähnlichen Zwecken dient. (4) Ist die Schuld gering, so kann das Gericht von einer Bestrafung nach dieser Vorschrift absehen. (3) Subsection (1) [and (2)] does not apply if the propaganda material or the act serves civic information, to prevent unconstitutional activities, to promote the arts or science, research or teaching, reporting about current or historical events, or similar purposes. (4) If the degree of guilt is minor, the court may dispense with imposing a penalty under this provision. That is why we have swastikas in German school books, as those tell about the horrors of nazi germany. That is why the logos can be found in research material and history books analyzing the use of the symbols in different countries. That's why the news outlet filming the demo where people yell Heil Hitler show that footage without precautions (unlike those that fly the banned symbol!) That is why you can have the film Inglorious Bastards with all its Swastikas and people yelling Heil Hitler, but its advertisement material was specifically altered to not show those. However, until August 2018, computer games were not accepted as arts. This is why the German versions of Wolfenstein that did get a german release before had been altered to remove Swastikas and voice lines. But the &quot;Sozialadäquanzklausel&quot; had been applied to computer games in August 2018, and the games got (after some other hoops) re-released in their international version on 22nd November 2019. How come some ideologies are banned?! Germany's equivalent of a constitution is the Grundgesetz (Basic Law). Its first 20 articles (not paragraphs or sections!) prescribe the rights of any person. The very first and most important one is, and the very first sentence of it makes clear what the very guiding principle of all other laws has to be (emphasis mine) before any of the other basic rights are enumerated. Art. 1: Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Sie zu achten und zu schützen ist Verpflichtung aller staatlichen Gewalt. Art. 1: (1) Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority. This is the most absolute right anyone can have. There is no provision in any way that would allow (or make it possible!) to strip or reduce the human dignity and every human being, living and dead, has it. Violations of human dignity have been used quite often to repeal laws, such as several incarceration methods or when cuts to the social security system would prevent someone to live a life that would be without dignity. Human Dignity is the measure that can be used to cut all other rights. In fact, it is explicitly the foundational principle of all german laws, that rights are not granted beyond where other rights start and that nobody has any rights when it comes to harming the constitutional order derived from the Grundgesetz (emphasis mine): Art. 2: (1) Jeder hat das Recht auf die freie Entfaltung seiner Persönlichkeit, soweit er nicht die Rechte anderer verletzt und nicht gegen die verfassungsmäßige Ordnung oder das Sittengesetz verstößt. (1) Every person shall have the right to free development of his personality insofar as he does not violate the rights of others or offend against the constitutional order or the moral law. Now, where comes freedom of speech? Only in Article 5, and it is absolutely not absolute but has defined limits (emphasis mine): Art 5:(1) Jeder hat das Recht, seine Meinung in Wort, Schrift und Bild frei zu äußern und zu verbreiten und sich aus allgemein zugänglichen Quellen ungehindert zu unterrichten. Die Pressefreiheit und die Freiheit der Berichterstattung durch Rundfunk und Film werden gewährleistet. Eine Zensur findet nicht start. (2) Diese Rechte finden ihre Schranken in den Vorschriften der allgemeinen Gesetze, den gesetzlichen Bestimmungen zum Schutze der Jugend und in dem Recht der persönlichen Ehre. (3) Kunst und Wissenschaft, Forschung und Lehre sind frei. Die Freiheit der Lehre entbindet nicht von der Treue zur Verfassung. Art 5: (1) Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures, and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship. (2) These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to personal honour. (3) Arts and sciences, research and teaching shall be free. The freedom of teaching shall not release any person from allegiance to the constitution. Parties and organisations that can't abide by the other rules of law because of their ideology will get banned based on that. In the case of the nazi ideology, it's quite simple: The core idea of Rassenlehre and its believe in Untermenschen is so deeply dehumanizing that there can't ever be a way to get that in line with the very first (as well as 2nd and 3rd) Article of the Grundgesetz. Or to quote the words of Amon: Nazi ideology denies dignity to some humans, goes against the liberal-democratic order, and therefore cannot enjoy the usual protections. Rule of law is still maintained because restrictions to the freedom of expression are codified in law, and violators will get a fair trial. You see, you simply don't even have an absolute right to disseminate your ramblings, because the Basic law itself points to the general laws that ban the dissemination of certain materials. This is how § 86 StGB can ban any propaganda material for organizations and § 86a StGB subsequently bans their symbols, including gestures and slogans.
The law is really bad at protecting whistleblowers From my understanding of US law, this is not unauthorised access to a computer: the reporter made a legitimate request to a remote computer, that computer provided data,the reporter accessed the supplied data on their own computer. However, pointing out the failures of people in power is fraught even if it is not illegal. It is certainly within the Governor’s power to authorise an investigation of the reporter. On the face of the law, it seems reasonable to suspect that what was done might be a violation so there is nothing legally wrong with initiating an investigation. I suspect that such a broad interpretation of the law would fall foul of the First Amendment which may partly explain why it wasn’t prosecuted: the government doesn’t want to find out. Similarly they can issue press releases, which, due to the First Amendment, don’t have to be true, just not defamatory. Saying it’s a possible violation is true and not defamatory. Saying the reporter was an evil person who is only doing this for political purposes is a statement of opinion and not defamatory. It’s a fact of the world that people with power can use that power in ways that are malicious, unethical, and unfair but not necessarily illegal.
The fact that something is illegal does not imply that it is illegal to post pictures of it happening. In general, under U.S. law, free speech protects almost all forms of communications subject to a handful of narrow exceptions and this is not one of them. There are many legitimate reasons one might want to post video of a fight (e.g. to identify crime perpetrators for purposes of prosecuting them), but no legitimate purpose is legally necessary. Surely as a platform Reddit cant hide against it being a platform of free speech in this case? They most definitely can. Reddit is also not responsible for user posted content under Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act, even if it were illegal for the person posting it to post the content
Lying is protected in the United States You can make films (or write books etc.) denying the Holocaust, or stating that UFOs are alien spacecraft, or that one race/ethnicity/gender is smarter/stronger/better than another without fear of government sanction. Further, the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that hate speech is protected in the United States - if you want to advocate that the members of [group] should be sterilized/deported/euthanased/violently murdered etc., feel free. What isn't protected is: &quot;advocacy of the use of force&quot; when it is &quot;directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action&quot; and is &quot;likely to incite or produce such action&quot;. Broadly, &quot;kill all [blanks]&quot; is OK, &quot;kill these [blanks] now&quot; isn't. This also means that inciting a suicide is illegal, some types of false statements of fact, counterfeiting is not protected speech, obscenity/indecency, child pornography, fighting words, threatening the President, speech owned by others (i.e. copyrights and trademarks), commercial speech (e.g. false advertising). There are also limitations that the government may impose when it is acting in specific roles. For example, as an employer, the government can restrict the speech of its employees in ways that it can't for general citizens. Private individuals and organisations can sanction or ostracize you however they want. Holocaust denial is reasonably common among white supremacists and other anti-Semitic groups and they produce films and literature on the subject. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum devotes this web page to it. Of course, while it's legal to make these things in the United States, distribution of them in Portugal is against Portuguese law.
No this is not a violation of discrimination law as there is no official language (de jure) in the United States at the Federal Level even though English, as the most common language is considered the National Language (de facto). Language is not a Federally recognized basis of discrimination for private business (your local state may require it though). Compared to Canada, where all services must be in English or French to comply with their Official Languages being English and French. It could be argued that, given America's very liberal Freedom of Speech laws, that requiring catering to a specific language by law could be challenged as a violation of your First Amendment Rights (after all, if you have freedom of speech, then you should have freedom of speech that others do not understand). Since there is nothing stopping an English Speaking American from learning the language you wish to do business in, nor is it confined to any race or religion (I, as a predominotly European descent, am perfectly capable of learning Arabic... or Japanese... or Navajo...). Where the confusion comes from is that in the United States, courts will often provide a linguistic interpreter for those who are not native English Speakers (even if they are conversational, given how technical legal terms can be, it may people who speak English as a Second Language will avail themselves of this service for the sake of making sure the nuance is properly translated).
It may very well be illegal, depending on the laws of the country. Most people have the right to enter their own country (except for practical problems, like not being able to prove you have the right) because you list your passport and/or other ID). But it may be illegal to enter outside official border crossings, for example. Or illegal to enter without having the entry registered. Or soon, it might be illegal to enter the U.K. while avoiding quarantine, whether you are British or not. But it wouldn’t be the fact that you entering that’s illegal, it would be how you did it. If you are the Dutch owner of a Ferrari then entering the Netherlands on the A40 from Germany at 170mph is very, very illegal :-)
The only applicable law is the local trespassing law. If he wants, the proprietor can demand that the patron leave, and if the patron does not leave, he can be arrested for trespassing. It uncontroversial that the First Amendment protects racist declarations.
Note that, criminals are not allowed to apply for a German citizenship, so I don't know whether the German government would consider being a deserter as a being criminal. First of all, they would deny a criminal German citizenry, but that goes only for crimes, that are also illegal in Germany (Sec. 12a § 2 Nationality Act, § 12a Abs. 2 StAG). Were you - for instance - convicted for muder you couldn't become a German citizen. Desertion in that sense however is not a criminal offence in Germany, so you're good. Regarding double citizenship, Sec. 12 § 1 2nd sentence no. 2 Nationality Act (§ 12 Abs. 1 S. 2 Nr. 2 StAG) allows you to keep your original citizenship, if the country of origin &quot;regularly refuses to grant release from citizenship&quot;, which should be the case here. Therefore, you could become a German citizen according to Sec. 10 Nationality Act (§ 10 StAG).