is there any reliable source for that "going to jail in europe for posting memes"? I keep seeing this argument in online arguments, but can not find a credible source
From what I understand the Public Spaces Protection Order is a law that exists exactly for this reason, how would this be a judicial overreaction?
Seems similar to the German law that makes it illegal to wear politcal symbols or talk politics outside of polling places. There is an undefined "buffer zone" outside of the voting location where, if you display political symbols, you will be arrested. This is a limitation of freedom of expression, but IMHO it makes total sense.
Germany is indeed like the UK in that it also does not believe in basic free speech protections. These anti-speech laws don't produce much domestic outrage because the people of Europe just like their politicians don't believe free speech is important. They believe anti-speech laws "make total sense". In many European countries you get visited by the police if you post the wrong kind of memes. You get arrested if you wave a Palestinian flag. Insulting a politician or police officer has been criminalized. These things all have a chilling effect on free expression.
The US has much stronger free speech protections than Europe. (At least for now.)
The man in the linked article did not display any signs or symbols, did not engage in speech, and did not "express" himself. If standing solemn is an arrestable offense, then anyone doing anything is subject to arrest. The police may think fascist thoughts are running through any random person's mind at this very moment.
This wasn't someone posting just a meme online or anything. The guy was posting racist shit during civil unrest [1]. Literally throwing oil on a fire. Yeah, you are going to get prosecuted for that.
"In those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech; a Thing terrible to Publick Traytors."
- Benjamin Franklin
This is why we fought a war to be separate from your "wretched" country. You're justifying jail time for racist speech!
Ironic coming from a future slave owner. He did become an abolitionist, after travelling to France and England and being exposed to some, for Americans, pretty radical ideas.
This hinges entirely on what the captions were. What did they say? Even US free speech laws doesn't protect certain forms of speech (eg. "imminent lawless action"), so whether it's a meme or not holds little relevance.
There are multiple cases in Germany (where I live). I cannot find them all, but "Pimmelgate" is a famous one where one guy on twitter (that's what it was called at the time) told a local politician "Du bist ein Pimmel" (in English: "You're a dick") and the next day the police showed up at his apartment and searched it.
The issue is the harassment. Most of these cases are baseless and get dropped once presented to the public prosecutor. But it puts unwarranted stress on people who just opened their mouth, regardless if I disagree with what they had said.
If these cases were moved forward, they could end up in front of the European Court of Human Rights, where Germany and Austria are among the worst offenders[1] when it comes to the article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights[2], which grantees free speech in the EU.
Usually these individual cases are used by neo-conservatives to criticize Europe and describe it as (their words) "a socialist hellhole."
While this argument (= "there is no free speech in Europe") might be based on some truth, and while I agree that the free speech situation in most of Europe could be improved, I think it is grossly exaggerated.
My question was specifically about being jailed for expressing their opinion? Is this something that happens all the time in Germany (from what you wrote I would say no. It's a hassle but at most you get a fine that you can appeal, right?). Americans seem to think that people post a meme and end up in an american style max-security federal prison or something, while actually the offender gets a minor slap on the wrist.
If that, as @acatton says. It is certainly not happening all the time. There are laws around libel and slander, which are more aimed at civility than anything else, but its rare that they make it to actual court. In Britain at least there is a long held tradition, and some rightly infamous accompanying libel cases, where 1 farthing/penny/pound damages (inflation has had some effect I guess) were awarded in an ok, you win but the moral case was with the defendant signal. One of the more recent:
It doesn't happen, unless your opinion is something very specific like holocaust denial and you double down on it multiple times. People do not get jailed for posting memes.
This is exactly why I asked for credible sources. This man never got any jail time (even a cursory search of the article you linked shows that), if anything this stunt made his youtube career take off.
"Meechan was sentenced to a fine of £800, with no prison sentence." i mean his video probably made more money than that...
"Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
- Cheshire people; in the context of rioting and the consequences of rioting.
For the record I think (personal view only) that the Nazi pug man should never have been prosecuted, I personally find it grossly offensive but I think that the harm of stopping people saying these things is greater than the harm of the idiot saying them.
The Cheshire thing I find much more serious, it seemed to me that this was about people calling for other people to get hurt and killed. Is it really the case that it's ok to threaten people or to call for violence against a community in the USA?
Also, what about folks like Snowdon and Assange? I mean if freedom of speech is absolute in the USA why can't they just tell the CCP about USA nuclear control?
> Is it really the case that it's ok to threaten people or to call for violence against a community in the USA?
In cases like that, courts in the US make the determination as to whether the speech is protected based on whether it may cause “imminent lawless action”—hard to say in the Cheshire case without seeing what they were actually posting, but encouraging people to start violent riots would not be protected in the US either. There are plenty of cases of people getting arrested in the US for Facebook posts inciting violence.
>Also, what about folks like Snowdon and Assange? I mean if freedom of speech is absolute in the USA why can't they just tell the CCP about USA nuclear control?
Why do people constantly and intentionally misconstrue arguments? It's so obnoxious and intellectually dishonest. I didn't say it was absolute. It's like people can't even have a conversation anymore without dealing with this.
>I think that the harm of stopping people saying these things is greater than the harm of the idiot saying them.
Oh, so you're a Nazi sympathizer? See how annoying that is when people intentionally misconstrue arguments?
I know it's a habit these days with the news and I don't mean to jump on your shit, it's quite common; but it's bleeding into person to person conversation and you just can't have any meaningful conversation this way.
I did not see that as an attack towards you or miscontruing any argument you made, rather putting things in perspective for people who may believe JD Vance & co when he talks about freedom of speech. I also did not see your statement "seems abhorrent to americans" as a value judgement you hold in regards to european freedom of expression laws.
>> These things seem abhorrent to Americans who have nearly unlimited free speech protection.
> Also, what about folks like Snowdon and Assange? I mean if freedom of speech is absolute in the USA why can't they just tell the CCP about USA nuclear control?
I said it was near unlimited protection and he claimed I said it was absolute so he could make a counter argument. He intentionally misconstrued my argument to make a counter argument. What am I supposed to do, defend and argument I didn't make? It kills any conversation or sharing of ideas. It's annoying.
I mean that glasgow guy was sentenced 800 pounds, went viral from those videos, and now has a huge youtube following...seems like a great deal
About those second 2 guys, what's that phrase that americans like so much? Fuck around and find out. I think the US, even in their nearly unlimited free speech, has similar laws in regards to inciting violence. Defamation, slander, fighting words, are also not protected by free speech. So really, the only difference between the US and UK is that the UK does not allow hate speech.
Germany has some more regulations, but the real significant difference seems to be about not being allowed to display nazi symbols or denying the holocaust.
seriously why do people get so mad that a rapper can't release such classics like "Mein Kampf mixtapes" or "A Nazi goes to Afrika" in the country that birthed the guy who destroyed the world. (I know why they get mad)
meme is a very vague term. it could have been death threat meme. its like saying "he went to jail for speaking". well its possible and might be totally justified. depends on what was said. for example death treats, bomb threats, scamming people. its all fits under "he was speaking"
It’s true for Germany. There recently was a case of a podcaster whose acquaintances were tapped and was apprehended while walking with his 1yo for posting memes. An AfD politician was fined 6000€ for posting crime statistics. A man had his house searched for sharing a meme of calling a politician something along the lines of „idiot“. There’s also the 60 minutes interview where prosecutors brag about confiscating devices for posting memes.
From what I hear from acquaintances and social media, the UK is even worse.
> An AfD politician was fined 6000€ for posting crime statistics.
No, she was not fined for posting crime statistics [0].
> Kaiser published a tile on her social media accounts with the text "Afghanistan refugees; Hamburg SPD mayor for 'unbureaucratic' admission; Welcome culture for gang rapes?"
> [media posts] reinforce the "negatively abbreviated representation" and fuels an atmosphere of fear and rejection. In explaining the verdict, Halbfas also made it clear: "Those who attack human dignity cannot invoke freedom of speech."
She was found guilty of reinforcing negative stereotypes and by doing so she "violated the human dignity of a distinct group of Afghan refugees".
Where is the line between having anti-immigration politics and harming refugees? If free speech means anything it should at least protect political opinions, and that includes politics many of us find distasteful or racist.
Dragging somebody through the courts and fining them heavily for a simple social media post is pretty extreme. If her post was deserving of a €6000 fine what kind of commentary will get you fined €1000? Which opinions will get you a visit from the cops and a stern talking to? Who decides where the line is between acceptable political opinion and unacceptable hate speech? How are regular people supposed to tell the difference? Or are regular people just expected not talk about controversial subjects at all if they can't afford to pay a €6000 fine?
> Dragging somebody through the courts and fining them heavily for a simple social media post is pretty extreme
Simple cute social media post where she equates afghan refugees to gang rapists.
> Which opinions will get you a visit from the cops and a stern talking to?
Racist ones that leads to violence. Argument started from "going to jail in europe for posting memes" to "posting statistics" to blatant racist xenophobic stereotyping punished via financial penalty. Free speech crusade came all the way to this goal post.
Free speech must include unpopular and even grotesque speech. That's not moving the goal post that's the entire point.
It's no coincidence that the laws used to punish people for speech are exceptionally vague. There is no clearly defined benchmark of harm. In fact harm does not need to be demonstrated at all. Simply asserting without evidence that a blog "leads to violence" is sufficient for those who don't believe in free speech.
Calling such posts grotesque and unpopular is quite euphemistic. They are aggressive and dehumanizing. And the determination on what should or shouldn't be protected as free speech doesn't happen in a vacuum: these attacks were targetted at a minority which is already regularly assaulted violently just for going about their day, because of violence-inciting shitposts like that. Of course you can't usually prove that post A led to violent crime B, but simply pretending like telling people over and over again that some group is criminal scum isn't going to lead to more violence against them also can't be the solution.
I also think that such laws almost have to be kind of vague by necessity, because the agitators will just try and be clever for plausible deniability. The idea is that a judge will rule on it, and the accused gets legal representation to defend their case. Of course you can always find some case where you may think the ruling was too harsh (or too lenient), but overall, the system seems to work pretty well. You really have to dig deep to find one or two iffy cases.
"the Rotenburg District Court concluded that Kaiser had taken the quoted information out of context in the post text and knowingly risked that the tile would be perceived as incitement to hatred by an objective observer. Additionally, the rhetorical question violated the human dignity of a distinct group of Afghan refugees."
I am. She got a court date and she got legal representation. She got the chance to convince the court that she did not intend his post as an incitement to violence, and she failed to do so.
I strongly believe that inciting hate and violence against others should have consequences. And I'm glad to live in a place where society decided that there is no place for such things. We're not talking about political opinions here, but hate speech with clear intention to cause harm.
ok but I was asking for some reliable sources, not a paragraph of anecdotes. I could go google each one myself, but I don't even want to imagine in what kind of hellhole websites I will end up in if I do that.
I find it interesting that the first replies i got were about racists, nazi sympathizers, afd people and so on (who it turns out never got jailed, but fined, and not for "posting a meme" but for going against well known laws against inciting violence).
Yours is the only reply (yet) that talks about Palestine, that I find much more interesting in this context. It should be noted that pro palestinian protesters have been arrested in the US too, so I don't know if it's really a good point when comparing "freedom of speech" between the US and Germany.
Unless what you meant was "freedom of speech" is an illusions and Americans are deluded into thinking they have more of it.
Both US and Germany are rapidly criminalizing vocal support for Palestine and criticism of Israel. Canada is, too - they've escalated a protest crime (painting a message against IDF recruitment on private property... the owner of a large bookstore chain here pays Canadians to go join the IDF) into a hate crime by calling it antisemitic so they can prosecute it more harshly.
The articles are about a handful of cases. You ignored all the others which were non violent and picked the irrelevant detail to share deceitfully as representative of the rest.
That seems to be a common tactic for authoritarians trying to control others by taking away their speech rights.
Notice also that the poster was only accused, not found liable or convicted. That means almost nothing - you can accuse anyone of anything.
Notice also the guilt by association, where the possibility of the poster committing violence (which isn't impossible) is used to try to invalidate their right to speech.
I'm not the parent, but one reference they made but didn't link was this 60 Minutes clip "Policing the internet in Germany, where hate speech, insults are a crime". It was a bit of a meme in Germany.
Still, the author of the original article has some pretty polarising and crude views, and I think it's valuable to keep that context in mind. The key is not to be lazy and just dismiss everything that doesn't come from the smoothest PR media personality.
For me, it felt like reading a frustrated author arguing against over-reliance on the service sector as an economy, given the dependencies it creates. There is certainly nationalism, realism/geopolitical views and a somewhat raw criticism of the current monetary system in the mix. The author sprinkles a lot of cultural references all over it and concludes with a tongue-in-cheek hint at an accelerationist strategy.
.. based on that random blogpost I probably still wouldn't buy any gold just yet.
The only people who are in jail for political reasons in the UK are fossil fuel company protestors, who were jailed for planning a protest during a Zoom meeting. Others have been jailed for relatively minor but high profile actions, such as throwing paint at paintings (protected behind glass).
People have been jailed for racist rioting and planning racist riots, but not many people in the UK see that as a bad thing.
The climate change prisoners are getting a lot more support.
The US imprisons countless black people every year for the flimsiest reasons with questionable due process, in for-profit prisons, some of which have been caught operating with kickbacks for judges.
> People have been jailed for racist rioting and planning racist riots
This is a factually false. The recent UK riots were largely about protesting violence (stabbings, killings, rape (which increased by a factor of 4.3 over 13 years, closely correlated to migration) and unchecked immigration (which is unpopular and opposed by a large fraction of the population, from someone who lived there).
These are, factually, not issues of racism - they are humans rights (in the case of the violence) and extremely reasonable political positions (in the case of cutting down immigration), and it's intentionally and maliciously deceptive to claim that they're "racism".
Yes, it's likely that some number of people at the riots were there because they were racist. No, the majority of the protestors were not there for that reason, and claiming that that small fraction makes the riots "racist" (not that that's even a coherent statement to make in the first place) is a lie.
Additionally, it's also a lie to
claim that only people participating in or planning the riots were jailed - "A judge has warned that anybody present at a riot will be remanded in custody, even if they were only a “curious observer”"[1], which was actually implemented, with documented video evidence of people getting arrested for merely filming the protests and police, with no participation[2].
It's deeply evil to defend the UK government's behavior here.
> The idea that the US
This is the tu quoque fallacy, in addition to being irrelevant - the topic is the UK and EU on free speech, not the UK.
This whole comment is just a tangle of lies, fallacies, and emotional manipulation.
