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From: alf@ttds.UUCP (Thomas Sj|land)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: Europe leaves net.politics in disgust.
Message-ID: <901@ttds.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Apr-85 03:53:43 EST
Article-I.D.: ttds.901
Posted: Wed Apr 24 03:53:43 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Apr-85 22:28:44 EST
References: <265@turing.UUCP> <1425@amdahl.UUCP>
Reply-To: alf@ttds.UUCP (Thomas Sj|land)
Organization: The Royal Inst. of Techn., Stockholm
Lines: 43
Keywords: freedom speech

Writes Gordin Moffett:
> So the problem is very clear.  "Europe" (whoever that is) doesn't
> really have free speech as we know it in the US, so we should not
> expect them to recieve just anything posted to the net.

We do have free speech over here.  From a democratic point of view it seems
dubious to censor even obvious desinformers like Don Black et consortes.
The historical reasons to react strongly against people like these seem
obvious though.

To give these guys the credit of destroying the debate between sensible
people seems to me to make them happy unnecessarily.  The reason people
here support the idea of cutting net.politics seems to be "high volume/low
content" not the fact that some idiot posts a load of senseless junk to the
whole world.

> I can't help but
> think that the reasons given above indicate a problem with European
> (and Canadian) law, rather than the particular contents of
> net.politics cited.

Well, European law is not one thing.  In Sweden e.g. it is illegal to wear
a political uniform and also to publish racist propaganda, while it is
very difficult to stop even obvious enemies of the democratic ideals to the
right and to the left from publishing.  So while it would be illegal to
form a regular fascist party here, there does exist a few small but
insistive groups who publish what is often called crypto-fascist material
glorifying nazi ideas similar to the stuff Black seems to have read to much
of. It is currently under debate whether this is good or not.

I do not know whether the law in other democratic countries in Europe is
different.  Eastern Europe is another story, of course.  While the
eastern european communists hate and fear fascism and claim that the US
government is similar to Hitler's they obviously despise democracy and their
propaganda is often clearly anti-semitic.

Interestingly I read today that Neues Deutschland in East-Berlin (and the
communist chinese news agency New China) did NOT mention any other people
killed in Ravensbruck than the political prisoners.  Neither gypsies nor
jews were mentioned by these media when they reported about the 40-year
anniversary of the freeing of this concentration camp.  New China is the
sole informer of 1/4 of the worlds population.
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