68 sats \ 16 replies \ @siggy47 3 Oct \ parent \ on: Political Culture In Germany: Where Violence Is Accelerating Politics_And_Law
I'm curious to know your take on CJ Hopkins' case:
https://consentfactory.org/2024/10/01/guilty/
I am not a lawyer, but it all starts with the great deception of the separation of powers. all three powers derive from the same institution, the state. And we can now see how these powers are merging into a single unit of power and systematically silencing dissenting voices. From my point of view, as a legal amateur, this case is an example of what is to come: more and more opinion control, canceling and censorship.
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You and I are fellow libertarians, so of course I agree. 😀
I also know not everyone agrees with us.
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It's important to stress the harm that is done by weaponizing the legal system to cancel political enemies
Fully agree. That's one of the reasons I despise both the political left and right in the US.
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Weaponizing the legal system is done by the left exclusively
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Mitch McConnell would beg to disagree :)
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When?
Mitch is a politician not attorney general. Or a judge. We don’t want politics to infect the legal or criminal justice system. Unlike Garland or Jack Smith
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Maybe we have a different definition as to what weaponizing the legal system means.
But when a politician's whole self-proclaimed goal is to put conservative judges in power at the expense of other ones, using whatever dirty politician tricks possible, it does sound like politics is interfering with the criminal justice system. Maybe not directly by being judge or atterney general, but by putting the people in power that are.
Anyhow, I'm not sure why I initially interfered in this thread. I usually try to avoid politics discussions here on SN. Too polarizing. I got carried away after a political discussion with my wife an hour earlier.
There are more interesting things to discuss here on SN.
Nothing personal :)
Not sure I have a definite take.
I only know about this story from what I (briefly) read in this article.
The double standards are condemnable: why would CJ Hopkins be more deserving of a guilty verdict than Stern or Der Spiegel who used similar imagery? He probably isn't. Based solely on the facts are reported in this article, he seems to be in the right to complain about this verdict. If all he did was using some Nazi imagery to get his point across, especially against the government, I'm all for it. Maybe, personally, I don't fully agree with free speech if it is targeted at other individuals possibly causing them personal harm. But I don't care if it is targeted at the government.
For Americans, it is hard to understand European law. Free speech is not absolute in Europe (it also isn't in the US, but let's not go there). Elon Musk is a prime example of someone with such a mindset. He often tweets angrily about EU members being trialed for hate speech. As another example of how US and EU are different: in several EU countries it is also illegal to deny the holocaust. It is hard for me to understand why anyone would deny something that has been documented quite convincingly, but it's a slippery slope where ostracizing these people has made the right-wing stronger and stronger. So I'd rather have open and honest dialogues about such topics rather than use repression tactics. It tends to backfire if one doesn't.
Overall, I think oppression of free speech is a slippery slope similar to how censorship is a slippery slope. Who draws the line as to what is allowed and what isn't? So, as said before, CJ Hopkins seems to be in the right to speak up about this injustice he suffered.
I'm not fluent in legalise, so this not a very structured answer, sorry for that.
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Oppression of free speech is censorship and vice versa.
Freedom of speech is a restraint on government not an incitement for the citizen
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