No gulags? You must be joking. Germany has more than 15000 people jailed because they have done exactly what the constitution permits them to do, namely spoken their minds freely. And then to see that silly incompetent woman to fly to Georgia and blathering about civil liberties is really perverse.

Since a “gulag” refers to a system of forced labor, use of torture, and random executions, this term does not fit what is happening in Germany.  The German prosecution of “hate speech practitioners” is still more subtle than the old Soviet system.

It seems that only right-wing parties in Europe are willing to raise unpleasant questions about the preservation of national [state?] sovereignty and identity, which the centralizing forces of the EU threaten.

It’s a truism that state sovereignty and national identity are often at odds, except in the few states that are true nation-states, like Japan.  Don’t some of the European national-liberation movements (Basque, etc.) welcome the EU’s weakening of the sovereign state, in the hope that weakened states will lead to strengthened (minority) national identity?  Sure, you pay a price in the increased regulation of things like speech and dairy products, but those things are presumably less important than national/ethnic identity.  I don’t really know anything about Europe, I just vaguely remember reading something like that, maybe from some Alain de Benoist type.  Anyway, it would sound awfully tempting to me if I were a national minority that wanted some self-expression.

A quick follow-up to my own question: Do national minorities have less free speech under EU as opposed to state controls?  For instance, would Basque separatists have freer speech under the sovereign state of Spain than they’d have under the EU?

Ploni:
This all depends on the “national liberation movement” in question.  If the EU mandarins can make temporary use of these movements as a way of weakening nation-states, then their particular tribalist views might be tolerated.  Alternately, the EU might point to these movements as an excuse for maintaining hate speech laws, if their tribalism gets out of hand.  The EU certainly treats Christian and Moslem liberation movements of the Balkans differently.

Anyway, it would sound awfully tempting to me if I were a national minority that wanted some self-expression.

You mean, like… Palestineans?

The bipartisan consensus about “democracies” being morally superior to the rest of the world makes me sick.  Here’s the New Republic,

http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=252f6e23-311f-4bd7-92a4-d1a438177dbf

After the way that the French treated the 70 year old actress it takes some nerve.  One day maybe Russia can have the freedom to criticize their president but not to criticize the Muslims displacing them.

curt, come off it. Where did you get the figure 15,000 from? Is that the total number of prosecutions brought under the holocaust denial etc. sections of the “Wiederbetätigung"-legislation since the beginning of the BRD?

We can moan about how the so-called political felonies are used to mask that the majority of political violence against people and property in Germany and other EU countries comes from the extreme left rather than the right, but tossing about fantasy numbers about just how many holocaust deniers, stiff-arm-raisers and swastika-wearers are in the clink is certainly no way forward.

Matt,

The 15,000 jailed claim for “holohoax denial” in Germany is probably quite reasonable.

I recently read in a German discussion forum that about 8,000 Germans are prosecuted every year for stating the obvious.

H.F. Wolff