Europe's Out-of-Control Censorship

I am banned from facebook (for 24 hours that has been 3 days and I have 12 hours to go, gotta love Common Core!) for responding to an article regarding 5 illegal men who brutally raped a 7 year old child. I simply wrote, "Mr. President, please arrest or deport these monsters". This is offensive to????? I am offended that these kind of people are being welcomed into our country despite it's illegality. I am offended that mere babies are being destroyed and we are supposed to be "tolerant" of these (can't say human) monsters!

Censorship is tyranny. Popular speech needs no protection.

"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives."
— Robert A. Heinlein

"The function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it invites a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it passes for acceptance of an idea."
-- Justice William O. Douglas
(1898-1980), U. S. Supreme Court Justice
Source: Terminello v. Chicago, 1949

"A free man must not be told how to think, either by the government or by social activists. He may certainly be shown the right way, but he must not accept being forced into it."
Col. Jeff Cooper

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of government. But then I repeat myself.
~Mark Twain

nobody should be surprised at what fb et.al. are doing; they are all run by leftists. leftists generally come in two flavors. one is the leftist-in-the-street, who believes whatever is "cool," and of course, what is "cool" is determined by the leftist propaganda agencies, his only source of information. the other flavor of leftist is a hard-core leftist leader. this animal is much more rare than the the average leftist. sadly, because education has become leftist indoctrination over the past few decades in every single western republic, most people fall into the former category. they have been fed lies from early childhood, and have not been taught critical thinking, so holding antithetical beliefs is no problem for them.

mr. zuckerberg has no concept of how his nation was originally designed, and does not care because he is wealthy and thinks that he is immune to the disasters happening in the streets. like other leftists-in-the-street, he, too, has little in the way of education, and only knows what he learned in leftist indoctrination centers. he will be all to happy enforcing Newspeak on the stinking masses, without seeing that he is helping to end civilization by ending free speech.

i encourage freedom-lovers everywhere to get on the TOR network, which at least makes it harder for the State to track U. BTW, before U do, be sure to examine the source code (or pay somebody to do so), because the CIA originally invented TOR (The Onion Router), and may inject bugs or regressions in order to compromise the network.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
NO! One of the most obnoxious quotes ever. Should the call for genocide be a 'right' that deserves defending?

Of course not. Thomas Mann: "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil"

Merkel actually never changed from her old East German Young Pioneer days where she was in charge of Soviet style propaganda. Many former fellows wondered why she even joined the Christian Democrats. Today we know better about her mindset seeming full of contempt for the country's ungrateful and undeserving people who did away with what she once stood for. Her hidden agenda is to reverse the outcome of the 1989 collapse of her home country by turning all of Germany into such. In her paranoid view ordinary citizens should be nothing other than an amorphous, exchangeable, even disposable mass which ought to strictly follow directives from above with zombie-like obedience, without any questioning, leave alone opposition.

Since the vast majority of her cabinet and parliament members in the upper and lower house are very much in line with her in that respect, a shift of chancellorship to another representative within the corrupt system won't bring any change. Legally unassailable, promoting multiculturalism and mass immigration of incompatible people along with a rigorous reverse integration strategy is their strongest vehicle to keep a potentially rebellious, indigenous population at bay.

Tight hate speech laws along with social media censorship bypassing legal institutions (they control the MSM and legal system already) are just other milestones on their way into totalitarianism. A system what the future majority consisting of Muslims, who are already saturating the political system and administration, favours anyway.

Expect to see the next step of currency control (and thus travel restrictions) on German citizens to arrive not too long down the road. And uprising citizens getting crushed like 1933 or 1953 (East Germany) if daring so, just look at the Pegida demonstration after NYE 2015 in Cologne.

I remember when I read last September, about the overheard conversation picked up by a microphone thought to be off, between Angela Merkel and Mark Zuckerberg on the sidelines at the UN, I was chilled to my bones. I knew what to expect after their little NWO dialogue on how to rid social media of critics of refugees/migrants and Merkel's policies.

Mark Zuckerberg appears to have political ambitions, and his embracing of Merkel's desires to both censor opponents and assist the Islamification of the West and Anglosphere point directly to their shared NWO involvement and beliefs.

We've all seen the same happening in our countries: our governments allow hostile (in the main) Muslim immigrants, multi thousands of them, into our countries, who then change our social fabric to our detriment; this inevitably leads to a growing right-wing resistance (we had no right-wing problems of any substance previously, and the majority are more 'centre' than 'right' though labelled 'far -right' by governments because they have all shifted to the left), then the governments attack the citizens for minor protests with punishments greater than meted out to Muslim criminals practising serious crimes, who are protected and their crimes downplayed or whitewashed.

Seriously, how long do our governments expect us to tolerate this hypocrisy and endangerment thrust upon us? Only a fool would fail to recognise that this is all part of 'the plan' to homogenise us all; does anyone remember at the political meeting photo shoot, where Merkel rips the German flag out of the hands of one of her Ministers - she was outraged and furious with him. The NWO movement has to dismantle nation states - their naive belief is that we will placidly accept our fate. They are wicked manipulators of societies, whist we are deemed no more important than sheep, to be docilely herded into the abattoirs of their making - we and our precious families are expendable.

This all reminds me of the film, 'Hunger Games', in the same way, we are now no freer than we were in Medieval times - the governing classes behave with impunity towards their people - we should all be very worried. Better, we should fight back before it is too late!

If there is one group of people propagating free speech but stifling it at every occasion, have a look at today's 'liberal' universities, where every pro Israel speaker is being deprived of that right and every Jew being attacked for it!

Freedom of speech <> hate speech!

"Freedom of speech & Human rights" those magical terms have completely lost their meaning as they have been kidnapped by those who use free speech as hate speech and Human Rights as a propaganda tool on 'social' networks, which gives them the power to reach millions like them in seconds.

As history teaches us (problem with many of the social network users with an opinion) all world conflicts & wars started with hate speech and if the thousands of 'Human Rights' groups would have done their work properly, they wouldn't be necessary.

So, bravo to the Germans and shame on the Zuckerberg's, the Soros and all the other hypocrites propagating free hate speech & inhuman rights to fill their own pockets.

And this is one of the many reasons why I gave up on social media years ago. My only regret is that I stupidly created an FB profile to begin with, as now, the little information that I did freely give to Facebook back then, is now theirs, forever. I signed in 2008, used it for 2 years and then stepped away.

The answer here is to invoke some basic personal responsibility. Adults are capable of making decisions and choices in life knowing of the potential consequences. The consequences of using Facebook are becoming more and more alarming as the years go on. So, don't use it.

Facebook - and the government cannot apply their rules and legislation against you if you do not use it and let's face it - peaking your opinions on social media does nothing to change any situation you feel strongly about - unless you are someone joining in with a large group of people who are harassing and attacking someone or something that flows along with the acceptable political agenda.

ALL "Hate-Speech Laws" ARE CRIMES!

"Progressive" criminals - who like all criminals desire an equality of outcome over a true equality of opportunity, and to get it will always try to socially engineer ever-more rights and ever-less responsibilities for them selves, by offloading their responsibilities onto their victims by stealing their victims' rights - pretend to hold submissive masochism as the highest virtue (for their victims to hold, not them) and the ultimate crime to be causing offense and hurting other people's (criminal's) feelings, (i.e: by accusing them of their crimes).

So they want to make it illegal to accuse criminals of their crimes, since that might hurt their feelings and in offending them with the often-painful truth, "make" them commit even more crimes!

Is there anything which really ought to qualify as hate speech and be banned?

NO - not because it's "hateful" (because that sort of nonsense is only making subjective assessments based on emotions;) and "HATE" is really only the perfectly natural human response of perpetual anger towards ongoing crimes (like islam); without 'hate' we would never bother to accuse criminals of their crimes in order to stop those crimes.

Unreasonable false displays of hatred and anger on the other hand, are what the Left is good at - but that's already illegal, not because of the anger displayed - that's just the outrageous holier-than-thou virtue-signalling packaging used to disguise their preposterous extortion attempts - but because it's fraudulent slander.

Such criminal leftists who try to make "hate" into a crime, only ever make it 'illegal' to hate crime itself!

Speech which is already disallowed is incitement of immediate violence and death-threats ... and even those aren't illegal, if say they call for the police to use violence to counter ongoing mob violence and looting, or call for the death-penalty for murderers!

It truly is unfair how the hatred of Jews and Christians is enforced on Facebook while anything Islamic is almost idolised to the point of blatant ridiculism. Are the Islamists paying bribe money to the social media moguls? There can be no other explanation.

Curious that Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, allows the hate speech and other incitements against Jews, while he is also Jewish. Have I missed something?

I'm not Jewish, nor a facebooker, but the double standards employed here are sickening. How much longer is this madness going to continue before the German people shake off their endless guilt and indoctrination and say "Enough is enough!"

Freedom of speech is the most important "weapon" any so-called democracy has. As soon as this has been rescinded it's a totally new ball game, as they say.

More and more German folk need to be screaming from the rafters "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." But the overwhelming guilt, passed down over the last few generations, coupled with the crazy, socialist agenda of the corrupt EU over the last few decades, has produced a nation of scared, robotic sheeple. My ex-husband is German, and I have many German friends, but not one of them will say anything negative about Merkel or her policies. The only German people I have come across who will dare to speak out are over 50. This is worrying on so many levels which is why, if freedom of speech is restricted in such a way, the German people must speak out now more than ever. There may not be another chance.

Why is Germany complaining about hate speech, when one of its judges freed arsonists of fire-bombing a synagogue, saying that their action was freedom to protest Israeli policies?

Dear Ms. Bergman:

Once again, you hit the nail on the head on your latest commentary. Your last sentence says it all on who would have thought that a mere thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Europeans and especially the Germans would reinvent themselves once again in the form of the Soviet Union. As Yogi Berra would have said, "It's de ja vu all over again."

Where are the Christians and the Jews? It seems the Israelis are the only ones with the balls to confront the evil of Islam. Will a stand take place before it's too late? Just once, I would love to read of a group of Christians or Jews or both kick the shit out of a group of Muslims as they attempt to deface a church or synagogue or sexually harass defenseless women and children.

Where is all this leading? As the rhetoric becomes more and more politically restrained and free speech becomes more and more silenced, the confrontation or submission to Islam becomes more and more obvious. Will the Europeans take to the streets to defend 2000 years of history and culture? Or will they quietly submit to the globalist Marxist elite who will inevitably destroy all that has come before?

Bob Mittendorf
McKinney, Texas

"Germany has formally announced its draconian push towards censorship of social media." Statements that are deemed illegal under German law "Hate speech" has included critiques of Chancellor Angela Merkel's migration policies. To be in disagreement with the government's policies is now potentially "criminal". So here we are with our modern day high tech liberal, biased news media as we seize yet another opportunity to see history repeating itself. We have once again been afforded the task of defending our First Amendment Constitutional Rights to Free Speech or perhaps we would be the better for having referenced Islamic jurisprudence. I say this because it is as if we are living the replay of the Third Reich. The difference lies in the cultures of the those being demonized and those who lead the charge of such demonization. People of the w who seek only to live a free and peaceful life amongst their neighbors are viewed as infidels and demonized for their christian and religious doctrines. They are preyed upon by those of the Muslim society and followers of the Islamic ideology and Sharia Law who seek to implement their ideologies through coercion harassment intimidation as well as threats and acts of terrorism. Much like Hitler campaigned against the Jews, the Islamic society is campaigning against the world. Radical Islam is the menu for the future of mankind or death to all who refuse to accept it. The tools at the disposal of the liberal leadership throughout the world are always the same. Control finances, freedom of speech and the ability to defend themselves and you control the population. Is this not what has been taking place? In this particular instance. The German government is trying to control, limit and eventually quash an individual's right to free speech. Not only is this prognostication of silence promulgated through the halls of government, it is being spread across social media as if jam on bread. There is no doubt as to where this will lead if left unchecked. Radical Islam is friend to no one and the more we understand that the more we will seek out a cure for cancer living among the world. One only needs to research a few pages of the quran to learn it is not bible but; a book of justifications and excuses for terror Islam inflicts in the world. One also needs to read of Sharia Law to know and understand the rules and punishments for not following their Muslim ideologies.

Germans have experienced one of the worst examples of the effects of censorship only 70 years ago. So how can they consent to have their civil liberties curtailed by a spying government? This is simply fascism.

To some degree, every news item is "fake news" as it is written and collected through the lens of its author's implicit and explicit biases. The elusive truth is out there for the reader not the government to discern. This is as bad as book burning in the Thirties!

I don't have any problem with Fatah having a Facebook page. I'm a Jew and an Israeli citizen...and a Zionist. Contradiction? Not at all I believe in freedom of speech. I don't believe that suppressing speech by and about Fatah is going to do any good, and that it will in fact do evil. The principled response to the suppression of civil rights of one party is not to call for suppression of civil rights of another party instead. Nazis, Stalinists, Maoists and other groups whose ideologies I abhore should have the same right to freedom of speech as the groups I support. If the European Parliament does not change its course, it will lead to its downfall. Likewise, if Merkel's government in Germany does not change its course, this will lead to its replacement. I cannot believe that Europeans will long continue to espouse state control of speech, let alone anti-semitism.

Politically correct Hate Speech laws spell the end of realistic political discourse or debate. Totalitarians love this and puts Merkel's Germany in lock-step with Islamic Sharia. Congratulations Germany and congratulations Zuckerberg's Facebook. Pathetic!

Merkel's social media policy has me thinking that East Germany, and especially the Stasi, has taken over West Germany, notwithstanding the reverse theory I read in the papers in 1989.

The best approach to Facebook is to boycott it. Never has so much time been wasted by so many people on totally unproductive activity.

Someone pointed out that FB and YT are hardly private concerns any more, they amount to monopolies supported by the government and so have no authority to censor.

Is German Justice Minister Heiko Maas a descendant of Heinrich Himmler by any chance? Apparently Herr Maas is continuing the old manipulation of compliant Jews tradition to do his bidding against their own self-interest. Why does that still happen, despite all logic? It will be interesting to see how quickly the Muslims turn the tables of censorship on the Germans with their sharia law.

I could say, "Good morning" in our local newspaper's online comments section and it would be censored; not because of what I say, but because I am perceived as being conservative on many issues. That is how bad things are with respect to the left-leaning press/media in Canada, with the CBC, recipient of over 1 billion dollars/year from the taxpayers, taking the lead on social justice warrior-ism. The others are much the same and try to guard their leftism with articles to support and guard their positions.

The closer one gets to the truth and to speaking clearly against long-held leftist political positions, the more heavily he/she is censored.

We also see a new corporate leftism, a recent example in an ad put out by Pepsi which tries to capitalize on the SJW movement, portraying every minority they could stuff into one short film ad in silly poses and crazy places and pretending to be part of a general protest against "the man" by using hyper-identity politics and young blacks, gays, men, women, Muslims, etc., to win over the opposing big bad white police with Pepsi, peace signs and sexy girls.

We live in an age where the mainstream left is doing summersaults to impress all the minorities they can find. And if they cannot find enough, they create new categories to place on pedestals and epitomize into perfection. Never mind that reality shows many of those they venerate have serious problem of hate, antisemitism, and are killing us and each other in record numbers through terrorism.

Reality is an inconvenient truth for leftists these days and they avoid it like the plague.

This is why many Germans have Austrian or Russian Facebook accounts. Recently the FB page "XY Einzelfall", that had been reporting on the often downplayed migrant crimes such as rape, attempted rapes and murders committed by migrants and "refugees" in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since September 2015, was closed down. Possibly this occurred in connection with the new law passed by Heiko Maas. From what I read posted by Germans online - e.g. comments in online newspapers such as "Die Welt" - most Germans are appalled by everything their Justice Minister says and does. Many wonder how he got into such a position (was it through his father?) However, even this law, which is only meant to cover actual crimes, such as incitement to murder, or libel, is not enough for some German politicians - such as Renate Künast of the Green party. She would like the censorship law to go further, criminalising any kind of disagreement with her personal opinion - which of course means the current refugee policy. One can only hope that Germans vote for a change of government in October 2017, which will at least get the current "Big Brothers" out of office.

Yes, I agree, I have been a victim of Facebook suspending my account for 48 hours because they did not like my negative comment about Muslim terrorists.

As long as the world sees Israel as 'the occupier', there is NOTHING that Israel does that redeems it. Therefore, our constant PR battle has to be: EXPLAINING WHY WE ARE NOT THE OCCUPIERS (AND HOW WE GOT THERE). In this we are failing abysmally, as we do not appreciate where are they coming from. Because we have not been able to perceive this, our PR is limp and totally ineffective.

We should not be responding to questions or explaining our actions and instead, regardless of the question, we should be constantly saying: 'the "occupation" is a result of Jordan's/Arab aggression. We have every right to occupy an entity which threatens our existence and does not recognise our right to be. We are one Jewish country vis a vis their 50+, with a tiny piece of land vis a vis their vast swathes of land. We have a historic - almost a 1000 years history, with kings, courts, traditions, etc - a strategic and a political right to be in Judea and Samaria.

We should not deny the Palestinians their right to live where they do, but living in a land does not spell out 'entitlement to a state', otherwise many nationalities/religions could ask for the same of countries much bigger than Israel.

If England was invaded today by a mightier power and 2 thousand years had passed - would it lose its claim to the land?

Forget about classifying anything as Islamophobic, which is as nonsense term for the deflection of valid criticism and is used as shield for Islam, and instead, expose what Islam is all about via the term Islamoreality.

I recently have shut down my Facebook. It is a corrupt organization and anyone can do anything that they need to do without it. It is a toy for people with time on their hands. Easy answer. Leave Facebook. It can then pander to all the terrorists and haters it loves.

Obviously, Facebook has been influenced by Arab money and the staff's hatred of anything unIslamic. Treacherous people are everywhere and will sell their very souls to those who offer cash incentives in order to dictate what is acceptable to Muslims.

Love your amazingly informative articles more than you can know. Thank you.

Any country that can devote money and police resources sifting through Facebook pages looking for anyone critical of Merkel's migrant policy, would in my opinion, be complicit with similar tactics employed by a certain 'doctor' in the Third Reich's Ministry of Propaganda nearly 80 years earlier. This has been happening regularly in Germany and The Netherlands but then again it's 'dog barks, tail wags' with these two neighbours. As reported by Gatestone, how can one forget the Carnaval floats on Rosenmontag, with Lady Liberty holding the severed head of President Trump? No qualms there during the traditional 'anything goes' period of festivities. Yet the float depicting Merkel behind bars, with the caption "This is what happens to traitors", incurs the wrath of the local town mayor, who says that all floats will be vetted through his office for next year's event, while the 'polizei' pay a visit to the so-called perpetrators to determine their background. Let's recall Erdogan's 'Nazi remnants and Fascists' comments. Remnants? Judging by this censorship, these 'remnants' are actually alive and functioning, if one happens to have anti-establishment opinions.
Incidentally, when I attempted to submit this comment on the board of the oldest establishment magazine in the UK, it was disapproved. Ironic indeed!

Freedom lovers should make a concerted effort to flood these media with such so called illegal messages and continually share them so that policing it would be almost impossible even for German totalitarians. Failing that, then Facebook should eventually be replaced by another service which will not knuckle under to German totalitarianism, since the Internet is international this should be possible unless Germany wants to go all the way and become like China.