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Germany, in a First, Shuts Down Left-Wing Extremist Website (nytimes.com) 408

An anonymous reader shares a report: An influential website linked to violence at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Hamburg last month has been ordered to shut down, in the first such move against left-wing extremists in the country (alternative source), the authorities in Germany said on Friday. Thomas de Maiziere, the interior minister, said that the unrest in Hamburg, during which more than 20,000 police officers were deployed and more than 400 people arrested or detained, had been stirred up on the website and showed the "serious consequences" of left-wing extremism. "The prelude to the G-20 summit in Hamburg was not the only time that violent actions and attacks on infrastructural facilities were mobilized on linksunten.indymedia," he said, referring to the website. The order on Friday was the latest move in a long battle against extremism in Germany. It comes in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Va., this month and amid worries about "antifa" factions that use violence to combat the far-right in the United States.
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Germany, in a First, Shuts Down Left-Wing Extremist Website

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  • Now you see (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Why we must protect freedom of political speech in the US. Fortunately we have strong laws to do this. Google and Facebook should not be the arbiters of speech. Universities should not live in fear of letting people talk.

    We do not want to hand the power they have in Germany to silence people to a man like Trump, or anyone who claims to be a fascist or anti-fascist (aka, communist)

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      Google is not government and may censor whatever it wishes on its property.
      DUH!
      If the University was staging the counter protest you might have a point.
      it is not.
    • or anyone who claims to be a fascist or anti-fascist (aka, communist)

      All the Marxist "class struggle" is baked right into the Antifa rhetoric, but is now under the guise of identity politics. Still treating people as groups. Still ignoring the individual.

      When your only importance is defined by what group you can be classified as belonging to, you arent important at all. In fact, you don't matter one bit.

    • This is not against free speech, but against politically motivated terrorism. Grab any one of the rioters from Hamburg and ask them what they are rioting against and what their demands are. At best you get a response like "kill capitalism" or something meaningless like that. Germany has one of the strongest free speech protections, but all in balance. As often stated, yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater is not free speech, neither is inciting violence. The articles and especially the summary make it sound
  • by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Friday August 25, 2017 @03:55PM (#55085729)

    You stop them from breaking the law.

    This is just bass ackwards.

  • Good. Every large group has it's version of Soccer Hooligans. The left is no different. The difference is (as Noam Chomsky noted) the Right is _much_ better at violence than the Left. Their love of strong authority figures means they can organize better and they've got more ex-military guys. The Left can win on issues because our policies work. But we can't win on violence because, well, we're not nearly as violent (and yes, that's probably a slightly controversial idea, but that doesn't make it less true)
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Go ahead and tell all these peopled killed by the left that you're not nearly as violent
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes

    • by lucm ( 889690 )

      as Noam Chomsky noted

      Noam Chomsky is a buffoon. He once complained during an interview with Larry King that he was silenced and ignored by the mainstream media. He's basically a white Al Sharpton with no cause.

    • Good. Every large group has it's version of Soccer Hooligans. The left is no different. The difference is (as Noam Chomsky noted) the Right is _much_ better at violence than the Left.

      So why is it that the Left in the U.S. are the only ones so far that have shot or killed anyone?

      Granted the ones who killed people were rather crazy and it's hard to label them exactly, but they all mostly read eliminationsist rhetoric from the left.

      "The right is better organized" is a "fact" I would heavily dispute, since the

    • Good. Every large group has it's version of Soccer Hooligans. The left is no different. The difference is (as Noam Chomsky noted) the Right is _much_ better at violence than the Left. Their love of strong authority figures means they can organize better and they've got more ex-military guys. The Left can win on issues because our policies work. But we can't win on violence because, well, we're not nearly as violent (and yes, that's probably a slightly controversial idea, but that doesn't make it less true).

      Well. Germany does have a history with left-wing terrorists like Rote Arme Fraction, and is still dealing with occational 80s style BZers in Berlin that won't leave the buildings they are not paying rent for (though with large parts of Berlin formerly communists and some building occupied since the fall of DDR, the ownership is a lot more vague in places).

  • I'm a big believer in free speech and all that, but I am glad that Germany is at least applying whatever laws against extremist speech they have to both sides equally. Keep in mind though that they have an extensive and fairly recent history of actual left wing terrorism. [wikipedia.org]

    It can be hard to tell the fascists and antifascists apart sometimes, in methods, ideology and in appearance. Just how hard it can be was nicely illustrated today in an article on a Dutch left wing (and fairly sympathetic to Antifa) bl
  • by mseeger ( 40923 ) on Friday August 25, 2017 @04:12PM (#55085909)

    If this web site was the worst site that needs to be shut down, Germany would be a happy country ;-). It was in the large part only a forum with anonymous usage. The name associated it with the left and the moderators surely had their sympathies rather on the left end on the spectrum.

    The site was used by extremists to announce their deeds and to blurp their justifications. On the other hands, they were constantly taking a beating by the far bigger majorities of lefties. It was always clearly visible, how isolated the extremists were.

    Tactically the police robbed themselves of one of the best intelligence sources they had on the extreme left.

    • by lucm ( 889690 )

      Tactically the police robbed themselves of one of the best intelligence sources they had on the extreme left.

      The police doesn't need this kind of intelligence. All they need is the green light from the politicians, then they can go pick up a troublemaker or two and they'll topple the whole pyramid because those people have no loyalty, they're just in for the lols.

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday August 25, 2017 @04:26PM (#55086021)

    Politically motivated violence (short of genocide) has been shown to be ineffective and many times counterproductive. However, if you think genocide is the answer then you have lost sight of what you were fighting for. Combating extremism with more extremism is a losing move.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell

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