European neo-Nazi websites find home in US
I hate the websites, but free speech is at risk in the US if we start shutting down sites that are found to be offensive. The recent ruling and release of Neo Nazi Bill White is another example of how far the US is willing to go to protect speech, even when it borders on calls for violence and specifying people and addresses judges here have ruled that we may not infringe any individual’s speech, no matter how odious or how close they come to even calling for violence.
The best and worst thing about free speech is that you know who the haters, the loons, and the wingnuts are. They are open and free to be seen and identified by all.
As a spelunker into the dim regions of the kookosphere I can tell you there are a lot of deranged people and groups out there spouting lies, hate, propanda, and vileness to the internet rooftops; but muzzling them would be a mistake. It’s better when they can speak and good that the public can know them for what they truly espouse and want.
So we have our Westboros, Alpen Donaus, and marches in Skokie. It’s really a very small price to pay to be able to freely laugh at wingnuts like Alex Jones, Fox News, and the Sovereign Citizens who try to pretend we live under a socialist tyranny.
Sometimes that laughter is stilled a short while; sometimes the haters go beyond speech to action. The other rare outcome of having speech that is so free: loons and nuts have conspired and have acted. So we also have our shootings, assassinations, and even bombings - these events are also the freight we pay for our large parcel of freedom.
The website is awash with neo-Nazi symbolism and even sarcastically refers to the notorious Mauthausen concentration camp as Austria’s largest open-air museum.
But attempts to cripple the xenophobic “Alpen-Donau” forum have been hindered by the fact it’s housed on a U.S. server, an example of how free speech on one side of the Atlantic can help spread hate speech on the other.
Austria bans Nazi glorification and Holocaust denial. In the United States nearly unrestricted freedom of speech rights are considered a cornerstone of democracy.