Disturbing German news

Today, I stumbled upon two German news stories that were both highly disturbing, overlapping with some of my writings, and showing how easy it is for the any of us to fall victim to forces that we might naively believe ourselves protected from*.

*E.g. because “the innocent have nothing to fear”, “things like that only happen to others”, …

Firstly, some poor sod has been assaulted in his own apartment, because of a TV program on pedophilia*, through which some people misidentified him as a pedophile** from the program, and took it upon themselves to beat him up so badly that he almost died***…

*According to the article and/or the TV program: There is a fair chance that the label is, for the umpteenth time, abused to include interest in post-pubescent “children” younger than 18, which is in a different realm than pedophilia—sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children.

**From the sparse information given, it is not clear whether he was identified as someone who actually had abused children (or “children”), or as someone who merely felt a sexual attraction towards them. Both are conceivable, considering how many appear to consider it impossible for a pedophile to not control himself; but the latter would make his attackers the more monstrous.

***Whether the attackers deliberate tried to kill him, whether his death was not intended, but at least considered acceptable, or whether an intended lesser attack “just” got out of hand, is not stated. However, if, as it appears, seven to ten people physically assault someone, it is almost a given that “lethal force” applies, irrespective of intent.

There are at least three important points to consider:

1. That self-proclaimed “good” people who commit evil deeds are worse than the “evil” people who do not—these “good guys” are the true evil, the true monsters. I note that even if the victim had been a child-abuser, chances are that his crimes had not warranted his death; and unless the abuses had been unusually bad, his attackers proved themselves to be worse monsters. Here the victim was innocent…
2. That it is extremely important to get the facts straight before taking drastic actions. Indeed, one of the reasons why the justice systems in “civilized” countries put emphasis on “due process”, “reasonable doubt”, etc., while strongly limiting self-justice, is exactly to try to prevent such scenarios. Regrettably, innocent people are still regularly convicted—and if a professional justice system can fail, how can a mob of TV viewers presume to take action?
3. That there is tremendous danger in an attitude of “he is evil; he must not live”, “he has the wrong opinion; he must not speak”, “he does not support our cause; he must not vote”, …

Depending on unknown-to-me details of the case, other points might need making. For instance, if a “passive” pedophile has been grouped with child-abusers, this exemplifies both the danger of seeing opinion/being/character/whatnot and assuming action, or treating them as equal to action, and of believing that what applies to the group applies to each individual member of the group*.

*Interestingly, the politically correct are among the groups most likely to commit this error—despite being among those who complain the loudest of it in others…

Secondly, various apartments have been searched and computers confiscated based on suspicion of “hate postings”. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find examples or quotes of these alleged hate postings, implying that I cannot judge whether these specific instances could have been considered illegal* (as might be the case with “kill all X”), offensive-to-a-reasonable-reader-but-legal, or just everything-not-pc-is-hate-speech**. Irrespective of this, this situation is troubling on several counts, including that confiscating computers is an extreme and improductive measure*** and that going to such lengths based on, as it appears, mere suspicion of guilt jeopardizes the Rechtsstaat. (And is a dubious prioritization of police resources…)

*Note that the German law is unusually strict, especially when anything even hints at support of the old Nazi-regime or its ideas. (This sometimes to a point that the ethical justifiability of the laws seems dubious, and including absurdities like computer games being censored for using Swastikas in depictions of Nazi enemies…)

**During the years that I actually bothered debating on blogs, I saw a great many examples of this. Other examples regularly reach me through the current news, as with [1]. The situation is so bad, that I am not willing to attribute this to sheer incompetence or the inability to see the flawed perspective and the hypocrisy, nor to forgive this by applying Hanlon’s Razor—no, problems on this scale can hardly occur without malice and intellectual dishonesty, by a deliberate use of unfair accusations as a means to an end.

***I note e.g. disproportionately negative effects on the victims of the confiscation; the uselessness of any found evidence through the ease with which digital evidence can be planted; and the uselessness of a search on the computer of a “big fish”, who will have the means to protect himself through use of encryption and similar technologies. See also e.g. [2].

The “chilling effect” of such actions is also disturbing: How do we know that what we say will not be deemed hate speech or illegal speech by someone in a position to cause trouble? What if the police overreacts as mindlessly as in [3]? What if our own words are judged by such absurd criteria as in [1]? How do we know that factual statements, reasonable opinion, attempts at serious debate will not cause the police to knock on our own doors? The simple truth is that we can only hope, and if this trend is carried on, the borders of even de facto illegal “hate speech” will continually be pushed into a more and more unreasonable territory*.

*Based on the comparatively small size of the police action, there is a fair chance that it was directed at outrageous cases—this time around. If no protests follow, this is likely to change… Obviously, what is called “hate speech” (or “racism”, “sexism”, whatnot) in PC circles are very often far from being so, even now.

More generally, I would seriously question whether even the vilest* expression of opinion (per se; without e.g. a call for action) should ever be treated thus. It would be better to restrict measures to expression that also imply an action or a call for action (e.g. “Go kill an X today!”**, but not “All X deserve to die!”***).

*When it comes to anything but the vilest expression, measures like police intervention are unacceptable, anti-democratic, and a violation of the Rechtsstaat. Consider e.g. the relative triviality of the case discussed in [1] and the disproportionate reaction (admittedly by non-police).

**Again, this type of statement is sometimes heard from extremists within the Leftist or PC spheres. Cf. e.g. my discussion of the Charlottesville events.

***Statements that are not uncommon among Leftist and PC extremists.

As an aside, I found the claim disturbing that hate speech would come predominantly from the “extreme Right”*: Not only have I so far seen far more hate from Leftist and PC extremists (especially feminists) than from the “extreme Right”, which makes me doubt the neutrality of this action and suspect a double standard**, but I also suspect the common tendency to consider anyone with e.g. nationalist, anti-immigration, or whatnot opinions to be “extreme Right”, even when other opinions would point to Left, thereby skewing the estimations of the (non-extreme) Left and “Right” among the broad masses.

*Starting with the renewed observation that this is a misnomer, unlike “extreme Left”: The extreme Left consists of people with extreme versions of Leftist opinions or who are willing to use extreme methods to reach Leftist goals; the “extreme Right” does not have the same role relative the “Right” in general. (To which must be added that the “Right” is far more heterogeneous than the Left, and that while the label “Left” can make sense, the label “Right” hardly ever does, except as an opposition to “Left”.)

**I note both that a double standard concerning opinions and behaviors is extremely common among e.g. PC, and Leftist groups, with the most intolerant people often being the ones that complain the most of intolerance in others, the most sexist those who complain the most of sexism in others, etc.; and that there is a considerable skew in German law between the extreme Left and the “extreme Right”. For instance, a few years ago I read a news-paper article on crimes committed by these groups. The main claim was that crimes were more common on the “extreme Right”; however, it was clear from the presented statistics that this was only true due to a legal asymmetry, e.g. in that German law forbids carrying swastikas but is silent on the hammer-and-sickle. When we looked only at non-asymmetrical crimes (e.g. assault, break-ins, …), the numbers were approximately the same.

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