this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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[–] explodicle@local106.com 22 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Actual not-rhetorical question: did it become a slippery slope in Germany?

[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

No, because slippery slope is the name of a logical fallacy, not something that actually happens.

If you made a colour gradient going from blue to green, at what point in that gradient does the transition from blue to green actually happen? It's impossible to say! It is therefore impossible to tell blue and green apart! That's the same argument the other comment is making. It suggests that because the transition point between A and B is blurry that something banning A effectively also bans B.

To quote United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, when asked what the criteria for pornography entails, "I know it when I see it".

[–] explodicle@local106.com 4 points 10 months ago
[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Your mistake is thinking the purpose of these laws is to stop "nazis." It's not. The purpose of these laws is to provide some legal backing to silence critics of the government. They will never make a law that says you can't criticize the Government. But they don't need to, all they need to do is make a law that says supporting terrorism is illegal, then it's easy to squint and say that agreeing with a terrorist organization is the same as supporting terrorism.

For example, if the green party of Australia wants to stop coal mining or whatever and ELF blows up a coal mining truck, suddenly the green party of Australia is breaking the law by existing so they have to spend all their effort defending themselves against the law, rather then attempting to ban coal mining.

That scenario is the purpose of this law, but with governmental support of Israel. Every time a public figure criticizes Israel they have bend over backwards and spend the majority of their time claiming how much they love the Jewish people and definitely aren't Nazis, and now if they don't sufficiently prove their non-naziness, they are suddenly breaking the law and now there is another avenue for people who want to silence critics to pursue. It's not a coincidence that this law was passed on Dec 8th.

That's what the slippery slope is, the silencing of dissent, not the specific verbiage of the law.

For example, ask yourself why https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27_Party would be be banned under this law?

[–] survivalmachine@beehaw.org 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nope. Slippery slopes don't really happen that often in reality. It's mostly just an argument used by Nazi sympathizers to protest against anti-hate speech measures.

[–] brain_in_a_box@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's literally happening in this case; notice that these laws also ban anything the Australian government considers a terrorist group, which is an expansive list.

[–] stmcld@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 10 months ago

I suppose this is the next phase of the slow? slide to fascism. It's depressing