If you’re the team that’s banning songs, you’re on the wrong team
That’s not a universal truth, there are a bunch of neo-nazi anthems and xenophobic songs banned in several countries, and for good reason.
As far as I know, there is no neo-Nazi song that is illegal in the US. I can buy Mein Kampf, I can sing whatever I want.
Back when Substack wasn’t banning Nazis, more than one person told me that that was definitely the right way to do it, and pointed to laws in countries like Germany that prohibited Nazi content as an example of a good approach (sometimes, for some reason, claiming incorrectly that the US had the same laws).
When I said that those laws would invariably classify speech that the ruling party didn’t like as “hate speech,” they told me I was talking pure nonsense and that they were only classifying actual hate speech, so there was no problem.
Guess which country in the Schengen Area has classified speech against Israel as “hate speech” and prevented a doctor from coming to a university and giving a speech on what he witnessed in Gaza.
The point is not that Nazi songs are okay. The point is that people are going to sing what they want to sing, whether their songs are good things or bad, and that laws telling them they can’t is (a) a big waste of time in the big picture (b) a lot more likely to be used against songs that are on the right side of history than the wrong side.
I have no knowledge about songs being banned in the US or not, but I disagree with your assessment of laws being a waste of time. I’m not if favor of a police state whatsoever, but I would consider attending concerts of some right-wing rock bands as a first step towards radicalization.
Hence, preventing those from occurring where possible might keep gullible people out of the influence of radicals, or in the worst case, help keeping tabs on potential future offenders by being able to charge them with something.
Yeah, I mean, I agree on principle sure. If I was running the music festival I would probably take that attitude sure. The issue with when it becomes the law, is that it’s never going to be you or me deciding what might be the first step towards radicalization and what needs to be kept away lest it influence people; it’ll always be people who think the Palestine protest songs or Rage Against the Machine are the first step towards radicalization that we really need to be looking out for. So better not to give them the power to shut down the music they think is dangerous.
Exceptions prove the rule. Plenty of good rules have the corollary, “unless you’re a nazi.”
Ah yes how they managed to perfectly erase some other things off the internet?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre
Here’s the full tank man footage on YouTube btw
