‘I’m A Daughter Of A Holocaust Survivor’; Censorship Of Nazi Speech BACKFIRED: Nadine Strossen

Nadine Strossen, a senior fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, explains how censorship laws during the Nazi regime helped Hitler rise to power. #FreeSpeech #censorship

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[Music] would censoring the Nazis have stopped the Holocaust from taking place that’s the implicit justification for the regime of Internet censorship that currently exists in modern Germany but one prominent voice naen strawson says that censorship actually didn’t work ston is the former head of the American civil liberties Union and the daughter of a holocaust Survivor now in a recent oped for Fox News she made the case that censorship would not have brought down Nazi Germany her article came in response to CBS News host Margaret Brennan’s curious claim to vice president JD Vance that the Nazis had successfully weaponized free speech Let’s watch he was standing in a country where Free Speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide and he met with the head of a political party that has far right views ston countered this making the case that censorship laws that did exist during the Nazi regime actually helped Hitler rise to power because he was a free speech martyr or portrayed himself that way joining us now to discuss all of this is naen ston who is now additionally a senior fellow at the foundation for individual rights and expression welcome to Rising naine i’ admired you for a long time always love conversing with you thanks for being here thank you so much for having me Robbie and Linda so I think this is such a a vital uh point you know you write in this uh in this oped and I I’ve heard you make this point before that you know yes if if widespread censorship might have produced some vastly preferable uh historical result and saved millions of lives I think we’d all have to consider it but your point is that actually we kind of did test that because they did practice censorship against the Nazis it just didn’t work why don’t you tell us more and what’s so interesting about that Robbie is that this is the consensus of historians as well as activists on behalf of Human Rights including Jewish anti-semitic Crusaders during the viar Republic 1918 to 1933 during which Hitler Rose to power that there was a vast array of laws suppressing hate speech both criminal laws civil laws they were very strictly enforced uh by prosecutors and there was an organization in Germany at the time very similar to the Anti-Defamation League now uh that provided resources including ERS for individuals who Jewish people who had been targeted by anti-semitic hate speech bringing complaints there were many prosecutions many convictions prison sentences including of prominent Nazis such as Julius strier the U publisher of the notorious D stumer which was repeatedly confiscated Hitler himself was literally banned from speaking in public for several years in many St States in Germany and not only did the Nazis uh try to gain sympathy out of uh this censorship they actually succeeded including according to uh Crusaders against anti-Semitism one of whom wrote this is a failed strategy we are simply creating Martyrs that’s incredible and you also you know have observed in the past there was plenty of actual crime you know organizing to overthrow the state to commit violence that is not free speech that could have been prosecuted more harshly than the the German state did so they they went all out on suppressing speech which backfires and then were too lenient in terms of actually punishing violence and terrorism well to say the least Hitler and his Hench people actually tried to overthrow the German government they had a coup and received the ridiculously leading incent of 5 years in prison at a time when the general sentence for that kind of treasonous violent activity uh was a like was the death penalty or at least life imprisonment or at least being in disqualified from running for political office again Hitler only served eight months of that already low fiveyear term during which he wrote mine comp and comes out and is allowed to run for office and the trouble is as you rightly say Robbie that he and his Hench people literally got away with murder physically assaulting and killing their political opponents um communist socialists Jews and other minority people nen is very helpful to get that historic context especially as this become has this conversation has become a bit of part of the Zeitgeist here in the US what’s your take on what lessons there are to be learned from experience especially today here in the US in an era where clearly social media has an outsized impact on the kind of discourse that we are experiencing especially in politics that that if we are concerned as we should be about speech that conveys dangerous evil hateful ideas um our goal is to suppress the ideas and the effective way of doing that is not through punitive criminal law I would add the effective way to do that is also not through shaming shunning ostracizing and cancelling rather the effective way is through counter information through persuasion through education trying to change people’s minds and also to very vigorously punish actually violent discriminatory illegal conduct you H your organization uh the ACLU has done so such good work over time as have organizations lik the foundation for individual rights and expression in uh you know defending the rights of very obnoxious and even in some cases evil people to practice their free speech on the understanding that you know if their speech can be suppressed then everyone’s speech can be suppressed and also that the authorities you know have no cannot be trusted to determine hateful speech from good speech you know what counts as hateful speech is different to every person uh my sense now is that misinformation is almost the new hate speech in terms of it being a justification used by you know many well-meaning people but to really constrain the guard rails of the conversations particularly um online you know this has become such a a a a main uh objective for the European Union for instance to to Target this um what are your concerns as Regulators look at you know how to change the rules on social media platforms ostensibly aiming at getting rid of this what they describe as misinformation it presents exactly the same problems as the um well intention but backfiring suppression of hate speech that it simply empowers government or powerful private Tech Titans to pick and choose which ideas they consider to be inaccurate or dangerous which is really dangerous discretion because it leads to suppression of a lot of values valuable speech conversely as we saw in the situation of punishing the Nazis for hateful speech it does not diminish the uh the the spreading of that uh feared dangerous inform misinformation in fact it draws people’s attention to it and support for it and many social scientists have shown that due to the psychology that is common to us human beings that if you try to suppress conspiracy theories or other disinformation for those people who are inclined to believe it it just increases their support they say oh well this must be true why would people be so afraid of it or trying to suppress it so again the answer not only in terms of free speech principles but in terms of actual pragmatic concerns of what works is not to try to suppress disinformation that’s never going to work but rather to use more speech accurate information giving people the resources the media information literacy to do their own research to learn which sources are trusted or not Nan it sounds like you’re in part while I don’t want to put words in your mou in part you are advocating for factchecking which of course we have had a lot of push back from this particular Administration and independently members of the private sector have moved away from it who do you believe should be doing that factchecking and is there an important role for that in this current discussion well Linda with all due respect it’s not objection to factchecking itself uh the objection is to any kind of centralized gatekeeper that is purporting to make a determination for everybody else in the country as to what is true and what is false and after all the most contested matters are not um narrow objectively falsifiable or verifiable facts but rather matters of analysis opinion perspective and it is for each of us individuals to make our own determinations as to what we think is a worthy and valuable perspective or idea and perhaps for parents and teachers to make those determinations on behalf of their own young children or students Na and straon thank you so much for joining us today appreciate your expertise I’m delighted to be here thank you so much next up on Rising looks like Maga is getting involved in the budget battle we will discuss [Music]