About Neo-Nazis silent marches
NB: This article is an echo to an old article where I spoke about an essay we had to do. I got it back (7/10) and I’d like to share it with you.
Neo-Nazism is a political movement that wants to bring back Hitler’s Nazism on the political scene. After all the history, all the torture and the jewish genocide, we can question the politics regarding Neo-Nazism. The main question here is whether or not it is legitimate to ban those marches and hate speeches?
The first problem we face is related to the Freedom of speech that allows everyone to speak freely without censorship. It is a fundamental right since it is written in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in France, and became an international right since then. Because of this fundamental right, it is said that we should allow them to express themselves. Indeed, they are just putting on the table an opinion; then it is our decision to agree with them or not. If we take this with a philosophical eye, we can ask ourselves if there is an absolute truth that we should all believe in. Nothing is stating that Neo-Nazism is truly wrong; that is why we should let them speak, and then form a personal opinion about it.
However we should consider another factor: the history. We cannot forget that Nazism was a repressive and hate movement that led to rejection, torture, crime whether massive or not. It hurt so many people: the victims of course, but also their families, friends and even random people who couldn’t accept what was going on. It took ages for Germany to finally recover from this dark past; but this part of history still affects a portion of people. Bringing back these thoughts will hurt those people; it can also revive or create some more hate that could lead to bad actions. Of course, we can say that censoring those thoughts doesn’t kill the main idea; it is still present but not expressed. But aren’t we better off them? We can’t destroy the idea; maybe the best solution is to ban the expression of hate and live as if it didn’t exist. This is a lie, but it may be the best solution in order to not hurt the core of everyone’s soul.
This is why there are some restrictions to the freedom of speech: the law about hate speech. It helps to limit hate speech; in France the law is very strict and thus speeches denying Holocaust or racial based speech are prohibited. However it is not the case in every countries; for example, the United States don’t prohibit hate speech as long as it doesn’t lead to crime, violence or riots. What about silent marches? They don’t involve anybody speaking; so, should they be allowed? It is quite controversial because on one hand Neo-Nazis are not expressing out loud their opinions, but on the other hand we cannot deny that this is another way of expression, even if it doesn’t involve words. We could then blame the spectators if violent fights begin because nobody was speaking; Neo-Nazis weren’t doing anything wrong. However these marches are provoking, it is not as if the demonstrators were innocents.
The question of silent marches is controversial: they are not doing anything wrong because they are just people gathered and walking, but they are also doing this in order to be watched, and thus it could be perceived as a form of provocation. There is no best solution about censorship because if we start censoring those movements, then what will be censored next? Where is the limit? However doing nothing about it can lead to violence, whether physical or moral, especially because there is a lot of history involved. Maybe the best solution would be to not censor those movements, but control them. Still, it is hard to find the right compromise between what should be allowed and what shouldn’t.
