Hey Tim, really interesting post, but... On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, you wrote:
At 11:55 PM +0200 9/25/00, Konrad Podloucky wrote: ---snip--- As for Germany, Austria, and all of the other countries which claim to be liberal democracies, open societies, but which have various laws banning Nazi literature, imprisoning people for expressing their view that the Holocaust was exaggerated, and so on, their policies are both _wrong_ and _counterproductive_.
Nothing has made Nazism more interesting to young persons, mostly young men, than the hint of illegality. "If they don't want me to know about this, there must be something to it." Plus, the usual flaunting of disrespect for authority.
The hint of illegality? Well, of course this is a reason, but the question remains that if all people had legal access to nationalsocialist propaganda such as "Mein Kampf", would the fact that that mainpart of our society disrespect right-wing radicals not lead to the same attraction? IŽm not sure. Disrespect of authority? Sounds funny for Nazis! :-) But I know what you mean. But certainly, this is not the reason that young men join the national-socialist cause. ItŽs about a feeling of superority, about finding an adventerous group of people that I fit in. And about finding a simple answer to the question why I donŽt have a job, money(, or a brain).
Would such anti-Nazi laws have stopped Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s? Maybe. Maybe it just would have been called something else, to "game around" whatever the specific language of the laws might have been.
And, of course, the German and Austrian governments of the time changed the laws as they saw fit.
Of course, the crypto relevance of all of this is that strong crypto is already making it possible to distribute Nazi and neo-Nazi material in these countries without any possibility that the governments can halt the flow.
This will make such laws moot, which is a good thing.
Agreed. Olav Stetter, Germany P.S.: Please donŽt mind my English. I know what you think about it when I read it myself. :-)