Peter Herngaard wrote:
Incidentally, I heard that last year there were a series of raids on bookstores for "hate" literature. One of the books seized was Art Spiegelman's "Maus". The justification was that it glorified violence. (Feel free to correct me if this is baseless rumor. ;-)
No. It is entirely correct as far I know. As I have pointed out before, the present state of freedom of expression in Germany is lower than in Denmark.
I would like to point out that much of the so called "hate" speech should in fact be labeled "hated" speech. Let's take an example: consider a history work thet denies holocaust of Jews in WWII. Many of such manuscripts are rather dry and historical, and certainly do not advocate killing anybody, and do not advocate any kind of "hate" (although their authors probably do hate Jews on a personal level). So why are they called "hate" speech? Because a lot of readers hate this kind of speech. Thus, it should be renamed into "hated" speech. - Igor.