No, The Nazis Weren’t Big on Free Speech
Reject this bizarre slander whenever you hear it.
When I think of Nazi Germany, “free-wheeling marketplace of ideas” isn’t the first thing that springs to mind.
And yet, last week Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan, in her relentless quest to surrender as much of CBS’s credibility as possible, claimed the Third Reich was a place where “free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.” This astonishing statement was followed by a 60 Minutes segment covering German police efforts to tackle hate speech and misinformation online. The piece approvingly documented raids by armed German police officers of the houses of German citizens found guilty of offensive tweets and memes.
Yes, that’s right. Uniformed men with guns kicked down doors to arrest people for things they’d written. But it’s the memesters who are supposed to remind us of Nazis.
Believe it if you can, dear reader.
You know who else liked free speech…?
The not-so-subtly implied takeaway from both pieces and others like them is that free expression, whether tweets from German shitposters or speeches by the Vice President of the United States, is a slippery slope that leads directly to Hitler.
It’s a tragically ignorant thing to believe when you look at the facts, as I will soon demonstrate. But it’s downright sinister when promoted by representatives of the supposedly free press, who should (and probably do) know better. The whole thing drips with authoritarian condescension, so let’s put this myth to rest with extreme prejudice.
Free speech absolutely did NOT bring the Nazis to power, nor was it championed by them once they were in power.
The truth is almost the exact inverse.
Censorship and speech restriction were instrumental to the Nazis’ rise as well as their reign of terror.
Don’t fall for the Weimar Fallacy
It’s often suggested that if only the German government had tamped down on the Nazis when they were a fledgling political movement, Hitler would never have come to power.
This is called the Weimar Fallacy (because Germany’s government was called the Weimar Republic at the time) and it’s completely ahistorical. Germany did have laws limiting speech on a number of issues, including antisemitism, and the Weimar government frequently used those laws to crackdown on Nazis. They’d disrupt Nazi events, deplatform speakers, and even imprison prominent party members, such as Julius Streicher, founder of the racist, antisemitic newspaper, Der Stürmer.
All this did was make the Nazis more popular.
It allowed them to portray themselves as victims of a tyrannical government which despised its own loyal citizens. This resonated deeply with many Germans in the 1920s and 30s, who also felt betrayed by their government after its capitulation in the First World War. Foreign boots had never touched German soil the entire war, and yet ordinary Germans were subjected to harsh sanctions and humiliating poverty as though they were an occupied nation. Mismanagement and bad economic policy furthered the suffering of average people, who felt they had no true representation in their government.
Hitler attributed this degraded state of affairs to systemic corruption by conspiratorial forces, and the fact that the system kept conspiring to silence him only strengthened his case.
Assume your opponent will one day have access to your weapons
Once in power, the Nazis used the very same censorship laws they suffered under to oppress their opposition.
The original speech codes were designed to stamp out radicalism, so all the Nazis had to do was define their opponents as radicals. Then they could justify their own brutal crackdowns as matters of national safety. Cue uniformed policemen kicking down doors and burning books in the town square.
Even in Hitler’s inner circle, a culture of censorship prevailed.
He’d fire military experts and policymakers when their observations about reality didn’t line up with his preferences. A constant fear of saying the wrong thing permeated amongst his most trusted advisors, until only sycophants and yes-men remained. Ultimately, Hitler’s severance from objective truth led to catastrophic strategic blunders that unraveled the Third Reich at the cost of millions of German lives (and tens of millions of non-German lives).
So, no. Free speech wasn’t involved in any part of this.
Fear isn’t a good reason to accept bad arguments
One has to wonder why anyone would even attempt to argue such a ridiculous and easily disproved point.
Undoubtedly fear has something to do with the answer.
I know lots of people are unsettled by the shameful rhetoric that’s thrown around these days. Many are also disconcerted by the rapid decentralization of information that’s occurred over the past decade, making it easier than ever for unscrupulous actors to gain audiences and influence. Many also see one-too-many reminders of the not-so-distant past.
Hitler’s era was also one of massive technological change and radical populism.
But if you really believe, as many do, that we’re living in a similar time, it might be wise to consider what really happened back then. What was tried? What failed? What should we learn from one of the darkest eras of human existence?
And why should we listen to those who refuse to learn?