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I'll admit to having real mixed feelings on this. On the whole, I'm a big believer in the "free marketplace of ideas" ala John Stuart Mill, but lately I've been rather dismayed with how some of my compatriots back in "The Old Country" seem to latch onto half-baked ideas, more or less simply because they have seen them in print somewhere "so they must be true."
Back at university, I took a fascinating class (I was a German major) where we read Hitler's speeches and took them apart to see what he actually said and try and figure out how and why it appealed to so many at the time. Oddly enough, we were reading them in the original, published in Germany by a rather prestigious German publisher. Said publisher is probably still not able to publish Mein Kampf, which is really only more of the same. All that strikes me as extremely bizarre, though I can appreciate the sensitivity of the issue in Germany, especially after having lived there for a few years.
Unfortunately I think that banning "hate speech" only drives it underground and makes it all the more attractive for those gullible individuals who have never learned how to read critically.
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