None of us is an expert in law, though I am not aware that the law deliberately and generally treats some ethnic group more leniently. It is my understanding that this would be against our foundational law. However, the courts treat neo nazi crime more harshly. Therefore, if you want to treat everything the same, the neo nazi crime would have to be adjusted and punished less. That's of course not what some parties hope to see.Kirbmarc wrote:Jews, as I've shown, have complained that the sentence was too lenient and could leave to other attacks on synagogues being punished less harshly if the perps justify themselves with the spurious "it's actually about criticism of Israel" justification.Aneris wrote:You find it important to nickpick whether your own word "doublestandard" fits, in context of extremely distorted tweets just to play the "yes, but" game? Actually, Jews don't complain about harsh anti-neo-nazi laws. It's Right Wingers who one time sympathize with conspiracy theorist and holocaust deniers, and another time with Israel. That doesn't go together. I don't see what point you are trying to make, or why you deem it necessary to play nitpicky contrarian with goal post moving, while implicitly defending extremly distorted news.
I don't care about InfoWars. I care about the fact that if you're a Palestinian-German anti-semite who sets fire to a synagogue you get a more lenient sentence than if you're a neo-nazi anti-semite who does the same thing. Yes, that's a double standard.
I know you're not defending the perps, I've never said you were. And yes, saying that this is the first step towards deaths of millions of jews is stupid, and so is saying that they'll erect a Hitler statue next. I never said you were trivializing this, either.No, the tweet is not part of the usual twitter outrage. It is beyond the pale. The perpetrators aren't neo nazis, and 800€ damage even to a synagogue is not the first step to the death of millions of jews, neither are we at risk of trying to erect a Hitler statue. And no, I am not defending the perpetrators, either. I hate this. I only put it into perspective, and explained the context. I detest this trick (of course a SJW favourite), and I'm really allergic to that stuff. It must be possible to accept that this isn't quite like murdering millions of jews, without being accused of trivializing it.
I'm simply baffled by what is a clear double standards, when a certain group of people is punished less harshly just because they're a certain group of people, even though the crime they committed was the same.
Many people (including Jews from The Jewish Press) disagree and think that all anti-semitic attacks should be punished in the same way. I tend to agree and think that punishing perps differently for the same acts is a double standard.Again, the court addressed the historical and symbolical weight. The court was taking it seriously. But that perpetrators weren't the type of anti-semites the German Law has in mind, hence this does not apply.
They aren't asylum seekers, they are Palestinian-German. I never said that they were asylum seekers and for that matter neither did Watson or InfoWars. You're putting words in other people's mouths.The point here is that if they wanted to go with the lenient ruling, they could have followed the assessment of the defence, but they didn't. You can always go deeper into the rabbit hole and somehow rescue Watson, his lunatic tweet, or the extremely hyperbolic article. Also, understand that Nazism in Germany has historical context and is not just some random (even dangerous) fringe group. They represent a former government, with aspirations to overthrow and re-install the former system, and they are thus more on the territory of treason, whereas another similar group does not meet such criteria. In addition to the obvious historical significance, there is also the de-nazification imposed by the allies. Obvious being obvious, none of these contexts apply to asylum seekers from the Middle East.
I'm not interested in defending Watson or InfoWars, they're nutty conspiracy theorist blowhard with little to no redeeming qualities. My point is that other people are also concerned by the blatant double standard, including "The Jewish Press" and "Everyday Anti Semitism", hardly bastions of right-wing craziness.
Why would punish people the same way for the same act trivialize anything? If anything jewish-friendly media seems to be offended by the more lenient punishment for anti-semitic attacks.That's of course unwinnable. Would they have punished middle-easterners like Neo Nazis, they'd trivialize the special context. Prison Planet and Infowars people are imbeciles, and their tweet and the article should not even merit a discussion.
Prison Planet and InfoWars are imbeciles and their article is hyperbolic and stupid, but the same point was made by others which aren't, like the aforementioned Jewish Press, Everyday Anti-Semitism and even Razib Khan:
Again, I hate the polarization here. I have sympathy for the Jews, for historical reasons and they are also the ethnic group most targeted by hate crimes in many countries, but apparently not in Germany, according to OSCE. This makes the "news" and hyperbole even more sketchy, as it lists 5 cases of arson of "Christians and others" in 2015, compared to 2 against jews, and 99 (!) with xenophobic or racist motive. Internationally, it's true that antisemtism is often downplayed, while "islamophobia" gets all the headlines. Though I don't believe this is the case in Germany.
I have defended it in the past why the German law needs to be more punitive with neo nazis, and that's still my belief. But that does not mean that Jews can be a special class that enjoys extra protection, which also seems unwarranted given the data. Antisemitism cannot be applied in any circumstance against Jews, but must be tied to the historical circumstances (e.g. fascism targetting jews).
Interestingly, the case got little attention in Germany because it was found unremarkable. It only got into the headlines, because it gained a lot of attention in the international press. This suggests to me that this is more propaganda than anything else. Even though concern is justified, there are also hardliners and right wingers out there, who obviously exaggerate the situation to the extreme for some gain. I also have serious doubts that Razib Khan or other international commentators actually looked deeper into the matter. It now took me half an hour, and it looks even dodgier. It looked like hyperbolic outrage at the beginning, and it shapes up to be a organized propaganda. This has nothing to do with Jews in Germany, or with some young men and burning a door of a synagogue, but big politics and manipulation and it's sad that people here fall for this stuff so easily.
The point is, all these commentators fail to explain what they think "was an act of criminal arson, but not anti-Semitic" means. They assume some magic, but I don't see it. They utterly fail to comphrend the historical context of anti-semitism in Germany, which makes me really sad. Vox even writes (from your link) "ut apparently, not all synagogue burnings are equal", because they aren't. The synagogue burnings orchestrated by the Nazis, and the Holocaust just are not like other cases. It's terrible that this even needs an explanation.
