Words are words. They can’t hurt unless you let them. If you don’t want to hear them get off twitter. Prison isn’t a reasonable response. Sad that George Orwell being proven right in the UK of all places.
Hitlers crimes were his actions, not his words. That the world erred in not taking his words seriously and preparing to stop the actions he said he’d do, doesn’t mean the solution to future hitlers is s thought police.
Leading Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher were all prosecuted for anti-Semitic speech. Streicher served two prison sentences. Rather than deterring the Nazis and countering anti-Semitism, the many court cases served as effective public-relations machinery, affording Streicher the kind of attention he would never have found in a climate of a free and open debate.
