Being German, unfortunately the answer to that is yes, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum, it’s because the media and politicians have been courting right wing ideologies over the past 20 years to an extent that things have become normalized that should have never been normalized, e.g. framing asylum seekers as „migrants“ and adopting dehumanizing language against them, which has led to us having AFD polling at 20% and CDU at 30%.

CDU has recently collaborated with the right wing extremist AFD to push through a proposal for an anti-migration bill that violates our constitution. There has been an uproar but CDU and AFD actually polled higher after this. Our country is in deep trouble and we’re moving into a very scary direction.

Generally speaking, espousing/engaging in the support of many harmful beliefs traditionally held by Nazis, and generally fascists more broadly since Nazism is just a branch of fascism, such as:

• Supporting the actions of the Nazi party historically (e.g. saying the Nazis were right to kill Jewish people, saying “Heil Hitler,” or doing the Nazi salute in a clearly deliberate manner)
• Supporting dictatorship, authoritarianism, or totalitarianism as a concept or goal
• Belief in a so called “master race” or the subordination of other races for the benefit of another/the nation
• Advocating for the imprisonment/killing of homosexual/transgender individuals (the exact category of people at risk here can change over time, since fascism just re-selects a new group of people to attack once the former has been exterminated/ostracized enough)
• Religious nationalism by any denomination
• Advocating to eliminate unions for the benefit of corporations/the state
• Ultra-nationalist rhetoric
• Advocating for an expansion of the police state
• Views of immigrants as sub-human
• etc.

Practically speaking, I think it would probably make the most sense to judge whether somebody is a “Nazi” legally, by requiring at least a few of these tenets to be met before any trial could take place to prevent false imprisonment and the like, but as these views are objectively harmful to society, I don’t believe they should be allowed to flourish, full stop.

If you don’t support imprisoning people who hold these views that directly lead to the death of many innocent people, the taking over of people’s land/homes, the destruction of democratic systems, and the elimination of entire races of people from populations, then you are inherently tolerating their beliefs.

The Nazis could claim you are in violation of your laws if you support “pedophiles” (by which they mean “trans”). Or supporting “enemy invaders” (by which they mean “immigrants”). Even mentioning “Luigi” could qualify as a violation.

Nazism, however, can be more objectively defined than single-word terms, as you’ve used here.

For instance, if someone says the words “Heil Hitler” while raising their hands in a traditional Nazi salute, there isn’t exactly room for a fascist to go “weeeeelllll but you saying ‘black lives matter’ with your fist up is the same thing, actually,” if the law explicitly states that saying the exact words “Heil Hitler” while raising your hand in that salute is the specific thing required to get you imprisoned. Laws can be more objectively defined than “pedophiles,” “supporting enemy invaders,” or “Nazis.”

Never give the government a power that you would not give to the Nazis.

Nazis simply ignore the law. Trump is quite literally doing it right now, He’s passing executive orders he doesn’t actually have the legal capacity to enforce, which is then leading to things like congresspeople being prevented from entering buildings they have a right to enter, or databases being given to people without legally required security credentials. They don’t care what the law was, they care what it will be once they’re done screwing with it.

Whether or not you pass a law prohibiting explicit behaviors that are categorically harmful to society will not change whether or not they are then capable of manipulating the laws to do what they wanted to do to you regardless.

It will, however, heavily reduce the chances of them coming into power, and having the ability to misuse any laws or power they may have in the first place

That conclusion does not arise from my arguments.

And yes, it obviously does. You stated that we should not censor Nazis because Nazis in power later on could use that law to suppress others. The same logic applies to any other regulation or prohibition. We shouldn’t pass gun control legislation because it’s possible someone uses it to take the good people’s guns away. We shouldn’t imprison people for rape because someone could redefine what rape means to mean non-married people having sex. We shouldn’t jail pedophiles because they could redefine trans people as pedophiles simply for existing.

It’s the same logic all the way down. There is nothing different when it comes to imprisonment for Nazi-aligned speech/actions, or other dangerous speech/actions. All of them can be prohibited to an extent, even though there’s a possibility that the power dynamic could then be reversed later on by the same group of people being prohibited.

Look, I’m not going to keep going on this because I think it’s clear neither of us are changing our stances. Send a reply if you want, I’ll gladly read it, and give it some thought, but I’m done trying to continue a conversation if you think we shouldn’t try to stop Nazis because Nazis could possibly get in power and stop us instead. That applies to any regulation against any group that could possibly come into power, and I would encourage you to look back at the examples I provided, stop, and think about just how different the logic really is to the idea of censoring Nazis, because I think you’ll find it is, in fact, not different at all.

In their defense, that’s the only thing lasers know how to do.