Latvia to forbid Soviet symbolics for the upcoming 9th of May - Polidicks

[QUOTE=laserguided;40294006]To whom is this post directed at? Do you support the banning of Nazi and Soviet symbols? Because it is hiding from history, it is counter-productive.[/QUOTE] I don't think the problem is trying to hide history. The issue seems to be more about Russians rubbing the whole soviet superiority in with their meetings. You don't go up to a Jew and start celebrating how great Hitler was. This is what Russians are doing in Latvia, celebrating how the Soviet Union fucked over Latvia. Glorifying or making excuses for either regimes is just wrong.

[QUOTE=pkhzor;40294317]I don't think the problem is trying to hide history. The issue seems to be more about Russians rubbing the whole soviet superiority in with their meetings. You don't go up to a Jew and start celebrating how great Hitler was. This is what Russians are doing in Latvia, celebrating how the Soviet Union fucked over Latvia. Glorifying or making excuses for either regimes is just wrong.[/QUOTE] Should it be banned because it makes people uncomfortable?

[QUOTE=laserguided;40294390]Should it be banned because it makes people uncomfortable?[/QUOTE] You're going down a slippery slope. Are you familiar with the Westboro Baptist Church? Snyder v Phelps supreme court case, 2006. There is no fine line between where one person's freedom of speech ends and another's right for protection from defamation begins.

[QUOTE=just-a-boy;40295776]You're going down a slippery slope. Are you familiar with the Westboro Baptist Church? Snyder v Phelps supreme court case, 2006. There is no fine line between where one person's freedom of speech ends and another's right for protection from defamation begins.[/QUOTE] Nobody is being defamed. I don't know what you're saying, but I personally don't think symbols should be banned because they make people feel uncomfortable.

[QUOTE=laserguided;40295898]Nobody is being defamed. I don't know what you're saying, but I personally don't think symbols should be banned because they make people feel uncomfortable.[/QUOTE] You misunderstand. Read what I said above: I'm all for history being neutral. That's not the point. What I'm saying is there are people from both sides of the fence, living in a single country. In order to get along, they must compromise. This means they can hold their rallies and gatherings, but they MUST remain civil. They MUST not confront each-other. And sadly, confronting each-other is exactly what is happening whenever these things are brought up. Read up on the 2007 April riots, a.k.a. "Bronze Night" in Tallinn. It should give you a general idea of the nature of the situation. I don't know where you're from, but it's not as simple as you would make it out to be.

i think it's silly to ban symbols as all it does is feed the persecution complex many of these groups already have but you'd have to be infinitely more stupid to glorify the nazi's or the soviet union. both of these empires are among the worst things to have happened to mankind.

Both are equally awful, I don't see the point in arguing over who is the worst. This 'debate' is going on because we sided with the lesser of two evils (for us), hoping to be liberated from the soviets but ended up trading a horrible occupation for a less horrible one (and then back to the horrible one again). Taking a neutral standpoint here is almost impossible because of personal opinions, experiences and histories of our respective countries (which, as I mentioned before, some people in this thread should read up on). Anyway as you might or might not know, history is written by the victors and life isn't as good and bad/black and white as you'd like to think.