--- "Poor, Edmund W" Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com wrote:
I think it's too scary to be tolerated, if someone declares themselves to be a "Nazi", especially when publicly e-mailing a person of Jewish ancestry. It's an implicit threat, if one takes "Nazi" as one who wishes or intends to kill as many Jews as he can lay his hands on.
I think that's way overboard. This "threat" would be laughed out of court. A real threat is when someone says "I'm going to ..", or "watch your back", or "I know where you live", or a similar formulation. If someone made such a real threat on WP then the appropriate response would be to call the cops. Just saying "I'm a Nazi" is not a threat without additional words that suggest action towards the "threatened" person.
Actually I find the idea that calling oneself a Nazi is a worse offence than calling someone else a Nazi to be astonishing. This is also true in law, as calling someone else a Nazi is libel but calling oneself a Nazi is perfectly legal.
Let's come up with a policy for this.
Obviously personal threats cannot be tolerated. Nor can criminal libels. Both should be capital offences. If some litigous person one day decides to sue WP for publishing a libel against him/herself, just the costs will close us down even if the case is weak.
Zero.
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