Summary of the opposition

The government in the debate had a burden to show that the benefits of the ban of Nazi and Soviet symbols outweigh the costs of such prohibition. Throughout the debate the opposition has been consistently pointing out the shortcomings in the reasoning of the government and showed how exactly such prohibition would not help. We would like to briefly remind you the main arguments and clashes. First, the government believes that a symbol is no different from other forms of communication. On the side of the opposition we agree that a symbol is a form of communication, but we most definitely disagree with the claim that it is no different. The first difference is that it is most definitely more abstract and can mean various things to various people. Perhaps a no-smoking sign, an example given by the government, unambiguously tells people not to smoke (but it is not necessarily so, for instance, such a sign could also be a logo of organization that is against smoking or something else depending on the context), but most of the symbols are extremely ambiguous and abstract and here we are talking about swastika that comes from ancient times and symbolizes sun, and hammer and sickle - symbols of the working people. The second difference in which a symbol is not like verbal or written communication is that it is a passive display of opinion. Whenever we talk, we put our emotions into it. When we are angry, we can yell at people which can put our words in a different context. Words "I love you" can be either loving or sarcastic, depending on the tone. If symbols could talk, they would all the time carry the same neutral voice and it would be for the ones who listen to decide on the actual meaning. Thus symbols are just passive form of affiliation. Because of the two mentioned differences, it is could be hardly claimed that a symbol is no different from other forms of communication and this is what the government failed to realize. The first harm of the symbols brought up by the government was extremist movement encouragement. The essence of the argument was that these symbols keep the extremist groups strong. Without them, extremists would become weaker. It might be the case that there are some groups that are actually united by these symbols. There might also be cases of groups that merely use symbols but are not ideologically attached to them. The point here is, banning the symbols would at best not change anything and in the worst case scenario worsen the current situation. The groups with weak ideological attachment to symbols arguably would change their symbols to new ones and continue their aggressive acts. As the symbols were not important, it would not be a big deal to change them. The groups in which ideology plays very strong role, the prohibition of symbols will call a negative reaction and strong discontent. The groups will feel unjustly suppressed and feel a need to rebel against society that ignores them. The ban will reinforce symbols and strengthen them because of the taboo which is always created when something is banned. Also, we would like to point out that the symbols have already lost most of their power and have been commercialized to some extent. The Soviet symbols are used on T-shirts and souvenirs, people generally do not view them as offensive. Such symbols are not attractive for extremists but banning them can reverse that. So far we can see that there are absolutely no benefits to banning these symbols. But in fact, it is possible to have some benefits - if the symbols are banned and by some miracle they are not used by extremist organizations anymore. However, thinking that the extremists would give up their ideological symbols so easily is a very bold assumption which is very unlikely to be true. Hence, we rule it out and say that we are quite certain that the prohibition of symbols cannot make extremist organizations weaker. Secondly, the government seems to believe that Nazi and Soviet symbols are just another form of hate speech. It has been noted above that symbols are too abstract and too passive to be put in one line with a phrase like “We should commit genocide of one or another nation”. Hate speech is called as it is, because when you hear it, you can feel certain emotions – in this case – hatred towards other people. Symbols themselves cannot carry emotions. Furthermore, there is no proof that the need to feel hatred towards other people would change just because of the prohibition of a certain symbol. To put shortly, symbols cannot be classified as hate speech and banning them would not change the need to hate other people. The final argument presented by the government was that exposing certain things is still banned even if it doesn't promote committing any harmful actions. However, the opposition would like to note that there are always some criteria according to which decisions to ban or not to ban are made. The usual criterion is the third party harm. Claiming that we ban some things just for the sake of banning (because these things are somehow “immoral”) is simply wrong. We do not allow exposing rape not because it is immoral, but because the act itself is wrong and public display of it is humiliating to the victim. But we do allow the face of the rapist to be shown. Banning a symbol is comparable to banning the face of a rapist (or if the scale is too small – like banning the face of Stalin). The government tells us that it is in the interest of society to ban these symbols, because generally seeing them is unpleasant. However, their plan leaves the public exhibition of the very same symbols in museums and use for educational purposes. Why should we allow the educative use of Nazi / Soviet symbols? They will recall the same unpleasantness there as anywhere else. After all, we do not show pictures of rapes for education, do we? The government made a case that it is legitimate to limit the freedom of speech when society is left better of as a result of that limitation. However, they failed to prove that such a ban would have some tangible benefits to the society; therefore, we see no reasons why such a ban should be implemented. On the contrary, the opposition has outlined some strong arguments against the prohibition of display of Nazi / Soviet symbols. Individuals have a right to self expression. It is most certainly true that it is not absolute (as was noted by the government), but we believe that there is no tangible third party harm involved in displaying Nazi / Soviet symbols due to the abstract nature of symbols that has been proved by the opposition. And because of this, a right to self expression is a principle we should adhere to. It should be realized that such right is valuable per se, because it allows the individuals to freely express themselves, which is good, because we live in a free and open society and we generally value liberty and we want to let people to do whatever they wish as long as they do not interfere with other people’s liberties. We should also allow public display of these symbols, because we want public discourse to happen. When a symbol is free to use, he can remind the ideas behind him. These ideas are the basis for further discussion, so society can freely discuss whatever lies behind them and choose what is acceptable for them and what is not. The people themselves are capable of deciding whether it is worth to take something from these ideas or not. By depriving people of such a choice, a government gets a monopoly of truth where it decides what is right and what is wrong. This is fundamentally wrong, because there are no absolute truths in the world. The society is left worse off, because some ideas, although they might be appealing for the society, just by government’s arbitrary decision were deemed to be fundamentally wrong and not suitable for further discussion. Publicity and open discussion is how false ideologies are fought against in a free society. Prohibitions and government interference is a sign of a totalitarian government’s regime. Finally, the opposition wants to remind you of the practical harms that would be caused by this ban. The ban would just fuel the already tense relationships between Russians and natives in the Baltic States, also the relationship between the countries. The government thinks that this move will actually encourage the Baltic-Russian debate; unfortunately we fail to see how exactly banning these symbols is debate. On the contrary, rigid stance of the Baltic States on this issue can deter Russia from having any further discussions with three Baltic countries. Since in the debate the government has not proved that there are tangible benefits to banning the Nazi / Soviet symbols, and the harms of such prohibition were explicitly shown by the opposition, we humbly beg you to oppose.