I agree Nazism was evil, but making free speech criminal is quite draconian. I hate how skinheads do what they do. Do I believe someone deserves prison time for making an anti-Semite remark about how what Nazis did was a good thing? Its disgusting to say, but so is throwing that person in prison for saying it.

Laws banning opinion are as stupid as the stupid opinions that they aim to ban. education is the key not a law that bans things, it's silly and proven not to work. if anything the opposite effect is seen as younger generations wonder at what all the fuss is about. then start to read history and get a million opinions, when faced with a million opinions, they wonder why that one is banned? ban something and make it a mystery, it's stupid. just my opinion. hope I can have it. - i might not be able to express it soon if our 'internet filter' bans your site ha ha. what a dumb world. Ah it’s alright. my grievances go out to you all, hope the hunt for the murders goes well.

Does the same apply to whitewash or rehabilitation of communist crimes? No, because people's lives don't count, neither do the articles of human rights of the UN, nor does common sense. A government which deliberately imposes its political views on the people, or persecutes them for their personal beliefs is defined as a dictatorship, and if so deserves to be removed from power.

You do realize that by repressing it, you only make it more interesting to people who want to rebel against the established order. You also make it's symptoms harder to recognize by making people less aware of what those symptoms really are. You're also putting a ban on legitimate historical research. One sure fire way of making anything more iconic than it actually is, is to ban it.

On one hand it is a very good think that Nazis shall be punished, especially in the world fortress of ant-fashism - Russia. But on the other hand it would be quite possible for the government to activly harass certain quite moderate or just unruly polititians, historians and researchers by interpreting their arguments/evaluations as "a rehabilitation of Nazism". Thus the law has to be VERY specific on what is meant by "a rehabilitation of Nazism"...

I see Russia goes the same steps as Poland.

Spreading ethnic/racial/religious hatred and glorifying Nazism has nothing to do with free speech! On the contrary - it has to do with fear-mongering, creating tensions between people thus eliminating healthy situation in the society and people's wish to speak freely. Spreading hatred in the name of "free speech" only inhibits people to speak freely. Only imbeciles say that banning hate speech and Nazism is against free speech. Good example is former Yugoslavia - during the communism era any idea of even mentioning Nazism in any positive context meant jail. As the result the scum did not exist, at least not in the public space, it was were it belonged - in the underground, effectively not existing. And the society was prosperous and peaceful. After the westernization of our societies and acceptance of the so called "western values" we are witnessing fascistic tendencies in our society. Before (and after) the civil war in Yugoslavia one could see thousands of young men and women saluting with nazi salute with right hand in public on the streets and soccer stadiums before Croatian state officials, thousands of monuments of antifascist freedom fighters were destroyed in Croatia, ethnic hatred was fueled and encouraged from abroad - all that eventually resulted in thousands killed and ethnic cleansing and disintegration of Yugoslavia. Of course together with that came neoliberalization of economy which meant selling of our national wealth to the western powers, and major EU countries grabbing our banks which ruined our economy. Disintegrated nations of former Yugoslavia became easy pray for the western vultures who grabbed everything that was worth. No! Glorifying hatred and nazism has nothing to do with the free speech! Keep that in your own western societies if you want that!

There is no nation in Europe that I know of that wants to “rehabilitate Nazism” – they all suffered far too terribly under Nazis. Nor do I know of any nations, nor of any responsible private individual who is taken seriously by anyone within them, who “publicly (or even privately) approves or denies Nazi war crimes determined by the Nuremberg Trials.” Nor do I know of a nation that either wishes to or is in the process of “re-writing history.” The world’s understanding of the history of WW2 progresses on an unchanging continuum from 1945 till today. The understandings of 1945 continue to be the understandings of today, only with more details added to confirm the thrust of understandings that were present from the very beginning. In Russia, however, mass media was under the tight control of Stalin’s profoundly criminal totalitarian government which committed many crimes against humanity both at home and abroad under the cover of its real enough contribution to the defeat of Hitler. Stalin’s self-serving version of events obviously edited out his own crimes and added distortions to fill in the blank spots that were thus created. In the tightly controlled world of Soviet censorship this came to be accorded the status of “history”, and is still considered as such in Russia. But parts of it are not history at all, and have never been part of the rest of the world’s understanding of history. Challenging such aspects of what was originally Stalin’s propaganda and replacing them with an actual account of real events is not a “re-writing of history,” nor even a writing of history, merely acknowledging history. It is a cheap shot indeed to claim that such a challenge represents some kind of “rehabilitation of Nazism.” It is a rehabilitation of nothing, simply an embracing of facts which the rest of the world already knows and acknowledges.

I remember that after the 2nd world war there were no anti-nazi sentiment in England. I do remember the daily revulsion against the Japanese atrocities with books films appearing almost daily. So is all forgiven with Japan ? What changed?