TIL about a Black man that convinced 200 Ku Klux Klansmen to leave the white supremacist group by befriending them

Im in Europe and I feel it has actually. Mind you I'm a minority too and here we value the freedom of expression up until it infringes on another's rights to go about their day not being persecuted. Moreover we have lots of freedom, with far right protests if you count that as freedom, it's just generally people who call directly for genocide who are affected. And it's turned out fine. You may have heard of stuff about migrant crisis etc or whatever but most of the time it's fine for the inhabitants (although I feel France is actually doing badly in this as someone from a different European country, I would say it is a clear exception imo in terms of integration and alleviating poverty and homelessness issues) and we respect rights to asylum. We as a general rule have more holidays, shorter work weeks, better healthcare access (and for some countries, better healthcare full stop), excellent education systems, better rates of social mobility, lower rates of inequality, lower rates of violence and murder, etc. Although there has been the turn to the anti immigration right in some of Scandinavia I think and of course increasingly in Poland etc generally we tend to be more left wing (even the UK), with higher safety standards, happy free flowing travel, lower poverty rates. France/UK has problems with terrorism but most countries have had histories of terrorism due to separatist movements etc for decades at the very least if not for centuries.

And you know the bedt thing? No country with European speech laws (which vary significantly but broadly protect freedom of expression except in cases of slander, political secrets and calls for direct action/genocide, genocide denial) have committed genocide or had a Nazi in power since those laws were installed. Same for the US which shows perhaps that we can go about things Jn different ways to avoid nazis and they both work out well. No dictatorship. And a bonus for us is that no country has participated in so much torture and potential war crimes as the US has.

/r/todayilearned Thread Parent Link - independent.co.uk