Democracies should ban the display of communist and Nazi symbols

Few points

–> Status quo: Soviet and Nazi symbols are already banned in Lithuania to some extent (in public gatherings). They are banned in Estonia as well. So maybe defining the location in such a way is not that helpful for a debate.

–> The commission would be set up, but what about the criteria according to which judgement would be made?

We certainly do not agree with the proposition case that symbols are the same as written or verbal communication. While they certainly are similar, there are two main differences that play an important role in this debate.

First, symbols are much more abstract than written and verbal communication. Thus, the display of a symbol, especially a one that has such a broad identification as the Nazi or communist symbol, does not directly imply that a person / organization displaying the symbol does attribute the whole ideology to itself. Case in point: there are quite a lot of people in the Baltic states that believe that the life was better in Soviet Union (surveys show that, for example, health care system in Lithuania currently is considered good only by 18% of respondents, while the one that was present in SU – by 42% [[http://www.civitas.lt/lt/?pid=72&id=17]]). For them, displaying a communist flag would only mean that they are longing the times of the Soviet Union, the life of their own, and we do not see how the government could prohibit such means of showing off one’s memories. To sum up, the message that symbols deliver is versatile, and a mere display of communist flag does not necessarily lead people to take actions against national press, language, etc, as the proposition tries to imply.

Second, we do not believe that symbols are to be held a strong enough affiliation sign to be penalized. Verbal or written communication is very direct, understandable and thus is used in courts as evidence. Hate speech is a good example where written/verbal communication is criminalized. We do not believe that the same should apply to symbols, partly due to the different level of abstraction, as explained above, and partly due to the fact that a symbol does not imply further action, and is a passive display of opinion. In the same way that a gang member cannot be punished for gang crimes, if he is found to have a gang tattoo, we do not believe that carrying a symbol does constitute a willingness to act according to the values of the regime underlying the symbol.

To sum up, symbols, while carrying a message as does the verbal / written communication, are different from them in two aspects that are important for this debate. First, they are much more abstract, and especially in our case, the Nazi / communist symbols can be used to display associations that are not meant to insult anybody, but rather are used to bring back memories, that are not necessarily inhumane. Second, a symbol is a passive form of affiliation, does not imply any further action, and we do not believe that the members of our society can be banned from having opinions. The only thing they can be held accountable for are actions, however, displaying symbols does not imply any actions to be made.

Both sides of the house agree that freedom of speech can be limited in the case of incitement. Indeed, if we strip the argument of the proposition to its essence, we can see one supporting idea: screaming “fire” incites people to take action, just as the sentence “oppress these minorities” would. This is one of the fundamental reasons to ban hate speech. However, barely displaying a symbol that represents a static set of values and beliefs that were used in a certain period of time by certain countries does incite people take felonious action.

It is true that in some cases the Nazi and soviet symbols as static information can generate some dynamic responses, for instance, discussion with friends about skinheads or drunken “communists”. In elections, however, it is very unlikely that people will vote for aggressive neo-nazis.

The bottomline is, most people do not regard these symbols as particularly offensive here in the Baltic States. These are just textbook history for the youth. And for those who were unlucky to live in the times of Russian and Nazi occupation, the symbols are memories, maybe unpleasant memories, but altering memories is not a government’s domain.

One more thing. As it was demonstrated with American war veterans [[http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/ARCHIVE/2008/DECEMBER/Pages/ToHealPsychologicalTrauma,TroopsReliveWarinVirtualReality.aspx ]], repetitive exposure to things that make you feel bad can actually heal post traumatic stress disorder. So, repressing symbols might actually do more psychological harm than the SQ.

What the government finds clear, we find much less convincing and appealing. We think that prohibiting the use of such symbols could actually encourage extremist movements.

The symbols that were used by the totalitarian regimes are not powerful per se. Perhaps they were powerful at some point in history, but claiming that these symbols carry the same strength nowadays is completely out of touch with reality. The soviet symbols have been commercialized extensively. They have become a mere tourist attraction and a brand for selling more. Probably the biggest concentration of soviet related items could be found in the streets, being sold to tourists by various street vendors. Soviet stars and other allusions to soviet life are used on bread and other food products so as to attract customers longing for the old taste. A kid wearing a shirt with Lenin recognizes him as an old bald guy from the past and most often does not attach any specific meaning or ideology to it. It is just a normal way of accepting the past and living with it. What strength does a symbol carry and how much attractive is it for extremists, if one can find it on a sausage pack? Could Nazis have taken something like this as their symbol? And in fact, most leftist movements are so weak and miserable that you have to really try to find out something about their activities in the Baltic States.

The symbol with which more serious criminal activities are associated is the Nazi swastika. It retained some of its strength mainly due to efforts to suppress it. The talks have been for ages how it is politically incorrect to use swastika publicly. No wonder the extremists still find the symbol attractive – it has still some power and, besides this, taboo attached to it. Any effort to strengthen the prohibition of these symbols would actually reinforce them.

The extremist groups are just miserable groups of youngsters, perhaps with a swastika or another symbol. So when people see them in the streets, they usually just shrug off and continue without paying much attention – these people are perceived as a marginal force in the society. If the symbols that they use are prohibited, the people sharing the ideology will not disappear for sure. What is more, when these groups will start appearing in public with these symbols, they will have much more of perceived power, because they are the ones who dare to break the law. If police will punish one or another – it will only make the group as a whole stronger, because they will feel that now they are important – someone finally started paying attention to them. Because of this taboo attached to it, such extremist groups could easily become more popular among teenagers and other people, attracting more members than ever before. The symbols that are banned might somewhat disappear from the public, but they will move underground – and when they appear in the public, they will have bigger strength and more fear attached to them.

We do not believe that the hate speech is caused by the ideologies and values behind the Nazi / communist symbols. We do not see any single reason why after banning these symbols the need to hate people of different sexual orientation, nationality, or religious beliefs would change. We think that the real reason for these movements to take place in the Baltic States is the current socioeconomic climate, the perception of such discrimination by the mainstream society.

We would love to see the government to show us examples how the youth of the Baltics watched Nazi flags, and then got interested in the Nazi ideology, and ended up beating homosexuals. Most of the extremists are not educated enough to know who Hitler was, and definitely know only small pieces of the Nazi ideology. Instead, we believe that the groups have formed in the society without the influence of the communist / nazi ideologies, and only later, to back-up their views, and to attract more attention, they have picked up the usage of the symbols discussed.

In case such symbols were banned, these groups would not be affected materially, as argued in the point above. Even further, as the symbols are only used to display the underlying values, the mere ban of symbols does not have any immediate effect on the values themselves. It is naive to think that the ban would cause these groups to rethink their actions, and the loss of possibility to publicly associate with a well-known ideology would not be a huge one for the reason outlined below: it was not that the ideology formed the groups, it’s rather they used it to attract attention, and will readily develop their own symbols if the ones currently in use will be banned.

The government seems to be very lost in their argumentation when using the rape footage example. If they mean an imitated rape, such as the one that could be observed in the fiction movies, then they are simply factually wrong – we do allow such things to be displayed.

If they talk about the real rape, than we do not allow to display its footage due to the direct tangible harms, which are as follows. First, in order to obtain such footage somebody has to be raped, which is an illegal act itself. Second, displaying this act on the video would inflict even further harms to the victim, namely, degrading the victim when she knows that somebody observes her in that awful condition.

Even more importantly, there is a clear distinction; the real image or video of the rape act might be very demoralizing and degrading even for the viewer, while a detail, related with the act carries only an indirect ambiguous meaning, That’s why we generally do not allow the display of a rape act itself, but find it acceptable to publicly show the face of a rapist, a serial killer or a person who committed a genocide.

In general, when banning things we always rely on analysis of actual harms, rather than imposing restriction solely for a reason that something seems to be immoral. Actually, in real life the qualification of a certain action as “moral” or “immoral” is exactly dependent on its consequences. The government itself agreed that its burden is to prove the actual harm of Nazi and Soviet symbols in order to limit their display. However, the fact that they represent immoral ideologies does not mean they are necessarily offensive and inflict harm.

This is due to the reason that the message sent by symbols is extremely ambiguous. Somebody wearing a sign of a hammer may only long for socialist times when all were “equal”, but not necessarily support sending people to concentration camps. Equally, people wearing swastika may be ultra nationalists opposing to immigration, but may not want to commit the genocide of Jews.

Furthermore, even if in some very marginal cases, for example, in a skinhead rally, people wearing those symbols may fully identify themselves with the respective awful ideologies, it is not the symbol itself that scares or offends other people, but the participants of the rally itself, their offensive talks and extremist ideologies. Banning symbols is not going to change anything. The participants of such rallies will find other means to identify themselves and communicate their ideology to the environment in no less offensive means. Thus generally, the lack of proof that there is a direct link between between the display of such symbols and direct harm to an individual (e.g. offence) is the major flaw in the government’s line of argumentation.

On another important note, if we followed the government’s logic that Nazi and Soviet symbols may be offensive to certain people due to the fact that they represent ideologies which in the past committed terrible massacres, then there is no reason to believe that these symbols are not offensive when being placed in history books or museums. Because even in such circumstances, the symbols still represent the same awful ideologies. However, in their model, the government exempts museums and history books, thus creating harm that they claim to be trying to prevent.

Under the government’s logic we should ban anything that is reminiscent of those ideologies or regimes, thus, probably pictures of Hitler or Stalin should be the first in line. Furthermore, we should criminalize all those who at least dare to talk about all the massacres committed by these two people. In that case, we should also imprison all the extremists for a single reason that they believe in ideologies that are considered immoral. However, we do allow them to assemble, share certain ideas and it doesn’t matter if those ideas are right or wrong.

Even if we conceded that such marginal cases where people may offended by those using Soviet and Nazi symbols exist, it is not a sufficient reason to trump the right of others to freely choose their beliefs, or to to associate themselves with a certain group that shares the same beliefs, thus, choosing their own identity. That is because there are certain rights of people, such as the right to self expression which takes precedence over somebody’s discontent.

It is so because this freedom constitutes the very essence of what it means to be a human being. Namely, the right to express ones beliefs through any medium is fundamental for every individual to be able exercise a reasoned agency. Through communicating their ideas as well as having unrestricted access to information people form their actual identity, not being restricted in deciding who they are and how they act. Even more importantly, it allows individuals to express discontent with the status quo and change it, thus, pursuing the most satisfactory life. Particularly concerning the usage of symbols, it not only allows individuals to communicate their views, but most importantly to affiliate themselves as a members of a certain group whose beliefs correspond to their own.

The opposition sees two most probable sequences of events after the ban.

1. The extremist groups will start to use other symbols. The main implication of the change is that the former symbol was not the main uniting force of the extremist group. The symbol was mainly an additional cool-looking accessory that helped people to identify as a group while their main ideology was nothing else but aggression. Since the symbol was not important, a change of it cannot demoralize them. If Nazi / Soviet ideologies would be important, the symbols wouldn’t be given up that easily. That leads us to the second point.

2. The extremist group is reinforced because of the prohibition of a symbol. The symbol gains new strength, because now it is a forbidden fruit. You don’t say God’s name often, because then it would lose its sacredness. While it is scarce, it is valuable. The symbols would become more powerful and they would be used more sparingly, but when they will – they will spread more fear than before.

The government tries to convince us that once they impose fines and punishments, organizations will be undermined. That is a very superficial way of looking at things. If banning things generally would be easy, we would have no black market for drugs. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Punishments could potentially make the extremist groups feel important and they will be more united in the end.

Those people who join extremist organizations not because of ideological reasons but because of the need to look cool and belong to a group are not very likely to care that much about a change of a symbol. The truth is that most probably they don’t care which symbol it is, they just care that there is one or that there is something that unites a group. Banning Nazi / soviet symbols cannot possibly solve this, because there will always be something that can be used as a substitution.

The government today has a burden of proof to show that the public display of communist / Nazi symbols are disadvantageous for the Baltic societies. They tried to show that the display invokes negative feelings, that people are hurt and thus we should limit the display to avoid all the negative consequences.

However, we believe that the societies in question are ready to meet such symbols in their every day life. A great example on our side is the Grutas park [[http://www.grutoparkas.lt/index-en.htm]], where a lot of communist sculptures, and other symbolic meaning carrying things are displayed. This park is one of the best known tourism attractions in Lithuania, and is not only visited by tourists, but by Lithuanians themselves, too. People are not afraid to meet their past, and we do not see why the government should try to limit their exposure in this case.

Furthermore, we believe that the government should encourage thinking about the past, to ensure that the lessons of history are not lost after a few decades. This ensures that the society is strengthened from inside, with its past being the main connecting link.

This leads us to the conclusion that the mere use of Nazi / communist symbols does not strengthen organizations. As the societies are no longer afraid of the symbols themselves, the organizations do not cause fear, and thus do not gain additional power, as the government tries to imply. We believe that the reason why some organisations choose swastikas is because they are weak politically and this is the way how to attract attention (i.e. be exposed in media). They are not that much for the ideology itself, they just find it a good brand which they can use. Hence, it is just a means of promotion, and we find society in Baltic states apathetic to it. Getting media exposure do not lead organisations into politically stronger positions.

The ones who usually look to soviet times with nostalgia and kind feelings are mostly older people of Russian origin. They might be offended by the fact that the symbols that are closely connected to Russia are prohibited. The ban could spread discontent and widen the gap between Russian and natives in the region that would effectively impair the social environment in the Baltic States.

Besides this, broader national relationships should be considered. The prohibition would be just another pretext for Russia to claim that Russians are being suppressed in the Baltic States, resulting in a tenser relationship between Russia and the Baltic States. Defeating Germany in World War II is one of the most important events in Russian history which the country is very proud of. Equating Nazi and soviet symbols will convey a poor message and will result in a negative response from Russia.

So, we believe that negative externalities caused by ban play a crucial role here as it implies a serious cost.

We believe that one of the most fundamental rights for every individual is right to express himself. Only in such way he can feel happy and satisfied. Society is not only the place where individuals live, individuals themselves are the society.

If an individual wears a t-shirt with a swastika, he may not associate himself with the crimes which Germany did. Instead, he might be associating himself with the idea of love to your nation, giving public employment to all unemployed and plenty of other non-evil policies which were enhanced by Hitler. If an individual was asked why he is wearing it, he might explain that he is in favour of several ideas expressed by Nazis.

When symbol that expresses ideas is visible, it reminds those ideas. Only when ideas are heard and not suppressed, public debates can happen. And if it possible to choose ideas from more options available, it does not lead to worse outcome. People can decide what is worth attention and what is just simple propaganda. An open and free discussion is a sign of a democratic society. Such discussion will determine which of the ideas spread by Nazi/soviets were actually noble and kind, and which ones were repugnant and to be ashamed of.

When a symbol is banned, such prohibition implies that the ideas associated with it might seem taboo. Hence, society would limit itself and the best solutions would not always be reached. Nazis were proud of their nation and had a view that their culture is to be preserved and nourished. Although the means were ill, the idea might be appealing and debatable, but by banning symbols you deprive society of an open discussion – the idea that national culture should be nourished is not so accessible any more.

On the other hand some people may find times in the Soviet Union much better. They had a job, but in the free market conditions they were not able to sustain it. Even though it is debatable what is better for economy, we believe it is fair that people can use the symbol to express that in the Soviet Union they lived in better conditions and the policy when everyone had a job is better from social perspective. If they are heard (and using symbols help to do that) this may cause government to maybe rethink policies they are imposing.

Government obviously believes today that international relationship decisions are made only for showing off or complaining. Also they believe that you can yell at Russia as much as you want for the reason that the Baltic States have alternative markets for export and military support from NATO. Mentioned examples about monument in Estonia and reformation of Russian school in Latvia definitely are not examples how diplomacy is supposed to work. Harms of worsening the relationship are way much higher than the government believes.

We are talking here not about what Russia might like or what it might not like. We are talking here about which decisions are beneficial for states themselves. You can be arrogant as much as you want, but in the end you would still depend on natural resource (i.e. gas and oil) stream from Russia.

We believe that the aim of international relationships is not only soreness and revenges. We believe that international arena is a place where more substantial goals can be reached. And these goals can be reached via cooperation, not conflicting. We believe that upsetting a powerful neighbour, even though you have a protector, just reduces the possible numbers of options and alternatives for future decisions.

On the status quo. We are not afraid to admit that for the Baltic States it is very beneficial to trade with Russia. Proximity to Russia is a competitive advantage of the Baltic States, it is a gateway from Russia to the rest of the EU. Being an intermediary between Russia and the EU is what gives most of the benefit to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Geographical location, widespread use of Russian language, and understanding of Russian mentality is something which brings real economic value. So a wise international policy would be to use these trading opportunities, because it gives much more welfare to societies than just keeping the pride and barking at a bear.

Having shown the economic benefits, we want to also stress that implementing this plan will make Russia extremely upset for another very important reason. It is the equation of Nazis and Soviets. Russia for whatever reason shows sentiments for all the people who, in their words, liberated the world from the Nazis. They by no means find Soviet regime comparable to Nazis and would be insulted by that. Even though we might consider those crimes being of comparable magnitude, announcing it as the official position would further harm already unstable relationship between the Baltic States and Russia.

On the opposition side we do not state that Nazzi and Soviet ideologies may be right and society may be governed according to them. No, rather than defending these ideologies, we are trying to protect the very mechanism of societies self-governance achieved exactly through no limitations to free speech.

We say that the very central feature of democracy is that power stems from the people. In order to be able to retain this power people must be ensured free access to information and ability to make the decisions freely according to the beliefs they deem to be right.

Taking the latter observation into account, it is dangerous to give the government such a huge power to draw arbitrary distinctions in deciding which truths are so fundamentally wrong that shouldn‘t even be engaged with. Because such distinction is arbitrary, such precedent increases the risk that such ban may be use in other cases for other ideologies and symbols. In other words, dictating what the beliefs and identity people should have, the government becomes oppressive. As a result, the dictate from the government reduces people’s capacity to evaluate competing ideas as autonomous agents and thus takes away their ability to retain the actual power of governance in their own hands.

Such process is not only dangerous in itself, because it leads to totalitarianism, but also takes away the most effective tool from the society to fight extremism. Namely, we say that it is better that societies fight against extreme, unacceptable ideologies, by using harsh public scrutinty. The plan ruins the self governance mechanism. This is so, for two reasons.

First, is that there is no universal absoliute truth. A belief, no matter how unrealistic or immoral it might be, remains truth in the minds of those who bedieve in it. Thus, it is not enough to ban only the symbol, because the underlying ideology of the carrier of the symbol is not going to change. Actually, the situation gets even worse because the society is less likely to spot the people who believe in certain ideologies that are dangerous to the society. Because the symbols enhance the understanding of the evil ideas they represent, they mobilize the society to fight against these ideologies.

Second, people have to understand that certain ideologies are wrong for a reason not just because the government bans them. Thus, they are less likely to join certain ideologies as well as more eager to fight against them.

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.