To be fair to us, we white (men) used to control 100% of all the positions of power, influence and importance. All the important positions in business, law, military, politics, culture, etc. were held by christian white men.
Now we are down to them only holding maybe 70%.
Time to make Ameruca great again and get that number back up to 100%.
I’ll ignore your tu quoque. It’s irrelevant, and only meant to incite an angry response I’d regret.
I will say that, even limiting our consideration to modern events, Canada has a long way to go in terms of freedom of expression:
More:
It wasn’t “meant to incite an angry response” as I have no issue with you personally, and Lord knows there are enough real assholes around without starting flame wars with reasonable posters. I was disagreeing with you, rather strongly, I admit. And I disagree again, so I have one more thing to say and then am happy to let the matter drop.
I do get worked up sometimes about how incredibly poorly Americans understand the hate speech laws in Canada (and, indeed, similar laws in most other countries). For one thing, actual hate speech laws are part of the criminal code and are hardly ever used except in the very specific and highly extraordinary circumstances in which they apply. None of the examples you cited had anything to do with that. People get them confused with quasi-judicial rulings by Human Rights Tribunals (which I’m not a fan of, but that’s another story) and with ordinary actions for libel. And to be clear, that’s what your cited examples were: libel actions. Can you be sued for libel and defamation in the US? Yes, you can. You know that.
Ezra Levant, in case you’re not aware, is a piece of shit on a par with Steve Bannon who has faced some half-dozen libel actions (one from George Soros, no less, whom he falsely accused of having been a Nazi collaborator as a youth) some of which resulted in rulings against him and others that were settled by publicly withdrawing his defamatory lies and apologizing. Notwithstanding the hysteria from the blog you were quoting, these were all civil suits for libel that had nothing to do with deep dark conspiracies against free speech by some looming government bureaucracy one step away from dictatorship (more or less paraphrasing one of the more hilarious lines from that blog). So was the second example you cited, though that one was a bit incoherent. Levant, being the piece of shit that he is, has also been in trouble several times for violating the ethics standards of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. Again, something that could be dredged up by the uninformed as another example of looming dictatorship, etc., but actually nothing more than a set of voluntary ethics standards by the broadcasting industry.
The other point I was making, perhaps not very clearly, is that the culture of society is probably more important to ensuring freedom of expression than clinging to absolutist interpretations of principles. I quoted a few facts about the Red Scare before. Here are a few more, taken from Bill Bryson’s book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir, in which Bryson mostly reminisces about growing up in the 1950s but also adds some fascinating and shocking context to what those times were like:
At the peak of the Red Scare, thirty-two of the forty-eight states had loyalty oaths of one kind or another. In New York, Oakley notes, it was necessary to swear a loyalty oath to gain a fishing permit. In Indiana loyalty oaths were administered to professional wrestlers. The Communist Control Act of 1954 made it a federal offense to communicate any Communist thoughts by any means, including by semaphore. In Connecticut it became illegal to criticize the government, or to speak ill of the army or the American flag. In Texas you could be sent to prison for twenty years for being a Communist. In Birmingham, Alabama, it was illegal merely to be seen conversing with a Communist.
HUAC issued millions of leaflets entitled “One Hundred Things You Should Know About Communism,” detailing what to look out for in the behavior of neighbors, friends, and family … Westbrook Pegler, a syndicated columnist, suggested that anyone found to have been a Communist at any time in his life should simply be put to death.
… Such was the hysteria that it wasn’t actually necessary to have done anything wrong to get in trouble. In 1950, three former FBI agents published a book called Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television, accusing 151 celebrities—among them Leonard Bernstein, Lee J. Cobb, Burgess Meredith, Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson, and the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee—of various seditious acts. Among the shocking misdeeds of which the performers stood accused were speaking out against religious intolerance, opposing fascism, and supporting world peace and the United Nations. None had any connection with the Communist Party or had ever shown any Communist sympathies. Even so, many of them couldn’t find work for years afterward unless (like Edward G. Robinson) they agreed to appear before HUAC as a friendly witness and name names.
FTR: It’s Lafayette Square, part of President’s Park.
Why the fuck are you so completely misinterpreting what he said? Those actions are exactly the thing he is talking about. That’s exactly what makes it not free speech. He said that, when their protests put people’s lives in danger, that makes it no longer free speech.
And, yes, before you making frothing dialog about hate speech laws, you should probably actually learn what they are. They would not in any way have stopped King from making his speeches.
Finally, it’s ridiculous to try and make arguments that assume the U.S. is the better country, and that the other countries with different laws are the bad ones. It’s very possible the other laws are actually better in this area. I’m not making that argument, but I am saying the null hypothesis is not “America is right, everyone else is wrong.”
My understanding is that he’s had a hard time getting people who would want to come. He couldn’t get anyone else to set up a protest, so he’s trying to set up another one himself. Problem is, people saw the first one backfire so badly that they don’t want to do another one. Especially not one that’s now even more explicitly racist, while the other one hid under “Unite the Right” branding. And he’s even taking it further North, into full on liberal territory.
I actually am anticipating how badly this will go. I hope that there are enough principled counterprotesters to troll them into getting the police involved. And then maybe Trump pardons them, because he’s on his pardon kick.
I hate racists as much as the next guy. Probably more, really. But that’s exactly why I want to see this bomb that is waiting to go off.
Speech is action. Speech has consequences. Sometimes those consequences are heinous enough that that the speech doesn’t deserve any protection. Inciting violence - and keep in mind that violence and murder was successfully incited the very last time these guys demonstrated - is not free speech. It is criminal.
Somebody should gather a shit-ton of tuba and sousaphone players to encircle the perimeter of the square and play this guy’s music for the duration of the rally.
I’d contribute to a Kickstarter to fund them.
Oh, that is sublime.
They never intended to go through with it, they are only angling to be brutally oppressed. They got their permit, now what? How many are they claiming to expect? Prepare for that, fund that, if needed for porta-potties, emergency medical, brown acid…wait, scratch that, these people can’t handle facts, much less drugs.
Start doing that, and they will panic, they will find some reason to cancel and claim they were forced to. Those that are remotely sane don’t want us to see how pitifully few people would show up. Nothing says stupid and empty like “expecting” ten thousand and getting fifty. Give them their moment in the sun, for sunlight is wonderful stuff.
Protest the “Occupy” way, with mockery, silliness, and fun. These jerks are desperate to be taken seriously. Don’t. Taco trucks, vegan bratwurst. And, of course, sauerkraut. Oh, yes,* sauerkraut*! Get the raging queen commandos out with cross-dressing Hitler cosplay.
No worries, won’t happen. Violence by antifas wouldn’t scare them, mockery by Ru Paul wannabes in SS drag? They will bail.
OK, so it’s just a coincidence that they’re a bunch of lousy no good fucking nazi bastards. :rolleyes:
A full-on performance of Springtime for Hitler would be a great counterdemonstration, but I think some of the Whites’ Rightists wouldn’t realize it was a parody.
I love the woman who keeps accusing the tuba-player of being the one who’s inbred.
I’d be surprised if there didn’t turn out to be a much, much larger counter-protest, and from this I predict the nazi-boys will resort to flash mobs/gatherings, after this.
Heh - this one time acidhead misread that as the other kind of acid. (which would be a really shitty scary thing):eek:
Or pull Bob Log along on a platform / dolly alongside them.
And shittier Music … but I can’t really be mad that the White Nationalists are going to make a display of themselves just as Americans start thinking about the elections.
Also, James Fields’ trial is set for November 23, so he’ll be all over the news on Election Day.
I understand them so poorly, I made points you can’t actually refute, so you throw irrelevancies out in what you hope is a tone of voice sufficiently calm to make you seem like the adult here.
If you can’t defend your own system without irrelevant attacks on someone else, you’ve lost.
I’m not.
Factually incorrect.
Also incorrect.
Yes, because censors only censor those who are on the wrong side of history.
I gave wolfpup every opportunity to make this case, and they refused. They were utterly unable to do so, and they knew it, so they declined to even make the effort.
No, not in the context we mean here.
Not that simple. Learn some law before you further make a fool of yourself.
I really thought we were done here, and without too much drama. I really wasn’t expecting you to so vividly highlight your lack of comprehension and ratchet up the hostility.
You didn’t make any points, you quoted an activist blog that clearly has no understanding of Canadian law (or culture) and engages in frothing-at-the-mouth hysteria like characterizing civil libel actions as somehow one step short of Orwellian government tyranny. My refutation of this nonsense was perfectly straightforward and in no way subject to misunderstanding, but you chose to simply ignore it. Here, let me put it in bold and small words for you:
The examples you cited were all libel actions, and had nothing whatsoever to do with the criminal hate speech laws. The specific first one you built your argument around was directed against a shitstain with a long history of defamation. The case was a civil suit for libel, Vigna v Levant. What the fuck do you think this has to do with government, criminal hate speech laws, or government “censorship”?
This is not a hard concept to understand and your comprehension failures are not my problem.
My Red Scare examples were not a tu quoque firstly because your argument was wrong and was answered accordingly, and secondly because your bleating about absolutist interpretations of free speech protections runs pretty thin in light of prior history, which is why examples of the Red Scare that I brought up in this post and the previous one are so relevant. Yes, free speech protections are vitally important, but so is the kind of balanced and fair society that is promoted by reasonable limitations on extreme hate speech, otherwise you get the kind of situation I described in that post, where you can be arrested and have your career ruined just for belonging to a peace organization or being suspected of even talking to a communist, as indeed many Americans were.
Seriously. Read those points about 1950s America again. And tell me, does this sound like something consistent with your understanding of the protections of the First Amendment that you value so much:
[INDENT]Communists and Communist sympathizers have no place on our air. It is the duty of the station licensee (and the network to which a portion of that responsibility necessarily is delegated) to ascertain that those who harbor views contrary to our form of government be denied access to our microphones.
– Broadcasting magazine, August 15, 1949[/INDENT]
And that’s nothing compared to those who were arrested, jailed, defamed, or had their careers ruined over suspicions of having said the wrong things. The First Amendment existed then, just as it does now.
Oh, and speaking of libel suits, I happened to be reading about Westbrook Pegler out of curiousity – the guy who said that anyone who had even been a Communist at any time should be put to death. Turns out he was a rabid right-wing columnist much along the lines of Ezra Levant, and, like Levant in Canada, he plied his trade protected by free speech, which was fine. But, also like Levant, he was not protected from libel actions, and in 1955 was in fact successfully sued for the largest libel award in US history.
I’m too lazy today to google for it, but I read some time ago about an annual Nazi march in (I think) Germany. Rather than counter-protest, people get together and treat it as a charity run. They mark the street for the march with distance markers, get folks to pledge money for every walker who completes the course (with all money of course going to anti-Nazi organizations) and cheer and throw confetti on all who complete the march. They put up signs to thank the marchers – “Your efforts have resulted in xxxx Euros going to anti-Nazi programs.”
I’d contribute to that. If they’re not marching, set it up so an amount gets donated to BLM for every attendee. Have folks with counters at each entrance, and change the sign for every so many attendees.
Suppose they actually get the 10000 people they say they will. If you pledge $.01 per attendee, you’d donate 100 if they actually get that many people. Suppose we get 10000 people to each pledge .01 for each attendee. If only 50 showed up, that would still be $5000 to BLM.
Who has the BLM boney fidos to accept such money on their behalf? Other than that, I like it, non-violent mockery of assholes, the cleanest of good clean fun!
So it’s a deliberately nebulous concept and that’s bad, but should not be made specific, because that is bad?