To be clear, then you would completely oppose anyone, say a BLM or Antifa leader, being charged with incitement to riot?
I typically don’t care what people have to say. Now, when molotov cocktails start flying and big screen tvs are being carried out the store arrests should be made.
A non-answer if there ever was one.
I hope it’s okay to jump in here … because I think that’s a fascinating question.
I think incitement to riot is a legal concept with a clear and distinct definition, making it wholly dependent on what was done and why.
To wit (emphasis mine),
As used in this chapter, the term “to incite a riot”, or “to organize, promote, encourage, participate in, or carry on a riot”, includes, but is not limited to, urging or instigating other persons to riot, but shall not be deemed to mean the mere oral or written (1) advocacy of ideas or (2) expression of belief, not involving advocacy of any act or acts of violence or assertion of the rightness of, or the right to commit, any such act or acts.
I think incitement to riot, legally, involves substantively different predicate events (and intent).
Just like gods - I’d be a big fan if I thought it was something that could actually ever exist. It doesn’t, and I’m not a fan of the ersatz version currently paraded as though it were genuine.
Yes. That is why I am opposed to “free” speech. The paradox of tolerance is real.
Free speech is the ideal, but in practice there are restrictions, and the main ones are libel, slander and hate speech.
“There should be no issue with so called provocative speech. At some point adults need to show some emotional maturity.”
True, to state the obvious, but a good many extremists are precisely that because they lack emotional balance and maturity. It gets worse if they invoke ideology or religion, which in the last resort are highly emotional topics.
Your solution?
The issue seems fairly straightforward to me (not having read much of the thread, but familiar with the situation). It is generally considered polite not to make fun of other religions or the things or people that they hold sacred. However, no person or religion or other force has the right to kill someone because they were rude.
The way to enforce this is to enforce it rigorously and consistently, until Islam is forced to alter its interpretation of scripture to coincide with the real world and the fact that there are other people in it. Any idea that the speech of everyone should be curtailed because it makes some group of people really angry, when there is no other damage than ridicule and rudeness, is surely the way to lose to religious tyranny.
If the non-radical Islamists cannot have any beneficial influence in this regard, then it certainly looks like there will be a long and ugly fight.
My apologies if this repeats ground already thoroughly covered, but OP asked for opinions, and this is mine.
The thing is freedom of speech depends on a certain set of moral axioms. These moral axioms may be contradicted by another set of axioms. Ultimately force is required to ensure that a society governed by one set of moral axioms is able to survive.
So, we as a society need to be forceful in protecting freedom of expression. Even freedom of expression that is blasphemous or otherwise offensive. Furthermore, we need to be tolerant of the expression of ideas and beliefs that we may find abhorrent. We also need to crack down on extrajudicial or mob actions, regardless of whether or not we agree with the outcome, that seek to deny others their liberties. I’m not sure that’s possible anymore.
The paradox as described by Popper only comes into play when the right to free expression by a tolerant society at large is challenged by the views being expressed. Only then is some form of supression potentially valid and only in exceptional circumstances. Other than that, you let free speech have free reign.
In the case of the cartoons, it seems to me that challenge actually comes from the actions of the cartoon protesters. They are intolerant to the point of violence and muder and if any supressions were needed one could argue it is there. Indeed, their holy book even preaches death, violence and hatred to a greater extent than any of the cartoonists ever do.
Those that drew the cartoons are not threatening anyone’s ability or right or tolerance in general. They are no threat to tolerance and no supression of their actions is required.
Like, say, blatantly racist cartoons making a mockery of any claim by a society to be tolerant … you may not recognize it, but allowing racist cartoons by a mass-media publication is a challenge to free expression, because it’s privileged speech that causes an atmosphere of fear in its victim class. They will see larger society as condoning the speech by consenting to it (at the same time that society stuffs them into banlieues and targets their religious expression while thinking disallowing crucifixes isn’t an obvious smokescreen…).
Popper says only the intolerances that can’t be combatted by reasoned discourse are up for suppression. Well, racist popular media isn’t subject to discourse, it’s not an equal-time debate forum.
Western European society already practices intolerance of intolerance. For instance, advocating a second Holocaust or an Islamist Jihad would get shut down right sharpish. But racist Islamophobia in cartoon form is seemingly still A-OK.
I’m sure Fips was no threat to anyone’s ability or right or tolerance in general as well … just a cartoonist, after all, not gassing anyone.
There’s quite a lot of a middle ground between beheading people and just harmless cartoons, and some cartoons still fall on the “things that shouldn’t be tolerated by a just society” side of that, right along with beheading people.
And in case anyone thinks I’m on the side of the Islamicists here, I’m definitely not. I’m in favour of limiting both their speech as well as racist Islamophobic cartoons.
And, shouldn’t need to say this, but murders are obviously right out too.
I believe in a free society you are going to have to live with some cartoons or publications that some people will find to be racist or otherwise offensive. What are the logical results of attempting such a value judgement?
I find sections of the major religious texts to be hugely offensive, far more so than an arguably racist cartoon in that they specifically call for death and violence.
They also could be said to make a mockery of a society’s claim to be tolerant.
On what basis would you ban cartoons but not books or texts?
So, Der Giftpilz, just A-OK to publish, for you?
A more tolerant society - the kind that Western Europe used to be, until they gave up tolerance when it wore a kufiya.
Oh, I’d happily ban those, as well.
I don’t know what that is
And down the rabbit-hole we go
How ofter does this kind of thing happen in the EU? I’ve heard of two main instances over the past 10(?) years. One by a Dutch cartoonist, the another in France (Charlie Hebdo). It seems that those two instances are getting a lot of outrage mileage. The most recent instances were “provoked” by a professor who issued a trigger warning before the ensuing discussion in a class about freedom of speech.
Is your Google broken?
Slopes are only as slippery as we let them be…
This manner of exchange tends to end a conversation.
You think Charlie Hebdo only published the one racist cartoon?
I don’t know. That is why I asked.