[Moderating]
I’m not really seeing anything relevant to CS, here. Moving to GD.
So according to the OP, we’re getting closer to Nazism (‘goose-stepping’ implies that) because a country banned Nazi symbols? I’m a big free speech advocate, but the idea that saying “you can’t run around throwing Nazi signs” brings a country closer to Nazism is… rather misguided.
:eek: I was raised to be terrified of Irish women. dropdad spent his Spring tuition at Winter Carnival; rather than tell his mother and face her wrath he joined the Air Corps. Nazi fighters and flak were less scary than dear, sainted Florence Jennings, but you say Scotswomen are worse?
PISTOLS AT DAWN, SIRRAH. :mad:
As I’ve seen pointed out before, this doesn’t seem to be a hate speech conviction. In the coverage I’ve seen, the allegations are about something being “grossly offensive,” which is closer to obscenity laws. Nothing in the UK hate speech laws article on Wikipedia seems to use this language (though it does apparently leave out Scotland laws–but I’d think they’d be similar), and the definition of hate speech doesn’t seem to apply.
I know the right likes to push the idea that hate speech is just “speech that offends you,” but that is not accurate. To quote Wikipedia, “Hate speech is speech which attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, or gender.” But the grounds for this was that some people were grossly offended by the remark, not that they felt like they were under attack from the speech. So it would seem to not apply.
I think this is an important distinction. This appears at first glance to be an argument for why hate speech laws are bad. But if hate speech laws are not involved, then this is an invalid argument.
To me, this looks like a version of obscenity laws. The idea there is that some speech or expression is so grossly offensive to a society that it should not allowed. Sure, it’s not as simple as outlawing words or porn, but it seems relevant. And obscenity law is something we all tend to agree if fucking bullshit.
I support hate speech laws, assuming they are designed properly. I do not support this law at all or the judge’s choice. Someone being offended by your joke does not make your joke into a crime. While you have a right to express your offense and try to get people to stop, you do not have a right to not be offended–not even grossly.
Hate speech is not about people being offended, but about bigotry and discrimination. Neither of these are invoked by this joke. Sure, I think this guy took a serious situation too lightly, and wouldn’t mind if, say, he lost advertising on this video. But it should not be illegal.
As for the Holocaust survivors and descendants who got upset: I understand your pain, but you’re just making things worse. You’ve created a plausible rallying point for actual Nazis and antisemitism. They can cite this unfairness to put on a cloak of decency. Despite what I said above, this looks and feels like a hate speech case, and so this is ammunition to remove the protections you currently have.
And, of course, the people who are upset but not in the UK are going to pull a Muhammad and make a ton more of this stuff in solidarity. All because of a joke where the guy flat out says that being a Nazi is the worst thing possible.
I keep seeing this argument, even in the court documents, but I find it very flawed. Why do you assume he actually trained the dog? I admit I’ve not seen the video, but I did see a clip, and it sure looked to me like he just caught the dog making a weird action and made it out to be a salute as part of the joke.
And, even if he did “train” it, with the power of editing, he could do it in an afternoon. The dog doesn’t actually have to do it every time. I’ve trained my dog to do something he normally does for a treat in that much time. It didn’t stick, and it wasn’t consistent, but it worked.
I actually previously had briefly mentioned thithis in my other comment about how stupid this argument was. But it seems it is convincing to a lot of people. I don’t find it so.
Though I agree with Novelty Bubble that the amount of time spent on something doesn’t make it not a joke, either. Comedians spend tons of time perfecting jokes, even those that might seem offensive.
Speaking of which, what about stuff that happened on Monty Python? What about the Producers? What about one of the royal princes dressing up as a Nazi for a fancy dress party?
It should have been clear to the court because Dankula said so at the beginning of the (IMO hilarious) video, and he’s been saying it at every possible opportunity for the last 2 years. If the court is determined to take all the relevant context and flush it down the shitter, there’s not really anything much he can do about it.
I don’t support absolute free speech (and no one really does), but I think this instance, if prosecuted and convicted, is going too far. I do however think there is some value in enforcing a modicum of civility among members of a population. Deliberately baiting people by calling them fags and niggers and what have you should be punishable, if you want a cohesive society.
No, that isn’t what the case was about. Thankfully there isn’t a ban on Nazi symbols in the UK. Some places in Europe do have a ban and I’d be against that as well. Some also ban holocaust denial and I’d be against that as well.
The allusion to goose-stepping is surely more soviet than nazi is it not? Certainly the “thirteen o’clock” is obviously a 1984 reference and again more soviet than any other flavour of totalitarianism. And therein lies the concern. Monitoring and punishing speech is a bad thing and I’d prefer not to move any further towards a such a state.
I sense a “but” coming…
…there we go, you’ve spoiled your credentials there.
Then I’d suggest that you haven’t thought through the implications very thoroughly. I didn’t say it brings you closer to nazism specifically, but I do suggest that it takes you one further step towards totalitarianism. (Insert the dictatorial regime of your choice here). I do not want speech to be restricted for anyone, I don’t want the courts turning their attention to comedy and humour, I don’t want books banned, I don’t want plays taken off the stage.
Almost nobody aside from hardcore anarchists support absolute free speech. The government is very, very much in the business of regulating who is allowed to say what and when, from non-citizens to the incarcerated all having their right to speech limited and suppressed in various ways. Often in ways that are so culturally normal to us we don’t even register them as being violations of free speech.
I rather think that, in Scottish law in relation to this case, the issue isn’t so much teaching the dog or annoying his girlfriend (where it might be a joke, albeit a tasteless one - but I hae ma doots). The important point is going public by posting it on the internet, where you have no influence or control over how what you say is received (e.g., shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre).
If you read the BBC report, it also turns out that there’s some involvement of the EDL and a connection to other material he’d posted on Youtube, which suggests a different sort of intentionality.
You gotta be kidding me. When someone mouths off to a cop and gets beat up for it, do you see our board’s (or our nation’s) conservatives equally up in arms about the attack on freedom of speech? Or do you see a lot of conservatives shrugging and saying stuff along the lines of “Oh well, lesson learned, don’t mouth off to cops”?
I’ve posted here many times about the UNC system shutting down a program at UNC-CH because the board of directors, newly packed with Republicans, disagreed with the program’s liberal bent. How many threads have you seen conservatives post about that?
I’ll tell you a story. One time I went to a bar in Edinborough. There was a guy there being cheered by the locals right-wingers, and I asked him why. He said,
"I used to roam the streets at night and tell cops to piss off, and got the shit kicked out of me. But do they call me McGregor the Cop-teaser?
"And I got a job at a college trying to help the destitute obtain legal counsel, and the university shut the program down. But do they call me McGregor the Poor-Helper?
“BUT YOU TEACH ONE DOG TO SIG HEIL…”
As for this case:
- I disagree with the law itself: while I agree with the intent, I don’t like the way it’s written, and am not sure there’s any way to write it that I’d be cool with.
- This dude should have known about this law. It’s not a judicial surprise.
- I’m deeply skeptical that he’ll spend time in jail. It’s far likelier that the judge will tell him to stop being a twit.
I think prosecuting this guy for teaching a pug an offensive trick is ludicrous.
Now if he’d taught the trick to a German shepherd, that’d be a Hate Crime. :dubious:
Prosecuting someone who taught their dog to preferentially growl at or attack minorities sounds OK.
I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. There is no such EU agency, and the laws we have on both incitement to hatred and the lesser public order offence in relation to speech originated in the UK, quite independently of any developments in the EU, indeed before we even joined.
The European Convention on Human Rights, which was largely drafted by the UK, long pre-dates the EU. I’m not aware of any court interpretation of it that requires a signatory state to impose a more rather than less restrictive interpretation, indeed by its nature it can hardly do so.
I tried to multiquote everyone posting in here who thinks this guy should be prosecuted or did anything wrong enough to warrant legal troubles but for some reason it didn’t work.
so Just imagine after your post the words
“Offense is taken, not given”
Seriously ANYONE can claim they were offended, and the correct response to that claim is something Christopher Hitchens Nailed when he said in response to someone claiming offense “So Fucking What?”
If you want to give others control over your emotional state by letting them offend you with some words that’s your choice.
In a country with hate speech laws, once he posts it on line, I’m sorry, but, yes, ‘gas the Jews’ IS hate speech.
To be clear, teaching his dog is not the issue, nor, if it was intended as a joke. Once he published it, it became hate speech.
He was aware this would happen I expect. But he garners lots of attention, and has a platform to play the victim. And, many first offences that aren’t screamingly clear cut, amount to warnings, in the end. But if he should find a way to repeat this, then they’ll really go after him seriously.
Well, yes, we understand that it was the posting that caused the legal problem. The stories make quite clear that he was prosecuted under the section of the Communications Act related to electronic communications.
Your “Fire in a crowded theater” comparison is ludicrous. This is, perhaps, one of the most over-referenced and most poorly-understood concepts in American law, and your use of it in this instance does not improve the situation.
Not only was the Schenck case itself a prime example of the worst type of government censorship (it was about a guy who was jailed for opposing the WWI draft), but it was overturned decades ago. The number of people who trot out that phrase in a misguided effort to justify the suppression of free speech is pretty depressing, and Exhibit #28,751 of Alexander Pope’s maxim that “a little learning is a dangerous thing.”
Yeah, it suggests that his intention was to drive traffic to his YouTube site. Which is, or should be, irrelevant to the question of whether we should jail a person for saying something that we find offensive on the internet.
Well, that makes it all OK then. As long as we only really go after people on the second occasion, and just drag them through the court system as a warning the first time around, draconian limitations on free speech are just fine and dandy.
Do you feel the same for virtually all other offenders who are also so treated for first offences? Is it Draconian? Or standard procedure in most court systems? Uh huh.
What, other than Nazism, did you mean to evoke with the specific words ‘goose-step’? There’s only one regime that I’m aware of that has the ‘goose-step’ specifically associated with it.
I think the real joke is the concept of prosecution for “hate speech”.
If that’s not a bad joke I don’t know what is.
It’s far worse than some nitwit saying something offensive to make his dog raise it’s paw.
I realize this is probably a thought crime.