I did say, “a good start”, not “carved in stone, verbatim”.
Otherwise, I agree with your analysis and also with BeepKillBeep’s response.
Hate speech laws set the tenor of what a just society can/should strive to be and the values it should uphold. They are not meant to, nor should they be permitted to, stifle all free speech.
ETA: I believe Canada’s hate speech laws played a role in prosecuting David Irving. So they are not entirely toothless.
Let the Nazis speak. Let the Nazis protest. Let the Nazis march.
However, when the Nazi’s are outed, let their employers fire them. Let their neighbors shun them. Let their mechanics refuse to do business with them.
(post shortened)
Because you do not have the votes to override the basic American belief in the 1st Amendment?
The best defense against hate speech is free speech and more free speech.
Irving was convicted in Austria.
Irving had been forcibly deported from Canada quite some time previous, but as he is not a Canadian citizen, he was in the country as a guest, and guests of Canada who are no longer welcome can be shipped off for any number of reasons not necessitating a criminal conviction. In Irving’s case he was found to have lied to immigration officials about the circumstances of his entry into Canada, which by itself is grounds for deportation.
Ahh! Let’s all go back to McCarthyism, blacklists, the actions of the various red scares, etc. At least it is an American tradition of longstanding.
So what’s your proposal: do we add “political views” to the list of protected classes?
It may be that I can see a smidge of daylight, just the teensiest scootch, between McCarthy’s list and subpoenas, and a boss who doesn’t want an employee who goes to a Kill the Jews rally.
If symbolism were the goal, passing a law allowing the state to prosecute speech is typically not the preferred methodology. Germany didn’t pass a law banning Nazism as a symbolic gesture - the country had just been led to ruin by the ideology and held a rational fear of its resurgence among the survivors.
In that vein, it would have made more sense for the US government to ban pro-Confederate speech in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, rather than wait 150 years under the hyperbolic fear that it would resurge and cause a civil war.
In my estimation, the state needs a profoundly strong case to ban political speech - as in, such speech represents a legitimate threat to the democracy. Nazism and white supremacy are, by nearly all accounts, fringe beliefs that carry virtually no mainstream support. No major American political party represents their cause. That they are hateful does not mean they represent a clear and present danger to our democracy. American society has relegated them to the fringe, more or less, by combatting them on intellectual and moral grounds. (And by banning discriminatory actions). It remains an important distinction that words and actions cannot be treated as legally equivalent. The role of the state, traditionally, is to protect its people from malignant actions. Words, as they say, will never break bones.
Another thing: I think people would be a lot less nervous about demonstrations like this if it weren’t pretty clear that the President of these United States weren’t on their side. I can see why some people feel besieged, all things considered.
Free speech is all well and good (in fact, it’s excellent), but I wish the advocates for letting Nazis chant about killing Jews had more to say or suggest to people who do feel threatened besides “Sorry, advocating your genocide is free speech; good luck. What’s for lunch?”
ETA: Something I just realized: there are quite a few socialists, and even anarchists, on some of the social media I frequent that gives me a pulse of what some section of progressives feel these days. I think many of them don’t seem care about the First Amendment because they already feel that the United States and its system of government is corrupt and has failed people like them. It makes sense; if you already feel that those in power are racist and don’t care about the poor and disabled, and that oligarchical interests already take precedence over what’s good for the average citizen, of course you aren’t going to think much about one small step towards dystopia amongst the giant leaps it’s already taken.
Though this still doesn’t explain why it seems Americans are the only ones afraid of the free speech slippery slope. I wish I had more Europeans to ask about this.
I’ve had my past qualms with European countries’ handling of free speech. In this example, a 16-year-old was jailed for posting an ironic cartoon in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack.
It seems Europeans are, in general, more alarmist about free speech, despite rallying together after the terrorist attack made against it. They seem to care more about sensitivity, whereas Americans care about pure freedom of expression.
I would probably have said this a couple years ago, but I wouldn’t agree with it today.
European countries nearly universally have hate speech laws of some form or other. The interesting thing is that this is true both of countries where the political spectrum is generally highly liberal, pro-immigration and welcoming of multiculturalism (modern Germany, say, or Sweden) as well as of those countries which take a much tougher line on immigration and ethnic minorities (Denmark, Austria, most of Eastern Europe, etc.). The current Slovak government has been as tough on immigration and ‘politically incorrect’ as you can get, but they also just charged the leader of the neo-Nazi party (quite a significant politician) with Nazi apologia after he made a charitable donation of $1,488 euros (that number is a Nazi dog whistle). European hate speech laws certainly could have a chilling effect on speech, in principle, if courts wanted to interpret them that way. Outside of a couple of countries (maybe) I don’t think they really do. There are no shortage of political parties in Europe that call for an end to mass immigration, that criticize the ideas of multi-ethnic societies, that promote the idea of relatively homogenous nations, etc., and some of them have been very successful, without getting their leaders thrown in jail. What they don’t do, in the same degree as trump and his close allies, is explicitly play with Nazi imagery, call an entire group (with no evidence) rapists, etc… The purpose these laws serve is so that people know there’s a line that they can’t cross. These laws don’t chill the discourse as much as they tame it, blunt the edges of potentially ethnically inflammatory speech, and force people to be more responsible about what they say.
I don’t much like the European model of handling speech codes, but I don’t like the American model either and I’m thinking these days that their model is probably less bad than ours, as long as these laws are interpreted carefully and narrowly.
I see no reason to change existing laws.
I merely note that a person espousing such actions as taking away a person’s livelihood to punish him for wrong thought is behaving in exactly the same as were people in earlier decades who punished people for having wrong thoughts.
If the person engages in criminal activity, (e.g., beating someone with a club), then firing them may be a decision to not employ criminals. If the person has an employment contract that requires them to avoid bringing disrepute to the company, (e.g., a person with a PR job), then the offender may have broken their contract. Joe Shmoe working in the back room who screams racial epithets does not meet either criteria and firing him serves no purpose but to make one feel smug while creating a martyr for the other side.
If you want to mock someone, mock away. If you want to harm that person through explicit violence or through actions such as denying them employment, you are out of line. Meeting hatred with hatred is just going to increase the recruiting for the other side. (I made the same point at the beginning of the Iraq invasion–even before ISIS was created.) Beyond that, it is prosecuting/persecuting people for thought crimes and that is wrong.
With the rise of internet outrage mobs you don’t have to be a communist or a fascist to lose your job. You can be filmed or taped secretly with a mistress saying something not quite PC enough.
That we allow bigoted racist assholes to try and spread their message speaks to our values - we value the principle of free speech so much we are willing to endure shitty applications of it. That they do so reflects poorly on them, and favorably on us.
Not to everyone, for sure. People from countries with hate speech laws are often appalled and disbelieving. Americans who feel done wrong by the system already consider many such advocates as hypocritical tools of white supremacy.
You disagree, of course, but, as with previous posts in this thread of mine, I’m just saying that not everyone sees the point you do.
As a small business owner, if an employee of mine is outed as a fucking nazi I’m going to fire them. It’s not about feeling smug, it’s about not wanting to be around someone who disgusts me.
Your mere note is merely wrong. My telepathic equipment is not up to the task of ascertaining the thoughts in a person’s head; all it can do is tell what they’re thinking based on what they say or do.
Nobody is talking about firing someone for thinking like a Nazi, because we can’t do that. The conversation is over firing someone for talking like a Nazi or otherwise acting like a Nazi. A person can choose whether to translate their dumb thoughts into their out-loud voice, and once they do that, it’s fair game to fire them.
What does Joe Shmoe’s contract say, I wonder? Doesn’t it mention disrepute?
Probably not, because Joe Shmoe doesn’t have a contract. He’s at-will, and if his boss thinks his Sig Heiling, captured on Youtube videos and linked to his company, is bringing disrepute to the company, she has every right to fire Joe.
There is no reasonable distinction between contract employees (whom you’re fine with firing for disrepute) and at-will employees.
Yep. I’ve never fired an employee, not a one. But if I go in today and choose to fire Beth because she’s wearing mismatched socks, I can do it.
You say this with the high degree of confidence of someone that is convinced that an ignorant racist could never rise to the position of POTUS by exploiting the racist elements of modern day American society, because high minded principles, etc.
Couldn’t a homophobe say the same thing?
I suppose so. Principles are only tested in the face of adversity. It’s easy to be principled when everything comes up roses. But when the Nazi is shouting their crap, the principle of free speech is tested. Maybe moreso when a person you don’t like is elected.