The UK (and Europe's) free speech problem

Great Debates
381

Like this bit…

one must make absolute the authority of the Great Leader Comrade KIM Il Sung over the nation. Affirming the absolute nature of his authority is the supreme demand of the revolutionary tasks and the revolutionary volition of the Korean people

Because my simple reading of that says the supreme leader has absolute power whatever the constitution says.

Just like when the ECHR says that the right to freedom expression has an exceptions to “protect health or morals”, that makes it objectively worse at protecting fundamental rights than the US bill of rights that doesn’t say that (not as bad as the North Korean constitution but worse than the bill of rights).

382

I did a bit more digging.

The only news article I could find in the UK stated that he was arrested for stalking, after being reported by a neighbour for harassment and threatening behaviour.

Initially the charge of owning illegal firearms was included on the basis of the pictures (flagged up by the person reporting him), which were posted without a location given, but once he showed he was on holiday in Florida when the pictures were taken, that part of the charge was dropped.

The stalking claim was taken more seriously initially because it appeared he had an illegal firearm, but the whole case was dropped due to lack of evidence.

383

So the question is whether he in fact engaged in predatory behavior or whether some paranoid Karen swatted him.

Generally, when someone didn’t actually do something there’s usually a lack of evidence. I’d be willing to take this as a case of British authorities exercising due diligence and the real source of the overreaction being the complainant. Thank you for the research.

384

Sure it would, and these are the 3100 examples. Note that your claim was that these protestors must have been guilty of violent crimes. Faced with the data to the contrary (unless you wish to claim that police – in the process of arresting them – downgraded their crimes?), you’re shifting to trying to make a distinction between being arrested for protesting and arrested for tweets.

But both are a problem for freedom of speech. And even on this hand-picked example of Gaza, it’s a bigger problem in the US than the UK. Not only because the numbers are vastly bigger but there’s also explicit pressure from the US government on the media, universities and other institutions not to criticize Israel.

I started replying to the rest of your post but when I saw the below bad-faith quote clip, I realized there’s no point reasoning with you. I’ll look for a pit thread I think.

The actual quote: “depending on who their employer is, they might be risking their job, because the government has leaned on many corporations, particularly in the media”
Perhaps you wouldn’t need 6 question marks if you hadn’t cut out the context / explanation?

385

What I said was:

You responded:

Great, then show JUST ONE example of an American being arrested for saying something equivalent to “Fuck Islam”. I’ll wait.

No one was arrested “for protesting”. They were arrested for specific criminal actions undertaken while protesting, like trespassing.

That’s hilarious. You’re calling me “bad faith” and then you try to claim that British people arrested for saying “Fuck Hamas” are equivalent to Americans arrested for trespassing.

IN THE US YOU WILL NEVER BE ARRESTED JUST FOR SAYING SOMETHING, UNLESS YOU SPECIFICALLY CALLED FOR SOMEONE TO IMMEDIATELY COMMIT VIOLENCE. IN THE UK, YOU CAN BE ARRESTED FOR SAYING FUCK HAMAS. THESE TWO THINGS ARE BOT EQUIVALENT. PERIOD, END OF STORY.

386

Protesting is free speech and the fact that some people were briefly arrested for whatever could go on the form, like trespassing, before being released without charge in most cases, doesn’t mean it’s not a free speech issue.

Which is the topic of the thread. This is the very definition of disingenuous if you’re trying to limit free speech as only about arrests, and only about online posts, rather than all forms of government abridgements and all forms of free speech and assembly.

387

Great, I agree with all that.

In the UK, they don’t need to “briefly arrest you for whatever could go on the form, like trespassing” before releasing you without charges. Because unlike in the United States, they can charge you for your words alone, because free speech protection is far weaker in the UK than the US. So they can just charge you and even sentence you to prison for words alone.

388

You don’t think you need to show the whole picture rather than focusing on one single facet?
Yes, the UK does not consider hate speech as protected speech and the US does. We’re all aware of this.

However, there are many kinds of free speech and free expression, and in totality, the US is much worse place to be right now.

389

@Mijin, in thinking it over, I wonder if we are speaking past each other. In the interest of offering an olive branch, I’ll summarize my thoughts.

I keep talking about legal frameworks in different countries and you keep bringing up extrajudicial means that the Trump admin uses to suppress free speech.

I’m not sure what conversation you are having with other people in this thread, but I’m not talking about the Trump admin vs the UK labour government. If you look, you can see that what I responded to you about was your claim that the North Korean constitution protects free speech “on paper”; I argued that this is ridiculous, because the North Korean constitution and legal code specifically allows the government to override the constitution’s free speech essentially at will. And we went back and forth from there.

My argument is, and always has been, about the level of power granted to the government by law to suppress speech. That’s what I originally challenged you on - your claim that the North Korean constitution protects free speech - it does not, for the reasons I explained.

Likewise, the UK’s legal system grants the government a lot more power over speech than the US legal system does.

On a personal level, Stramer obviously cares more about free speech than Trump does, and both of them probably care more than Kim (in Trump’s case, maybe not much more). But that has nothing to do with the legal system in place in the United States, the United Kingdom, or North Korea.

If Trump was Prime Minister instead of President, he would not need to rely on strong arming universities or arresting protestors and then letting them go without charging them. He could declare “Antifa” or “BLM” to be “Proscribed Organizsations” and then lock up anyone who said something positive about those groups. President Trump would salivate over that kind of power.

Meanwhile, if Stramer was Supreme Leader instead of Prime Minister, he might decide to make very little use of his sweeping powers of censorship, and in fact may very well decide to use his nearly limitless authority as Supreme Leader to reform North Korea into a much freer state. (Supreme Leader Trump would probably be pretty happy with the status quo, through).

My arguments have been about comparing the systems, not the intentions of the people wielding them. Trump obviously desires more censorship, but as President of the United States, his legal means of accomplishing this are relatively limited, so he has to rely on more “creative” (in the worst way) solutions. In the UK, censorship is easier; in North Korea, it is completely trivial.

390

Cite? Are the cops in the UK not allowed to arrest anyone at pro-Gaza protest unless they say nice things about Palestine Action?

Were any of the 3000 arrests you mention for things that wouldn’t be an arrestable offense in the UK?

Again the US bill of rights does not protect you from being arrested for obstruction or resisting arrest or assaulting a police officer, or any of the other things those people were arrested for but neither does the British constitution.

The US Bill of Rights does protect you from being arrested for saying nice things about Palestine Action. That is not crime in the US because of the bill of rights. It is in the UK because the British constitution is not as good at protecting fundamental rights as the US bill of of rights.

391

Not to presume to speak for @Mijin here, but that’s clear. My point has just been that that’s not ultimately a very useful notion in the end: you may tout the superiority of the American constitutional structure all the way to the gulag, but does that really make the trip better? What have you won if the train conductor is not in the direct employ of the government?

So I claim that it’s more useful to look at the rights people actually get to exercise. After all, it may be (not saying it is) the case that a system like the UK’s with its prohibitions on hate speech is more effective at preventing a Trumpian autocrat to rise to power on a platform of pure hate in the first place, thus leading actually to a better protection of fundamental rights in the long term. But to even have that discussion, I think we must anchor it in the best available data, rather than collect anecdotes and engage in a priori reasoning from textual exegesis. Back-and-forths about on-paper superiority seem of little help against the sustained attack on freedom of expression in nearly every form nearly everywhere.

392

Yes, exactly.
It’s like a thread about grift in government, and someone insisting that Trump and MAGA are better than other countries because there’s the emoluments clause.

393

OK

Right, because these things go hand in hand. The OP makes the claim that the US has greater freedom of speech because of the first amendment. (S)he also claims that this means the US is therefore further from being a “de facto dictatorship”.

The reality is that a lot more of what should be free speech, and a free press, is getting stomped in the US than the UK right now. And the US certainly looks closer to a dictatorship right now. So the claim / logic is false.

If the claim were to be modified that it is better to have a first amendment than not, and that some forms of speech that would be impossible to prosecute in the US are prosecuted in the UK, then I think I can basically agree. Although, even there, we see that protestors can be arrested for whatever random thing they can think of. And even for people not arrested, the government has exercised its powers in ways that are contrary to 1A to silence people. So it’s still a bit of a moot point, even for that specific area of free speech.

394

I’m not the OP. What I am saying is that the framework in the United States does a better job of protecting speech. It’s like a bigger, stronger fence.

The fact that the dog behind the US fence is bigger and actively trying to dig his way out doesn’t change anything about the nature of the fence. Yeah, he’s snapping at you from a hole he dug under, and that is a bad thing. But if the same dog was being held by the UK fence, he’d already be out and biting you.

If you’ll read my posts, you’ll see that this is the only claim I have made.

:roll_eyes:

Where the hell did I say that it “makes the trip better”? The only thing I talked about is which country’s system makes suppressing free speech easier.

Yes, that does make the US system better than the UK system - because if tomorrow you switched our system for the UK system, TRUMP WOULD IMMEDIATELY GET MUCH WORSE in terms of the censorship he’s capable of enacting.

There are two variants of a game’s rules. One variant of the rules (Game A) makes cheating super duper easy. The other variant of the rules (Game B) makes cheating very difficult.

Joe, Sally, Jenny, and Trump decide to play Games A and B in two pairs. Joe and Sally play Game A. Jenny and Trump play Game B.

Joe, Sally, and Jenny are decent human beings with no interest in cheating. Trump is Trump.

Trump proceeds to bend over backwards in order to cheat at Game B.

  1. Which of the two games being played had more cheating go on? Obviously, Game B. Trump is the one who was trying to cheat.

  2. Which game system is better at preventing cheating? Game B. The fact that this instance of both games being played resulted in more cheating going on for the Game B players doesn’t mean that Game A is a better system.

If someone points out that Game B is the more robust, cheating-proof system, saying “yeah but there was more cheating going on in the session of Game B than the session of Game A!” does not address the initial claim at all.

And if someone working on Game A says “Hey, Game B says you should put the deck of cards in the middle of the table where everyone can see it, that’s a good rule to prevent cheating” it would be silly to counter that with “didn’t you see how much more cheating happened at the Game B session?”.

395

No I said this…

The US clearly much closer to a de facto dictatorship than the UK. Trump is actively and blatantly attempting to become a de facto dictator, Stamer is not. The Bill of Rights is not a guaranteed to stop him. There are lots of bad things a POTUS can do that are not explicitly prevented by the bill of rights (or any other part of the US constitution or laws), but critically to the OP all those things also apply to British Prime Ministers.

If Trump had the same power to ban freedom of expression as Stamer it would be illegal to say nice things about the Democrats and “grossly offensive messages” would include any message that says nasty things about Donald J Trump.

396

Yes, that’s what I’ve been saying.

The point is that the claim in this thread was that session A has a cheating problem, which luckily never could happen in game B due to its superior rules. Except the currently running session B has way worse cheating, hence that claim is false.

Plus, of course, the analogy is too narrow: who gets to play is a function of the game’s rules. The rules of game B, as we now know, invites a certain kind of player who, ‘superior’ anti-cheating rules or not, then goes on to massively cheat. Is such a thing also possible in game A? Possibly—we don’t know. That’s a question to address with data.

397

And I never said otherwise or disagreed, so it’s a bit strange that you keep saying it when it’s totally irrelevant to the point I am making.

I never made any of these claims, so if you want to keep arguing against a strawman, you’re welcome to do so until you tucker out and fall asleep. But that’s got less than nothing to do with any argument I’ve made, in this thread or otherwise.

The claim I responded to was that Game C (North Korea) does “the bestest” (sic) job of protecting free speech on paper, when Game C’s rules on paper say “All these rules are great but above all that do whatever Kim says”.

That’s never been my claim. I agree that it’s a stupid claim to make.

What are you talking about? What part of Game B’s rules (the US legal system) “invites” a certain kind of player?

Trump is a product of the American culture and electorate, not the American legal code.

By the way, you claim:

Well, here’s the OP, clarifying his claim:

Look at that - even the original poster is not making the claim you said the OP made.

You really showed that strawman what’s what, though.

398

No that’s not even slightly to what was claimed. The analogy @Babale post is exactly right. If Game A has rules that stop the dealer taking your cards back if you play a hand he doesn’t like, and Game B does not then the rules of Game A are fairer than the rules of Game B.

Saying “the dealer at the table playing Game B is trustworthy player who cares whether everyone enjoys the game and the dealer playing Game A is vindictive cheat who doesn’t care about other players. So the rules of Game B must be just as fair.” Is not a valid argument. Or “look! the the dealer at Game A isn’t shuffling fairly! So game B must have fairer rules.” when neither the rules for Game A or B say anything about shuffling.

399

I think your analogy works well for illustrating the problems here.

Because firstly, the claim about the two games only works all else being equal. We would need to evaluate all of the rules to see which is fairer overall.

Secondly the title of this thread is about countries, not rules, so in the analogy we’d be making a claim about casinos. We’d be saying Alice’s casino is fairer than Bob’s, because her rules are more fair. Even though Alice routinely breaks her own rules to cheat customers and Bob does so far, far less.

400

I generally think that laws against hate speech are good and that we don’t gain anything by allowing people to run around in public waving Nazi flags and promoting stochastic terrorism.

On the other hand, it can lead to situations like we see in Britain, where the Starmer government has made a fool of itself by outlawing an organization that isn’t almost universally agreed to be evil. The number of Britons who actually support Palestine Action, plus the number who are willing to claim to do so in order to make a point about free speech, is far too large to make prosecuting them all viable.