I’ll complain about American exceptionalism as much as anyone.
But, this debate over whether that exceptionalism is, well, exceptional, seems a bit of a tangent to me.
My 2c on Europe and free speech is that, from what I understand, the Official Secrets Act / state secrets doctrine common to most European approaches would have prevented the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Maybe the Scandinavian nations would have allowed such a thing, but the burden would have been on the papers to prove that the information they are presenting serves a public interest, I think, rather than the U.S. approach of placing the burden on the government whenever it wants to censor something.
~Max
Aside, Marco Rubio has this power, provided the organization is foreign, engages in terrorist activity (statutory definition), and poses a threat to US interests.
For example, he did so last week:
If a celebrity with a significant following were to come out on X/Twitter and promote this organization by saying they are a “great organization”, that could lead to criminal prosecution for providing material support to a terrorist organization. In the US.
~Max
I’m extremely surprised to see you write this, given your attitude in the ‘cancel culture’ thread. Just because a democracy is functional and judicial system generally trustworthy does not mean no one is self-interested or willing to abuse the law. Nor does it necessarily result in well-written laws that only punish the truly dangerous.
In the UK we recently saw a teacher prosecuted for holding a sign at a protest insulting the Prime Minister and Home Secretary with a racial slur. She was eventually acquitted, but do you think it was reasonable to prosecute her in the first place? Is she a dangerous bigot, in your opinion?
Very much agreed. It is never safe to assume that ‘it can’t happen here’.
This depends entirely on what "conceivably’ means. Inciting violence or another crime is a justifiable exception to free speech. Saying anything which someone somewhere might take as a justification for violence is not. For example, detailing Trump’s crimes and the harm his administration is causing might very plausibly inspire someone to try to assassinate him (a man already did, though I don’t recall they ever released his motive). Or talking about the harm caused by health insurers denying claims might plausibly lead to more attacks on CEOs. But I don’t think anyone would deny that it’s important to be able to talk about these things nonetheless.
Laws are only as good as the people enforcing them. It doesn’t matter how well thought out and well written a law is if the police, courts etc are corrupt. On the other hand, if the courts and police are reasonably trustworthy, a good law can be a defence where a bad one isn’t.
No it wouldn’t, that would be protected speech, giving them money, training, etc. would not be protected, but just saying they are great would be
No to both questions. The law under which she was prosecuted is ridiculous. But that is no argument against hate speech laws in general, as it’s absurd to consider this to be speech intended to incite violence against a protected group.
Yeah, a hijab is a head covering, a niquab is a face covering, that shows the eyes, a burka is full face with a veil to hide the eyes.. Three seperate garments.
Then how would you phrase the hate speech laws to prevent it? IMO there is no way to do so. This would absolutely fall under the Canadian “incite hate” law (she was after all making a derogatory statement about an ethnically Indian woman based on the color of her skin)
But banning speech threatening or inciting violence is not banning “hate speech”. That is not protected speech and there are laws against threats of violence in the US and Europe.
As an aside thats why the Vance and the Maggats getting upset about the recent convictions over anti-immigrant riots in the UK was dumb. They weren’t convicted for saying racist stuff about immigrants they were convicted for saying we should burn down a specific hotel full of immigrants. That would not be protected speech in the US (especially as someone did in fact try to burn down that hotel)
I don’t think it’s that simple. The U.S. government could conceivably convince a jury that posting online messages praising a terrorist group amounts to material support, in the form of promotion, a “service”, if the messages have high visibility, and especially if part of a broader case. For an analogy, imagine if a newspaper ran an advertisement promoting a terrorist organization, but not paid for by the organization or advertising its terrorist activities specifically. IMO these hypotheticals are a grey area, not black and white.
~Max
And all of them have been banned in France or are about to be. It is illegal to wear a burqa or niqab in public in France and the hijab is about to be banned, in law, from all sports.
Though i guess the people being sent to jail over that don’t count as Europeans in @Sandwich’s definition? Because they are are brown skinned muslim women with non-european sounding names?
Though its not hypothetical there have been convictions under these laws, that have been apealled all the way to the SCOTUS, and the judgment made clear that giving funds or training are not protected, whereas opinions would be.
This actually makes my point very well. There are always going to be edge cases, even with a concise unambiguous bill of rights. And you might disagree where the line is drawn in one particular. But its a really good thing that there is a line. Without the bill of rights there is no line, saying Palestine Action are great is just as illegal as giving money to Hamas.
Well, we can agree on that point.
~Max
Yes, in the US the line is significantly further. For example, Hasan Piker, the (now 2nd, but for a time 1st) most popular political Twitch streamer, said on stream that he supports Hezbollah and the Houthis “Ten Toes Down” and didn’t even get moderated on Twitch for them, much less in legal trouble.
Mr Piker questioned this response, inquiring why he was asked about his views on Donald Trump, Israel, Houthi rebels, Hamas and his bans from Twitch.
~Max
Hasan actually lied about that.
He wasn’t even detained - he later admitted on stream that he was rejected for TSA Pre check months ago, and used the TSA Pre check line anyways (he claims because he didn’t know his request was rejected).
Huh, well nvm then. I do see a congressional representative wrote a strongly worded letter denouncing Mr. Piker.
~Max
Yeah, no worries - Hasan is a self described propagandist who, on a show with a host who used an animated avatar of Lenin, explained that he only pretends to be a Social Democrat in order to appeal to the masses, and is in fact supportive of much further Left, much more authoritarian forms of government. He’s incredibly dishonest, this was 100% intentional, the fact that much of the mainstream press fell for it is absolutely negligent on their part. It’s an easy mistake to make for someone unfamiliar with the background.
It should also be pointed out that he is able to say nice stuff about Hezbollah in turkey, not because it is a bastion of free speech, but because those views are acceptable to the Turkish government (run as it is by a trumpesque psuedo-dictator). If he’d have said the same thing about the Kurdish radical groups in Turkey (or even spoken Kurdish as part of “instruction” ) he would have gone to prison.
He wasn’t coming back from Turkey. He was coming from France. I don’t believe he’s been to Turkey since leaving as a child, and as a Marxist-Leninist Agitator (or at least, an influencer cosplaying as one) I doubt Erdogan would welcome him.
He is pretty silent about Turkey’s treatment of minorities, today and in the past. But he has criticized it on very rare occasions.
On the other hand, he defended China’s invasion of Tibet and compared it to the US Civil War, saying China ended slavery in Tibet and Tibet is historically Chinese anyways so their conquest is OK.