I can’t see as there is going to be much difference between their claiming martyr status “illegitimately” while being punished only socially/every other way and “legitimately” claiming it for legal punishment.
Yeah, our whole system of government is established on the principle that individuals have intrinsic rights. If one starts eroding that principle out of malice, ignorance, or desire for short term gain the consequences are not good. We already have stupid universities and judges unconstitutionally punishing speech today. If anything people who desire liberty should be advocating for liberty instead of aping totalitarians.
I think legal sanction – outlawing – can lead to some sense of legitimacy. “Outlaw legitimacy” can be a thing, if you follow what I’m saying.
I don’t know what would happen for sure, but as I understand it, white supremacist gangs and politicians in much of Europe have a cachet they don’t have here in the US, at least in some ways. I think a part of that might come from the legal sanction they face for speech. Part of it might just be related to my own feelings – I have an instinctive distrust of legal sanctioning of speech unless it’s a direct threat of some sort… and thus I thnk I’d have trouble resisting some feelings of sympathy towards those that are legally sanctioned, say, for publicly saying some historical fact (like even the Holocaust – and I’m a descendant of German Jews that escaped Germany in the 30s) is false. Maybe these feelings come from some sort of educational indoctrination into the First Amendment – I don’t know. But if I have these feelings, I suspect lots of other Americans have them as well.
I don’t want white supremacists to get any more sympathy, and thus I think legally sanctioning white supremacist speech, aside from threats and advocacy for violence (which our current laws may not sanction enough), could be a bad thing in the US.
It’s the same reason I oppose the tactic of starting violent confrontations with white supremacists – because I think it helps white supremacists by making them sympathetic in some ways.
I’m not really worried about slippery slopes – I just don’t want to help white supremacists.
By my feelings, there could be. I think social consequences are very, very different from legal consequences. But it’s just based on my feelings – I don’t have data on this.
Thank you for the thoughtful response.
Charles Manson became a celebrity because of murder, more or less. But I don’t think that’s a reason to eliminate the crime of murder, do you?
I think I thought of the potential sequence of events that could greatly assist white supremacists if white supremacist speech was somehow made illegal:
~202X: Hate speech is made illegal in some way.
~203X: Legal/political challenges to this new law are successful, and the law is overturned, with a white supremacist as the face of the efforts, and a white supremacist becomes the “face of free speech”, to some extent.
I think that, or something like it, might be likely enough to be concerned that such efforts could greatly aid white supremacism.
No - the consequences are very different.
I take my position because I think it provides less help to white supremacists. I’m not certain about it, but that’s where I lean right now.
Well, if you want data, you could look into whether that happened in other countries that enacted hate speech laws. Granted, in the US a law like that is in more danger of being overturned.
Yes, the best possible outcome of unfettered free speech is better than the worst possible outcome of hate speech restrictions. And the best possible outcome of hate speech restrictions is better than the worst possible outcome of unfettered free speech - which would be ethnic cleansing, I suppose, given how far you went to the other extreme.
Since clairobscur is continuing his arguments in the ATMB thread, I’m just going to quote him here rather than argue this in two threads:
I am in absolute agreement. I just differ as to which casualties I find acceptable.
clairobscur is willing to throw whole classes of oppressed minorities under the bus of idealistic “free” speech (which is *always *limited anyway). I’m willing to throw Nazis, racists and homophobes under the bus of specific hate speech laws. You know what? I’m totally OK with that.
Actually, I just want to requote select bits of that with emphases, because it becomes more abhorrent a statement the more I reread it:
People (and once again, let me emphasize that for hate crime laws that means people who historically were absolutely brutalized and often still suffer oppression today) must be sacrificed - to an idea. Not an actual practice, because** there’s no place where free speech is absolute**. But the idea of free speech, that is the Moloch into which we must feed actual people - our gays, our PoCs, our Jews, our disabled, all our oppressed.
All so some Nazis can get to deny the Holocaust with impunity.
The definition of Nazi and racist are far broader than they were a few years ago. If these (and other) definitions keep expanding, there’s no limit to who could be thrown under the bus.
No, the definitions are unchanged. It’s just that more Nazis and racists are open about their beliefs since probably the 60s. For … reasons.
That doesn’t fit with my day to day experience at all. I see people being called racists (and white supremacists, and fascists, and even, occasionally, Nazis) for stuff which wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow twenty (or maybe even ten) years ago.
And maybe that means that possibly, just maybe, the world of twenty years ago was fucked in the head ? And we’re recognizing it now ?
Eddie Murphy, hardly an icon of Trumpism, opened his extremely popular 1983 comedy show *Delirious *with a long bit on “faggots” (his word) and his fear of catching AIDS from them. To much laughter from the crowd.
Since then language and ideas have become more polished, more tolerant… and more coded and dog-whistly on the part of -phobic shitheads. And then comes this orange man who abandons all pretence at euphemisms and chameleon hatred, and oh boy are the tiki torch crowd loving him ! And supporting him, or deploring his tone while pushing forward their own -phobic rethoric wrapped in more “civil” terms.
We’re not fooled. And we call these people for what they are, because the word for “fascist apologist” or “opportunistic supporter of fascism” is “fascist” ; as there’s no meaningful nor practical difference between an honest to goodness fascist, one who plays one on TV, and one who plays one to sell fascists magic pills.
(and if you think that this wave of fascist, racist actors being granted far-reaching platforms or the normalization of hate is harmless or doesn’t lead to upticks of -phobic violence ; you really haven’t been paying attention.)
Yep. It’s not the definitions that have changed. It’s the public will to act.
“If laws allow for abortion, then doctors can murder second grades with impunity.”
Same argument.
We can’t debate personal experience.
Yes, I’m aware - saying “Native American casinos” is shorthand for saying “Casinos on Native American land” since they often don’t run the casinos entirely themselves. The whole point being that Native Americans get sovereign territory in the USA that others don’t.
That’s a tautology.
US AA laws are not the only AA laws in the world. And regardless, the practical effect is the exclusion of some races from some benefits.