“Other people should be killed” is clearly incitement, so this is rather obviously not an answer to the question posed.
But it’s not - “The Holocaust was the best thing to happen to Europe, and we should have a second one to finish the job,” is not going to get you arrested, at least under US law. Neither is, “Gays should be put to death as instructed by the Bible.” “We should send all the blacks back to Africa,” isn’t an explicit call for death, but it is a call for ethnic cleansing. All of these are protected speech under US law.
I agree it would not have you arrested in the USA as it stands. However, it’s definitely incitement, so saying that should be illegal in response to the question “Should it be illegal to say hateful things if they aren’t incitement?” is deliberately evasive. WE’re talking hypotheticals here.
Suppose a racist were to say “Blacks are inferior to whites.” That is clearly hate speech, but it is not incitement in any way. Would Northern Piper say such a statement should be illegal?
Given the various legal precedents (inclusive of both Brandeberg and Schenck) what sort of hate speech law could be passed that would be allowed on challenge to SCOTUS?
If a hate speech law was desired and was not possible without an amendment to allow for it, how should that amendment read and what would be possible unintended consequences of it?
Nether of those would qualify as hate speech under the criminal offences I’m familiar with in Canada. They’re not statements aimed at individuals or groups based on their personal characteristics.
I personally don’t see why it is a good thing to advocate killing people based on their political beliefs, no matter how reprehensible, any more than it is a good thing to advocate killing people based on the colour of their skin or who they fall in love with.
Am I to infer from your “dubious” that you think that’s an unusual position?
Not under US law it isn’t. As mentioned earlier, the Brandenburg case held that a statement advocating harming a religious or racial group only qualifies as incitement for 1st Amendment purposes if it is coupled with a reasonable likelihood of imminent violence or unlawful conduct.
It likely also wouldn’t qualify under the Canadian offence of inciting hatred, which has a requirement that it be in a public place and likely to lead to violence. A white supremacist keyboard warrior wouldn’t meet that test, tapping away in his own home. I assume that’s why the Ontario police in the Popescu case charged Popescu with the offence of “wilful promotion of hatred” rather than the incitement offence when he stated at an all-candidates meeting in a high school that “homosexuals should be executed”. Lacked the element of incitement.
Octopus, I certainly share your concern about the risk to freedom that totalitarian / authoritarian states pose to freedom. But I think the difference between us arises because hate speech laws are intended as a bulwark against the rise of such states.
Totalitarian and authoritarian states usually rely on attacks against “the Other” as part of their rise to power. For Hitler, it was Jews, and gypsies, and gays, and socialists. They were are castigated as not being “good Germans”. For Stalin, it was the Mensheviks, the Trotskyites, the “cosmopolitans” (ie Jews), the Old Bolsheviks, even doctors. They weren’t “true” supporters of the “Soviet ideal” and had to be punished and killed.
But those sort of regimes don’t arise overnight. Kristallnacht was not a sudden inexplainable event that came out of nowhere. The regimes build their support in part by demonising “The Other” simply because of who they are and their personal characteristics, not because of anything they’ve done wrong.
It starts with a German government suppressing a report that shows Jews have contributed disproportionately to the German war effort in the Great War, because that report doesn’t support the scapegoating.
It starts with Hitler’s speeches in the beer halls, demonising Jews for the “stab-in-the-back”.
It continues with Mein Kampf, furthering the narrative that the Jews are evil and anti-German.
It continues with speeches by Nazi politicians to get elected into the Reichstag, and then actually in the Reichstag, continuing those same themes.
It continues with laws passed to single out the Jews, affect their livelihood, mark them out as “non-German”.
It continues and gets worse with Krstallnach.
And it continues with Wannsee.
And it ends with the cattle cars and the death camps.
But it starts with speech.
Speech can be weaponised.
That’s what hate speech laws are aimed at.
No, what I think is dubious is that many people on the left seem to think that violence vs the radical right is perfectly OK. BUT, many also want hate speech punished- as long as it isnt THEIR hate speech. Because of course hate speech and violence vs nazis is a Good Thing. :rolleyes:
You seem to rather aggressively miss the point. It has nothing to do with what side is being attacked, it’s the way the group being attacked is considered a group. For hate crimes, usually ethnicity or religion is a protected group but a political affiliation is not. Pretty sure this has been explained to you about a billion times.
So, you think "Kill all the nazis’ is perfectly acceptable? “Kill all the Bernie Bros”?
The thread verved off into when is it Ok to advocate killing a group of people. You know, threads do that sometimes.
Do you think self-defense is abhorrent, or otherwise morally equivalent with murder (hateful or otherwise) ? Because that’s really what’s at stake with antifascistic action, even violent antifa action. It’s trying to avoid being murdered by Nazi assholes ; or trying to prevent others from being murdered by Nazi assholes.
When they’re actively planning on hurting you, I for one think it’s, if not automatically OK, at least a worthwhile consideration to possibly think about hurting them right back.
But that’s just me.
(and no, “kill all the Bernie bros” would not be acceptable. Because Bernie isn’t advocating violence and murder either explicitly or implicitly, and Bernie’s ideology & politics aren’t predicated on violence & murder either. Violence against Nazis isn’t violence based on their “political beliefs”. It’s violence based on their being fucking Nazis. You know, the baddies ? With all the skulls on their uniforms ?)
Lol, gimme a break. I have seen you running around waving your arms about hijacks so many times, this is quite hilarious. But regardless, you specifically mentioned hate speech in what I quoted, so don’t pretend you were talking more generally. Who in the world do you think you’re fooling?
I dont think that’s quite a “hijack”. It is speech designed to incite violence. We have discussed speech designed to incite violence as one thing it might be Ok to ban, as opposed to general laws against hate speech.
If you dont want to discuss speech designed to incite violence as part of hate speech laws, then- dont.
It’s a hijack because you are deliberately obfuscating the differences between hate speech laws and laws generally about inciting violence.
Sound familiar?
What do you think of preemptive self-defense? That is, hurt them first since you are sure they plan on hurting you?
Speech is always weaponized, including against the rise of such states. Pens are contrasted with swords for good reasons.
Canada is relatively comparable to the United States in many ways and I’ve asked in the GQ thread you created whether or not there is any evidence that Hate Speech laws there have had any efficacy. You stated clearly that you did not know. That said your initial review notes the extremely small number of charges made under the law and the smaller number successfully prosecuted.
Meanwhile best I can find is that hate crimes have been increasing fairly dramatically in Canada over the past several decades, peaking in 2017 with an jaw-dropping 47% year on year increase. Yes part of a global rise but in the same year the United States’ increase was relatively only 17%. Noted that each country is likely subject to under-reporting. It would be nice to see that Canada’s hate speech laws had resulted in protecting Canada from increases in hate crimes and of relative rise of hate over all. But if there is any evidence of such benefits accruing I cannot find it.
I strongly suspect that a hate speech law similar to Canada’s would not pass SCOTUS muster in the United States and I see no evidence that Canadian Hate Speech laws, despite having great intentions, have functioned as a bulwark against … well anything. They remind me a bit of greenwashing in that they may allow you to feel like you are doing something and to signify to others, but actually accomplishes fairly bupkiss.
And what are the risks in return for the bupkiss? Let’s ignore the sky will fall fear of totalitarianism and go with the practical. What we want to accomplish is the winning of hearts and minds to a vision of a more tolerant and inclusive society. The hearts and minds that need to be won are not won by arguing that we should do our best to gag those who say what we do not want to hear and being able to be portrayed as those want to censor and control speech more broadly is a bad look.
I think that is what Benesch called “accusation in a mirror” … the prep work: if you want to do something to a group first accuse them of wanting to do it to you. Which then justifies your doing it to them first.
When they come marching through your neighbourhood or campus with swastika tattoos and baseball bats, it sort of gives the game away.
Yeah I have no idea how anyone could possibly think Nazis would have violent thoughts or be planning violence. It is a conundrum :rolleyes:.
Glib. Not an answer to the question I asked, but glib.