Sorry, messed up with the post :
Just a quick last point : there’s a rising generation that thinks that freedom of speech isn’t worth maintaining. They’re, in my opinion, about as deluded as the anti-vaxers, and for more or less the same reason : their inability to perceive anymore the necessity of free speech and the dangers of restricting it, because they’ve been raised in a society where, precisely thanks to past efforts to support free speech against fierce opposition, they didn’t have to face the consequences of its restrictions.
Not only they were born and raised in a relatively liberal society as a result, where they could express their unpopular opinions, but also most of the ideas and values they support now have been defended, spread and eventually reached them only because people have battled to maintain free speech. There wouldn’t be many supporters of gay rights nowadays, for instance, without a centuries-long fight to strictly defend free speech, even free speech as morally indefensible and outrageous, and as obviously devoid of any value as letting people objectively proven to be crazy by scientific research state that there was nothing problematic with a man fucking another man.
How do you inform yourself on a subject when it is a crime to express or publish this information? You seem to say that since people can still express their views, being only punished after they do so, the information is still available.
Going this way, then there’s no problem with banning any kind of expression. For instance, we can make a crime to criticize the government or contradict the president, this isn’t a problem at all or harmful in any way, since people can still say the government is lying, they’ll just go to jail after making this statement. This of course won’t prevent you from being properly informed about government matters. You’ll just have to wait until someone brave enough to face a prison sentence will climb on a soap box when you happen to pass by to be informed.
Your argument is ludicrous in that it makes any kind of restriction of speech innocuous. Or for that matter any kind of restriction of freedom.
So why not demand and equally high standard of proof from e.g. people talking about Jewish plots ? Or furthering the abject rhetoric that immigrants are all criminals/rapists/gangsters/terrorists ? Did libel laws have such a chilling effect on public discourse ?
And all hate speech legislation does is recognize one kind of threat of violence that otherwise slips through the cracks.
Let me make sure I read this right. You think opposing bigotry is short-sighted and ineffective? Because I can’t parse another “it” in what you quoted.
No, only the kind that threatens violence because of the victim’s gender.
Where do you get “all speech” from? Talk about straw men…
Jews aren’t a race. Gays aren’t a race. But antisemitic and homophobic speech can be hate speech.
Yes, and…?
Nice dodging.
Wasn’t the question.
…which is another difference by race…
Native American casinos can exist in places that don’t otherwise allow them, though. And can have different tax laws. That’s a difference by race.
I’m all for educating people on why some speech is wrong.
Argument from fear duly noted.
My point exactly. Ban the hate speech, and then they really would have consequences to their speech. And most of those blowhards are cowards and would not “go underground”, they’d just shut up. It’s allowing them open forums that enables their spread, I’m afraid.
The information behind the utterances is all still there. The utterances are not new information.
No. The utterances are not tied to the existence of the information. You yourself hint at this when you phrase it as “express their views” not “state the facts”
The words “nigger” or “kike” or “faggot” don’t add any information to anyone’s utterances.
And neither does Holocaust denial. It is a lie - negative information.
Whoops, look at this slope someone left here. All slipperied up, it is…
I’m not saying hate speech laws are OK because the information is still there. I’m saying the need to get information out does not supersede the right of citizens to safety of person.
So your false equivalency doesn’t work, because critical speech against the government is not directly threatening any individuals.
Try speech which directly threatens the President, though…
No, it does not. It just prioritizes the actual safety of one group over the speech rights of another. There’s always going to be a restriction of freedom in these cases - freedom from threat of harm, or freedom of speech.
Hate speech is the larger restriction of freedom. That’s why it needs to be banned.
I’m curious on how you define “history of race-based violence”. For example, last year black perpetrators murdered 514 white victims. The year before that, it was 576, and the year before that, it was 533. If you were in charge, would this count as a “past history of race-based violence” for purposes of determining whether “cracker” or various other slurs against whites, when uttered by blacks, rises to the level of hate speech? Or did you have something more exclusive in mind with the “past history of race-based violence”?
Although to be fair, the hate crimes committed by blacks are not necessarily committed because of the race of the victim - gender, sexual orientation, or religion are lesser but still significant motivations, just like hate crimes committed by whites or Hispanics or Asians.
Sure. We were talking about hate speech and hate crimes, and the idea that some groups are more at risk and therefore their speech should be judged differently as to whether it is hate speech or not. So ISTM that proportionate risk is a factor to be considered. So if one group makes up 72% of the population but commits around 51% of the hate crimes, and another makes up 13% or so and commits 22% or so of the hate crimes, it doesn’t make sense to say that the first group should be judged as being more threatening than the second.
Of course this applies to groups, not individuals, but that is much of the problem - classing groups together and saying one group can engage in speech that the other can’t means that actual individuals in both groups are being treated unfairly.
A better approach, IMO, is to create a standard and apply it equally to everyone - that “equal protection” thing in the US Constitution that you think is outmoded and shouldn’t be considered when discussing hate speech law in America. If you are making a threat, then it doesn’t matter what other people in your group do. And especially, if you are expressing an opinion, even one with which either group disagrees, it is wrong to say “group A can express that opinion but group B can’t”.
But again, I am an American, and hold the Constitution in higher regard than non-Americans might. YMMV, but when it comes to discussing America, the Constitution is a far more important factor than you might consider it to be.
I find it kind of silly to demand that we need hate speech laws when saying anything even remotely controversial will end up on FB/Twitter/Instagram and make you lose your job. There are enough social consequences for saying things others deem offensive. Unless you are actively inciting violence, which we DO have legal consequences for (see those brought up on charges for causing others to commit suicide), there’s no need to attempt to legally reign in free speech.
Really? Where it is? How do you magically access information that is banned? As I said, your statement essentially means that no restriction of speech is a problem. I mean the information about the Tien An Men square and the golf results of Kim Jong Il (or was it Kim Il Sung?) is still here. It just can’t be uttered. No problem at all.
This is an absurd argument. You’re essentially saying here that freedom of speech in general is useless.
You want to restrict speech that can be expressed to facts? So, making pretty much 95% of speech an open target for censorship?
And who determines which “facts” are really factual? The Central Committee for Truthful Information, maybe?
And the list of words and utterance that are sufficiently insulting to be banned is determined by whom? Can I be the one doing it, pretty please?
“Don’t we almost all (95%) agree that this is really bad speech, harmful to society?” is always the argument of the censors. You pick something that almost all people will agree with, and you have opened the door. Censors have it good. They can always point at the speech most likely to be seen as offensive by the most people and say “do we really need to undermine society by allowing these very bad people to utter their lies? Don’t we all know that Jesus is the lord? Didn’t science prove that homosexuals are mentally ill? What information does this blasphemous statement add to anyone utterance?”
95% of the population feeling strongly that something is wrong doesn’t make it objectively wrong. Regardless how strongly you feel about it, how much support you have in the general population, you can still be wrong and the hateful, blasphemous, antisocial, whatever person right. You feeling that a word is insulting doesn’t make it so. You feeling that “nigger” is sufficiently insulting to be banned but not “cracker” or “negro” doesn’t make it so. You feeling that that it should be banned from TV but allowed in to remain in historical documents doesn’t make it so. You thinking that there are good enough reasons to ban speech harmful for group A but not speech harmful for group B doesn’t make it so.
Your political views aren’t an established truth. If you can ban a word you feel is very demeaning for, say, gays, the Men Rights activist is entirely justified in wanting to ban a word he feels is very demeaning for men, and the religious person entirely justified in wanting to ban a word he feels is very demeaning for his coreligionists. Of course, you’re certain that you’re right. That there are excellent reasons for banning the word you want to ban, and no good reason to ban the word that those other people want to ban. But you being very convinced of the correctness of your ideas doesn’t make them true. Everybody feels that he’s right. And that his reasons to ban this or that are perfectly valid.
If you can present a list of utterances that are really bad and add no new information and as a result should be banned, then I can present my list too and so can everybody. And then we ban everything that is on anybody’s list. Or we ban nothing. Your pick. Anything else is stating “My views are the obviously correct ones, so I’m entitled to decide what can be said and what must not be said”. Trump, Xi Jinping, myself, all feel as strongly as yourself that our views are the correct ones. There’s absolutely no reason to let you rather than Trump or Xi Jinping or me decide which words are bad enough to be banned.
And again, who decides what is a lie and what is not? You? The ministry of Truth?
Really? So I can suppress any information I want if I feel it threatens me? Or maybe you are the only one who can decide what speech is threatening enough and what information isn’t valuable enough? Is that the way it works?
Your statements are the same as those used by all censors for all of history. This speech is bad, wrong, threatening society. It’s much more important to protect society/people from X than to allow stupid ideas like Y to be expressed. Of course, I and my friends are the ones who will determine what speech is too detrimental and what information isn’t valuable enough. You can all rest reassured.
The only difference between you and all the censors before you and all the censors who will come after you, and the censors who wants now to ban something else than you want to ban is the list of things that ought to be banned and ought to be allowed. You want to censor for the common good, in pursuit of what is right and just. So did they. So do they. So will they. You act exactly like them, convinced of course that though people in the past were wrong and enforcing their censorship was bad, and that people with a different list than yours nowadays are wrong, and enforcing their censorship would be bad, of course, you aren’t the same at all…because, you, obviously, you are entirely right and your censorship would be right and enforcing it would be good.
Very noble aim. Not a problem as long as I’m the one deciding safety from what, safety for whom, how much safety must be guaranteed and how much speech and what kind of speech can be suppressed.
If I’m not the one deciding? No way.
Your opinion, nothing more. Blasphemous speech is the most threatening speech. Commie speech is the larger danger for freedom. Faggot speech is what threatens your children. Muslim speech is the greatest danger for our freedom.
You think I listed all of them? And two of those were in the last 20 years. 1 was this decade.
I’ll happily lay 400 years of cumulative violence against your slight recent murder rate disproportion (and that’s without going into why Blacks commit some crimes disproportionately).
You know, to make sure we’re properly assessing risk and all.
This “oh, let’s ignore the groups, everyone’s an individual” approach would be nice if hate crimes and hate speech weren’t directed at people because of their group membership.
The standard is applied to everyone. What changes from group to group is just precisely which language constitutes credible threat.
I’m aware how important some people think it is. I have absolutely zero reason to give that stance any respect at all.
That’s very cute, but I’m more concerned about, y’know… not being murdered? I don’t really care if there’s a lot of people out there who are secretly thinking “God hates fags.” I’m way more concerned that, if enough people are out there screaming “God hates fags” at the top of their lungs, someone’s going to get it into their head to do some of God’s work.