While I struggle to empathize with the sorts of folks negatively impacted by hate speech laws, making speech of any sort illegal seems dangerously close to criminalizing certain ideas or thoughts.
While I'm on the side of allowing hate speech this is clearly a discussion of degrees not an absolute choice.
Besides the obvious "fire in a crowded theatre" there a raft of things you may not say:
• you are not permitted to reveal to people material classified in certain ways
• you are not permitted to broadcast copyrighted material
• you may not make death threats against people even if you can prove that you are not a threat to them
• you may not reveal information about certain companies if you are in certain positions
These are speech of 'any' sort and I'm comfortable with the penalties (sometimes criminal) for them. I don't think they're dangerously close to criminalising certain ideas and thoughts. In almost every case you're free to think what you want and imagine what you want.
Any opposition to laws that attempt to abridge hate speech cannot derive from a general opposition to abridging freedom of speech unless one also objects to the restrictions I mentioned earlier.
They don't need your empathy. They need their rights respected. Society needs their rights respected.
If you don't like their ideas, it's your duty as a member of a free society to engage with with them in meaningful dialog to show them (and everyone else paying attention) what's wrong with those ideas.
Free speech is the mechanism by which people resolve their disagreements without killing each other - Jordan B. Peterson
>> "I struggle to empathize with the sorts of folks negatively impacted by hate speech laws..."
That's only because your pet ideology (whatever it is, I have no idea who you are or what your politics are) hasn't yet been criminalized as hate speech.
Recall that there's no objective definition of "hate speech," and in practice the definition will always be tuned by the loudest faction as a weapon against its enemies.
I mean that there exists no classifier which consumes as input arbitrary speech, and emits as output a foolproof classification of "hate" or "not hate."
Therefore humans are required to emulate that classifier. Perhaps we call them "judges" or "arbitration panels" or whatever, the name doesn't matter.
My point is that politics will guide the emulation of the classifier, such that it emits results favorable to the loud faction and unfavorable to that faction's enemies.
> I mean that there exists no classifier which consumes as input arbitrary speech, and emits as output a foolproof classification of "hate" or "not hate."
So, that's like every other criminal law ever created.
I do agree this is something bad (for Law in general). But it does not lead to your point that the definition will increase unexpectedly in scope.
Exactly! Language is power because it allows communication, and controlling language is effectively controlling communication. Persuasion and enlightenment involves taking on all sorts of, err, troublesome concepts.
Hate speech isn't just ideas or thoughts. It's an incitement to violence, it's horrifically bad for the mental health of people subjected to it, and it acts as a form of discrimination against those people.
No, it's not. Otherwise, wouldn't that imply we should outlaw being mean altogether? Is being mean always an incitement for violence? Yes/No? I think it's clear, it's not.
> it's horrifically bad for the mental health
Citation needed.
> as a form of discrimination against those people
Again, no. Discrimination requires that it be 'unjust or prejudicial treatment', hate speech does not. Hate speech could be as little as explaining factual reasons you don't like another race.
> Hate speech could be as little as explaining factual reasons you don't like another race.
Part of the problem in this discussion seems to be that people have different definitions of 'hate speech'. That definition could be applicable to their country of origin or personal belief but it's pretty clear that definitions aren't even remotely compatible and it makes any sort of level-headed debate very difficult.
The real problem is that the concept of "hate speech" is nonsensical. It is a term created exactly to polarize debates and prevent rational discourse. Calmly explain that to any one that attempts to use the term - or ask them to clarify exactly what they mean. We must reject politically engineered attempts to ruin the public debate.
You're taking your own definition of 'hate speech' which is irrelevant mostly. The important definition if you have an issue with laws limiting speech (through limits on hate speech) is the definition used by those. In most western democracies speech is only limited to prevent, as the parent said, incitement to violence and even then there should be protections in place to prevent abuse of those laws (and there are).
>> No, it's not. Otherwise, wouldn't that imply we should outlaw being mean altogether?
I don't understand what you're trying to imply here, it doesn't seem to make sense. Being mean could be telling someone they look ugly in those clothes. No incitement to violence. "All minority are evil, kill all *minority" would be an incitement to violence. Pretty clear cut. Being 'mean' has nothing to do with it.
>> Hate speech could be as little as explaining factual reasons you don't like another race.
Citation needed. Where is this law or definition of hate speech?
If someone is yelling "Kill all $racialslur" are they practicing hate speech yet?
They are most certainly openly advocating violence against a specific group not just "being mean"
Hate speech can indeed be quantified. Though definitions will vary (as with anything.)
Incitement to violence requires intent for the violence to actually occur. I believe this distinction is why you get things like pastors of megachurches who advocate for the idea that all gay people deserve to be killed, but they're not actually intending for any specific act to be carried out and therefore aren't technically inciting violence.
The problem is who do you trust enough to endow them with authority to decide whether something is hate or free speech?
I'd probably draw the line at a limit number of items (e.g. 5 or 10 or 100 specifically named items, I believe similar to Germany). If the government decides something new is important enough to be regulated, they must decide whether it's important enough to replace one of the previous items.
We trust the same people we trust with everything else, judges. The legal system is a nuanced mess and the reason we have judges is while some of it is black and white some of it is in a sort of gray area. We would give them guidelines and through an analysis of the language of the law and current precedent they would make a ruling. It's not a perfect system but often it's better to have an imperfect system than none at all.
What you just said hurts my feelings and makes me want to be violent. The greatest freedom is the freedom to be personally responsible. Laws that curtail speech generally are orthogonal to that freedom. Think about it.
Actual calls to violence are also covered. So "all liquor stores deserve to be burned!" is protected speech, but "let's go burn that liquor store now!" is not.
Blasphemy laws often frame the deed as (a) hurting the feelings of believers and/or (b) causing social unrest and/or (c) disturbing public order.
You certainly can consider a very large set of potential victims - there are a lot of real people who get gravely offended by cases of blasphemy.
Your statement that God isn't real is, in the eyes of such court, saying something clearly untrue that offends others and harms the social order. The existence and reality of God is an undisputed axiom in many legal systems - the court will rule that God is real, the legal acts will explicitly state that God is real, and it might even be enshrined in their constitution as a fact above all law. It's even plausible that the holy text e.g. Quran is the basis of all law there; there may be additional regulations but the core of law comes from God.
Which constitution? There's no "the" constitution, it's just as valid to say that there's no free speech in the constitution because, frankly, having free speech in constitution in just as rare as having god in constitution.
I'd agree that it would be nice that if it was differently, but saying "shouldn't be accepted" is just like wishing for a pony, it has no connection to reality - we simply don't get a say in such matters, and I'd bet dollars to pennies that a magical totally fair democratic vote in those countries would prove that the average voter there definitely supports prohibiting blasphemy and restricting speech to do so.
It's ridiculous to simply unilaterally declare that your moral system is more valid than someone else's, and forcing your constitution on some other place is just as reasonable as someone else wanting to replace your constitution with theirs.
I agree with that. Once we accept the false premise that "all are the same" we'll let the most intolerant and the most backward win. And accepting the complaints of those "offended" is giving up to the real and destructive backwardness.
Too many people take our current state for granted. It is actually the result of the centuries of the fight against the backwardness (especially religious). If we give up we'll lose what we've already and with a lot of fight achieved.
We have to offend the superstitious and those that want to protect the backwardness, otherwise we're doing it wrong, and we'll lose so much we can't even imagine.
We have what we have today in spite of the religious texts not because of tbem. Otherwise there would still be more burnings at the stake and beheadings. Not to mention the treatment of the women.
We should never forget that, and we should act. It's getting critical again.
If literal concentration camps or starving literal millions of people to death aren't sufficient to bring real action, is it realistic to believe that free speech of all things will be the reason because of which we will start to topple regimes that we consider immoral?
If we can achieve a consensus sufficient for action on regimes who kill and torture people just because, then it might be appropriate to consider stopping (as opposed to just criticizing) regimes that simply repress people not following an arbitrary social code of conduct.
The problem, though, is that when you go around toppling regimes, millions end up dead, when before only 10s of thousands were being killed by the secret police.
So yes, if I could wave a magic wand and give human rights to the entire North Korean population, with no negative side effects, I'd do it.
But we don't have that magic wand, and we have to balance the good that we'd be doing by fixing North Korea, with the bad that'd be done through the millions that would end up dead.
North Korea offered peace many times. It's the U.S that doesn't want to accept it. See my other post. The U.S. goal simply isn't to reduce the chance of a war and it's even less to improve the state of the people there (or anywhere actually). "Bringing democracy" when the U.S. politicians say it always mean something else as it would be naively expected. Best observed on recent Iraq and Syria examples.
The U.S has a huge history of the direct organization of toppling the regimes only on the principle "they don't do what we want them to do." Therefore, Saudi Arabia, one of the most intolerant places on the Earth "are the friends" and the dictators are somewhere else. And these "friends" thanks to that "friendly" support magnificently exported their mind-boggling intolerance all around the world. And some circles bend over backwards to teach us that "it's good so."
North Korea is the biggest straw-man imaginable(1). We should worry what is happening in our own lands. North Koreanism is spreading nowhere, the intolerance "as written" in the "holly" books (yes in all of them believed by the superstitious as such) is, through the world, as we speak.
Historically, most of the thinking world already once managed to see the mentioned books as the stories which aren't to be taken seriously. The superstition is fighting back now thanks significantly to our forgetting what is it actually about. Not caring for the intolerant being "offended" is our moral duty.
North Korea "has long sought a peace treaty with the United States and other parties in the 1950-53 Korean War, as well as an end to military exercises by South Korea and the United States, which has about 28,500 troops based in South Korea." The U.S. rejects the peace talks every time.
Blasphemy is not hate speech. It doesn't incite to violence, it's not bad for mental health, and it doesn't discriminate. It doesn't actually harm people, it merely offends them.
Causing someone to doubt and/or lose their religion is extremely damaging. It can lead to depression, anxiety, and other mental health crisis.
> it doesn't discriminate
Islam gets a lot more flak, than, say, Buddhists.
> It doesn't actually harm people, it merely offends them.
Speech is a weapon and can be very harmful. That's one of the major reasons totalitarian governments are terrified of free speech. In the West we've largely decided that the benefits of free speech outweigh the costs.
That's not even remotely what "incitement to violence" means.
> Causing someone to doubt and/or lose their religion is extremely damaging.
People blaspheming is not generally believed to cause religious adherents to lose faith. And even if it did, losing faith is not generally considered to be harmful either.
> It can lead to depression, anxiety, and other mental health crisis.
Citation please. I've never heard this argument before. And since you brought it up, I could just as easily say that losing religion can help cure mental issues. A classic example would be a gay person who has been brought up to believe that they're going to hell for being gay. Losing religion is probably the best thing that could happen to their mental health.
> Islam gets a lot more flak, than, say, Buddhists.
"it doesn't discriminate" doesn't mean all religions are equally blasphemed, and I can't imagine what sort of confusion would lead you to think that made any sense.
> Speech is a weapon and can be very harmful. That's one of the major reasons totalitarian governments are terrified of free speech.
Wrong type of harm. You're talking about spreading ideas that people don't like. I'm talking about the very words themselves harming the victims.
It's clear from the responses here and the downvotes that I'm receiving that a lot of you have never actually witnessed real hate speech, never seen what it does to people, never seen people killed by people who were inspired by hate speech.
The right to free speech wasn't intended to protect "love speech". Popular speech doesn't need protecting; unpopular (often rhetorically construed as "hate") speech does.
Why only protect popular speech? The whole point of "right to free speech" is that one may earnestly believe something that another may earnestly take offense to; the state shouldn't be able to punish someone for saying something another simply doesn't like (say, "abortion is murder" which may understandably offend someone who had an abortion and be construe the comment as "hate speech").
Most of us have never been on the receiving end of mass hatred, though. Those laws came on the heels of WWII which was, to put it mildly, terrible to a certain hated group of people.
The law of the land in the US is that the only speech that can be restricted is speech that poses an "imminent danger". You are allowed to communicate the most vile bigoted ideas as long as you are not inciting people to commit violence.
I agree with you. Keep in mind that the U.S. is on an extreme end of the free-speech spectrum. (This may spring from, in part, our sense of individuality [1].)
The US isn't doing great in the Press Freedom Index[0]. Norway, or my home country the Netherlands, would IMO be much better examples of "extreme freedom of speech". I'd say the US is strong on this point, but not at the extremes.
Do you have a good alternative to the Freedom of Press Index?
On the Geert Wilders issue: it is a lot more nuanced than how you present it. The quote Geert Wilders prosecuted for (translation mine):
"In this city and the Netherlands, do you want more or fewer Moroccans?"
the crowd starts chanting 'fewer'
"Then we're going to take care of that!"
This was not just a casual remark, as the judge determined that it was a scripted section of a speech meant to evoke that particular reaction from the crowd. The charges were "inciting hate", "inciting discrimination" and "criminal insult of and inciting discrimination of a group", the group being the Moroccan race (race as defined by Dutch law)[0].
The first charge was dismissed, but he was convicted of the latter; the judge decided to give no penalty because he considered the public conviction enough in the case of a public figure. The maximum penalty he could have received was two years in jail, though that would have been highly irregular; a fine is generally used.
Personally, I think Geert Wilders adds little of value. He consequently refuses to set (literally) any concrete goals for his party and only runs on populism.
The context matters, too. The Dutch legal system works very differently from the American system. Jurisprudence and the letter of the law are used, but the principle of arriving at a reasonable, proportional and good faith judgement is weighed very heavily when compared to the American system.
Our prison situation is that prisons are closing. We have 9,145[2] prisoners as of September 2016, out of a population of 16,979,120[3].
> The US isn't doing great in the Press Freedom Index...
"... which asks questions about pluralism, media independence, environment and self-censorship, legislative framework, transparency, and infrastructure"
that's not the same thing as speech, in the US at least.
Why wouldn't independence and self-censorship apply? Free press as a concept is irrelevant if you never say anything controversial or are a de-facto arm of the government.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are tangentially related but very different from each other. It's very possible to have a free press but without freedom of speech (e.g. journalists can report on anything they wish, corruption, government misdeeds, culture but pornography or a specific book like say Mein Kampf is illegal, or libel/slander laws are broad enough to allow the wealthy to use the court system to punish people for speaking)
Similarly it's possible to have freedom of speech but no free press, e.g. anyone can say whatever they wish on the street and out loud but all major media organizations systematically overwhelm or crush journalistic dissent and control the media narrative as dictated by a tiny oligarchy of wealthy elites which is in some large part the case in the U.S. or by the government directly as in many other more traditional repressive countries.
I know it's not what you said, but as it's a common misconception, I'd just like to mention that Mein Kampf is not illegal in Germany but publication is (or was, might have expired by now) forbidden thanks to copyright.
The minute the threat of state sponsored violence and kidnapping for "bad free speech" is there we don't have free speech. We have permitted and unpermited speech.
I don't know about any US place with real hate-speech laws. In fact, in a lot of places it even seems to be legal to run around in Nazi uniforms (complete with Hakenkreuz and everything).
Meanwhile, Facebook and TV stations censor nipples and four-letter words. Can someone explain this double morals to me?
Facebook & TV are private endeavors in which participation on the part of both parties is voluntary: they provide a service because they choose to and people consume that service because they choose to. Either party may opt out and seek alternative means of accomplishing their relative goals... right or wrong. If Facebook's community doesn't suit me I can find one that does. If Facebook doesn't like the service they're offering, they can change it.
Hate speech laws would be involuntary. You could not opt out and there would be a threat of force if you should fail to behave as demanded. Worse still... who gets to define what "hate speech" is and when the use of force gets called in?
There's no double morality - the balance of "who decides what can be said" is mostly taken away from government and given to the people.
It's legal for Facebook to say what it wants, and it's legal for Facebook to never say anything that it doesn't want to be said.
It's legal to make your own Facebook with nipples, four-letter words, blackjack and hookers; and it's legal for Facebook to forbid any posts containing letter x if they so choose.
> It's legal to make your own Facebook with nipples, four-letter words, blackjack and hookers;
AFAIK it's not - youth protection regulation gone wild is enshrined in law at least for TV stations and I'm sure that if FB wouldn't fear angry mothers with "uuuuuh buuuh my 16-year-old-boy saw a naked boob on FB" they wouldn't give a damn about boobs.
>soon will also consider mis gendering as hate speech.
I think it should be up to the individual case; deliberate misgendering can cause significant psychological trauma and distress, especially if in multiple occurrence.
"Non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression may very well be interpreted by the courts in the future to include the right to be identified by a person’s self identified pronoun. The Ontario Human Rights Commission, for example, in their Policy on Preventing Discrimination Because of Gender Identity and Expression states that gender harassment should include “ Refusing to refer to a person by their self-identified name and proper personal pronoun”. In other words, pronoun misuse may become actionable, though the Human Rights Tribunals and courts. And the remedies? Monetary damages, non-financial remedies (for example, ceasing the discriminatory practice or reinstatement to job) and public interest remedies (for example, changing hiring practices or developing non-discriminatory policies and procedures)."
>If they could only do the same to weasel-wording and stating falsehoods on the internet...
and thank god they can't, at least not for now. i can still say any bullshit i want on the internet, as is my right.
from your own article:
>Non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression may very well be interpreted by the courts in the future to include the right to be identified by a person’s self identified pronoun
nice precedent
>Policy on Preventing Discrimination Because of Gender Identity and Expression states that gender harassment should include “ Refusing to refer to a person by their self-identified name and proper personal pronoun”. In other words, pronoun misuse may become actionable, though the Human Rights Tribunals and courts. And the remedies? Monetary damages, non-financial remedies (for example, ceasing the discriminatory practice or reinstatement to job) and public interest remedies (for example, changing hiring practices or developing non-discriminatory policies and procedures). Jail time is not one of them.
oh ok, no jail time, but i'm forced to hire someone that identifies as an attack helicopter, great!
>So what does this mean for pronoun misuse? Well, refusing to use a person’s self identified pronoun is not going to be considered advocating genocide – unless the refusal to use the pronouns was accompanied by actually advocating genocide against trans and gender non-binary folks.
so its fine unless i promote genocide, kinda makes sense but its still a slippery slope imo
>Similarly, it’s hard to see the refusal to use the appropriate pronoun –without something else – rising to the threshold of hate speech. Hate speech laws in Canada have only been used- and only can be used – against extreme forms of speech – explicitly and extreme forms of homophobic, anti-Semitic or racist speech.
so pronoun misuse is still legal, unless it gets to "extreme", whatever that means. and who decides what "extreme" is?
>Moreover, prosecution needs the approval of the Attorney General.
A disjointed approximate is "fighting words doctrine". Assuming you survive punching someone for clearly being threatening, a prosecutor is unlikely to charge you with assault, i.e. the loud mouth had it coming.
I feel hate speech is an offense against free speech, but I still don't think it should be allowed. Honestly, things like being racist to someone on the street shouldn't be allowed in any country.
I guess it just comes down to the lesser of two evils.
My problem with hate speech bans always comes down to two things:
1. Who decides what is hate speech?
2. In 1800, would describing all slaveowners as "immoral, godless abominations" and calling for the destruction of their property and livelihoods have been hate speech? If not, why?
In the context of a country, a judge or the people elected to represent the people do. This is often touted as some kind of immense showstopper to restricting speech, when really, it's not. The same people who decide what rights you have also decide what things you can say in public.
>In 1800, would describing all slaveowners as "immoral, godless abominations" and calling for the destruction of their property and livelihoods have been hate speech?
Perhaps, I don't know the law of the time. Were there hate speech laws at the time? If so, then it probably qualified as hate speech, if those laws included such statements.
Restricting speech is not necessarily a slippery slope (though it has potential to be one); the old argument of "who decides what is hate speech?" is a tired one with a relatively simple answer.
But what does it look like in practice? All the sudden you have a cudgel to shut down all sorts of controversial statements by relating them to hate speech. I doubt the UN had jailing an Indonesian politician for claiming the Koran doesn't forbid voting for a non-Muslim in mind when it passed its resolution, and yet that's how it was used.
How is it defined? Who defines it? You? Your friends? Your political opponents? The government? Corporations?
Speech is not violence or actions. They should not be conflated. Incitement of violence should be treated as such.
"Hate" speech can never be well defined. I can hate things. I can hate ideas. And the when I speak about them, you can tar me with hate speech to shut me down.
This is antithetical to a free society, the foundation of what the United States was built upon, and generally the modern "western" philosophy.
People should be free to speak their mind. If others disagree, or find what they're saying offensive, then they can choose to not associate with these people.
>With that attitude, why stop there? Why not just outlaw saying mean things in general?
You're making this into a slippery slope when it need not be. The parent commenter didn't say anything about mean things, they were talking about hate speech.
The difference being that the definition of "hate speech" is a slippery slope, closely connected with the euphemism treadmill. The difference being, usually the euphemism treadmill doesn't have any legislative import...
Examples off the top of my head: the demonization of "illegal" when in reference to people who cross the border without the right to do so.
The willful conflation of "Muslim" as a race rather than a religion.
Why exactly is it a slippery slope? I admit that it can be made as such, but why must it necessarily be? A legislature or person can define hate speech in such a way that it is not a slippery slope in my opinion, and I think that's what should be done.
I would take this up a level of abstraction. I don't believe that the law should be considered the ultimate means toward shaping human behavior to the liking of minorities, majorities, interest groups or what have you. That would be oppressive. Rather it should be considered an expedient way of maintaining a minimal standard of order and societal functioning.
> Honestly, things like being racist to someone on the street shouldn't be allowed in any country
Going to point out that your language is ambiguous. What does "being racist" actually mean in the context of what you think should be disallowed?
It's an important question, because odds are very good that if you think through a real example of what you think ought to be criminal, there's a good chance there's already some other law that's already being broken, such as harassment. Of course, one consequence of this is that the censorious types have been diluting the term "harassment" to mean "anything anyone says that makes me feel uncomfortable." (Twitter is rife with this ridiculousness). But I digress. The fact is, harassment laws exist to protect people against the abuse of speech in public places, and there's no need for any particular special groups to have protection.
Here's some sample language:
He or she engages in a course of conduct or repeatedly commits acts which alarm or seriously annoy such other person and which serve no legitimate purpose.
The government, or the state in general decides. Whether the laws are problematic or not depends on someone's personal view. You view them as problematic, the parent commenter probably views them as unproblematic.
>Honestly, things like being racist to someone on the street shouldn't be allowed in any country.
>I guess it just comes down to the lesser of two evils.
The greater evil in this case is using the state's monopoly on violence to enforce what should be a norm of civil society.
> I feel hate speech is an offense against free speech, but I still don't think it should be allowed. Honestly, things like being racist to someone on the street shouldn't be allowed in any country.
The problem of racism "on the street" (and most other places, really) is almost always more subtle than blatant hate speech.
Besides violating free speech, hate speech laws don't help with the cultural root causes of racism.
I agree. I just finished reading the book Black Like Me and the author pointed out that a lot of racist people would politely and graciously tell him that no, he could not use that outhouse/fountain/restaurant/ticket counter there.
Edit: I'm glad this is a popular opinion. 31 upvotes within 12 minutes.