5 ms·

Free speech, European style.

legulere 11y ago
Which is just free speech. Rights stop where other rights get infringed. Free speech also has its bounds in the USA. You can't scream "fire" when there's no fire and cause panic, you can't post (nude) photos of someone without their consent, you can't call for someone to get murdered. In Europe you just also can't call for crimes to be committed against ethnicities, adherents to some religion etc. I always find the american worship of the constitution as strange. It's a bit like people that try to take the bible literal and forget to think about the actual meaning behind the words. Also the constitution is not a holy scripture. Several things in it have been turned around by 180°. We have way better documents to express the basic human rights.
- orangecat 11y ago
  In Europe you just also can't call for crimes to be committed against ethnicities, adherents to some religion etc. Or argue that Muslim immigration is harmful (http://www.reuters.com/article/people-france-bardot-muslims-dc-idUSL1584799120080415 http://www.reuters.com/article/people-france-bardot-muslims-...), or correctly state the Bible's position on homosexuality (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-preacher-arrested-for-saying-homosexuality-is-a-sin.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-p...).
nsaje 11y ago
Free speech does not give you the right to hate speech. The title is misleading, because they only agreed to remove hate speech only, not all anti-immigration comments. EDIT: To clarify, hate speech is for example speech inciting doing harm to others. As a concrete example, in the heat of the refugee crisis, I was regularly seeing calls to arms to go shoot all the refugees at the borders on my Facebook wall. It made me cringe.
- adventured 11y ago
  > Free speech does not give you the right to hate speech. I would argue that's exactly what it does. I'd further argue that hate speech and the threat of violence should be separated into two distinct categories for clarity. Clarity is extremely, extremely important when you're dealing with the edges of acceptable speech. It's dangerous to load them both into one concept that can be wielded by politicians and the media for control purposes over speech and free expression. It's also important to clarify that the threat of violence is not a form of speech, it's a threat (of violence). That's another obvious reason why "hate speech" should not cover threats of violence to begin with, it intentionally muddles the concepts. Just like smashing someone in the face should not fall under free expression: it's an act of violence. Free speech ends at the point of violence, putting violence and speech together generates a contradiction of terms that can only benefit people looking for levers of control. The concept "hate speech" is already a broken, frequently abused tool for controlling people. It's clearly going to get much worse in the coming years given the rise of extreme political correctness, the 'protect my feelings' movement. "Hate speech" is by default devoid of nearly all meaning, and nearly anything can be claimed to be hate speech, because "hate" is a generic term that can vary wildly and is inherently subjective. It was of course used for that exact reason: you can't legislate control over speech, therefore create empty jargon to do the same thing, and then load anything you want into it. A method frequently employed by totalitarian regimes. Are my posts, which openly express my dislike of elves, hate speech? You bet. Why? Because I say so. You can never successfully refute that.
  - illumen 11y ago
    Except what counts is explicitly encoded in law, not what anyone makes up. "Are my posts, which openly express my dislike of elves, hate speech?" No, because that's really silly. The law would let you do that. If instead you asked people to kill people, that would be taken down.
- rewqfdsa 11y ago
  There is no such thing as "hate speech". What you call "hate speech" is merely speech that you find disagreeable. Free speech is valuable not when it protects those who already agree with you. "Hate speech" is very vaguely defined, and you can use the label to smear people raising perfectly legitimate facts like "group differences are recent, profound, and heritable".
  - mrtree 11y ago
    Exactly. +1 to this
  - illumen 11y ago
    Except when it is precisely defined in law. Which is what we are talking about here from the article.
- DominikR 11y ago
  To support free speech is to support free speech precisely when you disagree with the opinion voiced. Either you support that people may say whatever the hell they like to say or you are definitely NOT in support of free speech.
  - _ak 11y ago
    Except people are calling to torch refugee homes and for violence against refugees, and refugee homes have been attacked and/or torched, more than 800 this year. At least one person was killed in these attacks. That's far beyond where free speech ends.
    - DominikR 11y ago
      Making a racist statement is something completely different than telling you to go out and torch someones home. The latter encourages you to actually commit a criminal act, while the first is just an opinion that you might dislike or not and therefore criticise.
Tomte 11y ago
Free speech, the correct way. In my opinion, of course. (The following is not so much directed at you; I don't know you, after all. It's just that I need to rant, as always when Americans lecture us on free speech. "You" is not the personal you, but "you Americans on web forums") Don't mistake your version of free speech for a canonical implementation. Keep your hate speech and school shootings, be proud of it, and bury your dead. We just happen to live in peace and don't need or want your constant superiority complex in our face. Just remember, after WWII you had a wonderful opportunity to force your free speech on us. You deliberately chose to force something else on us. And had it written in our constitution. Because Nazis. Now don't you dare blame us for having it. You wanted us to not extend free speech to Nazis. You wanted us to defend our new constitution. You don't get to come back after seventy-five years and ask us to please be nicer to Nazis. And Scientology. And whatnot. Have you noticed how wherever you engage in nation building, you never implement your political system? How come? Isn't your system perfect? Maybe it's only for the enlightened American people and other peoples are too backwards and savage for that? Okay, maybe Puerto Rico, which is almost an American state. They have your system, as well. Except... all their political organs serve at the US congress' pleasure. Very colonial. It's great that you identify with your system. Really. But please enjoy it. Feel free to tell us how much you enjoy it. But stop disparaging others who disagree.
- eropple 11y ago
  Thank you for writing this (and I say that as an American). We as a country are are gargantuan hypocrites about this whole thing; the idea of free speech in our Constitution--to say nothing of plenty of other privileges that we pretend are rights--is one of many things we don't pass on to the people we claim hegemony over. We are tremendously bad at owning our shit. I wish we were better.
  - cgriswald 11y ago
    As a human... The GP was just as condescending as the GGP. His rush to stereotype Americans was largely comical. He makes it quite clear at the beginning that his buttons were simply (and easily) pushed; and this his rant was justified in his eyes. He simply emoted all over this thread to the benefit of no one but himself. It is not my status as an American that I defend or his status as a German(?) that I attack when I point out the hypocrisy or limits in his version of free speech. Nor does my acknoledgement of those limits imply I am not familiar with the history and hypocrisy of the United States and its voracious appetite for hegemony, empire building, and oppression of peoples (including the restriction or punishment of ostensibly free speech) both within and without its borders. This entire thread reads like a bunch of petulant children pointing fingers. Neither side defends the merits of their version of free speech nor makes salient points about the others' version of free speech; leading to no greater understanding and apparently prompting people to take sides in a conflict that doesn't even have to exist.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
marklgr 11y ago
Free speech, American stylen is all or nothing: either you can say absolutely everything, without any reserve, or it is not free speech. Free speech, European style, is: let's cut the bottom 1% in public places--knowing full well it will necessarily be somewhat arbitrary, debatable and potentially dangerous--if it gives a much, much saner space for everybody else. That's a trade-off, and not an easy one: opponents to it will immediately ask "who decides", "what if they want to shut _you_ up", or they'll invoke slippery-slope style arguments. But, for all these issues, there is some point where the trade-off is a huge win for society, according to proponents. That's always debatable, but I think it is as reasonable a stance as the previous one. Besides, it's not because a limit is very difficult to set that we should give up defining one. For instance, think about under age sex; who's to say what age is ok, but two weeks before is a serious crime? It is prone to the same kind of induction and slippery slope arguments as free speech, but most people (me included) don't argue about setting some arbitrary limit.

Which is just free speech. Rights stop where other rights get infringed. Free speech also has its bounds in the USA. You can't scream "fire" when there's no fire and cause panic, you can't post (nude) photos of someone without their consent, you can't call for someone to get murdered. In Europe you just also can't call for crimes to be committed against ethnicities, adherents to some religion etc. I always find the american worship of the constitution as strange. It's a bit like people that try to take the bible literal and forget to think about the actual meaning behind the words. Also the constitution is not a holy scripture. Several things in it have been turned around by 180°. We have way better documents to express the basic human rights.

orangecat 11y ago
In Europe you just also can't call for crimes to be committed against ethnicities, adherents to some religion etc. Or argue that Muslim immigration is harmful (http://www.reuters.com/article/people-france-bardot-muslims-dc-idUSL1584799120080415 http://www.reuters.com/article/people-france-bardot-muslims-...), or correctly state the Bible's position on homosexuality (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-preacher-arrested-for-saying-homosexuality-is-a-sin.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7668448/Christian-p...).

nsaje 11y ago

Free speech does not give you the right to hate speech. The title is misleading, because they only agreed to remove hate speech only, not all anti-immigration comments. EDIT: To clarify, hate speech is for example speech inciting doing harm to others. As a concrete example, in the heat of the refugee crisis, I was regularly seeing calls to arms to go shoot all the refugees at the borders on my Facebook wall. It made me cringe.

adventured 11y ago
> Free speech does not give you the right to hate speech. I would argue that's exactly what it does. I'd further argue that hate speech and the threat of violence should be separated into two distinct categories for clarity. Clarity is extremely, extremely important when you're dealing with the edges of acceptable speech. It's dangerous to load them both into one concept that can be wielded by politicians and the media for control purposes over speech and free expression. It's also important to clarify that the threat of violence is not a form of speech, it's a threat (of violence). That's another obvious reason why "hate speech" should not cover threats of violence to begin with, it intentionally muddles the concepts. Just like smashing someone in the face should not fall under free expression: it's an act of violence. Free speech ends at the point of violence, putting violence and speech together generates a contradiction of terms that can only benefit people looking for levers of control. The concept "hate speech" is already a broken, frequently abused tool for controlling people. It's clearly going to get much worse in the coming years given the rise of extreme political correctness, the 'protect my feelings' movement. "Hate speech" is by default devoid of nearly all meaning, and nearly anything can be claimed to be hate speech, because "hate" is a generic term that can vary wildly and is inherently subjective. It was of course used for that exact reason: you can't legislate control over speech, therefore create empty jargon to do the same thing, and then load anything you want into it. A method frequently employed by totalitarian regimes. Are my posts, which openly express my dislike of elves, hate speech? You bet. Why? Because I say so. You can never successfully refute that.
- illumen 11y ago
  Except what counts is explicitly encoded in law, not what anyone makes up. "Are my posts, which openly express my dislike of elves, hate speech?" No, because that's really silly. The law would let you do that. If instead you asked people to kill people, that would be taken down.
rewqfdsa 11y ago
There is no such thing as "hate speech". What you call "hate speech" is merely speech that you find disagreeable. Free speech is valuable not when it protects those who already agree with you. "Hate speech" is very vaguely defined, and you can use the label to smear people raising perfectly legitimate facts like "group differences are recent, profound, and heritable".
- mrtree 11y ago
  Exactly. +1 to this
- illumen 11y ago
  Except when it is precisely defined in law. Which is what we are talking about here from the article.
DominikR 11y ago
To support free speech is to support free speech precisely when you disagree with the opinion voiced. Either you support that people may say whatever the hell they like to say or you are definitely NOT in support of free speech.
- _ak 11y ago
  Except people are calling to torch refugee homes and for violence against refugees, and refugee homes have been attacked and/or torched, more than 800 this year. At least one person was killed in these attacks. That's far beyond where free speech ends.
  - DominikR 11y ago
    Making a racist statement is something completely different than telling you to go out and torch someones home. The latter encourages you to actually commit a criminal act, while the first is just an opinion that you might dislike or not and therefore criticise.

Tomte 11y ago

Free speech, the correct way. In my opinion, of course. (The following is not so much directed at you; I don't know you, after all. It's just that I need to rant, as always when Americans lecture us on free speech. "You" is not the personal you, but "you Americans on web forums") Don't mistake your version of free speech for a canonical implementation. Keep your hate speech and school shootings, be proud of it, and bury your dead. We just happen to live in peace and don't need or want your constant superiority complex in our face. Just remember, after WWII you had a wonderful opportunity to force your free speech on us. You deliberately chose to force something else on us. And had it written in our constitution. Because Nazis. Now don't you dare blame us for having it. You wanted us to not extend free speech to Nazis. You wanted us to defend our new constitution. You don't get to come back after seventy-five years and ask us to please be nicer to Nazis. And Scientology. And whatnot. Have you noticed how wherever you engage in nation building, you never implement your political system? How come? Isn't your system perfect? Maybe it's only for the enlightened American people and other peoples are too backwards and savage for that? Okay, maybe Puerto Rico, which is almost an American state. They have your system, as well. Except... all their political organs serve at the US congress' pleasure. Very colonial. It's great that you identify with your system. Really. But please enjoy it. Feel free to tell us how much you enjoy it. But stop disparaging others who disagree.

eropple 11y ago
Thank you for writing this (and I say that as an American). We as a country are are gargantuan hypocrites about this whole thing; the idea of free speech in our Constitution--to say nothing of plenty of other privileges that we pretend are rights--is one of many things we don't pass on to the people we claim hegemony over. We are tremendously bad at owning our shit. I wish we were better.
- cgriswald 11y ago
  As a human... The GP was just as condescending as the GGP. His rush to stereotype Americans was largely comical. He makes it quite clear at the beginning that his buttons were simply (and easily) pushed; and this his rant was justified in his eyes. He simply emoted all over this thread to the benefit of no one but himself. It is not my status as an American that I defend or his status as a German(?) that I attack when I point out the hypocrisy or limits in his version of free speech. Nor does my acknoledgement of those limits imply I am not familiar with the history and hypocrisy of the United States and its voracious appetite for hegemony, empire building, and oppression of peoples (including the restriction or punishment of ostensibly free speech) both within and without its borders. This entire thread reads like a bunch of petulant children pointing fingers. Neither side defends the merits of their version of free speech nor makes salient points about the others' version of free speech; leading to no greater understanding and apparently prompting people to take sides in a conflict that doesn't even have to exist.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

marklgr 11y ago

Free speech, American stylen is all or nothing: either you can say absolutely everything, without any reserve, or it is not free speech. Free speech, European style, is: let's cut the bottom 1% in public places--knowing full well it will necessarily be somewhat arbitrary, debatable and potentially dangerous--if it gives a much, much saner space for everybody else. That's a trade-off, and not an easy one: opponents to it will immediately ask "who decides", "what if they want to shut _you_ up", or they'll invoke slippery-slope style arguments. But, for all these issues, there is some point where the trade-off is a huge win for society, according to proponents. That's always debatable, but I think it is as reasonable a stance as the previous one. Besides, it's not because a limit is very difficult to set that we should give up defining one. For instance, think about under age sex; who's to say what age is ok, but two weeks before is a serious crime? It is prone to the same kind of induction and slippery slope arguments as free speech, but most people (me included) don't argue about setting some arbitrary limit.