4 ms·

This is where the slippery slope leads us when we create vague terms like "hate"-speech which then criminalize. The US is obviously nowhere Thailand, but just

This is where the slippery slope leads us when we create vague terms like "hate"-speech which then criminalize. The US is obviously nowhere Thailand, but just questioning the concept of and (lacking) principles around "hate"-speech is enough for some people to consider you a possible sexist, racist, troll... Or just a general "hater". You know, someone who should be banned because they're obviously up to no good.

athenot 9y ago
No. Europe has had hate-speech laws for a while—separate from libel laws which are a totally different story. What makes "hate speech" specific is its broad recognition by an overwhelming portion of the population (including historians), with facts & events to back up its consequences. It's very different from "you said something that hurts my feelings", and it's purposely narrow in its scope.
- throwawaywonk 9y ago
  Speech on its own has no consequences. I'm on a phone so please do look up Brandenburg v. Ohio and the Brandenburg incitement test. Basically, the opinion of the courts since like 1969 has been that even "hateful" speech is protected because advocating some kind of lawlessness is not the same as actually encouraging or engaging in lawlessness. Do also remember that for most of England and America's history, it wasn't "harmful" speech being punished, it was any speech that the ruling class deemed wrong. In America, this was overwhelmingly left-wig speech. Communists, anarchists, union activists, even pacifists were jailed under such laws as the Espionage Act of 1917. I'm not willing to put enough faith in the vagaries of public opinion to gamble free speech, and neither are American lawyers or historians. Furthermore, who would police such speech? Given how, for example, police in Charlottesville stood back and let the fascists and antifascists beat the stuffing out of each other, can you really imagine the State protecting speech such as "kill all landlords" and "fuck laws" and "smash capitalism" if it were suddenly legal to disallow certain types of political speech?
- DarkKomunalec 9y ago
  I was unable to find polls directly on 'hate speech', but http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-millennials-ok-with-limiting-speech-offensive-to-minorities/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-millen... says 49% support limiting offensive speech, and 46% oppose such limits, in the EU - hardly an 'overwhelming' portion.
throwawaywonk 9y ago
For most of Anglo legal history, there were strict punishments on "seditious" speech. Even as late as 1917 people were prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Acts for speech that's way less pointed and vitriolic than the crap people get away with today. But still, free speech is for everyone. The Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that even "hate" speech is protected. Democracy is messy and hard.
oddlyaromatic 9y ago
>You know, someone who should be banned because they're obviously up to no good. This is not what "hater" means in most speech. You seem to be pretty sensitive about this issue. I guess you've been in some unpleasant arguments recently. The vague idea of hate speech is obviously in need of refinement, and has lots of problems. I'm interested in what you would do about hate speech other than criminalize/punish it. Or perhaps more narrowly define it. I won't bite your head off or call you a hater.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  I personally would do nothing at a legal level. I don't believe you can legislate such problems away and that society holding the opinions necessary to try is more dangerous than hate speech in and of itself. The answer to speech is more speech: I suggest making fun of people spouting "hatespeech" and drown their message in an overwhelming amount of mockery. Comedy is a well-known memetic weapon that we've lost the ability to effectively use in our pearl-clutching seriousness. The criminalization of hate speech is actually counter-productive: it gives easy access to a social lightning rod to powerless losers while giving them more respect and attention than they deserve. It makes a serious issue out of something we're better mocking.
- josteink 9y ago
  > You seem to be pretty sensitive about this issue. I'm just an avid proponent of free speech, and almost daily now I see it under attack, probably by the most well-meaning people in the world. Today it's neo-nazis whose rights we are happy to strip away. Next out may be some other "hateful" group... Let's say racists? But according to what definition of racism? Some people seem to think that recognizing the positive in homogeneity is racist. Others seem to mistake the religion of Islam for a race, so that any criticism of Islam makes someone a racist. And what about the Jews? Are they a race? Or a culture? Or maybe a religion? All of those? Are you a racist if you criticize Israel, a state run by Jews? Some people genuinely says so! So if we ban "racist" speech, treat it as non-protected... What do we actually ban? And can we trust that whatever we define as racist today, will be the same which is upheld by court tomorrow? If anything, experience should tell us to be careful, or else we risk sliding down the slippery slope into general censorship. And it has ofcourse always been done with the best of intentions. So when I see free speech under attack, I speak up, because I think free speech is a too damned important thing to ruin over petty stuff like individuals feeling offended. We already have laws against acts of murder, genocide, racism, and what not. We don't need to doubly criminalize it by making speech about it criminal too. That's just redundant and IMO does more harm than good.
davidreiss 9y ago
Absolutely. How is this any different than germans throwing chinese tourists in jail for making nazi salutes? Or saudis throwing atheists in jail because they offended their faith. Or russians throwing lgbt people in jail for being "offensive". Or the chinese throwing pro-democracy groups in jail because they find them offensive. Or Larry Flint in jail for distributing offensive pornography. Anything can be viewed as offensive by anyone. That's why we have free speech rights. To protect ourselves from the offended. It's sad that the internet ( what I grew up believing was going to be the defender of free speech ) is slowly turning into a tool for censorship. And it's sad that the population of "netizens" who were extremely pro-free speech in the 90s and 00s are turning in favor of censorship as less educated people brainwashed by the pro-censorship media join the internet.
JulianMorrison 9y ago
Insulting the king's dog is clearly harmless. Arguing for genocide, or deportations, or coercive "cures" for gayness or etc etc is clearly harmful. There is no reason to make space for haters. Kick them off the internet.
- interfixus 9y ago
  You do realise that someone else might consider arguing against deportations clearly harmful, don't you? I'm being rhetorical. You probably don't. And that is a frightening problem.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
  >Insulting the king's dog is clearly harmless. Why do you think that? Insulting the king's dog is just a "dogwhistle" for insulting the king. By insulting the king, you break the social cohesion of a country. The respect for the king is one of the major things that has held Thailand together, and kept Thailand as one of the few Asian countries that was able to avoid European colonization. Breaking this social cohesion makes civil war and the breakup of the country more likely, which is a bad thing. Here are some other harmful things. Arguing for anything that raises taxes is arguing that people's money be taken from them by force of law - clearly harmful. Arguing for reducing taxes is arguing that the government have less resources that can be used to fund social programs - which can hurt people who depend on it - so clearly harmful. Arguing for tougher prison sentences is clearly harmful to those people convicted of a crime. Arguing for lighter prison sentences is harmful to the victims of crimes. Arguing to curtail free speech on the Internet is clearly harmful as can suppress valid criticism of the government. In addition, the wonderful stuff about this supression of arguments for things you harmful, is that you can also suppress the arguments for why you should be allowed to argue for them.

athenot 9y ago

No. Europe has had hate-speech laws for a while—separate from libel laws which are a totally different story. What makes "hate speech" specific is its broad recognition by an overwhelming portion of the population (including historians), with facts & events to back up its consequences. It's very different from "you said something that hurts my feelings", and it's purposely narrow in its scope.

throwawaywonk 9y ago
Speech on its own has no consequences. I'm on a phone so please do look up Brandenburg v. Ohio and the Brandenburg incitement test. Basically, the opinion of the courts since like 1969 has been that even "hateful" speech is protected because advocating some kind of lawlessness is not the same as actually encouraging or engaging in lawlessness. Do also remember that for most of England and America's history, it wasn't "harmful" speech being punished, it was any speech that the ruling class deemed wrong. In America, this was overwhelmingly left-wig speech. Communists, anarchists, union activists, even pacifists were jailed under such laws as the Espionage Act of 1917. I'm not willing to put enough faith in the vagaries of public opinion to gamble free speech, and neither are American lawyers or historians. Furthermore, who would police such speech? Given how, for example, police in Charlottesville stood back and let the fascists and antifascists beat the stuffing out of each other, can you really imagine the State protecting speech such as "kill all landlords" and "fuck laws" and "smash capitalism" if it were suddenly legal to disallow certain types of political speech?
DarkKomunalec 9y ago
I was unable to find polls directly on 'hate speech', but http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-millennials-ok-with-limiting-speech-offensive-to-minorities/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-millen... says 49% support limiting offensive speech, and 46% oppose such limits, in the EU - hardly an 'overwhelming' portion.

throwawaywonk 9y ago

For most of Anglo legal history, there were strict punishments on "seditious" speech. Even as late as 1917 people were prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Acts for speech that's way less pointed and vitriolic than the crap people get away with today. But still, free speech is for everyone. The Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that even "hate" speech is protected. Democracy is messy and hard.

oddlyaromatic 9y ago

>You know, someone who should be banned because they're obviously up to no good. This is not what "hater" means in most speech. You seem to be pretty sensitive about this issue. I guess you've been in some unpleasant arguments recently. The vague idea of hate speech is obviously in need of refinement, and has lots of problems. I'm interested in what you would do about hate speech other than criminalize/punish it. Or perhaps more narrowly define it. I won't bite your head off or call you a hater.

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
I personally would do nothing at a legal level. I don't believe you can legislate such problems away and that society holding the opinions necessary to try is more dangerous than hate speech in and of itself. The answer to speech is more speech: I suggest making fun of people spouting "hatespeech" and drown their message in an overwhelming amount of mockery. Comedy is a well-known memetic weapon that we've lost the ability to effectively use in our pearl-clutching seriousness. The criminalization of hate speech is actually counter-productive: it gives easy access to a social lightning rod to powerless losers while giving them more respect and attention than they deserve. It makes a serious issue out of something we're better mocking.
josteink 9y ago
> You seem to be pretty sensitive about this issue. I'm just an avid proponent of free speech, and almost daily now I see it under attack, probably by the most well-meaning people in the world. Today it's neo-nazis whose rights we are happy to strip away. Next out may be some other "hateful" group... Let's say racists? But according to what definition of racism? Some people seem to think that recognizing the positive in homogeneity is racist. Others seem to mistake the religion of Islam for a race, so that any criticism of Islam makes someone a racist. And what about the Jews? Are they a race? Or a culture? Or maybe a religion? All of those? Are you a racist if you criticize Israel, a state run by Jews? Some people genuinely says so! So if we ban "racist" speech, treat it as non-protected... What do we actually ban? And can we trust that whatever we define as racist today, will be the same which is upheld by court tomorrow? If anything, experience should tell us to be careful, or else we risk sliding down the slippery slope into general censorship. And it has ofcourse always been done with the best of intentions. So when I see free speech under attack, I speak up, because I think free speech is a too damned important thing to ruin over petty stuff like individuals feeling offended. We already have laws against acts of murder, genocide, racism, and what not. We don't need to doubly criminalize it by making speech about it criminal too. That's just redundant and IMO does more harm than good.

davidreiss 9y ago

Absolutely. How is this any different than germans throwing chinese tourists in jail for making nazi salutes? Or saudis throwing atheists in jail because they offended their faith. Or russians throwing lgbt people in jail for being "offensive". Or the chinese throwing pro-democracy groups in jail because they find them offensive. Or Larry Flint in jail for distributing offensive pornography. Anything can be viewed as offensive by anyone. That's why we have free speech rights. To protect ourselves from the offended. It's sad that the internet ( what I grew up believing was going to be the defender of free speech ) is slowly turning into a tool for censorship. And it's sad that the population of "netizens" who were extremely pro-free speech in the 90s and 00s are turning in favor of censorship as less educated people brainwashed by the pro-censorship media join the internet.

JulianMorrison 9y ago

Insulting the king's dog is clearly harmless. Arguing for genocide, or deportations, or coercive "cures" for gayness or etc etc is clearly harmful. There is no reason to make space for haters. Kick them off the internet.

interfixus 9y ago
You do realise that someone else might consider arguing against deportations clearly harmful, don't you? I'm being rhetorical. You probably don't. And that is a frightening problem.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y ago
>Insulting the king's dog is clearly harmless. Why do you think that? Insulting the king's dog is just a "dogwhistle" for insulting the king. By insulting the king, you break the social cohesion of a country. The respect for the king is one of the major things that has held Thailand together, and kept Thailand as one of the few Asian countries that was able to avoid European colonization. Breaking this social cohesion makes civil war and the breakup of the country more likely, which is a bad thing. Here are some other harmful things. Arguing for anything that raises taxes is arguing that people's money be taken from them by force of law - clearly harmful. Arguing for reducing taxes is arguing that the government have less resources that can be used to fund social programs - which can hurt people who depend on it - so clearly harmful. Arguing for tougher prison sentences is clearly harmful to those people convicted of a crime. Arguing for lighter prison sentences is harmful to the victims of crimes. Arguing to curtail free speech on the Internet is clearly harmful as can suppress valid criticism of the government. In addition, the wonderful stuff about this supression of arguments for things you harmful, is that you can also suppress the arguments for why you should be allowed to argue for them.