8 ms·

It's very sad to see the path the EU has chosen to follow in regards to speech and the free flow of ideas.

jdietrich 8y ago
It's a path that pre-dates the EU. We're a crowded continent with a huge amount of diversity and a long and bitter history of war. We have learned through bitter experience that, while free speech is a precious right, it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances. Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. Free speech is not unconditional in the US; there are many things that an American could say that would see them brought before the courts. European nations have simply drawn the line in a different place, for entirely understandable historical reasons.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances Such as when government is given too much power over it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- deogeo 8y ago
  Some of us have also learned that censorship can mean censorship of pacifist and anti-war speech: https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/censorship#What_was_Censored_3F https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/censorship... I'm sure sympathizing or trying to understand a terrorist's motives (perhaps their home country is being occupied by the US?) can fit under the terrorist content umbrella. Edit: Let's not leave unaddressed the farcical idea that Europe prior to World War I was some bastion of free speech, and that this somehow led to the wars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany#German_Empire_(1871%E2%80%931918) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany#German_E... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom#Prior_restraint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingd... https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=766 https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=766
  - smsm42 8y ago
    BTW the famous "fire in the crowded theater" quote was used by Holmes exactly to suppress anti-government anti-war pacifist speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States Judge Holmes came to regret his support of speech suppression, but a lot of people still seem to miss the point.
  - mk89 8y ago
    Brilliant! Censorship is a technique used by any person in power so far in history (at least as far as I know), no matter the government type. It has little to do with the "fear of committing the same mistakes as they did years ago".
- durnygbur 8y ago
  Wasn’t the problem exactly that the government had too much control over the information flow and the general narrative?
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    It didn't start out that way. It started with conspiracy theorists and fake news.
    - jakeogh 8y ago
      Do you know where that first term comes from? It's strongly related to the second.
      - ionised 8y ago
        Are you suggesting the term 'conspiracy theorist' is somehow a new thing tied to the emergence of 'fake news'?
        jakeogh 8y ago
        The other way around. Fake news and the older term have the the same origins. Neither are accidental. Both are designed to short-circuit critical thinking. Consider how logically meaningless the term "conspiracy theory" is. A great deal of US law is specifically written to address conspiracies. They are forms of psychological warfare. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15003606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15003606
- klagermkii 8y ago
  > We have learned through bitter experience that, while free speech is a precious right, it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances. Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. Have they learnt the right lesson though? What's the alternate history theory here? You toss Hitler in jail after he makes an inflammatory speech to a large crowd, but before he's elected and that prevents WW2? None of this solves the underlying issue of there being deep political problems in any country that ends up with this kind of leader getting into power. The hope of free speech supposedly being that someone will eventually put their finger on the real cause of the problems and get people on board with it, rather than an unfortunate group being scapegoated.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > You toss Hitler in jail after he makes an inflammatory speech to a large crowd, but before he's elected and that prevents WW2? That probably works better if you don't let him out 9 months into a 5 year sentence.
  - Faark 8y ago
    It always fascinating to me when Americans pretend freedom of speech will automatically solve all struggles between people having incompatible worldview while their own political landscape in recent years has become more divisive than ever... I see quite a few similarities with pre ww2 Germany. We'll how fast violence will be on the rise.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      It's not that it will solve all struggles. It's that censorship doesn't solve them, either, but makes everything else worse. And speaking of our own political landscape, last thing I want is a right wing populist government that has been handed laws to crack down on "hate speech" by my fellow progressive do-gooders. If such laws were to pass and found constitutional, I'd expect BLM and BDS to be the first targets in all red states (and Europe has ample precedent for persecuting BDS as "hate speech", so it's not like you'd have any moral high ground on calling them out on it).
- smsm42 8y ago
  > there are many things that an American could say that would see them brought before the courts. Unless it's libel (i.e. intentional or neglectful causing of actual harm to a person) or speech connected to specific lawless action (like saying "let's whack this guy" to a contract killer) - no, there's not. Which things do you mean? > Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged Germans problem was not just "incitement". It was putting Hitler in charge of the government. That wasn't done by "incitement", that was done by actual German top politicians, who thought that putting a strong leader in charge and suppressing opposition (Ermächtigungsgesetz and so on) will solve their stability problems. They did it for security, to keep the tranquility and peace in the nation, so they had the troublemakers arrested and the people who can right the course of the nation assigned the power instead. Too bad those people turned out to be the Nazis. I think the lesson from here is that no opposition voice needs to be suppressed, no group should be excluded, and nobody should be given absolute power over others. Somehow some people in EU think that the lesson if that right people just need to suppress the right things instead. After all, we have so good record in choosing who are the right people and what things they should be suppressing, don't we? We won't make any mistakes again there?
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    >Unless it's libel (i.e. intentional or neglectful causing of actual harm to a person) or speech connected to specific lawless action (like saying "let's whack this guy" to a contract killer) - no, there's not. Which things do you mean? It's quite a long list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      That's not a very long list. Several of them fall into his original categories. Incitement, fighting words and child pornography into the second, false statements into the first. (Or more like the first falls into false statements, but libel really is a central example of false statements not being protected.) The big one he missed was obscenity, but that's somewhat understandable given the frequency with which "obscenity laws" get struck down rather than upheld. And the others aren't categories of speech. You can't use someone else's copyrighted work, but you can convey the exact same information in your own words. Government employees et al can't say certain things, but anyone else can say the same things.
- terryschiavo22 8y ago
  You're being disingenuous. Nazi Germany's rise to power was a composite of many different factors. You make it seem as though free speech was the sole cause of its ascendance.
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    "enabling" and "causing" aren't the same thing.
    - smsm42 8y ago
      Not shooting in place anybody who speaks against the government can be said to "enable" a lot of bad things too. Hitler spoke against contemporary government, so if he had been shot there and then, nothing afterwards would happen. I hope you can see how fallacious such argument is. The reality is, contemporary German government was not shy at all at suppressing freedoms. They had special exception in their Constitution to do just that when the government needs. But they were more afraid of Communists than they were of Nazis, so they gave the suppression machine to Nazis to fix the things. The conclusion from this fail should be "don't build suppression machine out of government", not "give it to Communists instead next time, maybe it'll work better".
- contravariant 8y ago
  European nations have indeed drawn the line in a different places for historical reasons, however that place is most definitely not the same for all nations. It wouldn't make sense for that to be the case as a line drawn for historical reasons must therefore depend on the countries history which is vastly different for each and every country. I reckon on the whole people have fought more to protect free speech than to limit it, although both have indeed occurred, fascism being the main example of the latter.
- tikhonj 8y ago
  The exact same argument could be applied to pretty much any right. It certainly applies to, say, freedom of religion—religion is historically dangerous in exactly the same way as speech, and different societies restrict religion to different extents. And yet, if you seriously brought that argument forth, I suspect people would be more disgusted than if you applied it to freedom of speech. What makes religion so much more important than speech? The main difference I can think of is that freedom of speech is primarily a more individualistic kind of right, while religion is inherently more collectivist.
- Camillo 8y ago
  Absolutely. Having suffered from German imperialism, Europeans understand that the only way to preserve their freedom is to allow it to be restricted as Germany sees fit.
- oska 8y ago
  > it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances The dangers that come from suppression of speech trump the dangers of free speech by far. And your 'historical analysis' is laughably shallow. Frankly, your comment reads like regurgitated propaganda.
- meowface 8y ago
  I would argue the US draws the line in a clearly categorical way, while European countries draw it past a categorical boundary. In the US, what you say has to break an already existing criminal law or be pursuant to a criminal act for it to be criminal. For example, lying to someone about your company's financial situation is fraud, telling someone you're going to injure them is threat of battery, and falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is illegal because it may lead to imminent lawless action, such as a riot or stampede which could injure people. European countries ban those forms of speech, and also ban other forms of speech based on subjective non-criminal harm that is perceived to be a potential result of such speech. For example, denying the Holocaust could lead other people to think it didn't happen, which may cause them to view Jewish people more negatively. The US simply doesn't engage in that kind of subjective interpretation of speech. Speech has to be a component of a criminal act, or a clear precursor to an imminently criminal act. You can't play association games like "he said this, which could lead other people to think X, which could lead people to say Y, which could lead to some form of violence", which most (all?) European legal systems seem to do. I do understand the need for certain limited restrictions on speech in times of war and martial law, and perhaps for brief periods after wars end, but the EU hasn't had a major war in a long time. I get banning swastikas and banning Holocaust denial in the 50s. But I'm an American Jew, and I've been to Germany a bunch in the past decade. I don't care (in a legal sense) if someone denies the Holocaust, and in fact think that banning Holocaust denial greatly empowers them and their cause, not just in Germany but globally. I've seen this firsthand, many times.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    I have to disagree. A lot of the time in America we tend to believe we have an absolute right to freedom of speech, but the reality is that our rights to speech are already tied to our race, sexuality, etc. A black man mouthing off to a police officer for example would be very likely putting himself in a dangerous situation and anything the officer does would end up 'justified' in the court of law. Or you'll be arrested if you laugh at someone powerful, like what happened with the Jeff Sessions incident [1] The great irony of our rabid belief in freedom of speech is that it simply doesn't exist in America. It's a nice platitude, but 'freedom of speech' has always been used as a tool and weapon for those in power to suppress minorities or to bolster their own voices. All you have to do is tie it to some other bogus law or rationale, and you get freedom of speech for me but not for thee. [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-laugh-congressional-hearing_n_590929bbe4b05c39768420ef https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-laugh-congressi...
- natch 8y ago
  It’s debatable whether the problem in Europe was too much free speech. Some would argue the problem was suppression of free speech.
- mr_toad 8y ago
  > Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. I’m not sure that current hate speech laws would have been effective at countering Nazi propaganda. The Nazis were not openly advocating their most extreme policies before the war. Even during the war, the worst atrocities were mostly kept quiet.
- mk89 8y ago
  I used to think the same. However, I see that this fear has become a technique to crush anything else that doesn't follow the same thinking. As usual, extremes are not good, no matter what, and it is in such situations that other extremes take shape.
- mcv 8y ago
  There's indeed always going to be a line somewhere. What's vital though is that whatever censorship you do enact, is limited, proportional, and most importantly, accountable. Allowing rapid action to block harmless content based on false reports seems to fail those criteria.
- raxxorrax 8y ago
  > Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged Evidently not, as that would probably mean we would not be on the road to make at least some mistakes again. We also had hate speech laws in the 19th century... But the real curious argument is that the state was lacking oversight and control over public content. It almost makes you angry thinking about it. Germany had a laisser-faire approach to recent content control. That worked brilliantly. That changed and suddenly we have some really angry people wanting to change some things. Additionally, the far right people want content control as much as everyone. I don't want to see a smug smile while they implement hate-speech laws like in Austria. Using the german experience to justify content control is infantile.
Bombthecat 8y ago
With article 17 (former 13) is the past imho

It's a path that pre-dates the EU. We're a crowded continent with a huge amount of diversity and a long and bitter history of war. We have learned through bitter experience that, while free speech is a precious right, it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances. Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. Free speech is not unconditional in the US; there are many things that an American could say that would see them brought before the courts. European nations have simply drawn the line in a different place, for entirely understandable historical reasons.

CamperBob2 8y ago
it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances Such as when government is given too much power over it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
deogeo 8y ago
Some of us have also learned that censorship can mean censorship of pacifist and anti-war speech: https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/censorship#What_was_Censored_3F https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/censorship... I'm sure sympathizing or trying to understand a terrorist's motives (perhaps their home country is being occupied by the US?) can fit under the terrorist content umbrella. Edit: Let's not leave unaddressed the farcical idea that Europe prior to World War I was some bastion of free speech, and that this somehow led to the wars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany#German_Empire_(1871%E2%80%931918) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Germany#German_E... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom#Prior_restraint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingd... https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=766 https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=766
- smsm42 8y ago
  BTW the famous "fire in the crowded theater" quote was used by Holmes exactly to suppress anti-government anti-war pacifist speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States Judge Holmes came to regret his support of speech suppression, but a lot of people still seem to miss the point.
- mk89 8y ago
  Brilliant! Censorship is a technique used by any person in power so far in history (at least as far as I know), no matter the government type. It has little to do with the "fear of committing the same mistakes as they did years ago".
durnygbur 8y ago
Wasn’t the problem exactly that the government had too much control over the information flow and the general narrative?
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  It didn't start out that way. It started with conspiracy theorists and fake news.
  - jakeogh 8y ago
    Do you know where that first term comes from? It's strongly related to the second.
    - ionised 8y ago
      Are you suggesting the term 'conspiracy theorist' is somehow a new thing tied to the emergence of 'fake news'?
      - jakeogh 8y ago
        The other way around. Fake news and the older term have the the same origins. Neither are accidental. Both are designed to short-circuit critical thinking. Consider how logically meaningless the term "conspiracy theory" is. A great deal of US law is specifically written to address conspiracies. They are forms of psychological warfare. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15003606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15003606
klagermkii 8y ago
> We have learned through bitter experience that, while free speech is a precious right, it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances. Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. Have they learnt the right lesson though? What's the alternate history theory here? You toss Hitler in jail after he makes an inflammatory speech to a large crowd, but before he's elected and that prevents WW2? None of this solves the underlying issue of there being deep political problems in any country that ends up with this kind of leader getting into power. The hope of free speech supposedly being that someone will eventually put their finger on the real cause of the problems and get people on board with it, rather than an unfortunate group being scapegoated.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > You toss Hitler in jail after he makes an inflammatory speech to a large crowd, but before he's elected and that prevents WW2? That probably works better if you don't let him out 9 months into a 5 year sentence.
- Faark 8y ago
  It always fascinating to me when Americans pretend freedom of speech will automatically solve all struggles between people having incompatible worldview while their own political landscape in recent years has become more divisive than ever... I see quite a few similarities with pre ww2 Germany. We'll how fast violence will be on the rise.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    It's not that it will solve all struggles. It's that censorship doesn't solve them, either, but makes everything else worse. And speaking of our own political landscape, last thing I want is a right wing populist government that has been handed laws to crack down on "hate speech" by my fellow progressive do-gooders. If such laws were to pass and found constitutional, I'd expect BLM and BDS to be the first targets in all red states (and Europe has ample precedent for persecuting BDS as "hate speech", so it's not like you'd have any moral high ground on calling them out on it).
smsm42 8y ago
> there are many things that an American could say that would see them brought before the courts. Unless it's libel (i.e. intentional or neglectful causing of actual harm to a person) or speech connected to specific lawless action (like saying "let's whack this guy" to a contract killer) - no, there's not. Which things do you mean? > Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged Germans problem was not just "incitement". It was putting Hitler in charge of the government. That wasn't done by "incitement", that was done by actual German top politicians, who thought that putting a strong leader in charge and suppressing opposition (Ermächtigungsgesetz and so on) will solve their stability problems. They did it for security, to keep the tranquility and peace in the nation, so they had the troublemakers arrested and the people who can right the course of the nation assigned the power instead. Too bad those people turned out to be the Nazis. I think the lesson from here is that no opposition voice needs to be suppressed, no group should be excluded, and nobody should be given absolute power over others. Somehow some people in EU think that the lesson if that right people just need to suppress the right things instead. After all, we have so good record in choosing who are the right people and what things they should be suppressing, don't we? We won't make any mistakes again there?
- jdietrich 8y ago
  >Unless it's libel (i.e. intentional or neglectful causing of actual harm to a person) or speech connected to specific lawless action (like saying "let's whack this guy" to a contract killer) - no, there's not. Which things do you mean? It's quite a long list. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    That's not a very long list. Several of them fall into his original categories. Incitement, fighting words and child pornography into the second, false statements into the first. (Or more like the first falls into false statements, but libel really is a central example of false statements not being protected.) The big one he missed was obscenity, but that's somewhat understandable given the frequency with which "obscenity laws" get struck down rather than upheld. And the others aren't categories of speech. You can't use someone else's copyrighted work, but you can convey the exact same information in your own words. Government employees et al can't say certain things, but anyone else can say the same things.
terryschiavo22 8y ago
You're being disingenuous. Nazi Germany's rise to power was a composite of many different factors. You make it seem as though free speech was the sole cause of its ascendance.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  "enabling" and "causing" aren't the same thing.
  - smsm42 8y ago
    Not shooting in place anybody who speaks against the government can be said to "enable" a lot of bad things too. Hitler spoke against contemporary government, so if he had been shot there and then, nothing afterwards would happen. I hope you can see how fallacious such argument is. The reality is, contemporary German government was not shy at all at suppressing freedoms. They had special exception in their Constitution to do just that when the government needs. But they were more afraid of Communists than they were of Nazis, so they gave the suppression machine to Nazis to fix the things. The conclusion from this fail should be "don't build suppression machine out of government", not "give it to Communists instead next time, maybe it'll work better".
contravariant 8y ago
European nations have indeed drawn the line in a different places for historical reasons, however that place is most definitely not the same for all nations. It wouldn't make sense for that to be the case as a line drawn for historical reasons must therefore depend on the countries history which is vastly different for each and every country. I reckon on the whole people have fought more to protect free speech than to limit it, although both have indeed occurred, fascism being the main example of the latter.
tikhonj 8y ago
The exact same argument could be applied to pretty much any right. It certainly applies to, say, freedom of religion—religion is historically dangerous in exactly the same way as speech, and different societies restrict religion to different extents. And yet, if you seriously brought that argument forth, I suspect people would be more disgusted than if you applied it to freedom of speech. What makes religion so much more important than speech? The main difference I can think of is that freedom of speech is primarily a more individualistic kind of right, while religion is inherently more collectivist.
Camillo 8y ago
Absolutely. Having suffered from German imperialism, Europeans understand that the only way to preserve their freedom is to allow it to be restricted as Germany sees fit.
oska 8y ago
> it is also an extremely dangerous one in the wrong circumstances The dangers that come from suppression of speech trump the dangers of free speech by far. And your 'historical analysis' is laughably shallow. Frankly, your comment reads like regurgitated propaganda.
meowface 8y ago
I would argue the US draws the line in a clearly categorical way, while European countries draw it past a categorical boundary. In the US, what you say has to break an already existing criminal law or be pursuant to a criminal act for it to be criminal. For example, lying to someone about your company's financial situation is fraud, telling someone you're going to injure them is threat of battery, and falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is illegal because it may lead to imminent lawless action, such as a riot or stampede which could injure people. European countries ban those forms of speech, and also ban other forms of speech based on subjective non-criminal harm that is perceived to be a potential result of such speech. For example, denying the Holocaust could lead other people to think it didn't happen, which may cause them to view Jewish people more negatively. The US simply doesn't engage in that kind of subjective interpretation of speech. Speech has to be a component of a criminal act, or a clear precursor to an imminently criminal act. You can't play association games like "he said this, which could lead other people to think X, which could lead people to say Y, which could lead to some form of violence", which most (all?) European legal systems seem to do. I do understand the need for certain limited restrictions on speech in times of war and martial law, and perhaps for brief periods after wars end, but the EU hasn't had a major war in a long time. I get banning swastikas and banning Holocaust denial in the 50s. But I'm an American Jew, and I've been to Germany a bunch in the past decade. I don't care (in a legal sense) if someone denies the Holocaust, and in fact think that banning Holocaust denial greatly empowers them and their cause, not just in Germany but globally. I've seen this firsthand, many times.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  I have to disagree. A lot of the time in America we tend to believe we have an absolute right to freedom of speech, but the reality is that our rights to speech are already tied to our race, sexuality, etc. A black man mouthing off to a police officer for example would be very likely putting himself in a dangerous situation and anything the officer does would end up 'justified' in the court of law. Or you'll be arrested if you laugh at someone powerful, like what happened with the Jeff Sessions incident [1] The great irony of our rabid belief in freedom of speech is that it simply doesn't exist in America. It's a nice platitude, but 'freedom of speech' has always been used as a tool and weapon for those in power to suppress minorities or to bolster their own voices. All you have to do is tie it to some other bogus law or rationale, and you get freedom of speech for me but not for thee. [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-laugh-congressional-hearing_n_590929bbe4b05c39768420ef https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-laugh-congressi...
natch 8y ago
It’s debatable whether the problem in Europe was too much free speech. Some would argue the problem was suppression of free speech.
mr_toad 8y ago
> Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged. I’m not sure that current hate speech laws would have been effective at countering Nazi propaganda. The Nazis were not openly advocating their most extreme policies before the war. Even during the war, the worst atrocities were mostly kept quiet.
mk89 8y ago
I used to think the same. However, I see that this fear has become a technique to crush anything else that doesn't follow the same thinking. As usual, extremes are not good, no matter what, and it is in such situations that other extremes take shape.
mcv 8y ago
There's indeed always going to be a line somewhere. What's vital though is that whatever censorship you do enact, is limited, proportional, and most importantly, accountable. Allowing rapid action to block harmless content based on false reports seems to fail those criteria.
raxxorrax 8y ago
> Germans in particular are acutely aware of the disastrous consequences of allowing incitement to go unchallenged Evidently not, as that would probably mean we would not be on the road to make at least some mistakes again. We also had hate speech laws in the 19th century... But the real curious argument is that the state was lacking oversight and control over public content. It almost makes you angry thinking about it. Germany had a laisser-faire approach to recent content control. That worked brilliantly. That changed and suddenly we have some really angry people wanting to change some things. Additionally, the far right people want content control as much as everyone. I don't want to see a smug smile while they implement hate-speech laws like in Austria. Using the german experience to justify content control is infantile.

Bombthecat 8y ago

With article 17 (former 13) is the past imho