3 ms·

What are the arguments for censoring hate speech? Not saying you are either for or against censorship, just trying to understand the other side

d-sc 7y ago
Hate speech can have harmful physiological effects on those it targets.
- ne0flex 7y ago
  >physiological effects I think you mean psychological.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  Very true; I'm reminded of the funny example used in debates on these matters, in which a legal professor is saying he'd rather have somebody break his left leg than to publish something alleging sexual misconduct with a student, and further, there are absolutely non-physical harms which can cause just as much, if not more, pain and anguish than physical harms. In this view, the idea that speech should be able to contain any content by law is about as ridiculous as saying that actions in general should be able to contain any content. The first amendment in the US is on a very shaky metaphysical model which does not accord with what we know about the brain or trauma.
danharaj 7y ago
Free speech is important because speech has consequences. If speech didn't matter, then it wouldn't be a right worth enshrining. One has to grapple with the fact that speech has power regardless of whether they think it is an inviolable, unrestricted right. If it has power, it has the power to be abusive.
claudiawerner 7y ago
I would recommend papers by Susan Brison for the censorship case (and an argument as to why she thinks the First Amendment is baseless), and Rae Langton's case for why pro-free speech liberals can (or even should) support a restriction on hate speech and pornography, based on their own principles.
hinkley 7y ago
We already have a wide body of law covering inciting others to commit crimes on our behalf or at our behest. I can't stand around working up a bunch of drunk college kids to flip over cars expect to not be implicated in the subsequent crimes, and that's just property damage. If I'm talking about a minority student instead... it'd be pretty fucked up that a piece of insured property has more protection under the law than a fellow human being. Especially since if you were in a car accident and bleeding out, the EMTs are allowed to engage in destruction of property in order to save your life. They can damage the car, shred your clothing. They're trained to do this without even thinking (and wasting heartbeats).
- livueta 7y ago
  I think that if in your hypothetical you were _directly_ inciting violence against a minority student (so, "let's go fuck up X" "let's go fuck up students with Y characteristic"), you'd also definitely (and uncontroversially) be implicated. Where it gets harder is what most people seem to want "hate speech" provisions to cover are much more diffuse forms of incitement, if you can even call it that. When you can't make a direct causal mapping between speech and crime, you start having problems. If you didn't personally direct drunk college students to flip cars, but instead had previously posted online somewhere that flipping cars while drunk is fun, it's a lot harder to say that absent your speech, the illegal act would not have occurred. Say a large number of commentators talked up how fun car-flipping is. Does each now possess 1/nth of the criminal liability for incitement? Do we know the actors read a given post? Even if we do, can we quantity the degree to which a given post influenced their actions? Obviously IANAL, but in my lay experience it seems that the sort of incitement liability we have is limited to no-brainer cases where it's quite obvious that the speech was the primary motivating factor for the subsequent criminal action. Anything further quickly gets into an enormous can of worms of unknowables. I think the term of art is the imminence of the incited lawless action. Without imminence, causality is difficult, and you open the door to all kinds of crazy contributory claims - are the authors of the Anarchist's Cookbook liable for every bombing to occur following its publication?

d-sc 7y ago

Hate speech can have harmful physiological effects on those it targets.

ne0flex 7y ago
>physiological effects I think you mean psychological.
claudiawerner 7y ago
Very true; I'm reminded of the funny example used in debates on these matters, in which a legal professor is saying he'd rather have somebody break his left leg than to publish something alleging sexual misconduct with a student, and further, there are absolutely non-physical harms which can cause just as much, if not more, pain and anguish than physical harms. In this view, the idea that speech should be able to contain any content by law is about as ridiculous as saying that actions in general should be able to contain any content. The first amendment in the US is on a very shaky metaphysical model which does not accord with what we know about the brain or trauma.

danharaj 7y ago

Free speech is important because speech has consequences. If speech didn't matter, then it wouldn't be a right worth enshrining. One has to grapple with the fact that speech has power regardless of whether they think it is an inviolable, unrestricted right. If it has power, it has the power to be abusive.

claudiawerner 7y ago

I would recommend papers by Susan Brison for the censorship case (and an argument as to why she thinks the First Amendment is baseless), and Rae Langton's case for why pro-free speech liberals can (or even should) support a restriction on hate speech and pornography, based on their own principles.

hinkley 7y ago

We already have a wide body of law covering inciting others to commit crimes on our behalf or at our behest. I can't stand around working up a bunch of drunk college kids to flip over cars expect to not be implicated in the subsequent crimes, and that's just property damage. If I'm talking about a minority student instead... it'd be pretty fucked up that a piece of insured property has more protection under the law than a fellow human being. Especially since if you were in a car accident and bleeding out, the EMTs are allowed to engage in destruction of property in order to save your life. They can damage the car, shred your clothing. They're trained to do this without even thinking (and wasting heartbeats).

livueta 7y ago
I think that if in your hypothetical you were _directly_ inciting violence against a minority student (so, "let's go fuck up X" "let's go fuck up students with Y characteristic"), you'd also definitely (and uncontroversially) be implicated. Where it gets harder is what most people seem to want "hate speech" provisions to cover are much more diffuse forms of incitement, if you can even call it that. When you can't make a direct causal mapping between speech and crime, you start having problems. If you didn't personally direct drunk college students to flip cars, but instead had previously posted online somewhere that flipping cars while drunk is fun, it's a lot harder to say that absent your speech, the illegal act would not have occurred. Say a large number of commentators talked up how fun car-flipping is. Does each now possess 1/nth of the criminal liability for incitement? Do we know the actors read a given post? Even if we do, can we quantity the degree to which a given post influenced their actions? Obviously IANAL, but in my lay experience it seems that the sort of incitement liability we have is limited to no-brainer cases where it's quite obvious that the speech was the primary motivating factor for the subsequent criminal action. Anything further quickly gets into an enormous can of worms of unknowables. I think the term of art is the imminence of the incited lawless action. Without imminence, causality is difficult, and you open the door to all kinds of crazy contributory claims - are the authors of the Anarchist's Cookbook liable for every bombing to occur following its publication?