7 ms·

Blasphemy laws suck

AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
Slavoy Zizek has once wisely noticed that each and every nation has its own blasphemy laws. In the Soviet Union a joke about Lenin could ruin your career. In the UK expressing politically incorrect opinion about genders may turn an otherwise successful writer into an outlaw. In Austria expressing doubts about Holocaust will bring you into prison. We all are a bunch of intolerant hypocrites.
- sbmthakur 6y ago
  No doubt about being hypocrites. But does one get 10 years for those crimes in UK and Austria?
  - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
    I'd prefer spending 10 years in prison to being excommunicated for life.
- dralley 6y ago
  > In the UK expressing politically incorrect opinion about genders may turn an otherwise successful writer into an outlaw. "an outlaw", really? This might be one of the most hyperbolic statements I've ever seen. The uproar about JK Rowling is not equivalent to the treatment of "blasphemers" in the Soviet Union, give me a break.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
    > The uproar about JK Rowling is not equivalent to the treatment of "blasphemers" in the Soviet Union Which one do you see as being worse (and why?)
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      Maybe a brief read up on gulags, knowing what got you there and what happened might help you.
    - tikhonj 6y ago
      You mean comparing the one where a car with its headlights off turns up at your apartment around midnight and you're never seen again to one where you're a billionaire who gets angry comments on Twitter and, maybe, a non-material reduction in ongoing revenue from a work you finished years ago?
    - chki 6y ago
      Is this a serious question? Are you comparing actual executions to the treatment of Rowling on Twitter? You must be trolling.
      - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
        Ok, now I see where you're coming from. In the original post I was talking about the late (no pun intended) Soviet Union: 1960 onwards. You were not executed for political jokes. You will just be shunned by your friends and won't be offered any decent job and your kids may never get into the college.
    - sbmthakur 6y ago
      In the Soviet Union, the "blasphemers" were actually tried in a show trial, which sent them to labor camps. All they did was to write satire that did not go well with the state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinyavsky%E2%80%93Daniel_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinyavsky%E2%80%93Daniel_trial
      - gambiting 6y ago
        The point everyone seems to be missing here is that it's not like if you said something bad about the party then bam, off to the labour camps you went. The entire Soviet Union would be one huge labour camp if that was the case. That would happen to you if you somehow got published in a newspaper being critical of the government. Or if you were say a headmaster of a school or the director of a state owned company - then yeah, the punishment would be pretty severe. But your regular Joe making a bad comment at the wrong time? You'd definitely lose your job first, few phone calls to the right place and it would happen. Or maybe you got a mandatory re-assignment to a middle of bumfuck nowhere. Not a labour camp, just the same job you were doing already, but in a small town out thousands of km away from your family. Or maybe you were waiting in a queue to get a flat assigned to you - well, that's not happening anymore. Like, my point is, there were escalating punishments to criticizing the government. Some people here suggest that it was like "say something bad about the government = black volga picks you up and you disappear forever". It wasn't that unless you had certain amount of outreach.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    JK Rowling is already a millionare, she can make pretty much any unpopular opinion on twitter or elswhere and apart from the outrage almost nothing will happen to her. She might stop being invited to some events, boo hoo. If you or me posted on twitter that(as an example!!!) people shouldn't be free to pick their own gender and I'm like 99% certain I'd get fired or at least reprimended at work, and I'm sure finding further work would be difficult. And I think you might be a little bit off the mark, because I do actually come from a formely communist country - and yeah, making unpopular statements against the ruling party wouldn't throw you in prison(at least not straight away) but you can guarantee most jobs would fire you on the spot and you'd have problems finding any further work. It's not as different as you think.
    - lostlogin 6y ago
      > If you or me posted on twitter that(as an example!!!) people shouldn't be free to pick their own gender and I'm like 99% certain I'd get fired or at least reprimended at work, and I'm sure finding further work would be difficult. I think you overestimate the reach of Twitter and the number of jobs that trawl employee and potential employee Twitter post history.
      - gambiting 6y ago
        Possibly, but I also think that it's not so unlikely that some "kind soul" would quickly find out where I work and tag them in a reply saying "you need to fire this guy". Then it gets picked up by our PR department and it's all downhill from there. It's possible that it wouldn't have such a large impact on looking for a new job I guess.
  - manfredo 6y ago
    I'm not sure what the above poster means by "outlaw", but yes police do investigate and have sometimes issued fines for public statements that don't invite violence or harass but espouse unpopular views: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-47005937 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-47005937. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-offensive-facebook-and-twitter-posts-soar-london-a7064246.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-offensive-face... This isn't just JK Rowling getting a Twitter backlash, it's being enforced by police.
  - blfr 6y ago
    YouTuber was arrested and convicted in Britain for teaching his dog to do a nazi salute. It's not a ten year sentence for 13-year old but still a very real legal sanction. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/youtuber-count-dankula-found-guilty-of-hate-crime-for-teaching-pet-pug-nazi-salute-a3794926.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/youtuber-count-dankula...
  - snovv_crash 6y ago
    If this is what happens to billionaires, what is the treatment given to a nobody?
- spankalee 6y ago
  Please don't equate questioning the Holocaust - a factual historical event - and blasphemy. Regardless of whether you think anti-Holocaust-denying laws are justifiable, even making this comparison seems to put the Holocaust in the same realm of opinion and faith, which is most assuredly is not.
  - lixtra 6y ago
    But blasphemy laws are justifiable as well. They try to avoid riots on the streets by true believers and also limit the punishment to a well defined point.
    - sbmthakur 6y ago
      Considering this context, ten year sentence to a thirteen year old boy does not seem justifiable.
      - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
        You mean, imprisoning him for just a couple of years would be perfectly acceptable?
      - lixtra 6y ago
        Obviously not. But what if just scolding him leads to riots, your town in ashes and the boy lynched? Not every society is as peaceful as yours [1]. [1] https://news.yahoo.com/another-blogger-hacked-death-bangladesh-061940287.html https://news.yahoo.com/another-blogger-hacked-death-banglade...
  - AdrianB1 6y ago
    I have no doubt about the existence of the Holocaust, but I put the laws in the same bucket of forcing people to think or speak in a way or else. People should be free to think and speak whatever they want, from flat earthers (plain stupid) to Holocaust deniers (ignorant) to religious (no comment) without stupid laws to force them - this is why I love the idea of the USA' First Amendment.
  - 6y ago
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  > In the UK expressing politically incorrect opinion about genders may turn an otherwise successful writer into an outlaw. An “outlaw” whose latest book went on to top the UK book charts: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/23/jk-rowling-thriller-no-1-transphobia-row-troubled-blood-robert-galbraith https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/23/jk-rowling-thr...
- gedy 6y ago
  That you are being downvoted for saying this: QED
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
BrandoElFollito 6y ago
Religion is one of this weird things that seems to be deeply "built in" into our mind, some kind of atavism. It is much more prevalent than a rational, scientific approach and I can understand people want to defend something they deeply believe in. We are not a tolerant species. Now, as a pure atheist, I am all in favor to ban these laws and pus religion somewhere n the side, together with fairy tales (or psychiatric studies). I also know that this will not happen.
- clairity 6y ago
  the desire to explain the world is a built-in survival/thrival mechanism. it's not weird so much as fascinating what our brains can conjure.
  - chrischen 6y ago
    The desire to explain and justify our sins is evil masked as religion.
- f6v 6y ago
  The benefits which come from scientific advances aren't distributed equally. My take on this is that for many people religion offers the only justification of suffering on Earth. Otherwise people with low education level and socioeconomic status don't understand why they have to live on 1$ a day.
  - auggierose 6y ago
    So why are there so many religious people in the US? Are they all living on $1 a day? It probably also explains the current state of the US, as reason and religion usually don't cohabitate too well.
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      The question is “what does religion give them that isn’t given by a more progressive social structure?”
hprotagonist 6y ago
separation of church and state is vital for the full flourishing of both.
- Nesco 6y ago
  I don’t think there is a “church” in Islam. Correct me if I am wrong but the imam is only the prayer leader and nothing more. Islam is by definition social (the concept of Ummah) and includes a corpus of laws. And anyway in most Muslim majorities country you couldn’t enforce such a separation anyway. The new attacks in France linked to the republication of depictions of Muhammad by Charlie Hebdo and the violent protest in Sweden after a Danish politicians burned some copies of the Quran shows Thant it can be hard to enforce even with a Muslim minority.
  - hprotagonist 6y ago
    you can s/religion/church if you want; the intent is the same. I just used the common American synecdoche. Any way you want to slice it, official state sanctioned sectarianism is deadly. Don't do it, that way leads only to pain and degradation. It doesn't matter what family of religions the sect is part of. If full participation in the doings of the state as a citizen requires you to publicly swear to certain religious doctrines as a prerequisite, at least two things happen: 1. religious disagreements are now treasonous threats to the authority of the state that must be met with force, and 2. you cannot trust anyone's affirmation of their beliefs, including your own. Both are extraordinarily corrosive truths to the people who have to perform them, not to mention the state and the religion.
free_herve 6y ago
It's true, but I would be surprised if the Auschwitz memorial director is really against _all_ blasphemy laws. France just jailed an intellectual, Herve Ryssen, for the contents of his books and documentaries about jews. In the meantime, French political elites, including President Macron, are lauding the re-publication of Charlie Hebdo caricatures about Islam. Some animals are more equal than others... Except for the United States, no country has real freedom of speech, and all countries have taboos that can land you in jail if you write books about certain topics.
- znpy 6y ago
  > Except for the United States, no country has real freedom of speech Ahem... - https://youtu.be/TIClA57jWmQ https://youtu.be/TIClA57jWmQ - https://youtu.be/xuAAPsiD768 https://youtu.be/xuAAPsiD768 Particularly the second link, the journalist is forbidden from interviewing an inmate. Also he's under special surveillance. Call that "freedom of speech".
- gambiting 6y ago
  >>Except for the United States, no country has real freedom of speech That's a joke, right? US cosplays at having freedom of speech, the law only protects you from the government, but even that applies selectively - look at the treatment of journalists in the US. No wonder the country is 16th on the freedom of press ranking!
  - AdrianB1 6y ago
    At least they are trying, most countries have no legal support of any kind for free speech.
GuB-42 6y ago
Sure, but it has to be put into context. In countries with a state religion, blasphemy is an attack to the very foundation of that state. Secular countries have similar laws and concepts. It can include hate speech and flag desecration. Some monarchies have lese majeste laws that are similar in nature. In fact, blasphemy and hate speech are very similar. In hate speech, you will, for example, insult the ancestry of your fellow citizens. This is not considered acceptable in a society based on equality, and generally can incite violence, and therefore is illegal in some countries. In blasphemy, you insult the religion of your fellow citizens, this is not acceptable in a society based on that religion and can incite violence, and therefore is illegal is some countries. Other laws that can be related to blasphemy are related to fictional child porn (ex: lolicon). Real child porn is a product of rape, so it is understandably illegal, but lolicon is essentially blasphemy against the sacred "purity" of children. The idea that it can cause distress, incite actual child rape, etc... is the same idea as how blasphemy can cause distress for believers and incite others to not follow the (religious) law. Note, as an atheist, I am against state religions. I am also in favor of freedom of expression over protecting people feelings, especially with such harsh punishment. However, I am not Nigerian, I don't know their culture, so I won't give them lessons when it comes to their internal affairs. I can only disagree.

Blasphemy laws suck

Slavoy Zizek has once wisely noticed that each and every nation has its own blasphemy laws. In the Soviet Union a joke about Lenin could ruin your career. In the UK expressing politically incorrect opinion about genders may turn an otherwise successful writer into an outlaw. In Austria expressing doubts about Holocaust will bring you into prison. We all are a bunch of intolerant hypocrites.

sbmthakur 6y ago
No doubt about being hypocrites. But does one get 10 years for those crimes in UK and Austria?
- AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
  I'd prefer spending 10 years in prison to being excommunicated for life.
dralley 6y ago
> In the UK expressing politically incorrect opinion about genders may turn an otherwise successful writer into an outlaw. "an outlaw", really? This might be one of the most hyperbolic statements I've ever seen. The uproar about JK Rowling is not equivalent to the treatment of "blasphemers" in the Soviet Union, give me a break.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
  > The uproar about JK Rowling is not equivalent to the treatment of "blasphemers" in the Soviet Union Which one do you see as being worse (and why?)
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    Maybe a brief read up on gulags, knowing what got you there and what happened might help you.
  - tikhonj 6y ago
    You mean comparing the one where a car with its headlights off turns up at your apartment around midnight and you're never seen again to one where you're a billionaire who gets angry comments on Twitter and, maybe, a non-material reduction in ongoing revenue from a work you finished years ago?
  - chki 6y ago
    Is this a serious question? Are you comparing actual executions to the treatment of Rowling on Twitter? You must be trolling.
    - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
      Ok, now I see where you're coming from. In the original post I was talking about the late (no pun intended) Soviet Union: 1960 onwards. You were not executed for political jokes. You will just be shunned by your friends and won't be offered any decent job and your kids may never get into the college.
  - sbmthakur 6y ago
    In the Soviet Union, the "blasphemers" were actually tried in a show trial, which sent them to labor camps. All they did was to write satire that did not go well with the state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinyavsky%E2%80%93Daniel_trial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinyavsky%E2%80%93Daniel_trial
    - gambiting 6y ago
      The point everyone seems to be missing here is that it's not like if you said something bad about the party then bam, off to the labour camps you went. The entire Soviet Union would be one huge labour camp if that was the case. That would happen to you if you somehow got published in a newspaper being critical of the government. Or if you were say a headmaster of a school or the director of a state owned company - then yeah, the punishment would be pretty severe. But your regular Joe making a bad comment at the wrong time? You'd definitely lose your job first, few phone calls to the right place and it would happen. Or maybe you got a mandatory re-assignment to a middle of bumfuck nowhere. Not a labour camp, just the same job you were doing already, but in a small town out thousands of km away from your family. Or maybe you were waiting in a queue to get a flat assigned to you - well, that's not happening anymore. Like, my point is, there were escalating punishments to criticizing the government. Some people here suggest that it was like "say something bad about the government = black volga picks you up and you disappear forever". It wasn't that unless you had certain amount of outreach.
- gambiting 6y ago
  JK Rowling is already a millionare, she can make pretty much any unpopular opinion on twitter or elswhere and apart from the outrage almost nothing will happen to her. She might stop being invited to some events, boo hoo. If you or me posted on twitter that(as an example!!!) people shouldn't be free to pick their own gender and I'm like 99% certain I'd get fired or at least reprimended at work, and I'm sure finding further work would be difficult. And I think you might be a little bit off the mark, because I do actually come from a formely communist country - and yeah, making unpopular statements against the ruling party wouldn't throw you in prison(at least not straight away) but you can guarantee most jobs would fire you on the spot and you'd have problems finding any further work. It's not as different as you think.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    > If you or me posted on twitter that(as an example!!!) people shouldn't be free to pick their own gender and I'm like 99% certain I'd get fired or at least reprimended at work, and I'm sure finding further work would be difficult. I think you overestimate the reach of Twitter and the number of jobs that trawl employee and potential employee Twitter post history.
    - gambiting 6y ago
      Possibly, but I also think that it's not so unlikely that some "kind soul" would quickly find out where I work and tag them in a reply saying "you need to fire this guy". Then it gets picked up by our PR department and it's all downhill from there. It's possible that it wouldn't have such a large impact on looking for a new job I guess.
- manfredo 6y ago
  I'm not sure what the above poster means by "outlaw", but yes police do investigate and have sometimes issued fines for public statements that don't invite violence or harass but espouse unpopular views: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-47005937 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-47005937. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-offensive-facebook-and-twitter-posts-soar-london-a7064246.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-offensive-face... This isn't just JK Rowling getting a Twitter backlash, it's being enforced by police.
- blfr 6y ago
  YouTuber was arrested and convicted in Britain for teaching his dog to do a nazi salute. It's not a ten year sentence for 13-year old but still a very real legal sanction. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/youtuber-count-dankula-found-guilty-of-hate-crime-for-teaching-pet-pug-nazi-salute-a3794926.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/youtuber-count-dankula...
- snovv_crash 6y ago
  If this is what happens to billionaires, what is the treatment given to a nobody?
spankalee 6y ago
Please don't equate questioning the Holocaust - a factual historical event - and blasphemy. Regardless of whether you think anti-Holocaust-denying laws are justifiable, even making this comparison seems to put the Holocaust in the same realm of opinion and faith, which is most assuredly is not.
- lixtra 6y ago
  But blasphemy laws are justifiable as well. They try to avoid riots on the streets by true believers and also limit the punishment to a well defined point.
  - sbmthakur 6y ago
    Considering this context, ten year sentence to a thirteen year old boy does not seem justifiable.
    - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
      You mean, imprisoning him for just a couple of years would be perfectly acceptable?
    - lixtra 6y ago
      Obviously not. But what if just scolding him leads to riots, your town in ashes and the boy lynched? Not every society is as peaceful as yours [1]. [1] https://news.yahoo.com/another-blogger-hacked-death-bangladesh-061940287.html https://news.yahoo.com/another-blogger-hacked-death-banglade...
- AdrianB1 6y ago
  I have no doubt about the existence of the Holocaust, but I put the laws in the same bucket of forcing people to think or speak in a way or else. People should be free to think and speak whatever they want, from flat earthers (plain stupid) to Holocaust deniers (ignorant) to religious (no comment) without stupid laws to force them - this is why I love the idea of the USA' First Amendment.
- 6y ago
jakelazaroff 6y ago
> In the UK expressing politically incorrect opinion about genders may turn an otherwise successful writer into an outlaw. An “outlaw” whose latest book went on to top the UK book charts: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/23/jk-rowling-thriller-no-1-transphobia-row-troubled-blood-robert-galbraith https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/sep/23/jk-rowling-thr...
gedy 6y ago
That you are being downvoted for saying this: QED
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

BrandoElFollito 6y ago

Religion is one of this weird things that seems to be deeply "built in" into our mind, some kind of atavism. It is much more prevalent than a rational, scientific approach and I can understand people want to defend something they deeply believe in. We are not a tolerant species. Now, as a pure atheist, I am all in favor to ban these laws and pus religion somewhere n the side, together with fairy tales (or psychiatric studies). I also know that this will not happen.

clairity 6y ago
the desire to explain the world is a built-in survival/thrival mechanism. it's not weird so much as fascinating what our brains can conjure.
- chrischen 6y ago
  The desire to explain and justify our sins is evil masked as religion.
f6v 6y ago
The benefits which come from scientific advances aren't distributed equally. My take on this is that for many people religion offers the only justification of suffering on Earth. Otherwise people with low education level and socioeconomic status don't understand why they have to live on 1$ a day.
- auggierose 6y ago
  So why are there so many religious people in the US? Are they all living on $1 a day? It probably also explains the current state of the US, as reason and religion usually don't cohabitate too well.
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    The question is “what does religion give them that isn’t given by a more progressive social structure?”

hprotagonist 6y ago

separation of church and state is vital for the full flourishing of both.

Nesco 6y ago
I don’t think there is a “church” in Islam. Correct me if I am wrong but the imam is only the prayer leader and nothing more. Islam is by definition social (the concept of Ummah) and includes a corpus of laws. And anyway in most Muslim majorities country you couldn’t enforce such a separation anyway. The new attacks in France linked to the republication of depictions of Muhammad by Charlie Hebdo and the violent protest in Sweden after a Danish politicians burned some copies of the Quran shows Thant it can be hard to enforce even with a Muslim minority.
- hprotagonist 6y ago
  you can s/religion/church if you want; the intent is the same. I just used the common American synecdoche. Any way you want to slice it, official state sanctioned sectarianism is deadly. Don't do it, that way leads only to pain and degradation. It doesn't matter what family of religions the sect is part of. If full participation in the doings of the state as a citizen requires you to publicly swear to certain religious doctrines as a prerequisite, at least two things happen: 1. religious disagreements are now treasonous threats to the authority of the state that must be met with force, and 2. you cannot trust anyone's affirmation of their beliefs, including your own. Both are extraordinarily corrosive truths to the people who have to perform them, not to mention the state and the religion.

free_herve 6y ago

It's true, but I would be surprised if the Auschwitz memorial director is really against _all_ blasphemy laws. France just jailed an intellectual, Herve Ryssen, for the contents of his books and documentaries about jews. In the meantime, French political elites, including President Macron, are lauding the re-publication of Charlie Hebdo caricatures about Islam. Some animals are more equal than others... Except for the United States, no country has real freedom of speech, and all countries have taboos that can land you in jail if you write books about certain topics.

znpy 6y ago
> Except for the United States, no country has real freedom of speech Ahem... - https://youtu.be/TIClA57jWmQ https://youtu.be/TIClA57jWmQ - https://youtu.be/xuAAPsiD768 https://youtu.be/xuAAPsiD768 Particularly the second link, the journalist is forbidden from interviewing an inmate. Also he's under special surveillance. Call that "freedom of speech".
gambiting 6y ago
>>Except for the United States, no country has real freedom of speech That's a joke, right? US cosplays at having freedom of speech, the law only protects you from the government, but even that applies selectively - look at the treatment of journalists in the US. No wonder the country is 16th on the freedom of press ranking!
- AdrianB1 6y ago
  At least they are trying, most countries have no legal support of any kind for free speech.

GuB-42 6y ago

Sure, but it has to be put into context. In countries with a state religion, blasphemy is an attack to the very foundation of that state. Secular countries have similar laws and concepts. It can include hate speech and flag desecration. Some monarchies have lese majeste laws that are similar in nature. In fact, blasphemy and hate speech are very similar. In hate speech, you will, for example, insult the ancestry of your fellow citizens. This is not considered acceptable in a society based on equality, and generally can incite violence, and therefore is illegal in some countries. In blasphemy, you insult the religion of your fellow citizens, this is not acceptable in a society based on that religion and can incite violence, and therefore is illegal is some countries. Other laws that can be related to blasphemy are related to fictional child porn (ex: lolicon). Real child porn is a product of rape, so it is understandably illegal, but lolicon is essentially blasphemy against the sacred "purity" of children. The idea that it can cause distress, incite actual child rape, etc... is the same idea as how blasphemy can cause distress for believers and incite others to not follow the (religious) law. Note, as an atheist, I am against state religions. I am also in favor of freedom of expression over protecting people feelings, especially with such harsh punishment. However, I am not Nigerian, I don't know their culture, so I won't give them lessons when it comes to their internal affairs. I can only disagree.