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I believe that an intelligent person should be able to hold two conflicting perceptions at the same time. Therefore, I understand and accept that free speech i

I believe that an intelligent person should be able to hold two conflicting perceptions at the same time. Therefore, I understand and accept that free speech is a foundation for a civilized life, that there should be no restraints on free speech. But, I also acknowledge that free speech isn't so free at all. For a long time and in many places in the world there are minorities without the right to speech. And the barriers aren't just authoritarianism. In many places, even in democratic countries, there are non-formal mechanisms to restrain the speech of women, ethnic and sexual minorities. When an European soccer fan shouts "monkey" to a dark skinned African or Latin American player of an adversary team there is a lot more than free speech at play (e.g.: google for "Vinicius Jr Valencia"). There is the fact that the power of black people to respond and argue is severely constrained in Europe, even more with the rise of anti-immigrant right-wing parties. The key issue here is that the channels of expression are not free, are not open. The same thing goes for, say, women in South Korea, Christians in Muslim countries, Muslims in India, native American people in Latin-America, etc. Wanting "free speech" to justify oppression of a minority that is already constrained in their speech is not exactly advocating freedom. A lot of times it is advocating hypocrisy.

ghusto 3y ago
> There is the fact that the power of black people to respond and argue is severely constrained in Europe, even more with the rise of anti-immigrant right-wing parties. The key issue here is that the channels of expression are not free, are not open Admittedly, I haven't lived in every European country, but I've lived in enough for an eyebrow to be raised nearly off my face at this. Even with what's happening in Italy right now, I couldn't say "the power of black people to respond and argue is severely constrained".
- hamax 3y ago
  Who owns all the media organizations in Italy? Black people? If not, their power to respond and argue is severely constrained
  - ghusto 3y ago
    What you've just said also says: 1. White people as a whole wish to suppress the speech of black people 2. The speech of anybody else who isn't also white is suppressed It also presumes, instead of knowing something. Do you know any black people in Italy? Have you heard of any of them complaining that they have no "power to respond"? EDIT: Case in point; I'm not white, (nearly) all my representatives are white, I don't feel like I have no power to respond. Stop making non-whites victims.
redeeman 3y ago
> When an European soccer fan shouts "monkey" to a dark skinned African or Latin American player of an adversary team there is a lot more than free speech at play are you saying the african soccer player is lower in rank than some idiot fan? im also sure barack obama was much in a bad power dynamic to people that call him monkey president? those guys have all the institutional power, ey?
- diego_moita 3y ago
  What I am saying is "this is a complex issue that should be deeply understood before rushing to easy ideological solutions". The problem is that, like my children doing math, no one wants to understand problems. Ideological solutions that fit in memes are much easier.
  - Towaway69 3y ago
    I do wonder how humans made it this far. 60000 years and speech seemed to work fine. Now it becomes a complex issue needing complicated laws that restrict instead of allowing more speech. One is constantly checking which terminology one is now allowed to use for minorities without offending. Humans have inbuilt biases that we won't be able to get rid off with more laws. Ironically if we look closely at AIs, they are amplifying those biases - remember Facebooks face recognition software that incorrectly identified some minorities as primates? It wasn't AI at fault, it was the bias in the training set.
    - diego_moita 3y ago
      Bullshit. For most of those 60000 years speech didn't work "fine" at all. The majority of people that lived in those times where ruled by empires that had nothing resembling free speech or the rule of the law. You wouldn't even think of bad things against the King or Church in Europe before the 19th century. Same goes to Middle Eastern Empires, Chinese dynasties, the Japanese emperors or Shoguns, etc. Even less than think you'd say anything to offend established powers. Yes, even the Roman Republic was not democratic or free for all. And your "inbuilt biases" are just a justification for sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination created by specific historic circumstances. There is no "inbuilt" basis for discrimination.
MrDrDr 3y ago
I agree with the sentiment of what you are saying. I agree with Mr Atkinson (and Obama apparently) that the solution to speech that causes offence is more speech. The problems as I see it are twofold. The first is that 'more speech' presumably means better speech, better rhetoric, better arguments, and I don't see many people in society these days with these skills. If anything universities have taken backwards step in providing students with these skills. If more speech is just more insults in the other direction... then I'm not sure it helps. The second is that our speakers are often anonymous. I think its much easier to be angry with those who are one step removed (e.g road rage) than one to one. So in a world where people were better equipped to argue their points and where everyone involved was identifiable, online or off - the 'more speech' idea could work.
- Towaway69 3y ago
  If everyone is identifiable all the time then you have a totalitarian state. Free speech is the first thing that flys out the window. And what about whistle blowers or rape victims - should they be identifiable to those they accuse? Edit: What about walking along the street, I bump into someone and say sorry. Should I be identifiable to the other person? If not, Where's the limit/cut-off for identifiable? If yes, what is the difference to Chinese social scoring where literal everyone is identifiable?
  - MrDrDr 3y ago
    I agree - but I also think the opposite does not make a good society - a society where everyone can act with anonymity. I was quite impressed with Matt Ridley's book 'The Origins of Virtue' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Virtue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Virtue) it makes the argument that we evolved the capacity for altruism from the evolutionary benefits of reciprocity. IMO there is a marked difference between city culture - where the chances of meeting a random person in the street again is virtually zero, and village/rural culture where if you don't know the person you bump into you are almost certainly going to be separated by a single degree. The former culture being less 'polite' that the latter. My point is that, while we should have the freedom to speak, we should expect our speech to have some social consequences that should at least cause us to pause and consider those consequences. And I accept that there should be a balance here. I would not want to live in a society that banned anonymous social media accounts, but I do think it would be an interesting experiment to have a civic social space where everyone was identifiable.
bufio 3y ago
How are they constrained in their speech?
- diego_moita 3y ago
  When they speak but no one listens. Mr. Atkinson is a famous white and male comedian. How many famous comedians do you know belonging to minorities? Who would give these minorities a voice? E.g.: google for "Vinicius Jr. Valencia". He is a Brazilian player that was continuously harassed and threatened in Spain, spoke a lot about it, filled complaints but nothing happened. Then in a game where he was harassed his teammates escalated it and stopped the match, his coach made an interview denouncing the racism, the Brazilian government issued a formal protest and the Spanish prime-minister condemned the racism. Only then the Spanish league reacted. There are thousands of black people living in Spain that don't have the power to escalate aggression that Vinicius had. These are people without free speech because no one listens their speaches.
jwalton 3y ago
By way of counter argument, I would point out that in almost any country on earth where free speech is not enshrined as it is in western democracies, minorities fare far worse. I don’t want free speech to help justify oppression, I want free speech so that the oppressed can have a voice. > even more with the rise of anti-immigrant right-wing parties If you give the government the power to regulate speech, and one of those right wing parties comes to power, what do you think they’ll use that power for? The only way to guard against this is not not give them that power in the first place.
- diego_moita 3y ago
  Your first point is very good, thank you. I acknowledge and respect it. The second one is way more complex. There is a big discussion on classic liberal circles about that. Karl Popper, the very own champion of open societies, was strongly against giving free speech to the enemies of freedom.
- lowbloodsugar 3y ago
  The first thing the right wing party does is to roll back such rights. In the US they did it by installing authoritarian Supreme Court justices. You're worried about speech? Women no longer have control over their own bodies! Meanwhile books the right don't like are banned. At the time of this video, the UK supposedly had free speech rights as it was still part of the EU, but of course, the EU's version of "free speech rights" is actually "you have free speech except when we don't want you to". And in any case, as demonstrated in the video, it doesn't matter if you have the right to free speech or to protest, if the government can simply arrest you for something else. For example, if anyone causes property damage during a protest, the police can and will arrest you for it. People in the UK don't realize that their life can be truly fucked by such a charge. You go out for a nice peaceful protest with your teenage kid, and a few months later you have to sell your house because insurance companies will not insure it because of your criminal record, and your mortgage company can and will foreclose since you don't have insurance. Authoritarians (be they on the left or the right) are incredibly good at procedural totalitarianism. You may have a nice piece of paper explaining your free speech rights, and you may eventually win when you get your day in court, but guess what? The courts are underfunded, the lawyers are over-priced, the pro-bono liberal lawyers are stretched too thin, and you got denied bail. Who is going to gofundme your legal fees when all your friends are in jail too? A government is simply the application of force. The enemies of freedom have done a fantastic job at using "free speech" to get voters to elect authoritarians. When trump talks about being friends with Russia, that is not hypothetical, it's not bemusing. Russia is literally an ally of the the confederacy 2.0, and this time they aren't going to lose. Your pretty first amendment isn't stopping them now and we have a "democrat" president.
mcv 3y ago
> there should be no restraints on free speech. There are always restraints on speech, and it's silly to pretend there aren't. The classic example is yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, but threats, blackmail, and slander are all forms of speech with serious restrictions on them. Forms of speech that endanger or coerce other people are not free. The same could be argued about hate speech: speech that creates a hostile environment for vulnerable groups, and often ends up silencing them (thereby effectively restricting their speech).

ghusto 3y ago

> There is the fact that the power of black people to respond and argue is severely constrained in Europe, even more with the rise of anti-immigrant right-wing parties. The key issue here is that the channels of expression are not free, are not open Admittedly, I haven't lived in every European country, but I've lived in enough for an eyebrow to be raised nearly off my face at this. Even with what's happening in Italy right now, I couldn't say "the power of black people to respond and argue is severely constrained".

hamax 3y ago
Who owns all the media organizations in Italy? Black people? If not, their power to respond and argue is severely constrained
- ghusto 3y ago
  What you've just said also says: 1. White people as a whole wish to suppress the speech of black people 2. The speech of anybody else who isn't also white is suppressed It also presumes, instead of knowing something. Do you know any black people in Italy? Have you heard of any of them complaining that they have no "power to respond"? EDIT: Case in point; I'm not white, (nearly) all my representatives are white, I don't feel like I have no power to respond. Stop making non-whites victims.

redeeman 3y ago

> When an European soccer fan shouts "monkey" to a dark skinned African or Latin American player of an adversary team there is a lot more than free speech at play are you saying the african soccer player is lower in rank than some idiot fan? im also sure barack obama was much in a bad power dynamic to people that call him monkey president? those guys have all the institutional power, ey?

diego_moita 3y ago
What I am saying is "this is a complex issue that should be deeply understood before rushing to easy ideological solutions". The problem is that, like my children doing math, no one wants to understand problems. Ideological solutions that fit in memes are much easier.
- Towaway69 3y ago
  I do wonder how humans made it this far. 60000 years and speech seemed to work fine. Now it becomes a complex issue needing complicated laws that restrict instead of allowing more speech. One is constantly checking which terminology one is now allowed to use for minorities without offending. Humans have inbuilt biases that we won't be able to get rid off with more laws. Ironically if we look closely at AIs, they are amplifying those biases - remember Facebooks face recognition software that incorrectly identified some minorities as primates? It wasn't AI at fault, it was the bias in the training set.
  - diego_moita 3y ago
    Bullshit. For most of those 60000 years speech didn't work "fine" at all. The majority of people that lived in those times where ruled by empires that had nothing resembling free speech or the rule of the law. You wouldn't even think of bad things against the King or Church in Europe before the 19th century. Same goes to Middle Eastern Empires, Chinese dynasties, the Japanese emperors or Shoguns, etc. Even less than think you'd say anything to offend established powers. Yes, even the Roman Republic was not democratic or free for all. And your "inbuilt biases" are just a justification for sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination created by specific historic circumstances. There is no "inbuilt" basis for discrimination.

MrDrDr 3y ago

I agree with the sentiment of what you are saying. I agree with Mr Atkinson (and Obama apparently) that the solution to speech that causes offence is more speech. The problems as I see it are twofold. The first is that 'more speech' presumably means better speech, better rhetoric, better arguments, and I don't see many people in society these days with these skills. If anything universities have taken backwards step in providing students with these skills. If more speech is just more insults in the other direction... then I'm not sure it helps. The second is that our speakers are often anonymous. I think its much easier to be angry with those who are one step removed (e.g road rage) than one to one. So in a world where people were better equipped to argue their points and where everyone involved was identifiable, online or off - the 'more speech' idea could work.

Towaway69 3y ago
If everyone is identifiable all the time then you have a totalitarian state. Free speech is the first thing that flys out the window. And what about whistle blowers or rape victims - should they be identifiable to those they accuse? Edit: What about walking along the street, I bump into someone and say sorry. Should I be identifiable to the other person? If not, Where's the limit/cut-off for identifiable? If yes, what is the difference to Chinese social scoring where literal everyone is identifiable?
- MrDrDr 3y ago
  I agree - but I also think the opposite does not make a good society - a society where everyone can act with anonymity. I was quite impressed with Matt Ridley's book 'The Origins of Virtue' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Virtue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Virtue) it makes the argument that we evolved the capacity for altruism from the evolutionary benefits of reciprocity. IMO there is a marked difference between city culture - where the chances of meeting a random person in the street again is virtually zero, and village/rural culture where if you don't know the person you bump into you are almost certainly going to be separated by a single degree. The former culture being less 'polite' that the latter. My point is that, while we should have the freedom to speak, we should expect our speech to have some social consequences that should at least cause us to pause and consider those consequences. And I accept that there should be a balance here. I would not want to live in a society that banned anonymous social media accounts, but I do think it would be an interesting experiment to have a civic social space where everyone was identifiable.

bufio 3y ago

How are they constrained in their speech?

diego_moita 3y ago
When they speak but no one listens. Mr. Atkinson is a famous white and male comedian. How many famous comedians do you know belonging to minorities? Who would give these minorities a voice? E.g.: google for "Vinicius Jr. Valencia". He is a Brazilian player that was continuously harassed and threatened in Spain, spoke a lot about it, filled complaints but nothing happened. Then in a game where he was harassed his teammates escalated it and stopped the match, his coach made an interview denouncing the racism, the Brazilian government issued a formal protest and the Spanish prime-minister condemned the racism. Only then the Spanish league reacted. There are thousands of black people living in Spain that don't have the power to escalate aggression that Vinicius had. These are people without free speech because no one listens their speaches.

jwalton 3y ago

By way of counter argument, I would point out that in almost any country on earth where free speech is not enshrined as it is in western democracies, minorities fare far worse. I don’t want free speech to help justify oppression, I want free speech so that the oppressed can have a voice. > even more with the rise of anti-immigrant right-wing parties If you give the government the power to regulate speech, and one of those right wing parties comes to power, what do you think they’ll use that power for? The only way to guard against this is not not give them that power in the first place.

diego_moita 3y ago
Your first point is very good, thank you. I acknowledge and respect it. The second one is way more complex. There is a big discussion on classic liberal circles about that. Karl Popper, the very own champion of open societies, was strongly against giving free speech to the enemies of freedom.
lowbloodsugar 3y ago
The first thing the right wing party does is to roll back such rights. In the US they did it by installing authoritarian Supreme Court justices. You're worried about speech? Women no longer have control over their own bodies! Meanwhile books the right don't like are banned. At the time of this video, the UK supposedly had free speech rights as it was still part of the EU, but of course, the EU's version of "free speech rights" is actually "you have free speech except when we don't want you to". And in any case, as demonstrated in the video, it doesn't matter if you have the right to free speech or to protest, if the government can simply arrest you for something else. For example, if anyone causes property damage during a protest, the police can and will arrest you for it. People in the UK don't realize that their life can be truly fucked by such a charge. You go out for a nice peaceful protest with your teenage kid, and a few months later you have to sell your house because insurance companies will not insure it because of your criminal record, and your mortgage company can and will foreclose since you don't have insurance. Authoritarians (be they on the left or the right) are incredibly good at procedural totalitarianism. You may have a nice piece of paper explaining your free speech rights, and you may eventually win when you get your day in court, but guess what? The courts are underfunded, the lawyers are over-priced, the pro-bono liberal lawyers are stretched too thin, and you got denied bail. Who is going to gofundme your legal fees when all your friends are in jail too? A government is simply the application of force. The enemies of freedom have done a fantastic job at using "free speech" to get voters to elect authoritarians. When trump talks about being friends with Russia, that is not hypothetical, it's not bemusing. Russia is literally an ally of the the confederacy 2.0, and this time they aren't going to lose. Your pretty first amendment isn't stopping them now and we have a "democrat" president.

mcv 3y ago

> there should be no restraints on free speech. There are always restraints on speech, and it's silly to pretend there aren't. The classic example is yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, but threats, blackmail, and slander are all forms of speech with serious restrictions on them. Forms of speech that endanger or coerce other people are not free. The same could be argued about hate speech: speech that creates a hostile environment for vulnerable groups, and often ends up silencing them (thereby effectively restricting their speech).