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[Free Speech, Propaganda & Hate Speech] : Shenanigans Are Declared Against Meiklejohn
The Ender
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Registered User regular
I think I'll open this topic on some common ground: just about everyone reading this probably agrees that the above propaganda, taken from North Korea, is wrong - both in the sense that it is simply factually in error and that it is unethical (...to some people, this is taken so far to the extreme that they believe certain dehumanizing stories about North Koreans being almost autonomous in their subservience to the Kim dynasty; that the propaganda is so effective, in fact, that the DPRK is an entirely weaponized zombie population). Everyone also agree, of course, that the propaganda is perfectly legal - it's state sanctioned, afterall, and even toothless international laws have no current stipulations about what kind of national propaganda is or isn't legal.
But the impact is entirely negative: it gives a false impression of American values & citizens, it demonizes foreigners and it attempts to fan the flames of not only antagonism but outright war (even if you disagree about whether or not the propaganda has much influence, I don't think you'd disagree that it is not a good thing for the government to be printing and posting-up).
So, if we agree that an element of speech like this one can be negative, and without any merit, my question is: why does the West overall - and America in particular - have such a cavalier attitude about regulating it? That is, it seems that the consensus is that we should have either very little or no regulation of what a person or organization can say.
I am of the opinion that speech should not only be regulated, but tightly regulated. That there should be substantial fines for anyone found making casual racist remarks or perpetrating known false information, and jail time for anyone that either directly contributes to a campaign of harassment or conspires to do so. I believe that you should have to obtain a license to become a publisher. I think that our contemporary understanding of what speech can enable, and our modern communications infrastructure that provides a larger megaphone & greater access to personal information than has ever before been known, demands that we change our perspective on speech.
I'll start building my case for this here:
THE MEASURABLE HARM TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC OCCURS ON A LARGE SCALE BECAUSE OF FREE SPEECH
I will offer two instances of very clear, very well studied propaganda campaigns here that have indiscriminately caused damage to everyone in society, without targeting any specific minority groups. Often the proponents of these campaigns are not even trying to do harm; the harm is incidental because the message itself is damaging.
- HIV Denialism
- Anti-Vaccine Libertarianism
HIV Denialism
The cause here is self-explanatory: proponents of this claim asset that HIV is not a virus (some also claim that viruses in general are not real, but we'll stick with just the claim that HIV is fake for the moment), but a myth made-up to scare people into buying various products. Often this assertion is seen hauling a lot of anti-Western luggage.
Exactly how much damage this campaign has caused in at least one country has been studied, and the results published by Harvard University: about 330,000~ people died of preventable infection in South Africa under the regime of Thabo Mbeki and his health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. Mbeki was hardly biased against accepting Western help and was not an uneducated man, and in fact reversed his position and replaced his health minister (who has made combating HIV a priority) after Tshabalala-Msimang's 'herbal remedies' proved to be ineffective - but the damage was already done. For the sake of 'free speech' and 'free inquiry', 330,000 people had to die at the hands of bad opinions.
Anti-Vaccine Libertarianism
Again, this is what it says on the tin: there is a large (and growing) body of opinion that vaccines do more harm than good and that the government should not be mandating vaccinations. They often cite specific ingredients (most of them long since out of use, or never having been used) as proof that this practice is toxic.
The consequences of public distrust in vaccines has been studied in multiple countries at different periods of time - I will cite the two most recent studies here:
In 1996, lobbyists creating a public controversy over MMR vaccines caused a drop in vaccine program participation: in 1999, with immunization rates below 80%, a measles outbreak in Dublin hospitalized 100 children and killed 3.
In 2005, half a decade after the CDC declared that Measles had been eradicated in the United States, Indiana saw a measles outbreak. No children died, but isn't to be laughed at: a disease that was previously extinct, that had cost a great deal of time and energy to eradicate, re-emerged due to a careless scare campaign.
You can see echoes of this same problem with all other forms of pseudoscience and 'alternative medicine' lobbyists. Sensational stories, or ones that they bet media organization will see as sensational, are picked-up and presented. Those stories seen as viewer magnets are then broadcast by telecommunications companies who do not care about the content, only that it generates a large audience.
FREE SPEECH HARMS MINORITIES MORE THAN IT HELPS THEM
The most listened to radio program in America is currently the Rush Limbaugh Show, with over 14 million weekly listeners (followed by the Sean Hannity show, with over 13 million listeners). The most watched news program in America is consistently Fox News, with just over 1 million daily viewers (and, despite a decline, it is as of the most recent polling the network most often rated as the most trustworthy).
I am not going to insult anyone by explaining the editorial positions of these two entities.
The volume of a person's voice in society is proportional to the audience they have, and in practice, the majority at least appears to be much more drawn to hatred than they are measured discourse. Minorities are typically given token representation at best in the largest media platforms, their actions are often highlighted and Other'd (sometimes in a positive light, often in a negative light). This is obviously a bit of a chicken vs the egg dilemma (...the Goddamn egg came first, by the way): do people just hate others and thus create the speech platform for their hatred, or does the hateful speech of a few people foment more hate? Whatever you think the answer is, regulation would still address at least one part of the problem. If Rush Limbaugh were arrested for insinuating that all African Americans are violent gangsters, at the very least, that element of the conversation would be absent. I would go further, however, and suggest that the actions of the body of authority would further compel people that this is not the way to behave.
By contrast, we can look at what sort of credit the free speech model has been for minorities. Primarily, it has - in theory - allowed them to rally and protest. In practice, almost always, these protests are:
1) Shut down by the authorities, acting on behalf of a public that is not interested in minority rights, often using violent force. In other words, in practice, minority groups do not have access to speech without violent repercussions within the free speech model.
2) Demonized by larger media organizations, who have a larger audience (and thus a larger voice), and more influence.
Other efforts simply do not constitute so much as a drop in the speech bucket: books that go ignored / unsold, interviews that are often 'counter-balanced' by persons holding the prevailing view, etc. The only thing that has traditionally been shown to assist minority group is government intervention on their behalf.
PARADOXICALLY, 'FREE SPEECH' GUARANTEES INSTANCES OF CENSORSHIP WORSE THAN STATE REGULATED SPEECH
Because the police cannot arrest you for saying something crass, but they also can't step in on your behalf if Anonymous decides to launch a harassment campaign again you by publishing your contact details.
But yes they can! We have regulations against... oh...
See what I did there?
Here's the thing: harassment laws are already at least sort-of subjective. Is it harassment when a bunch of people that disagree with your political & economic views bash on their drums and blow on their tubas outside of your bedroom window?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrmTHkN7FVs...Apparently not. I mean, i happen to agree with the views of (most of) that mob, but they're still basically screaming at someone with the intent of forcing them to adopt new opinions. That's not discourse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmCwQRe7L9wAgain, the mob here (and again, it's a mob I largely agree with) is censoring Karl Rove. The only way he was allowed to continue is when police stepped-in to eject the protesters, essentially removing their voice from the equation because it was overriding Rove's (and he was who people had paid to go hear).
A laissez faire model breaks down in practice, and there is recognition even in the country with the most extreme speech protections of this. That recognition just isn't acted on equally enough, or with enough rigor.
WE DON'T WANT IT AT WORK, AT HOME, AT SCHOOL, ON THE BUS, ON THE AIRPLANE, NOT EVEN ON MOST PLACE ON THE INTERNET. SO WHY WOULD WE WANT IT AS A PUBLIC POLICY?
Seriously: do you let your kids get away with saying anything? If not, why not? What about your spouse, or relatives that come over to your home? Friends? obviously there tends to be some more leeway for some people in the last two categories, but I suspect most people would not invite a friend who turned out to be a white supremacist over on a second occasion.
How about at work: is there a policy for what happens if you refer to a colleague using a racist slur or otherwise derogatory term? Do you agree with said policy? If so, why?
There's no debate about any western school's approach to free speech: it's completely absent. All discussions are very tightly controlled, disciplinary action for off-color remarks is typically harsh (up to and including expulsion from the grounds) and the administration's word is the last word. Do you agree with this model? If so, why?
Public transit in western countries disallows outbursts of any sort, and most private companies (like Greyhound) will give you one warning before kicking you off of the bus if you so much as swear. No refunds. Do you agree with that policy stance? If so, why?
The overwhelming majority of Internet forums, including this one, have pretty strict standards for user decorum (the one large exception is 4chan; interestingly, this is largely what is attributed to 4chan's extremely piss poor content). Do you agree with such standards? If so, why?
But for some reason, even though we want regulated speech everywhere we go, we demand a public policy in contravention to that extremely reasonable and understandable desire. You cant hand out Holocaust denial pamphlets anywhere, unless you do it on the fucking street corner (assuming said street corner is not owned by someone that will no doubt kick you off their property for being a Nazi). It's a case of massive cognitive dissonance, in my opinion.
So, here we go. Free speech (take 2, apparently?).
Tell me about how much you love it and how horribly wrong I am (but please fill out Dissenting Viewpoint Form 1-A first, and remember to pay special attention to the Indignant Interlocutor Clause at the bottom of page 6!)
With Love and Courage
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It's very easy to point at obvious cases of harmful or unpopular speech and say "why do we allow that? no harm in banning it!" Anti-vaccine crap, neo-nazis, the Westboro Baptists, etc.
It's another thing entirely to judge the edge cases, and when you put that power in the hands of the government, it's an invitation to abuse. Your other examples like school, workplace, home, are just false equivalences - nothing is comparable to government coercive power. Getting detention, fired, or sent to your room are simply not in the same ballpark as the kind of punishment the government can mete out.
Furthermore, we put up with speech regulation in those areas in part because there's a greater sphere of influence you can speak in; don't like your school's anti-swearing policy? Lobby via speech to get it changed from outside the school. There's no equivalent "outside" with government.
Sort of.
Most people want regulated speech, but they want only the bad stuff regulated. "Bad" being determined by them, of course, and not everyone else who has an opinion. This is why I much prefer an absolute model of free speech, because it means that instead of everyone getting to control speech, no one does.
This applies in both good and bad ways. It could be seen as bad because speech you feel is harmful (and you showed some examples that you feel this way about) can go on being spoken. However, this also means that speech your ideological foes feel is harmful can go on being spoken. I'd say this is a large reason why we've gone through as much social change as we have: because those in power are unable to ban speech they disagree with.
And what about enforcement? You say casual racist remarks should be a crime. This strikes me as something extremely hard to prove, and something which enforcement would be very selective on, depending on the view of the enforcing officer.
For me, one of the greatest examples against regulation is the 2009 Iranian Presidential elections, and the ensuing Iranian Green Movement. The internet, communications, and speech was and is tightly regulated there, and had the regulations been effective, I doubt the people could have organized and demonstrated to the extent they did, nor would the world have known the injustice going on there. But because Twitter, Youtube, and other programs were able to circumvent these restrictions and information propagation was possible, the people of Iran were able to at least attempt to act.
More competing view points always strikes me as healthiest, because I believe it allows the most fit opinion to rise to the top.
Who gets to decide truth?
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
At one point wouldn't it have been considered true that homosexuality was a mental illness?
Beyond that, I have never heard of that requirement for speech before.
You see this also with religious speech and practice, where suddenly if you stop forcing people to listen to religious speech you're somehow violating religious freedom.
Or like the complaints about the government funding birth control, which make about as much sense as a Jew or Muslim complaining that you can buy pork with food stamps.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
That's sort of like asking, "Who gets to regulate [other crime]?" WHAT IF TOMORROW THE GOVERNMENT DECIDED THAT QWERTY KEYBOARDS ARE ALL ILLEGAL!? WHAT THEN!?
The state would regulate speech, the same way they regulate anything else (and the same way they regulate some instances of it right now). If you don't trust them to tell apart racist jingoism or anti-vaccine pseudoscience from other forms of speech, frankly, I'm not sure why you'd trust them with anything at all?
He might be thinking of the defense to defamation (generally if something is actually true, it can't be libel/slander).
Can you cite a specific example of this abuse so it can be examined / discussed? Something preferably not from a police state run by a dictator, where it hardly matters what speech laws are in place.
Like maybe there could, theoretically, be a workable system whereby speech is further regulated and benefits to the public arise from said system. In the abstract, it could happen. But as soon as someone says, "...and I'd like to help shape that system!" you know that they're the wrong person to have any say in the matter, and so it's time to table the idea for now.
If we had a system of government where our leaders were randomly selected from "the competent but unwilling", then maybe it could work. Good luck with that.
Additionally Federalism will fuck a lot of people were free speech to be weakened. Look at the shit AZ & TN are pulling with there school systems with bans on 'teaching ethnic resentment' and 'don't say gay' bullshit. You are willing to extend their regulatory reach further by letting them sensor speech in public?
I've found that there's often a fundamental disconnect in perspective between people who live in countries with more strictly regulated speech, such as much of Europe and Australia, and Americans. If someone's reaction to a person being jailed for posting racist things on the internet is "meh, so what?", it seems like my words are in another language. Maybe it's an American First Amendment thing, I don't know. England's infamous libel laws show that this can sometimes be a tricky proposition.
Ah. Well that's not particular to free speech in general.
You don't fight these things by restricting speech, but with more speech of the kind you want. Frankly it's not the government's ability to tell your examples apart from other speech that worries me so much as what they will inevitably do when we lie down and allow them to start regulating forms of speech that are currently protected.
If the First Amendment only protects non-controversial speech, then it is unnecessary and meaningless.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
In any case, the basic problem with heavily limiting speech isn't even necessarily that it's a slippery slope (though it is), it's that it tries to define truth as a popularity contest. Throwing people in jail for unpopular opinions makes it fundamentally very difficult for opinions to change over time. For example, it wasn't that long ago in this country that it would have been trivially easy to ban speech that promoted homosexuals or homosexuality. But because we didn't ban that speech, we were able to shift public opinion towards something more equitable. The assumption that the current ways of doing things are always going to be the right ones has been proven wrong pretty much every time its been tried. Why should this time be any different?
Most of the 'issues' people blame on free speech are actually other issues masquerading as free speech, and censorship tends to become a band-aid for these issues. Don't attack the problem, attack the people talking about the problem. Likewise, it's nearly impossible in practice to write speech laws in such a way that they don't hurt a lot of legitimate speech, especially when lobbyists are involved - if you can write a law against anti-vaccine people, why can't you write a law against the people who would speak out against my company's drug? After all, my drug can save millions of lives, think of all the people you'd be saving.
This is the libertarian outlook; to say this it lacks credibility is an understatement. The idea that Average Man can compete in the marketplace of ideas with, say, News Corporation or Walt Disney Company is more or less ludicrous.
Wait, now I'm unsure about your stance. This last sentence could easily be interpreted as a support for changing current speech laws, unless I'm reading it wayyy wrong.
The only objective aspect of speech is that people will disagree, sincerely, as to what is good speech and what is bad speech. Our system allows for people to bring up opposing points of view, and let the public decide which opinion they agree with.
You seem to be wanting to shortcut that process, eliminate the discussion and just regulate what is and is not bad speech. That is an idea the term "slippery slope" was coined for.
you don't actually have to jail anyone to effectively regulate speech
you can just remove the profitability of waving a megaphone, by (say) seizing all the proceeds derived as such
if the self-appointed Voice of the People is only interested in speaking truth to power, then s/he wouldn't really be dissuaded by not having $$$ BUY GOLD NOW $$$ spots on their show, can they
I mean, you can still disagree with that, but I think it is important to make that distinction.
Am I right, Ender?
Sorry if I communicated that poorly. The idea is that speech laws tend to restrict the ability of the community to change its attitudes over time - for example, if you aren't able to speak out in defense of homosexuals, it becomes very easy for the community to continue hating homosexuals. It's not a defense of change for the sake of change.
Libertarians are routinely mocked around here for their economic ideas ( and rightly so), but I'd say they're usually spot-on when it comes to protecting civil rights.
And don't try to discredit what I'm saying by linking me to libertarians.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Once again, you're deliberately picking the easy cases. But government power turns on a pretty slim majority - giving that majority the ability to choose what speech to restrict means they can basically cement their position.
The overwhelming majority of representatives are Christian. With what you're proposing, how are they prevented from banning all discussion of non-Christian religions?
Let's say the GOP takes the Senate and the White House in 2014. Welp, now it's illegal to advocate for gay rights, or labor regulations, or teach about climate change. The party out of power can't get its message out (sorry MSNBC and CNN, you aren't allowed to contradict anything Fox News says), and eventually there's no non-violent way to get them out of power, because they have the ability to silence the people who would do so.
It's not all easy things that 99% of people agree are bad. In fact it's mostly never that - no one really cares enough about the WBC's message to ban it, because it's not going to convince anyone. The message stays small. Something like the gay rights movement on the other hand gained traction so quickly because people were able to advocate for change, convince people, and grow the message. Do you want to give the government the ability to jail Ellen Degeneres for coming out on her show, or arrest people for participating in a gay pride parade? Because it wasn't so long ago that a substantial majority of the country would have been fine with that, would have voted for it.
1) If you consider nearly every industrialized country to be a fascist dictatorship, I suppose you're right?
2) You're using the DPRK as a sweeping generalization for the way all governments necessarily would act or regulate speech. This is a slippery slope fallacy.
Go figure!
So why, if we agree that these are easy and obvious cases, why aren't we regulating them then? Or is this just another slippery slope fallacy?
This is correct.
I should add, though - like I said in the OP - that I would like extremely strong regulation. A centralized policing system with real teeth.
And it is complete and utter nonsense. Just look at non-free countries and how they deal with homosexuality. Simply saying gay people are not terrible people can send you to prison. Actual advocacy will absolutely definitely land you in prison. This is China, Russia, and that's to say nothing of the delightful shithole that is the middle east.
Naturally, speaking ill of gays, telling all manner of lies about what gay people are about - all perfectly legal and often state sanctioned.
How again are gays being helped in these countries that so thoughtfully declined to have free speech so the government could protect people from harmful speech?
Oh, right, they're not being helped, they're being curbstomped.
Lack of free speech means that minorities, and especially unpopular minorities will not only continue to be subjected to hate speech, it will also criminalize them merely speaking up about it.
While true, I look at it this way:
If I get caught shoplifting a $20.00 box of chocolates from Costco, I can certainly jail time for theft (probably not much time, but still). If, on the other hand, I harass someone over the phone, by e-mail, by website, etc, to the point where they actually commit suicide, I probably will never be charged with a crime.
If I go on TV and promote a pseudo-medical practice that seriously injures or kills a few people, likewise, I'll probably never be charged with a crime.
I think that is absolutely appalling, and a sign that our perception of how speech operates has not caught up with the reality of our circumstances.
It's not a fallacy. If you give the government the ability to regulate speech in this way, they will regulate speech. You're literally designing a slippery slope.
Anyway, any power you want to give the government you have to imagine a megalomaniacal asshole with the power in question. And since my country has elected two of those in the last 45 years, I'd really rather not. I tend to think hate speech laws are bullshit. I'm pretty skeptical of hate crimes legislation for the most part, but when localities refuse to prosecute people who commit against minority offenders I can understand them.
It's not our job to tell people what they can say or think. Just what they should say and be accepted in polite society.
EDIT: Also what Regina said. That was some privileged fucking shit that could not imagine real oppression.
there are actually a large number of nation-states where a relatively cosmopolitan technocracy finds itself ruling a much more traditionalist population, whose political mobilization against the immorality and decadence of foreigners would be distinctly unhelpful
which, in this context, would be eastern european nations outside the CIS and under the aegis of EU institutions
I don't see how, in a Western style democracy, this does not just become public opinion deciding good and bad speech.
I also don't really see how a "centralized policing system with real teeth" is functionally any different than the current FCC. The "teeth" being hefty fines for any speech the FCC deems indecent.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
The countries you mentioned are all either dictatorships, or (in the case of Russia) effectively run by theocratic institutes. Speech laws are completely irrelevant to the situation: Did Madonna speaking-out, in contravention with the Russian laws, help any of the gay community? Did the Russian laws against assault do any favors to the gay rallies? No? Then one can say that the law is a moot fucking point - that dictators and KGB assassins will do whatever they like, laws or no laws, and that bringing them into the discussion is a non sequitor.
On the other hand, if you look at African countries, it's blindingly obvious to anyone that has visited the continent that homophobic propaganda is what has caused a vast majority of the hatred and crimes against humanity in places like Uganda.
Except for the whole thing where thought control is completely antithetical to progressive liberal values.
So color me skeptical of anyone who advocates it.
We are - freedom of speech in the US is not absolute. There are a few slim cases where the government's interest outweighs the individual's interest in speaking freely.
Child pornography/obscenity
Disclosure of classified information
Defamation
Incitement to imminent unlawful action
Conspiracy
and a few others. Generally they involve concrete, direct harm to people, their liberty interests, or security ("fighting words" as a category is technically still on the books, but I don't think anything actually qualifies these days). Your examples might be close to the edge, but you're always going to have examples that are close to the edge. When you move away from direct tangible harm being caused by speech, the argument then rests on "Well most of us agree!" Where "most of us" means whichever majority happens to control the government.
The government already decides what speech is and isn't harmful (see above). Some speech is banned. The vast majority isn't.
Apparently you just want certain speech you disagree with to be banned.