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[Freedom Of Speech]: More Than The First Amendment

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Posts

  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    Senna1 wrote: »
    In the context of a political system/environment that can't even in good faith agree on what "fascism" is, and who they are, I'm forced to agree with "Styrofoam Sammich" . Any law you institute now is just as likely to hit groups like, say, BLM as it is to deter actual Nazis.

    I mean, how many times have you heard/seen someone on the right say, "There's no race problem in America, BLM are the real racists" or some variation. Trump wanted to punish NFL players for peaceful silent protests.

    No-one is enacting a speech-restricting law friendly to the interests of liberals and minorities in anything like the current America. No way.



    Like laws against murder. And robbery. And abuse. And threats.

    This seems like a very silly reason to be against a law that, if anything, would for once target white supremacists more if written non insanely.

  • FrankiedarlingFrankiedarling Registered User regular
    Enc wrote: »
    I'm still blanking on what hate speech laws are supposed to accomplish.

    Say you pass something hard and fast, "Kill the Jews" is criminalized. That's already not a problem. We don't have huge parades and protests with people shouting about how they want to kill the Jews. That's not the language they use. The language is coded around things like "protect our land" and shit like that. A vigorous hate speech law would have to be a living, breathing tribunal tracking the various slogans and dogwhistles used to have any effect whatsoever. A body that would decide meaning, context, etc. To me that seems unfeasible, unwise and not a small bit Orwellian.

    So my problem here is that feel-good hate speech laws will accomplish nothing, weaken our speech laws for nothing, and probably catch more ironic idiots like my Jewish friends lolling over "gas the Jews" memes than they will actual racist hatemongers. On the other side, hate speech laws that actually *do* something are going to be huge, ugly overreaches I want nothing to do with.

    The entire mess seems to be a huge wave of "we've got to do SOMETHING". Sometimes "something" is worse than doing nothing. Free speech is not absolute, but there's a standard that needs to be met to fuck with it: both in terms of need, and in the cost of the solution. Even if you feel the current situation meets the need, I don't see how the cost is worth it.

    Also a bad faith reading, I and others have talked about how such a thing would be about broadening existing exclusions to first amendment protections, not banning a slogan or phrase. Nobody is talking about banning slogans or phrases but those misrepresenting the thread.

    Could you clarify how it would work for me? Because I clearly am not understanding what you mean by hate speech laws.
    Quid wrote: »
    I'm still blanking on what hate speech laws are supposed to accomplish.

    Say you pass something hard and fast, "Kill the Jews" is criminalized. That's already not a problem. We don't have huge parades and protests with people shouting about how they want to kill the Jews. That's not the language they use. The language is coded around things like "protect our land" and shit like that. A vigorous hate speech law would have to be a living, breathing tribunal tracking the various slogans and dogwhistles used to have any effect whatsoever. A body that would decided meaning, context, etc. To me that seems unfeasible, unwise and not a small bit Orwellian.

    So my problem here is that feel-good hate speech laws will accomplish nothing, weaken our speech laws for nothing, and probably catch more ironic idiots like my Jewish friends lolling over "gas the Jews" memes than they are actual racist hatemongers. On the other side, hate speech laws that actually *do* something are going to be huge, ugly overreaches I want nothing to do with.

    The entire mess seems to be a huge wave of "we've got to do SOMETHING". Sometimes "something" is worse than doing nothing. Free speech is not absolute, but there's a standard that needs to be met to fuck with it: both in terms of need, and in the cost of the solution. Even if you feel the current situation meets the need, I don't see how the cost is worth it.

    There's plenty of people that say "Kill the Jews" out in the open. They may not be the majority but I'm fine starting with them and working from there.

    Meanwhile we generally have no trouble discerning between someone literally threatening others and someone telling a joke. Mistakes do happen but they're straightened out eventually and well worth not allowing threats.

    We already have examples of humor going awry in other countries with hate speech laws, and for what gain? So a few loudmouth racists face consequences and learn to code their shit? Not worth fucking with, far as I can see. It does little to no good for its cost.

  • Senna1Senna1 Registered User regular
    Quid wrote: »
    Senna1 wrote: »
    In the context of a political system/environment that can't even in good faith agree on what "fascism" is, and who they are, I'm forced to agree with "Styrofoam Sammich" . Any law you institute now is just as likely to hit groups like, say, BLM as it is to deter actual Nazis.

    I mean, how many times have you heard/seen someone on the right say, "There's no race problem in America, BLM are the real racists" or some variation. Trump wanted to punish NFL players for peaceful silent protests.

    No-one is enacting a speech-restricting law friendly to the interests of liberals and minorities in anything like the current America. No way.



    Like laws against murder. And robbery. And abuse. And threats.

    This seems like a very silly reason to be against a law that, if anything, would for once target white supremacists more if written non insanely.
    If you arbitrarily change the conditions of reality to remove the reason for objection, yes the reason for objection becomes silly. I will be more than happy to reconsider my position under a different administration, with a different Congress.

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    Senna1 wrote: »
    In the context of a political system/environment that can't even in good faith agree on what "fascism" is, and who they are, I'm forced to agree with @Styrofoam Sammich . Any law you institute now is just as likely to hit groups like, say, BLM as it is to deter actual Nazis.

    I mean, how many times have you heard/seen someone on the right say, "There's no race problem in America, BLM are the real racists" or some variation. Trump wanted to punish NFL players for peaceful silent protests.

    No-one is enacting a speech-restricting law friendly to the interests of liberals and minorities in anything like the current America. No way.



    ...once again, this is not how anything works in the US. You would be creating broader exclusions to 1st amendment protections that are dependant upon context, not banning a concept of racism.

    Just how the current legal framework can be used by prosecution for repeated violent threats against a woman by a stalker to take action, so might one imagine an extension to be a thing be used by law enforcement for repeated violent threats against a minority group despite multiple people being the target of such verbal attacks. Like the current framework, one would have to provide repeated documentation of intentional of harm to multiple groups (rather than a single person) and have the will to take action upon it (or, more likely, be added to a wider attack that was committed to increase the consequences of hate crimes) in order for prosecution to be taken seriously, much less a conviction to occur.

    And, again, this is a broad-based for instance. This is the sort of thing we should be discussing the language of to mitigate misuse, not misrepresenting the concept of what hate speech response in the US to hyperbolic slogans and misrepresentations.

  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    Senna1 wrote: »
    Quid wrote: »
    Senna1 wrote: »
    In the context of a political system/environment that can't even in good faith agree on what "fascism" is, and who they are, I'm forced to agree with "Styrofoam Sammich" . Any law you institute now is just as likely to hit groups like, say, BLM as it is to deter actual Nazis.

    I mean, how many times have you heard/seen someone on the right say, "There's no race problem in America, BLM are the real racists" or some variation. Trump wanted to punish NFL players for peaceful silent protests.

    No-one is enacting a speech-restricting law friendly to the interests of liberals and minorities in anything like the current America. No way.



    Like laws against murder. And robbery. And abuse. And threats.

    This seems like a very silly reason to be against a law that, if anything, would for once target white supremacists more if written non insanely.
    If you arbitrarily change the conditions of reality to remove the reason for objection, yes the reason for objection becomes silly. I will be more than happy to reconsider my position under a different administration, with a different Congress.

    But then there will be another administration and congress after that. With no guarantee that they'll be any better than the current one.

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    Could you clarify how it would work for me? Because I clearly am not understanding what you mean by hate speech laws.

    Enc wrote: »
    Senna1 wrote: »
    In the context of a political system/environment that can't even in good faith agree on what "fascism" is, and who they are, I'm forced to agree with @Styrofoam Sammich . Any law you institute now is just as likely to hit groups like, say, BLM as it is to deter actual Nazis.

    I mean, how many times have you heard/seen someone on the right say, "There's no race problem in America, BLM are the real racists" or some variation. Trump wanted to punish NFL players for peaceful silent protests.

    No-one is enacting a speech-restricting law friendly to the interests of liberals and minorities in anything like the current America. No way.



    ...once again, this is not how anything works in the US. You would be creating broader exclusions to 1st amendment protections that are dependant upon context, not banning a concept of racism.

    Just how the current legal framework can be used by prosecution for repeated violent threats against a woman by a stalker to take action, so might one imagine an extension to be a thing be used by law enforcement for repeated violent threats against a minority group despite multiple people being the target of such verbal attacks. Like the current framework, one would have to provide repeated documentation of intentional of harm to multiple groups (rather than a single person) and have the will to take action upon it (or, more likely, be added to a wider attack that was committed to increase the consequences of hate crimes) in order for prosecution to be taken seriously, much less a conviction to occur.

    And, again, this is a broad-based for instance. This is the sort of thing we should be discussing the language of to mitigate misuse, not misrepresenting the concept of what hate speech response in the US to hyperbolic slogans and misrepresentations.

  • spool32spool32 Contrary Library Registered User regular
    I wonder if there's a way to craft a minor expansion of the current exclusion that would meet our current tests. Like, is it really so bad that our current 1A structure failing us as a society? Or is this simply an enforcement problem?

  • QuidQuid Definitely not a banana Registered User regular
    Quid wrote: »
    I'm still blanking on what hate speech laws are supposed to accomplish.

    Say you pass something hard and fast, "Kill the Jews" is criminalized. That's already not a problem. We don't have huge parades and protests with people shouting about how they want to kill the Jews. That's not the language they use. The language is coded around things like "protect our land" and shit like that. A vigorous hate speech law would have to be a living, breathing tribunal tracking the various slogans and dogwhistles used to have any effect whatsoever. A body that would decided meaning, context, etc. To me that seems unfeasible, unwise and not a small bit Orwellian.

    So my problem here is that feel-good hate speech laws will accomplish nothing, weaken our speech laws for nothing, and probably catch more ironic idiots like my Jewish friends lolling over "gas the Jews" memes than they are actual racist hatemongers. On the other side, hate speech laws that actually *do* something are going to be huge, ugly overreaches I want nothing to do with.

    The entire mess seems to be a huge wave of "we've got to do SOMETHING". Sometimes "something" is worse than doing nothing. Free speech is not absolute, but there's a standard that needs to be met to fuck with it: both in terms of need, and in the cost of the solution. Even if you feel the current situation meets the need, I don't see how the cost is worth it.

    There's plenty of people that say "Kill the Jews" out in the open. They may not be the majority but I'm fine starting with them and working from there.

    Meanwhile we generally have no trouble discerning between someone literally threatening others and someone telling a joke. Mistakes do happen but they're straightened out eventually and well worth not allowing threats.

    We already have examples of humor going awry in other countries with hate speech laws, and for what gain? So a few loudmouth racists face consequences and learn to code their shit? Not worth fucking with, far as I can see. It does little to no good for its cost.

    People in this country have faced consequences for threats that weren't intentional too.

    Perhaps explain something bad that would happen by not allowing others to say "Kill the Jews" with intent instead of hand wringing about how it's not worth it for the potential consequences.

  • Phoenix-DPhoenix-D Registered User regular
    spool32 wrote: »
    I wonder if there's a way to craft a minor expansion of the current exclusion that would meet our current tests. Like, is it really so bad that our current 1A structure failing us as a society? Or is this simply an enforcement problem?

    Both, I think. You have to be incredibly specific with threats before they're actionable, and even actionable stuff is often ignored.

  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    I'm still blanking on what hate speech laws are supposed to accomplish.

    Say you pass something hard and fast, "Kill the Jews" is criminalized. That's already not a problem. We don't have huge parades and protests with people shouting about how they want to kill the Jews. That's not the language they use. The language is coded around things like "protect our land" and shit like that. A vigorous hate speech law would have to be a living, breathing tribunal tracking the various slogans and dogwhistles used to have any effect whatsoever. A body that would decide meaning, context, etc. To me that seems unfeasible, unwise and not a small bit Orwellian.

    So my problem here is that feel-good hate speech laws will accomplish nothing, weaken our speech laws for nothing, and probably catch more ironic idiots like my Jewish friends lolling over "gas the Jews" memes than they will actual racist hatemongers. On the other side, hate speech laws that actually *do* something are going to be huge, ugly overreaches I want nothing to do with.

    The entire mess seems to be a huge wave of "we've got to do SOMETHING". Sometimes "something" is worse than doing nothing. Free speech is not absolute, but there's a standard that needs to be met to fuck with it: both in terms of need, and in the cost of the solution. Even if you feel the current situation meets the need, I don't see how the cost is worth it.

    Literally

    LITERALLY

    had a bunch of white dudes in polos, khakis and backyard party torches marching on a Virginia college camping chanting “Jews will not replace us”

    waNkm4k.jpg?1
  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Lanz wrote: »
    I'm still blanking on what hate speech laws are supposed to accomplish.

    Say you pass something hard and fast, "Kill the Jews" is criminalized. That's already not a problem. We don't have huge parades and protests with people shouting about how they want to kill the Jews. That's not the language they use. The language is coded around things like "protect our land" and shit like that. A vigorous hate speech law would have to be a living, breathing tribunal tracking the various slogans and dogwhistles used to have any effect whatsoever. A body that would decide meaning, context, etc. To me that seems unfeasible, unwise and not a small bit Orwellian.

    So my problem here is that feel-good hate speech laws will accomplish nothing, weaken our speech laws for nothing, and probably catch more ironic idiots like my Jewish friends lolling over "gas the Jews" memes than they will actual racist hatemongers. On the other side, hate speech laws that actually *do* something are going to be huge, ugly overreaches I want nothing to do with.

    The entire mess seems to be a huge wave of "we've got to do SOMETHING". Sometimes "something" is worse than doing nothing. Free speech is not absolute, but there's a standard that needs to be met to fuck with it: both in terms of need, and in the cost of the solution. Even if you feel the current situation meets the need, I don't see how the cost is worth it.

    Literally

    LITERALLY

    had a bunch of white dudes in polos, khakis and backyard party torches marching on a Virginia college camping chanting “Jews will not replace us”

    Will they didn't say HOW they would keep Jews from replacing them. Just that they wouldn't.

    In contrast, I've seen "Egg Boy should have used a gun instead" posts on Tumblr.

    Hexmage-PA on
  • Senna1Senna1 Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Quid wrote: »
    Senna1 wrote: »
    Quid wrote: »
    Senna1 wrote: »
    In the context of a political system/environment that can't even in good faith agree on what "fascism" is, and who they are, I'm forced to agree with "Styrofoam Sammich" . Any law you institute now is just as likely to hit groups like, say, BLM as it is to deter actual Nazis.

    I mean, how many times have you heard/seen someone on the right say, "There's no race problem in America, BLM are the real racists" or some variation. Trump wanted to punish NFL players for peaceful silent protests.

    No-one is enacting a speech-restricting law friendly to the interests of liberals and minorities in anything like the current America. No way.



    Like laws against murder. And robbery. And abuse. And threats.

    This seems like a very silly reason to be against a law that, if anything, would for once target white supremacists more if written non insanely.
    If you arbitrarily change the conditions of reality to remove the reason for objection, yes the reason for objection becomes silly. I will be more than happy to reconsider my position under a different administration, with a different Congress.

    But then there will be another administration and congress after that. With no guarantee that they'll be any better than the current one.
    The practical ability to currently write and pass a law that is difficult to misuse is what I doubt, not the idea that such is theoretically possible with good faith actors in elected office.
    Lanz wrote: »
    I'm still blanking on what hate speech laws are supposed to accomplish.

    Say you pass something hard and fast, "Kill the Jews" is criminalized. That's already not a problem. We don't have huge parades and protests with people shouting about how they want to kill the Jews. That's not the language they use. The language is coded around things like "protect our land" and shit like that. A vigorous hate speech law would have to be a living, breathing tribunal tracking the various slogans and dogwhistles used to have any effect whatsoever. A body that would decide meaning, context, etc. To me that seems unfeasible, unwise and not a small bit Orwellian.

    So my problem here is that feel-good hate speech laws will accomplish nothing, weaken our speech laws for nothing, and probably catch more ironic idiots like my Jewish friends lolling over "gas the Jews" memes than they will actual racist hatemongers. On the other side, hate speech laws that actually *do* something are going to be huge, ugly overreaches I want nothing to do with.

    The entire mess seems to be a huge wave of "we've got to do SOMETHING". Sometimes "something" is worse than doing nothing. Free speech is not absolute, but there's a standard that needs to be met to fuck with it: both in terms of need, and in the cost of the solution. Even if you feel the current situation meets the need, I don't see how the cost is worth it.

    Literally

    LITERALLY

    had a bunch of white dudes in polos, khakis and backyard party torches marching on a Virginia college camping chanting “Jews will not replace us”

    Which isn't "Kill the Jews". I mean, it is, but legally, it isn't. Which I think? was the point of the other post.

    Senna1 on
  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    spool32 wrote: »
    I wonder if there's a way to craft a minor expansion of the current exclusion that would meet our current tests. Like, is it really so bad that our current 1A structure failing us as a society? Or is this simply an enforcement problem?

    The structure itself is fine, the exclusions need updating on (in my opinion) two fronts:
    • To deal with the concept of doxxing as not being valid speech. Destroying someone's right to privacy should have some degree of accountability or actionability in the modern era, even with broad exemptions for being a celebrity and such there is a need for stronger protections than what we have given the amount of people physically harmed by online harassment.
    • Hate crimes and speech attacking minorities, as I outlined earlier in the thread (repeated violent threats against a minority group despite multiple people being the target of such verbal attacks).

    Again, these would need to be written carefully to account for a broad degree of variations in severity. But these are the two places where the 1st amendment needs some exemptions in my seeing of things. Both have led to actionable harm and deaths that have few ways to prosecute despite having direct agency of harm.

  • FrankiedarlingFrankiedarling Registered User regular
    Lanz wrote: »
    I'm still blanking on what hate speech laws are supposed to accomplish.

    Say you pass something hard and fast, "Kill the Jews" is criminalized. That's already not a problem. We don't have huge parades and protests with people shouting about how they want to kill the Jews. That's not the language they use. The language is coded around things like "protect our land" and shit like that. A vigorous hate speech law would have to be a living, breathing tribunal tracking the various slogans and dogwhistles used to have any effect whatsoever. A body that would decide meaning, context, etc. To me that seems unfeasible, unwise and not a small bit Orwellian.

    So my problem here is that feel-good hate speech laws will accomplish nothing, weaken our speech laws for nothing, and probably catch more ironic idiots like my Jewish friends lolling over "gas the Jews" memes than they will actual racist hatemongers. On the other side, hate speech laws that actually *do* something are going to be huge, ugly overreaches I want nothing to do with.

    The entire mess seems to be a huge wave of "we've got to do SOMETHING". Sometimes "something" is worse than doing nothing. Free speech is not absolute, but there's a standard that needs to be met to fuck with it: both in terms of need, and in the cost of the solution. Even if you feel the current situation meets the need, I don't see how the cost is worth it.

    Literally

    LITERALLY

    had a bunch of white dudes in polos, khakis and backyard party torches marching on a Virginia college camping chanting “Jews will not replace us”

    EXACTLY.

    It’s obvious what they mean but they’re not explicitly threatening genocide. You don’t need to say it to Say It!

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    Senna1 wrote: »
    Quid wrote: »
    Senna1 wrote: »
    Quid wrote: »
    Senna1 wrote: »
    In the context of a political system/environment that can't even in good faith agree on what "fascism" is, and who they are, I'm forced to agree with "Styrofoam Sammich" . Any law you institute now is just as likely to hit groups like, say, BLM as it is to deter actual Nazis.

    I mean, how many times have you heard/seen someone on the right say, "There's no race problem in America, BLM are the real racists" or some variation. Trump wanted to punish NFL players for peaceful silent protests.

    No-one is enacting a speech-restricting law friendly to the interests of liberals and minorities in anything like the current America. No way.



    Like laws against murder. And robbery. And abuse. And threats.

    This seems like a very silly reason to be against a law that, if anything, would for once target white supremacists more if written non insanely.
    If you arbitrarily change the conditions of reality to remove the reason for objection, yes the reason for objection becomes silly. I will be more than happy to reconsider my position under a different administration, with a different Congress.

    But then there will be another administration and congress after that. With no guarantee that they'll be any better than the current one.
    The practical ability to currently write and pass a law that is difficult to misuse is what I doubt, not the idea that such is theoretically possible with good faith actors in elected office.

    This perspective rests upon the idea that status quo is the best you are going to get.

    Which is bonkers when discussing minority rights in a variety of ways.

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    By most accounts, the march in Charleston was deplorable, but not legally actionable and wouldn't be under any possible model of US hate crime laws.

    However, such laws would ensure that the guy who hit the counter-protesters suffers under more extensive punishments that would serve as a deterrent to some degree against such marches from taking action.

    Under the first amendment, you will never stop there being Illinois Nazis, but you will pre-emptively stop a lot of localized hate crimes and shootings as they are, in many cases, the endgame of severe, actionable harassment of minorities.

  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    Quid wrote: »
    Quid wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    It's already illegal to make death threats.

    It should would help if advocates were more clear about what specifically they want to outlaw and what the punishments would be then.

    I mean sammich I've been pretty clear in what I've been advocating haven't I?


    Like I got like at least three different posts that boil down to "Advocating genocide against anyone who isn't a white cis straight christian is bad."

    I'd even go a step further and say no calling for genocide of anyone! Just no serious avocation of genocide ever!

    I can not fathom any benefit to it that people want to defend.

    Its not about finding any merit in the speech, its in thinking about how its really applied versus what the goals are.

    Any government from here to the end of time can implement any law they want in bad faith.

    If the government gets to the point where they're rounding up half the population for extermination they'll cite HOA ordinances for all it matters.

    Sorry, meeting.

    I don't think we can be so flippant about how laws will or might be applied despite our best intentions! You guys didn't like my mandatory organ donation half joke but what if we were talking about laws making it easier to infiltrate and crack down on organized racial groups with violent intent? That's a great idea! But historically that kind of shit led to a lot of cops arresting and/murdering black activists!

    We cannot just assume laws will be acted on in the way we intended!

    wq09t4opzrlc.jpg
  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    Lanz wrote: »
    I'm still blanking on what hate speech laws are supposed to accomplish.

    Say you pass something hard and fast, "Kill the Jews" is criminalized. That's already not a problem. We don't have huge parades and protests with people shouting about how they want to kill the Jews. That's not the language they use. The language is coded around things like "protect our land" and shit like that. A vigorous hate speech law would have to be a living, breathing tribunal tracking the various slogans and dogwhistles used to have any effect whatsoever. A body that would decide meaning, context, etc. To me that seems unfeasible, unwise and not a small bit Orwellian.

    So my problem here is that feel-good hate speech laws will accomplish nothing, weaken our speech laws for nothing, and probably catch more ironic idiots like my Jewish friends lolling over "gas the Jews" memes than they will actual racist hatemongers. On the other side, hate speech laws that actually *do* something are going to be huge, ugly overreaches I want nothing to do with.

    The entire mess seems to be a huge wave of "we've got to do SOMETHING". Sometimes "something" is worse than doing nothing. Free speech is not absolute, but there's a standard that needs to be met to fuck with it: both in terms of need, and in the cost of the solution. Even if you feel the current situation meets the need, I don't see how the cost is worth it.

    Literally

    LITERALLY

    had a bunch of white dudes in polos, khakis and backyard party torches marching on a Virginia college camping chanting “Jews will not replace us”

    I don't think it was a lack of hate speech laws that got them the kid treatment from the cops.

    wq09t4opzrlc.jpg
  • Senna1Senna1 Registered User regular
    Enc wrote: »
    Senna1 wrote: »
    Quid wrote: »
    Senna1 wrote: »
    Quid wrote: »
    Senna1 wrote: »
    In the context of a political system/environment that can't even in good faith agree on what "fascism" is, and who they are, I'm forced to agree with "Styrofoam Sammich" . Any law you institute now is just as likely to hit groups like, say, BLM as it is to deter actual Nazis.

    I mean, how many times have you heard/seen someone on the right say, "There's no race problem in America, BLM are the real racists" or some variation. Trump wanted to punish NFL players for peaceful silent protests.

    No-one is enacting a speech-restricting law friendly to the interests of liberals and minorities in anything like the current America. No way.



    Like laws against murder. And robbery. And abuse. And threats.

    This seems like a very silly reason to be against a law that, if anything, would for once target white supremacists more if written non insanely.
    If you arbitrarily change the conditions of reality to remove the reason for objection, yes the reason for objection becomes silly. I will be more than happy to reconsider my position under a different administration, with a different Congress.

    But then there will be another administration and congress after that. With no guarantee that they'll be any better than the current one.
    The practical ability to currently write and pass a law that is difficult to misuse is what I doubt, not the idea that such is theoretically possible with good faith actors in elected office.

    This perspective rests upon the idea that status quo is the best you are going to get.

    Which is bonkers when discussing minority rights in a variety of ways.
    I will explicitly state I think the status quo is the best you're going to get*, until something changes politically. The midterm elections changed a shitton in the House, let's hope 2020 does more.

    *legislatively

  • Hexmage-PAHexmage-PA Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Hexmage-PA wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    I'm still blanking on what hate speech laws are supposed to accomplish.

    Say you pass something hard and fast, "Kill the Jews" is criminalized. That's already not a problem. We don't have huge parades and protests with people shouting about how they want to kill the Jews. That's not the language they use. The language is coded around things like "protect our land" and shit like that. A vigorous hate speech law would have to be a living, breathing tribunal tracking the various slogans and dogwhistles used to have any effect whatsoever. A body that would decide meaning, context, etc. To me that seems unfeasible, unwise and not a small bit Orwellian.

    So my problem here is that feel-good hate speech laws will accomplish nothing, weaken our speech laws for nothing, and probably catch more ironic idiots like my Jewish friends lolling over "gas the Jews" memes than they will actual racist hatemongers. On the other side, hate speech laws that actually *do* something are going to be huge, ugly overreaches I want nothing to do with.

    The entire mess seems to be a huge wave of "we've got to do SOMETHING". Sometimes "something" is worse than doing nothing. Free speech is not absolute, but there's a standard that needs to be met to fuck with it: both in terms of need, and in the cost of the solution. Even if you feel the current situation meets the need, I don't see how the cost is worth it.

    Literally

    LITERALLY

    had a bunch of white dudes in polos, khakis and backyard party torches marching on a Virginia college camping chanting “Jews will not replace us”

    Will they didn't say HOW they would keep Jews from replacing them. Just that they wouldn't.

    In contrast, I've seen "Egg Boy should have used a gun instead" posts on Tumblr.

    peykphqxswzq.png

    Should this be able to get a pass? That's clearly a more explicit call for violence than "x will not replace us", especially since it's made in reference to the Egg Boy incident, which involved a specific politician and not the Christchurch shooter.

    Hexmage-PA on
  • rockrngerrockrnger Registered User regular
    I mean, 100 percent serious, would hitler be liable under hate speech laws as defined in this thread?

  • EncEnc A Fool with Compassion Pronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered User regular
    edited March 2019
    rockrnger wrote: »
    I mean, 100 percent serious, would hitler be liable under hate speech laws as defined in this thread?

    This isn't an answerable question without edoscopically looking at all of his speech and actions, which I have no intention of subjecting myself to.

    But, if you want an example, likely George Zimmerman (the man who killed Treyvon Martin) would probably be liable for some degree of prosecution given his speech history, and history of harassing African Americans, leading up to the shooting. Assuming, specifically, a broad law like I suggested earlier in this thread.

    And such a law would probably be too broad to pass muster.

    Enc on
  • AridholAridhol Daddliest Catch Registered User regular
    I think enforcement is a huge problem but also some specific expansions of what death threats or incitement entail is warranted because what we have now has not kept up.

    "we should eliminate all the redheads" should not be allowed.

    "I don't like redheads, they have no soul's" SHOULD be allowed.

    I think this kind of expansion will come with a corresponding burden on the legal system but maybe that's worth it?

    Of course shit heads are gonna code their language but the more you water this down the more you lose your clique.


    Basically I think people should be able to criticise and make fun of something or someone but not advocate, call for, or express a desire that some crime be committed against them.

    I. E. Someone should rob the queen and steal her jewels - No, not allowed.

    The queen is way too rich, I should have a crown too. - yes allowed.

  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    I don't know that society benefits from locking someone up for "we should eliminate all the redheads" unless that's just a fill in the blank for some ethnic group.
    Basically I think people should be able to criticise and make fun of something or someone but not advocate, call for, or express a desire that some crime be committed against them.
    This gets in to a problem where the people who have power can start using your hate speech laws to insulate themselves from activism or criticism. To say nothing of the danger it puts comedians and satirists in.

    Styrofoam Sammich on
    wq09t4opzrlc.jpg
  • AridholAridhol Daddliest Catch Registered User regular
    I don't know that society benefits from locking someone up for "we should eliminate all the redheads" unless that's just a fill in the blank for some ethnic group.
    Basically I think people should be able to criticise and make fun of something or someone but not advocate, call for, or express a desire that some crime be committed against them.
    This gets in to a problem where the people who have power can start using your hate speech laws to insulate themselves from activism or criticism. To say nothing of the danger it puts comedians and satirists in.

    I think society and our legal system would be able to navigate this gray.
    Also yes that's a fill in for x ethnic group or y religion or z protected group.

  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    Aridhol wrote: »
    I don't know that society benefits from locking someone up for "we should eliminate all the redheads" unless that's just a fill in the blank for some ethnic group.
    Basically I think people should be able to criticise and make fun of something or someone but not advocate, call for, or express a desire that some crime be committed against them.
    This gets in to a problem where the people who have power can start using your hate speech laws to insulate themselves from activism or criticism. To say nothing of the danger it puts comedians and satirists in.

    I think society and our legal system would be able to navigate this gray.
    Also yes that's a fill in for x ethnic group or y religion or z protected group.

    Our legal system is already stacked in favor of power though, and its not a clean line between legislative power and the judicial branch. Is society really made better by a law that goes after a comedian for saying a senator should have his teeth knocked out?

    Our current laws about threats generally require they be specific and actionable. Why is that not sufficient?

    wq09t4opzrlc.jpg
  • ForarForar #432 Toronto, Ontario, CanadaRegistered User regular
    No law is going to get 100% of everything, that's not a reason to avoid doing something about the problem.

    I don't think anyone expects a single law to land and suddenly saying "kill all the _____'s" once to get the FBI kicking in the door and someone sent to jail for 500 years.

    But when you have people systemically calling for the eradication of a group, be it ethnic, religious, or something else, a pattern of behaviour builds. Do I trust the current administration and their appointed judiciary to use this in good faith? Fuck no, but even living in the apparent totalitarian hellscape some folks seem to think Canada's hate speech laws make it out to be, it doesn't need to be perfect to be an improvement. It doesn't need to capture every last single offensive statement, or prevent anyone from ever having a racist or otherwise bigoted idea to be worth pondering.

    Like, nobody is going to yell out a racial slur in the heat of the moment and have cops tackling them from 3 directions at once out of nowhere, but when a long term pattern of statements calling to incite violence can be found (and through the glories of social media and the internet, I'm sure that if an egregious example brings the microscope onto someone, that wouldn't exactly be a hard case to build), maybe having something to act upon before actual violence occurs has value?

    Look, I'm not saying that there isn't room for concern. I get that people need not be hardcore free speech absolutists to be against the idea. But I also look in from abroad and see increasingly racist expressions and sentiment (not that there are more racists, but those that exist seem emboldened to share their ideology) and think "uh, it'd sure be nice if maybe y'all might do something about the people ranting about jews and n_______s and f__s and whatever other group they feel should leave or die at that moment.

    Surely the great legal and political minds of the US can figure out some first step that allows law enforcement some leeway to act on the most egregious cases, without taking a steaming shit on the first amendment entirely. Words and statements can already be prosecuted under a number of existing laws, by my understanding, meaning that the precedent already exists, though I'm sure there's some civil versus criminal distinction going on here or something.

    I'm not a lawyer. I don't claim to have all the answers, and I'm sure someone will fisk this post apart in a manner most cutting. But the idea, the sentiment, the point I'm trying to make, is hopefully being expressed in a reasonable fashion.

    First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
  • AridholAridhol Daddliest Catch Registered User regular
    Aridhol wrote: »
    I don't know that society benefits from locking someone up for "we should eliminate all the redheads" unless that's just a fill in the blank for some ethnic group.
    Basically I think people should be able to criticise and make fun of something or someone but not advocate, call for, or express a desire that some crime be committed against them.
    This gets in to a problem where the people who have power can start using your hate speech laws to insulate themselves from activism or criticism. To say nothing of the danger it puts comedians and satirists in.

    I think society and our legal system would be able to navigate this gray.
    Also yes that's a fill in for x ethnic group or y religion or z protected group.

    Our legal system is already stacked in favor of power though, and its not a clean line between legislative power and the judicial branch. Is society really made better by a law that goes after a comedian for saying a senator should have his teeth knocked out?

    Our current laws about threats generally require they be specific and actionable. Why is that not sufficient?

    I dunno maybe instead of saying someone should beat the politician up they could say he's an idiot who makes bad decisions?

    I guess maybe no, you shouldn't be able to say someone should knock x's teeth out.

  • discriderdiscrider Registered User regular
    Sleep wrote: »
    discrider wrote: »
    Incenjucar wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Jephery wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    I get the feeling that as society becomes more educated regarding technology, speech on a global scale will become uncontrollable.

    Information security has always been a losing battle. China's firewall will fall, and in addition to everyone learning about Tiananmen square, tools will be created to circumvent all speech control.

    Distilled down to the essence we literally cannot stop speech, we cannot revoke the right to communication, unless we turn to grossly inhumane methods like locking them solitary and naked in a cell a'la Marquis de Sade in Quills. If a fascist wants to distribute his propaganda by writing it in crayon on yellow notebook paper in a cell block, I'm happy letting him have that right. Similarly, we ultimately cannot stop sites like 4chan from forming, if somebody wants to go to great lengths to disseminate whatever bullshit they want behind a veil of anonymity, a wealth of technology exists and will continue to exist to enable that.

    Political power is bought with, to borrow the blog title, lawyers guns and money. A broad right to free speech does not necessarily mean that you get to keep your high-paying TV anchor position or your highly-monetized YouTube channel or your speaking gigs at major universities. You can speak all you want but the establishment can revoke your access to the privileges of civilization.

    (Obviously there needs to be caution exercising such power. Deplatforming can have a chilling effect on speech almost as much as government censorship. There's a real danger in blacklisting, as in the US in the 1950s or China today. I am absolutely not arguing that this is unproblematic.)

    Optimistic point of view: Liberalism has largely won the culture war already. Corporations are pretty responsive to calls for private sanctioning of obvious bigots. Even Fox News looks like it might be positioning itself to buck its alt-right hosts if Trump loses the next election.

    We might not need to do anything if things keep going our way. Society will do its job.

    This is, broadly speaking, my take. Nothing about the current movement has scared me. The biggest events are what? Some pasty dudes with torches, a vehicular homicide and a shooting in New Zealand? I know there’s more and I know I’m being light here but most of the alt right advances are, as I see it, Democrats being bad at politics and letting a reactionary opponent have their 4 years in the sun. That comes with consequences but it will pass.

    Liberals won the culture war, and while they were stomping on the corpse it twitched. A death gasp, if you will. It’s not something I’m going to throw away our freedoms over. I get it’s serious but overreactions can have dire consequences.

    I'd just like to address this real quick?

    This?

    This thign doesn't happen.

    You don't "win" a culture war. Culture Wars, essentially, do not stop. Culture is this always shifting, always evolving thing. There is no end of history, there is no final state utopia, there is no "finished"

    And shit like White Supremacy? It doesn't go away. Not ever, not fully. You have to be on guard for it, you have to be ready to always tamp its fires back down before it kills countless numbers of people.

    We're not, as a society, doing that.

    We're ignoring it as it spreads and saying everything is fine.

    Sure, the quest for progress goes on and on. This is the way of the universe, I’m down with that.

    But perspective is necessary, if only to avoid flipping your shit and ruining the things you built unnecessarily. The rhetoric used here is scarily close to the sort of thing I used to hear post 9-11. When people are scared and angry they do stupid things, like stripping themselves of their own speech protections because a relatively small group of malcontents raised some hell.

    It's really not that hard for rational, ethical people to make a narrow set of laws and reasonable consequences for baseline standards. Something like:

    * Do not advocate for performing the act of the legal definition of rape in violation of federal law
    * Do not advocate for performing the act of the legal definition of murder in violation of federal law
    * Do not advocate for performing the act of the legal definition of slavery in violation of federal law

    Note that this means that advocating for a change of the definition of any of these is not part of it, but only advocating to break the law itself, as could be enshrined in legalese. So if someone goes and defines abortion as murder you can still advocate to change that definition, you just can't say "while this is still illegal go ahead and do it anyway" without consequence.

    And then you use actually sane consequences.

    A few thoughts!

    How does this deal with humor and/or satire? I know the standard response on these forums is that humor is used as a shielding device, and that is certainly true, but dark humor is a thing and it's no crime to have a bad sense of humor either. At least, not currently. Look at the UK and the "Nazi Pug" incident as an example. I don't like the guy at all but his situation is totally fucked and a massive government overreach, and the joke was hilarious. Edgy, to use a word no one loves anymore, but funny. And I'm dubious of how you craft a speech law to get around "it's just a joke, bro". At least, in such a way that doesn't trample on speech.

    Which brings to the next point, which is that the speech I see complained about the most here is the notorious dogwhistle. In any set of narrowly defined speech laws that would have to remain, no? I don't see a way to narrowly define speech laws that allow extrapolation of meaning in such a way.

    With that in mind, what do we gain from this? You can't stop people dogwhistling and any clause seeking to deal with humor is going to be a massive overreach, so that's out too. So now we've overthrown several centuries of tradition and messed with our speech laws--that taboo is broken, setting the precedent for going back in to change more later--and for what?

    Nah.
    Punishing people who have 'a bad sense of humour' is completely acceptable, where their humour is normalising the above abhorrent topics, eg. rape.
    Not doing so also means you're attempting to enforce this law on the intent of the accused, which is rather unknowable.
    Better to punish on every offence, no matter the intent, and then increase punishment on repeat offenders.

    And once that massive self-inflicted loophole is closed, dog-whistling is actionable because the hate-speech can't pretend to just be a joke.
    The only other difference between dog-whistling and normal hate-speech then would be the exact language used, and I'm sure the same law can keep up with whatever specific words are used in the hate-speech.

    Just to be clear, a religious icon I wore for years is considered a white supremacy dog whistle. Should I be arrested or my religious symbol banned?
    Like how does that play out in a court?

    "Mr. Shapiro, you called this police shooting victim a thug, which is clearly coded language for n----r"
    "No I was referring to his past legal problems"
    "No you weren't, 2 years prison and pay this fine"
    Sleep wrote: »
    Should the magic shop in my town with futhark runes adorning the windows be shut down cause lots of folks that like viking stuff are fuckin racist?

    How bout my yearly viking feast, am I not allowed to go to that anymore?

    Is a racist laying claim to a thing immediate grounds upon which to throw it and everything having to do with it in the memory hole?

    Clearly 'dog-whistle' means something different to what I thought it meant.
    But yes, if these coded symbols or signals are being directly used to argue for the murder, rape, etc of other people, then they should be caught in the previously mentioned hate-speech laws too.

    If they are not caught in the previously mentioned laws, because they're flagging 'I will support this thing but not mention the thing', then they don't further Frankiedarlings argument that the mentioned laws against direct hate-speech are useless, as they are an entirely different form of speech.
    That is, you can wait until the hate-speech purveyor says directly what the thing they are supporting is rather than jumping on ambiguous dog-whistles, and if they never say any direct hate-speech, then no-one will be able to tell what they're promoting, which renders the speech inherently less dangerous.

    Similarly, everyday use of the same words used in hate-speech but in different contexts and in different sentence structures is of course not something that you'd want to criminalise.
    Dog-whistles are the same; they are only dangerous when being directly used in hate-speech.

  • SleepSleep Registered User regular
    discrider wrote: »
    Sleep wrote: »
    discrider wrote: »
    Incenjucar wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Jephery wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    I get the feeling that as society becomes more educated regarding technology, speech on a global scale will become uncontrollable.

    Information security has always been a losing battle. China's firewall will fall, and in addition to everyone learning about Tiananmen square, tools will be created to circumvent all speech control.

    Distilled down to the essence we literally cannot stop speech, we cannot revoke the right to communication, unless we turn to grossly inhumane methods like locking them solitary and naked in a cell a'la Marquis de Sade in Quills. If a fascist wants to distribute his propaganda by writing it in crayon on yellow notebook paper in a cell block, I'm happy letting him have that right. Similarly, we ultimately cannot stop sites like 4chan from forming, if somebody wants to go to great lengths to disseminate whatever bullshit they want behind a veil of anonymity, a wealth of technology exists and will continue to exist to enable that.

    Political power is bought with, to borrow the blog title, lawyers guns and money. A broad right to free speech does not necessarily mean that you get to keep your high-paying TV anchor position or your highly-monetized YouTube channel or your speaking gigs at major universities. You can speak all you want but the establishment can revoke your access to the privileges of civilization.

    (Obviously there needs to be caution exercising such power. Deplatforming can have a chilling effect on speech almost as much as government censorship. There's a real danger in blacklisting, as in the US in the 1950s or China today. I am absolutely not arguing that this is unproblematic.)

    Optimistic point of view: Liberalism has largely won the culture war already. Corporations are pretty responsive to calls for private sanctioning of obvious bigots. Even Fox News looks like it might be positioning itself to buck its alt-right hosts if Trump loses the next election.

    We might not need to do anything if things keep going our way. Society will do its job.

    This is, broadly speaking, my take. Nothing about the current movement has scared me. The biggest events are what? Some pasty dudes with torches, a vehicular homicide and a shooting in New Zealand? I know there’s more and I know I’m being light here but most of the alt right advances are, as I see it, Democrats being bad at politics and letting a reactionary opponent have their 4 years in the sun. That comes with consequences but it will pass.

    Liberals won the culture war, and while they were stomping on the corpse it twitched. A death gasp, if you will. It’s not something I’m going to throw away our freedoms over. I get it’s serious but overreactions can have dire consequences.

    I'd just like to address this real quick?

    This?

    This thign doesn't happen.

    You don't "win" a culture war. Culture Wars, essentially, do not stop. Culture is this always shifting, always evolving thing. There is no end of history, there is no final state utopia, there is no "finished"

    And shit like White Supremacy? It doesn't go away. Not ever, not fully. You have to be on guard for it, you have to be ready to always tamp its fires back down before it kills countless numbers of people.

    We're not, as a society, doing that.

    We're ignoring it as it spreads and saying everything is fine.

    Sure, the quest for progress goes on and on. This is the way of the universe, I’m down with that.

    But perspective is necessary, if only to avoid flipping your shit and ruining the things you built unnecessarily. The rhetoric used here is scarily close to the sort of thing I used to hear post 9-11. When people are scared and angry they do stupid things, like stripping themselves of their own speech protections because a relatively small group of malcontents raised some hell.

    It's really not that hard for rational, ethical people to make a narrow set of laws and reasonable consequences for baseline standards. Something like:

    * Do not advocate for performing the act of the legal definition of rape in violation of federal law
    * Do not advocate for performing the act of the legal definition of murder in violation of federal law
    * Do not advocate for performing the act of the legal definition of slavery in violation of federal law

    Note that this means that advocating for a change of the definition of any of these is not part of it, but only advocating to break the law itself, as could be enshrined in legalese. So if someone goes and defines abortion as murder you can still advocate to change that definition, you just can't say "while this is still illegal go ahead and do it anyway" without consequence.

    And then you use actually sane consequences.

    A few thoughts!

    How does this deal with humor and/or satire? I know the standard response on these forums is that humor is used as a shielding device, and that is certainly true, but dark humor is a thing and it's no crime to have a bad sense of humor either. At least, not currently. Look at the UK and the "Nazi Pug" incident as an example. I don't like the guy at all but his situation is totally fucked and a massive government overreach, and the joke was hilarious. Edgy, to use a word no one loves anymore, but funny. And I'm dubious of how you craft a speech law to get around "it's just a joke, bro". At least, in such a way that doesn't trample on speech.

    Which brings to the next point, which is that the speech I see complained about the most here is the notorious dogwhistle. In any set of narrowly defined speech laws that would have to remain, no? I don't see a way to narrowly define speech laws that allow extrapolation of meaning in such a way.

    With that in mind, what do we gain from this? You can't stop people dogwhistling and any clause seeking to deal with humor is going to be a massive overreach, so that's out too. So now we've overthrown several centuries of tradition and messed with our speech laws--that taboo is broken, setting the precedent for going back in to change more later--and for what?

    Nah.
    Punishing people who have 'a bad sense of humour' is completely acceptable, where their humour is normalising the above abhorrent topics, eg. rape.
    Not doing so also means you're attempting to enforce this law on the intent of the accused, which is rather unknowable.
    Better to punish on every offence, no matter the intent, and then increase punishment on repeat offenders.

    And once that massive self-inflicted loophole is closed, dog-whistling is actionable because the hate-speech can't pretend to just be a joke.
    The only other difference between dog-whistling and normal hate-speech then would be the exact language used, and I'm sure the same law can keep up with whatever specific words are used in the hate-speech.

    Just to be clear, a religious icon I wore for years is considered a white supremacy dog whistle. Should I be arrested or my religious symbol banned?
    Like how does that play out in a court?

    "Mr. Shapiro, you called this police shooting victim a thug, which is clearly coded language for n----r"
    "No I was referring to his past legal problems"
    "No you weren't, 2 years prison and pay this fine"
    Sleep wrote: »
    Should the magic shop in my town with futhark runes adorning the windows be shut down cause lots of folks that like viking stuff are fuckin racist?

    How bout my yearly viking feast, am I not allowed to go to that anymore?

    Is a racist laying claim to a thing immediate grounds upon which to throw it and everything having to do with it in the memory hole?

    Clearly 'dog-whistle' means something different to what I thought it meant.
    But yes, if these coded symbols or signals are being directly used to argue for the murder, rape, etc of other people, then they should be caught in the previously mentioned hate-speech laws too.

    If they are not caught in the previously mentioned laws, because they're flagging 'I will support this thing but not mention the thing', then they don't further Frankiedarlings argument that the mentioned laws against direct hate-speech are useless, as they are an entirely different form of speech.
    That is, you can wait until the hate-speech purveyor says directly what the thing they are supporting is rather than jumping on ambiguous dog-whistles, and if they never say any direct hate-speech, then no-one will be able to tell what they're promoting, which renders the speech inherently less dangerous.

    Similarly, everyday use of the same words used in hate-speech but in different contexts and in different sentence structures is of course not something that you'd want to criminalise.
    Dog-whistles are the same; they are only dangerous when being directly used in hate-speech.

    So basically, if I want to wear around the hammer I just have to be cool with the cops asking me if I'm a racist, and if I deny it I'm good.

    Or like if I get caught wearing the hammer do the cops get to investigate my whole life to figure out what I meant by it?

  • FrankiedarlingFrankiedarling Registered User regular
    Sleep wrote: »
    discrider wrote: »
    Sleep wrote: »
    discrider wrote: »
    Incenjucar wrote: »
    Lanz wrote: »
    Jephery wrote: »
    Feral wrote: »
    Paladin wrote: »
    I get the feeling that as society becomes more educated regarding technology, speech on a global scale will become uncontrollable.

    Information security has always been a losing battle. China's firewall will fall, and in addition to everyone learning about Tiananmen square, tools will be created to circumvent all speech control.

    Distilled down to the essence we literally cannot stop speech, we cannot revoke the right to communication, unless we turn to grossly inhumane methods like locking them solitary and naked in a cell a'la Marquis de Sade in Quills. If a fascist wants to distribute his propaganda by writing it in crayon on yellow notebook paper in a cell block, I'm happy letting him have that right. Similarly, we ultimately cannot stop sites like 4chan from forming, if somebody wants to go to great lengths to disseminate whatever bullshit they want behind a veil of anonymity, a wealth of technology exists and will continue to exist to enable that.

    Political power is bought with, to borrow the blog title, lawyers guns and money. A broad right to free speech does not necessarily mean that you get to keep your high-paying TV anchor position or your highly-monetized YouTube channel or your speaking gigs at major universities. You can speak all you want but the establishment can revoke your access to the privileges of civilization.

    (Obviously there needs to be caution exercising such power. Deplatforming can have a chilling effect on speech almost as much as government censorship. There's a real danger in blacklisting, as in the US in the 1950s or China today. I am absolutely not arguing that this is unproblematic.)

    Optimistic point of view: Liberalism has largely won the culture war already. Corporations are pretty responsive to calls for private sanctioning of obvious bigots. Even Fox News looks like it might be positioning itself to buck its alt-right hosts if Trump loses the next election.

    We might not need to do anything if things keep going our way. Society will do its job.

    This is, broadly speaking, my take. Nothing about the current movement has scared me. The biggest events are what? Some pasty dudes with torches, a vehicular homicide and a shooting in New Zealand? I know there’s more and I know I’m being light here but most of the alt right advances are, as I see it, Democrats being bad at politics and letting a reactionary opponent have their 4 years in the sun. That comes with consequences but it will pass.

    Liberals won the culture war, and while they were stomping on the corpse it twitched. A death gasp, if you will. It’s not something I’m going to throw away our freedoms over. I get it’s serious but overreactions can have dire consequences.

    I'd just like to address this real quick?

    This?

    This thign doesn't happen.

    You don't "win" a culture war. Culture Wars, essentially, do not stop. Culture is this always shifting, always evolving thing. There is no end of history, there is no final state utopia, there is no "finished"

    And shit like White Supremacy? It doesn't go away. Not ever, not fully. You have to be on guard for it, you have to be ready to always tamp its fires back down before it kills countless numbers of people.

    We're not, as a society, doing that.

    We're ignoring it as it spreads and saying everything is fine.

    Sure, the quest for progress goes on and on. This is the way of the universe, I’m down with that.

    But perspective is necessary, if only to avoid flipping your shit and ruining the things you built unnecessarily. The rhetoric used here is scarily close to the sort of thing I used to hear post 9-11. When people are scared and angry they do stupid things, like stripping themselves of their own speech protections because a relatively small group of malcontents raised some hell.

    It's really not that hard for rational, ethical people to make a narrow set of laws and reasonable consequences for baseline standards. Something like:

    * Do not advocate for performing the act of the legal definition of rape in violation of federal law
    * Do not advocate for performing the act of the legal definition of murder in violation of federal law
    * Do not advocate for performing the act of the legal definition of slavery in violation of federal law

    Note that this means that advocating for a change of the definition of any of these is not part of it, but only advocating to break the law itself, as could be enshrined in legalese. So if someone goes and defines abortion as murder you can still advocate to change that definition, you just can't say "while this is still illegal go ahead and do it anyway" without consequence.

    And then you use actually sane consequences.

    A few thoughts!

    How does this deal with humor and/or satire? I know the standard response on these forums is that humor is used as a shielding device, and that is certainly true, but dark humor is a thing and it's no crime to have a bad sense of humor either. At least, not currently. Look at the UK and the "Nazi Pug" incident as an example. I don't like the guy at all but his situation is totally fucked and a massive government overreach, and the joke was hilarious. Edgy, to use a word no one loves anymore, but funny. And I'm dubious of how you craft a speech law to get around "it's just a joke, bro". At least, in such a way that doesn't trample on speech.

    Which brings to the next point, which is that the speech I see complained about the most here is the notorious dogwhistle. In any set of narrowly defined speech laws that would have to remain, no? I don't see a way to narrowly define speech laws that allow extrapolation of meaning in such a way.

    With that in mind, what do we gain from this? You can't stop people dogwhistling and any clause seeking to deal with humor is going to be a massive overreach, so that's out too. So now we've overthrown several centuries of tradition and messed with our speech laws--that taboo is broken, setting the precedent for going back in to change more later--and for what?

    Nah.
    Punishing people who have 'a bad sense of humour' is completely acceptable, where their humour is normalising the above abhorrent topics, eg. rape.
    Not doing so also means you're attempting to enforce this law on the intent of the accused, which is rather unknowable.
    Better to punish on every offence, no matter the intent, and then increase punishment on repeat offenders.

    And once that massive self-inflicted loophole is closed, dog-whistling is actionable because the hate-speech can't pretend to just be a joke.
    The only other difference between dog-whistling and normal hate-speech then would be the exact language used, and I'm sure the same law can keep up with whatever specific words are used in the hate-speech.

    Just to be clear, a religious icon I wore for years is considered a white supremacy dog whistle. Should I be arrested or my religious symbol banned?
    Like how does that play out in a court?

    "Mr. Shapiro, you called this police shooting victim a thug, which is clearly coded language for n----r"
    "No I was referring to his past legal problems"
    "No you weren't, 2 years prison and pay this fine"
    Sleep wrote: »
    Should the magic shop in my town with futhark runes adorning the windows be shut down cause lots of folks that like viking stuff are fuckin racist?

    How bout my yearly viking feast, am I not allowed to go to that anymore?

    Is a racist laying claim to a thing immediate grounds upon which to throw it and everything having to do with it in the memory hole?

    Clearly 'dog-whistle' means something different to what I thought it meant.
    But yes, if these coded symbols or signals are being directly used to argue for the murder, rape, etc of other people, then they should be caught in the previously mentioned hate-speech laws too.

    If they are not caught in the previously mentioned laws, because they're flagging 'I will support this thing but not mention the thing', then they don't further Frankiedarlings argument that the mentioned laws against direct hate-speech are useless, as they are an entirely different form of speech.
    That is, you can wait until the hate-speech purveyor says directly what the thing they are supporting is rather than jumping on ambiguous dog-whistles, and if they never say any direct hate-speech, then no-one will be able to tell what they're promoting, which renders the speech inherently less dangerous.

    Similarly, everyday use of the same words used in hate-speech but in different contexts and in different sentence structures is of course not something that you'd want to criminalise.
    Dog-whistles are the same; they are only dangerous when being directly used in hate-speech.

    So basically, if I want to wear around the hammer I just have to be cool with the cops asking me if I'm a racist, and if I deny it I'm good.

    Or like if I get caught wearing the hammer do the cops get to investigate my whole life to figure out what I meant by it?

    Avoid any Manowar albums, dangerous Viking rhetoric lurks within the killer guitar riffs.

  • RT800RT800 Registered User regular
    Attempting to regulate what someone means rather than what they've actually said seems like a real can of worms.

  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    RT800 wrote: »
    Attempting to regulate what someone means rather than what they've actually said seems like a real can of worms.
    And yet context and motive get weighed in the court of law, right?

  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Henroid wrote: »
    RT800 wrote: »
    Attempting to regulate what someone means rather than what they've actually said seems like a real can of worms.
    And yet context and motive get weighed in the court of law, right?

    Generally as factors in someone's actions. Laws against dog whistles would be thought crimes in a real enough sense.

    Styrofoam Sammich on
    wq09t4opzrlc.jpg
  • HenroidHenroid Mexican kicked from Immigration Thread Centrism is Racism :3Registered User regular
    Henroid wrote: »
    RT800 wrote: »
    Attempting to regulate what someone means rather than what they've actually said seems like a real can of worms.
    And yet context and motive get weighed in the court of law, right?

    Generally as factors in someone's actions. Laws against dog whistles would be thought crimes in a real enough sense.
    People using coded language and symbolism are NOT hiding what they're all about by any stretch. Some dickhead may flash the OK symbol and smirk like he's being a secret agent, but the fact of the matter is these people say and do other things that point in the direction of "yeah we know what you fucking mean."

    That's the magical thing about bigots. They can't fucking help themselves, and the coded stuff isn't about trying to keep it a secret. It's a recruitment tool, it's promotion.

  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    Flashing signs isnt a dogwhistle

    wq09t4opzrlc.jpg
  • Inkstain82Inkstain82 Registered User regular
    Honestly, I'm way more interested in examining the idea that free speech is an unfettered cultural and social positive than I am the details of how a law could be implemented.

    Whether or not society has anti-hate-speech laws doesn't concern me as much as whether society has an effective method for non-governmentally isolating and ostracizing dangerous ideas.

  • jothkijothki Registered User regular
    Should we be restricting ourselves to dealing with speech in good faith, or should we alternate between pushing free speech or pushing hate speech laws depending on whichever would serve us best at that moment? Freedom of speech isn't as much an inherent good as it is a tool to protect other freedoms, so I don't see why we shouldn't weaponize it against people who want to remove those freedoms.

  • RT800RT800 Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    I don't know if you can argue that anything is an "unfettered cultural and social positive". There's always the downside.

    I think most people would agree that there should be some limits on speech.

    The argument is over what those limits should be.

    RT800 on
  • SleepSleep Registered User regular
    edited March 2019
    Henroid wrote: »
    Henroid wrote: »
    RT800 wrote: »
    Attempting to regulate what someone means rather than what they've actually said seems like a real can of worms.
    And yet context and motive get weighed in the court of law, right?

    Generally as factors in someone's actions. Laws against dog whistles would be thought crimes in a real enough sense.
    People using coded language and symbolism are NOT hiding what they're all about by any stretch. Some dickhead may flash the OK symbol and smirk like he's being a secret agent, but the fact of the matter is these people say and do other things that point in the direction of "yeah we know what you fucking mean."

    That's the magical thing about bigots. They can't fucking help themselves, and the coded stuff isn't about trying to keep it a secret. It's a recruitment tool, it's promotion.

    So there's this funny thing that's been happening to me for years, people ask me, straight up, if im racist. Like im talkin strangers in the street totally unprompted. Apparently I look racist as fuck, does that mean I can't wear my religious icons because other people assume I'm racist because of how I look.

    Sleep on
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