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The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

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Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#41

Post by ben_w »

brigandish wrote: post #40
pjc50 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Safety" from hate speech is difficult to define in statistical terms, because it tends to be nonlinear - everything looks fine until someone goes on a murder spree or starts up the death camps again. The last European genocide was in my lifetime, at Srebrenica (which, incidentally, Spiked Magazine are denialists of) Americans seem much more comfortable with the idea that both free speech and free gun ownership will…

> Americans seem much more comfortable with the idea that both free speech and free gun ownership will get more people routinely killed; like car ownership, it's just part of the price, it seems. In 2013 there were 33,636 deaths due to guns. Even without breaking down those figures (2/3 were suicides) it would take 178 years to reach the 6 million regularly claimed to be the total for the Holocaust. That seems to be…

Mass murders aren’t the the thing that spills over into genocide — they get stopped when the shooter runs out of bullets etc. — it’s hate speech which spills over because it gets the speaker an army which can replenish itself.

To put it another way, it’s not like Hitler personally shot all the people he killed, he convinced other people to do it for him.

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#42

Post by pjc50 »

brigandish wrote: post #40
pjc50 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Safety" from hate speech is difficult to define in statistical terms, because it tends to be nonlinear - everything looks fine until someone goes on a murder spree or starts up the death camps again. The last European genocide was in my lifetime, at Srebrenica (which, incidentally, Spiked Magazine are denialists of) Americans seem much more comfortable with the idea that both free speech and free gun ownership will…

> Americans seem much more comfortable with the idea that both free speech and free gun ownership will get more people routinely killed; like car ownership, it's just part of the price, it seems. In 2013 there were 33,636 deaths due to guns. Even without breaking down those figures (2/3 were suicides) it would take 178 years to reach the 6 million regularly claimed to be the total for the Holocaust. That seems to be…

> 33,636 deaths due to guns

.. or four Srebrenicas, or roughly the entire historical body count of the Troubles. If it was concentrated then we would say that it was genocide.

The big threat of the moment is "stochastic terrorism". If you tell enough people that X is a threat that is coming for them - that they are going to be victims of a holocaust - then eventually one of them will follow the logic that they can use their gun to avoid the holocaust by pre-emptively murdering the threat. Most people will recognise these messages as lies and nonsense, but there will be a number who believe it. Of those, eventually one will take action.

There has been a steady drip of those people "taking action", such as by going and opening fire on synagogues. Often they leave behind surprisingly similar manifestoes. They speak the same language and are radicalised in the same way, despite never having met nor being part of the same organisation.

Now, this is ""fine"" as long as there's only one such movement carrying out occasional massacres. What happens when someone decides to start pre-emptively shooting back? Reprisals? Riots? As soon as there's two armed groups in politics there is the risk of horrible escalation.

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#43

Post by hollerith »

brigandish wrote: post #40
pjc50 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Safety" from hate speech is difficult to define in statistical terms, because it tends to be nonlinear - everything looks fine until someone goes on a murder spree or starts up the death camps again. The last European genocide was in my lifetime, at Srebrenica (which, incidentally, Spiked Magazine are denialists of) Americans seem much more comfortable with the idea that both free speech and free gun ownership will…

> Americans seem much more comfortable with the idea that both free speech and free gun ownership will get more people routinely killed; like car ownership, it's just part of the price, it seems. In 2013 there were 33,636 deaths due to guns. Even without breaking down those figures (2/3 were suicides) it would take 178 years to reach the 6 million regularly claimed to be the total for the Holocaust. That seems to be…

>the 6 million regularly claimed to be the total for the Holocaust

Not to mention the other 42 million civilians and prisoners of war (mostly Russian and Chinese) killed by soldiers during WW II.

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#44

Post by claudiawerner »

serf wrote: post #33
peteretep wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As to advantages of free speech, social freedoms are strongly correlated with economic freedom, and hence, economic success. Simply to look at an ordered list by GDP would correlate with free speech strongly. I suspect you have not done your research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... But, the question I originally asked remains, although I'll restate it to make it even easier to answer…

>What has the US gained over these countries from that free speech, exactly? I think it's non-trivial to try to quantify the effects of free speech. Freeform opinions off the top of my head: the definitions of 'hate speech' are too fluid, allowing argument opposition to massage the definition until your protest against them is considered to be hateful -- which then allows legal options to silence the opinion. The Uni…

>What are the damages of hate speech? Can you realistically consider damages from a violent individual to have been caused by hate speech -- or is that a good scapegoat for a mentally disturbed individual to kill people with?

Not only the actions of the individual (we must remember concepts such as stochastic terrorism) due to hearing hate speech, but also the harm of the speech itself. There's substantial work done on this concept, i.e. that speech itself at least has the potential to be actually harmful, and that there is no meaningful rigorous distinction between "speech" and "action" - metaphysical or otherwise. In this way, regulating speech should be just like we regulate any other kind of action. As Brison has said:

"although this relational account helps to explain why the right to speak and to receive others’ speech is important, it does not yield a defense of the view that speech is special, requiring greater justification for its regulation than is needed for the regulation of other conduct."

This[0] is a great paper to read for the argument. There are also more 'traditional arguments arguing that Mill's ideal (and the principle that free speech is based on) has become obsolete in the face of the ever-shortening distance between speech and action (which was observed during the rise of the Nazi Party), along with the function of mass media which dulls critical thinking[1].

[0] SJ Brison, "Speech, Harm, and the Mind-Body Problem in First Amendment Jurisprudence" (1998) http://susanbrison.com/files/B.16.-speech_harm_and_the_mindb...

[1] "Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc." (Herbert Marcuse, "Repressive Tolerance" (1965))

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#45

Post by foldr »

exolymph wrote: post #19
peteretep wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you briefly outline how you think the USA has benefitted from this freedom, in a way that other rich Western countries haven’t? I guess I’m specifically thinking of Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada, as all have broadly similar legal systems and robust judiciaries / policing, but not the singular focus on free speech.

How about a lot fewer people being jailed or otherwise punished by authorities for expressing their opinions? The UK has gotten positively absurd. You can be forced to talk to cops about un-PC tweets. Example: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man-investigated... I'm against transphobia, but not being able to vocally dissent on a certain politically loaded topic... that shit is bad.

> Citing 30 potentially offensive tweets, the PC singled out a limerick Mr Miller had retweeted which questioned whether transgender women are biological women. It included the lines: "Your breasts are made of silicone, your vagina goes nowhere."

The most disturbing aspect of this is that there is no possible limerick including those lines!

As a Brit who's lived in the USA and UK, I'd say that people outside the UK probably get a misleading impression from new stories like this. I'd say that political discussion in the UK is actually freer in practice than in the US. There's certainly a wider range of opinion in the mainstream press, and Prime Ministers are more effectively held to account by Parliament than Presidents are held to account by congress and the judiciary.

What the article describes is obviously an absurd waste of police time. However, no-one was even arrested, so it's hard to get excited about it as an example of someone's free speech rights being violated. I would happily take this kind of police harassment over the kind that leads to unarmed people being shot. It at least targets people who vaguely deserve it.

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#46

Post by foldr »

Kalium wrote: post #38
peteretep wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This British peculiarity could perhaps be regarded by some people as one nasty failure mode of free-ish speech. Sure, but the Americans are innovative yo! (cf: Peter Thiel and Gawker) > how easy do you want it to be for powerful private citizens [...] to silence anyone they don't like for arbitrary reasons I do not want this, but I feel the press in the UK counter-balance that pretty effectively. Rich people seem t…

> I do not want this, but I feel the press in the UK counter-balance that pretty effectively. Rich people seem to love bringing down other rich people Relying on a commercial sector seems like odd. Why can't individuals have those rights too? Does having a printer make someone more deserving of rights? I would think not, in an age where anyone with a smartphone can reach a sizable audience, but I'm also clearly the c…

>Relying on a commercial sector seems like odd. Why can't individuals have those rights too? Does having a printer make someone more deserving of rights? I would think not, in an age where anyone with a smartphone can reach a sizable audience, but I'm also clearly the crazy American in this thread.

Where are you getting the idea that newspapers in the UK have rights that individuals don't?

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#47

Post by Kalium »

foldr wrote: post #46
Kalium wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not want this, but I feel the press in the UK counter-balance that pretty effectively. Rich people seem to love bringing down other rich people Relying on a commercial sector seems like odd. Why can't individuals have those rights too? Does having a printer make someone more deserving of rights? I would think not, in an age where anyone with a smartphone can reach a sizable audience, but I'm also clearly the c…

>Relying on a commercial sector seems like odd. Why can't individuals have those rights too? Does having a printer make someone more deserving of rights? I would think not, in an age where anyone with a smartphone can reach a sizable audience, but I'm also clearly the crazy American in this thread. Where are you getting the idea that newspapers in the UK have rights that individuals don't?

Parent said that newspapers counterbalance the potential to use libel law to silence people. This suggests to me that publishers have de facto protections and rights that individuals do not.

I would love to learn that I have been badly misinformed, and it is in no way true that infamously flexible UK libel law is not mostly defended against with a well-funded legal department.

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#48

Post by Kalium »

foldr wrote: post #45
exolymph wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a lot fewer people being jailed or otherwise punished by authorities for expressing their opinions? The UK has gotten positively absurd. You can be forced to talk to cops about un-PC tweets. Example: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/24/man-investigated... I'm against transphobia, but not being able to vocally dissent on a certain politically loaded topic... that shit is bad.

> Citing 30 potentially offensive tweets, the PC singled out a limerick Mr Miller had retweeted which questioned whether transgender women are biological women. It included the lines: "Your breasts are made of silicone, your vagina goes nowhere." The most disturbing aspect of this is that there is no possible limerick including those lines! As a Brit who's lived in the USA and UK, I'd say that people outside the UK p…

In the US, there's this notion of a chilling effect. Even if nothing ultimately comes of it, police harassment has the effect of convincing people to stay silent. This is not exactly a win, and definitely the kind of tool that the less kind sort of government has used to suppress ideas they dislike.

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#49

Post by foldr »

Kalium wrote: post #48
foldr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Citing 30 potentially offensive tweets, the PC singled out a limerick Mr Miller had retweeted which questioned whether transgender women are biological women. It included the lines: "Your breasts are made of silicone, your vagina goes nowhere." The most disturbing aspect of this is that there is no possible limerick including those lines! As a Brit who's lived in the USA and UK, I'd say that people outside the UK p…

In the US, there's this notion of a chilling effect. Even if nothing ultimately comes of it, police harassment has the effect of convincing people to stay silent. This is not exactly a win, and definitely the kind of tool that the less kind sort of government has used to suppress ideas they dislike.

Yes, sure, but this particular example of police harassment isn’t especially disturbing. Do you not think that, for example, routinely shooting unarmed black men probably has a bit more of a “chilling effect” than this does?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-...

As I said, I’d be wary of forming your opinion of what political discourse is like in the UK from reading news stories. How much time have you actually spent in the UK?

Re: The fight to publish Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

#50

Post by foldr »

Kalium wrote: post #47
foldr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Relying on a commercial sector seems like odd. Why can't individuals have those rights too? Does having a printer make someone more deserving of rights? I would think not, in an age where anyone with a smartphone can reach a sizable audience, but I'm also clearly the crazy American in this thread. Where are you getting the idea that newspapers in the UK have rights that individuals don't?

Parent said that newspapers counterbalance the potential to use libel law to silence people. This suggests to me that publishers have de facto protections and rights that individuals do not. I would love to learn that I have been badly misinformed, and it is in no way true that infamously flexible UK libel law is not mostly defended against with a well-funded legal department.

You’ve certainly been misinformed if you think that there is some kind of special free speech protection in the UK that applies only to publishers.

I don’t know of any country in the world where having money and resources doesn’t confer all kinds of advantages. It wouldn’t be difficult to come up with a list of fundamental rights which de facto aren’t available poor people in the USA. (Just think of all the people jailed under plea bargains because they couldn’t afford proper legal advice. Plea bargains aren’t a thing in the UK.)

Certainly, you are better able to defend against a libel action if you have a lot of money. But in fact private individuals would rarely be sued for libel unless they were rich, as it otherwise wouldn’t be worth it. The libel laws (which I’m not a fan of) have the largest chilling effect on small to medium sized publications, not on individuals.

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