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Is Hate Speech Legal?

thefire.org

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Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#11

Post by version_five » 

  Banning “hate speech” without restricting political speech is prohibitively difficult because of the target’s inherent subjectivity.
That's the crux right. As soon as you decide that a certain kind of speech is "illegal", the goalposts shift to convincing others that speech you don't agree with falls in the illegal category. Even what seem like sensible categories like inciting to violence immediately get spun around and we get all sorts of things being called violence in order to try and suit political aims.

Like most rights, free speech isn't perfect, it's just the least bad alternative.

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#12

Post by nhchris »

bitwize wrote: post #5

Much like the law prevents rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges and on park benches, the First Amendment bars both the privileged and the marginalized from seeking to silence through state action those who would advocate their oppression.

"When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles."

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#13

Post by [deleted] »

torstenvl wrote: post #9
13415 wrote: post #2

The title of this post and the blog post itself should be "Is hate speech legal in the US?"

This post is on an American website running as a service of an American startup accelerator running out of America's tech hub, running on an American operating system based on a research project at an American university, and links to a post from an American organization concerned with American free speech law and policy. I feel like the applicable context is easily inferred. https://www.thefire.org/about-us/mission

[deleted]

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#14

Post by reset2023 »

People don't get that Free Speech is not about the content but the existence of the supreme court. The Supreme Court is the so called Free Speech. This is in comparison to the times of kings and emperors where just the mere act of questioning the king, even in thought (if refusing to immediately act according to instruction) would get you in trouble.

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#15

Post by dbrueck »

mbgerring wrote: post #4

Hate speech is not legal in many jurisdictions and it is perfectly possible to create a stable statutory definition of hate speech. See, for example, Germany: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung

What do you mean by "stable statutory definition"? Are you meaning to imply that they have removed subjectivity from identifying it? It seems like Germany's approach has the same problem that all others do, in that so-called "hate speech" is usually in the eye of the beholder, and so it's impossible to define or identify objectively.

The net result, of course, is inconsistency and absurdity (see e.g. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/erding/volksverhetzung-... for a recent example).

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#16

Post by majormajor »

version_five wrote: post #11

Banning “hate speech” without restricting political speech is prohibitively difficult because of the target’s inherent subjectivity. That's the crux right. As soon as you decide that a certain kind of speech is "illegal", the goalposts shift to convincing others that speech you don't agree with falls in the illegal category. Even what seem like sensible categories like inciting to violence immediately get spun around…

You talk about how categories that "seem like sensible" ones get "spun around" too much for politics.

So are you promoting no restrictions whatsoever? How close to violence do you want to allow? How allowable is a specific threat before it is actionable? How much intimidation is allowed to influence "free" action in your mind in the name of preserving "free speech" before it has too high a cost of preventing "free action"? How does something like fraud, or the slippier forms of it called "false advertising" or "hype" fit in?

We cannot be so paranoid about potential future government harms to us that we overlook the immediate dangers of current and ongoing harms done person-to-person.

If you extended the same level of paranoia to other abuses, you'd end up abolishing the police and any other sort of government body that could be abused as well... yet very few of us would choose that world. No world will be free of harm, free of crime, free of abuse of power - we must simply try to minimize their occurrence in practice vs trying to fit things into a slogan.

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#17

Post by oceanplexian »

mbgerring wrote: post #4

Hate speech is not legal in many jurisdictions and it is perfectly possible to create a stable statutory definition of hate speech. See, for example, Germany: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung

Well yeah, the German constitution doesn’t guarantee an absolute right to freedom of speech. There is a clause to the effect of “These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws”

In the USA, however, freedom of speech is an absolute right. There are some narrow limitations (Libel, Calls to Violence), however the legislature does not have the power to add limits without a constitutional amendment, which requires a super-majority.

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#18

Post by kashkhan »

version_five wrote: post #11

Banning “hate speech” without restricting political speech is prohibitively difficult because of the target’s inherent subjectivity. That's the crux right. As soon as you decide that a certain kind of speech is "illegal", the goalposts shift to convincing others that speech you don't agree with falls in the illegal category. Even what seem like sensible categories like inciting to violence immediately get spun around…

Social discouragement is often more effective than legal.

The 'n' word is mostly stopped by social means.

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#19

Post by barbariangrunge »

version_five wrote: post #11

Banning “hate speech” without restricting political speech is prohibitively difficult because of the target’s inherent subjectivity. That's the crux right. As soon as you decide that a certain kind of speech is "illegal", the goalposts shift to convincing others that speech you don't agree with falls in the illegal category. Even what seem like sensible categories like inciting to violence immediately get spun around…

We want to ban speech today that was considered acceptable 60 years ago; and the things we celebrate today are things people wanted to ban or censor 60 years ago.

You can’t have it both ways: if you want to speak freely about what you care about, you have to let the people you hate speak freely too. Over the last 100 years, it has done far more good than harm to let people express themselves

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#20

Post by spritefs »

mbgerring wrote: post #4

Hate speech is not legal in many jurisdictions and it is perfectly possible to create a stable statutory definition of hate speech. See, for example, Germany: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung

> and it is perfectly possible to create a stable statutory definition of hate speech

Doesn't sound like it. If the washington post is saying you're going too far in this category, there's a good chance you've already gone off the deep end

> The raid Wednesday came a little over three months after he replied to a tweet from Andy Grote, the interior and sports minister for the city of Hamburg, describing him as a “pimmel.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/09/pimmelgate-g...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/13...

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