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Is Hate Speech Legal?

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Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#51

Post by gmarx »

majormajor wrote: post #16
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 a…

The answer is that the right to free speech does not provide a trick to get around other laws. How close to violence do you have to get? That crime/tort is usually called "assault" and (IANAL) the standard is usually on the order of "would a reasonable person thing he was about to be subject to some kind of physical attack". So brandishing a knife and saying in a serious tone "prepare to be stabbed" would count. Saying "I think anyone whose favorite band is 'Green Day'" would probably not.

We also have laws and civil actions for fraud, defamation, slander, libel. For all of them a key component is that you are lying to achieve some end- take money, or ruin someone's reputation.

These lines are actually very easy to draw. If the thing you are bothered by and trying to outlaw is the thought behind them then they are protected. If you are trying to stop something that would be considered criminal or a civil tort regardless of how it was achieved (stealing, making some think he is about to get hurt, ruining someone's reputation) then it is not protected.

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#52

Post by croes »

akerl_ wrote: post #23
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

Am I understanding correctly that if I were to fly to Germany, step out of the airport, and shout “Americans are evil”, I’d have violated this law?

Calling them evil is not prohibited, but if you say they are evil, so we should kill them all. That's a different level.

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#53

Post by scarmig »

croes wrote: post #45
barbariangrunge wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you sure? Didn't it help that is wasn't unacceptable to call a black person n**r and to call a homosexual f**t? Freedom of expression always goes in both directions. Your free expression can suppress my freedom of expression.

> Your free expression can suppress my freedom of expression

How does even harmful speech (e.g. your examples) prevent your freedom of expression?

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#54

Post by SllX »

majormajor wrote: post #31
wonderwonder wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In America we seem to have a fairly decent handle on those issues. Exceptions apply of course. We are now dealing with edge cases such as the infamous baker refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple. The main issues such as fraud, threats, etc. are handled pretty well via existing law.

Do we really have a great handle on things like swatting? The wave of ICO scams a few years back? Death threats to local government officials or public figures? I see more "grudging acceptance" than any sort of good control. And if that's what the people want, that's fine. But in my view, if we wanted to do better on those things, we should have the freedom as a society to do those things. That's the place I argue ag…

> Do we really have a great handle on things like swatting? The wave of ICO scams a few years back? Death threats to local government officials or public figures?

No, but none of those are free speech issues. Swatting involves deceiving law enforcement; ICOs were something nobody with any real law enforcement or policy power understood well at the time but they’ve been taking the time to learn (emphasis on time) and death threats are generally more an issue of resources. Any dumbass can create an anonymous email address and send threats. Unmasking all of the dumbasses willing to send them is generally more resource intensive than providing temporary protection and investigating the veracity of the threats or the likelihood they will be carried out; but if you did unmask them it would typically mean at minimum a trip to the psych ward for them to be held and evaluated.

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#55

Post by ohCh6zos »

krapp wrote: post #46
ohCh6zos wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like that is an oversight we should fix.

It's not an oversight, it's the inevitable and intended consequence of freedom of speech, freedom of association and private property as defined by the US Constitution and law. "fixing" that would mean undermining those fundamental rights in favor of a right that doesn't exist in the US, the right to employment.

We should have all of those, but right now we have those asymmetrically depending on your cause.

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#56

Post by michaelmrose »

wonderwonder wrote: post #3

All speech must be legal short of threats,fraud, etc. If one administration is given the power to outlaw speech you don't like, you may not like it when the next administration you didn't vote for does the same. Everyone should have the right to say what they want free of government repercussions. I would even go so far as to say what someone says and does on their free time is their business and not their employers…

This isn't even true now. There are all sorts of limits including but not limited to gag orders, no contact orders, defamation, harassment, malicious use of a telephone device, obscene phone calls and so forth.

You imply that it is utterly impossible to draft a law forbidding some speech without handing the tools of oppression to the next fellow to hold office but we already deal with plenty of nuanced situations now many odious examples of speech that aren't nuanced at all.

Calls for stochastic violence or terrorism are just as worrying as specific threats even when the target is not specifically called out. Someone should murder all the jews is no more acceptable than lets get together at the bar next Tuesday and kill Bob the Jew with the candlestick.

Hand in glove with the above is false information designed to spread hate. Ex The jews are setting our forests ablaze with jewish space lasers! Do you know who snuck in and stole my breakfast? Jews! Why am I going bald? Jewish space lasers pointed at my head! If you constantly spew hateful nonsense while others directly call for violence its pretty clearly part of the same shtick and you ought to be treated similarly.

This is trivially defined as clearly false information about a group of people defined by cultural, ethnic, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation yada yada yada designed to promote hatred towards a group of people.

You may trivially point out that grey areas exist. This is hardly a barrier to dealing with the numerous black and white scenarios so evident around us.

Lastly I don't want to employ or work with a "non violent nazi" just because he promotes mass murder only on his own time because such a person is an odious human being and regarding minorities as subhuman is inherently going to color his decision making even if he presents as objective. I really don't think I or any manager ought to be obliged to overlook the fact that applicant has already publicly announced that he is an odious human being.

Even were he to fully separate his odious being from the job he does his coworkers will inevitably come to understand who he is if he keeps putting it out there online under his own name and you'll find yourself at a disadvantage in terms of retaining good help and clients if everyone knows you employ nazis.

Free speech absolutism is an indefensible position. It is so far as I'm aware practiced nowhere in the world.

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#57

Post by hvdijk »

oceanplexian wrote: post #17
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…

The US First Amendment does not say anything about libel or calls to violence. I am not aware of other amendments doing so either. What is the rationale for allowing these limitations on speech that cannot equally be applied to hate speech?

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#58

Post by gmarx »

majormajor wrote: post #44
wonderwonder wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think so, all of the items you mentioned are illegal and punished by the law. Laws can only be enforced after a crime has been committed, not really sure what you are advocating for.

Things like "puffery" and other "I wasn't being serious" defenses. Good luck prosecuting those things when everyone can hide behind "speech alone is harmless." Note also that the comment I was originally replying to was saying we already have too many restrictions on speech. So they'd presumably want to loosen those things even more.

Per my other comment, you cannot hide behind "speech alone is harmless". If a reasonable person would think you were joking it might be a defense but if you took the money anyway, I doubt that defense would hold up.

We could easily make the penalty for SWATting life in prison. If you got caught the only free speech defense I could imagine would be that you sincerely believed that SWAT was needed and you were mistaken. Sometimes that defense would work, but I can imagine all kinds of scenarios in which the defense would be useless, e.g. you did it to the same guy multiple times, or you don't live anywhere near the location you sent SWAT to

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#59

Post by bacchusracine »

yongjik wrote: post #42
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…

As other comments said, this argument, while sounding superficially logical, does not agree with reality: most Western European countries don't share the same idea of free speech as in America, yet they continue to be democratic.

>Western European countries don't share the same idea of free speech as in America, yet they continue to be democratic.

But are they really?

Can you really claim to be democratic when you have wholesale determined that only approved speech can be uttered? How does democracy work when some can speak and others cannot?

Re: Is Hate Speech Legal?

#60

Post by michaelmrose »

ohCh6zos wrote: post #55
krapp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an oversight, it's the inevitable and intended consequence of freedom of speech, freedom of association and private property as defined by the US Constitution and law. "fixing" that would mean undermining those fundamental rights in favor of a right that doesn't exist in the US, the right to employment.

We should have all of those, but right now we have those asymmetrically depending on your cause.

If I believe that people whose name is ohCh6zos should be made into bacon ought the law force you to employ me or do you think adults should be able to choose who they associate with?
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