Is Hate Speech Legal?

Post by Ekaros » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 8:10 PM UTC

yucky wrote: post #90

sofixa wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Democracy works best when unhelpful fringes cannot speak. Antisemites for instance contribute nothing of substance to any democracy. Same goes for people insisting on abusing fellow humans based on their sexual orientation or skin colour. H…

> Democracy works best when unhelpful fringes cannot speak. This reads like it's straight out of a dystopian book.

Post by willnonya » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 8:17 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #79

bacchusracine wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

> 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? Democracy works best when unhelpful fringes cannot speak. Antisemites for instance contribute nothing of substance to any democracy. Same goes for people insisting on abusing fellow humans based on their sexual orientation or skin colour. H…

Post by ginngeo » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 8:20 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #56

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…

Post by yucky » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 8:21 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #21

>In other words, the First Amendment recognizes that the government cannot regulate “hate speech” without inevitably silencing the dissent and dialogue that democracy requires While I'm all for debates about the pros and cons of more or less permissive speech policies, sentences like this always betray the quasi religious nature of American speech attitudes. Many of the oldest democracies in the world work perfectly…

    > It would probably be worthwhile to have a much more empirical approach, trying to actually measure what the impact of prohibiting certain speech is. 

Post by cmrdporcupine » Fri, Dec 30, 2022, 8:27 PM UTC

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