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Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

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Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#31

Post by PuppyTailWags »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #14
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if this is true all the time. I think knowingly sending rape threats to rape victims is pretty violent behavior. I think knowingly trying to trigger someone into an eating disorder relapse or coercing someone into suicide are heinous things that fall into violence. I think there is a line where speech can be violent or said with the intent to harm someone the same as a punch is.

I think knowingly sending rape threats to rape victims is pretty violent behavior Compared to the actual act of rape? No. That kind of thinking just devalues the victim. That said, specific threats aren't normally examples of protected speech. Extreme cases make bad law.

I also agree extreme cases make bad law. That's why I'm disagreeing with the extreme that there are no exceptions to the notion of speech not being violent.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#32

Post by kneebonian »

autokad wrote: post #24
vannevar wrote: post #7

I don't think that most of the people who equate hate speech with violence are literally requesting assualt charges be brought. They are calling for boycotts and de-platforming, both of which fall well within the bounds of the "marketplace of ideas." While there is indeed no right to not be offended, there is also no right to be listened to, and no right to artificially amplify your speech on someone else's dime. We…

> I don't think that most of the people who equate hate speech with violence are literally requesting assualt charges be brought First off, they are. but if you are saying: loose your job and ability to make a living, losing your ability to speak in public, fuck me give me those charges then! you are backing tyrannical ideas while trying to pretend you are just being reasonable.

It's equivalent to saying you can have a gun you just will go to prison if you ever use it.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#33

Post by RajT88 »

vannevar wrote: post #7

I don't think that most of the people who equate hate speech with violence are literally requesting assualt charges be brought. They are calling for boycotts and de-platforming, both of which fall well within the bounds of the "marketplace of ideas." While there is indeed no right to not be offended, there is also no right to be listened to, and no right to artificially amplify your speech on someone else's dime. We…

> I don't think that most of the people who equate hate speech with violence are literally requesting assualt charges be brought.

Right. I can't think of anyone I have come across in liberal media. But you can always dig someone up that takes any given position.

> While there is indeed no right to not be offended, there is also no right to be listened to, and no right to artificially amplify your speech on someone else's dime. We live in a world where the mechanisms of mass communication are held in private hands---there is no digital public square, regardless of what techno-libertarians might have you believe.

All correct. The people who want it to be one way or the other (depending on their political leanings) usually are conflating constitutional protections from the government as being applicable to/from everyone and everything else.

If you're screaming on Twitter that (some racial group) is bad, and people tell you to shut up, they are allowed to do so under the first amendment. You're allowed to do so under the first amendment. Twitter can totally ban you based on what they deem acceptable behavior, because the first amendment doesn't regulate private companies (just the government).

If you're calling for the extermination of that particular group, the government can charge you under US Code for inciting violence:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/373

...But you have to prove intent, which is notoriously hard to do, and notoriously easy to get off scott-free from. ("I was being bombastic, I didn't think anyone would LITERALLY try and exterminate said group")

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#34

Post by a_shovel »

vannevar wrote: post #7

I don't think that most of the people who equate hate speech with violence are literally requesting assualt charges be brought. They are calling for boycotts and de-platforming, both of which fall well within the bounds of the "marketplace of ideas." While there is indeed no right to not be offended, there is also no right to be listened to, and no right to artificially amplify your speech on someone else's dime. We…

> They are calling for boycotts and de-platforming, both of which fall well within the bounds of the "marketplace of ideas."

This is a really obvious idea that people seem to have a lot of trouble understanding, especially when the framing of the conversation drifts toward "cancel culture".

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#35

Post by CamperBob2 »

johnny22 wrote: post #30
CamperBob2 wrote: post #3

People who equate speech with violence have generally never known physical violence. I've always held that position firmly. The trouble is, people are turning out to be a lot more programmable than I thought they (we) were. You could almost say that we're becoming more like machines at the same time that machines are becoming more like us. To the extent that's true, the part of the old saying that goes "... but words…

how much physical violence is enough? Getting jumped by a crowd of dudes for no reason? Getting held up at gunpoint? There was definitely some other stuff as well, but those are the most memorable. I do admit that i haven't been in an actual warzone though.

So you're saying that you equate speech (not credible, specific threats or other extreme examples of non-protected speech) with having your life threatened physically.

I wish I could understand where you're coming from. I genuinely do.

------------- Replying here due to rate limit:

That's why I said "generally." I'm not setting out to invalidate or disrespect any individual's experience.

It's likely that we'd have no trouble finding Holocaust survivors who would equate Nazi rhetoric with violence, for instance. They would agree with your position, given that such rhetoric arguably facilitated violence against them that would not otherwise have occurred. German law reflects this point of view.

But my position has traditionally been that prior restraint empowers the bad guys to an even greater extent. You don't want Nazis spreading messages of hate and violence... but you really don't want them telling you what you can say, if/when they come to power again.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#37

Post by pclmulqdq »

fallingfrog wrote: post #8

The kinds of censorship that really bothers me is when people like Ron deSantis use the power of the state to force people like university professors to say specific things and muzzle them from saying other things. That's actual government censorship.

Those professors and teachers are employees of the government. Like it or not, that puts them under the same umbrella as police officers, fire fighters, and others. Government employees are very much restricted in what they can say and do when they are on the clock.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#38

Post by ejb999 »

fallingfrog wrote: post #25

When a message board or user is kicked off a platform, it's never for "saying the wrong thing" or "political correctness". It's generally because they organized targeted campaigns of harassment, doxxing, swatting, and other kinds of behavior that violated the terms of service. Take this example: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/cloudflare-kiwi-farms-... "At least three people have died by suicide after becoming…

>>When a message board or user is kicked off a platform, it's never for "saying the wrong thing" or "political correctness".

That is not what I have seen - what about all the MDs and scientists that warned about possible side-effects of the vaccine, but since their opinions were not approved by the government, were kicked off twitter/facebook etc?

How about the NYPost being de-platformed for reporting on the hunter biden laptop story? a story which has now been admitted to being true?

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#39

Post by commandlinefan »

PaulHoule wrote: post #17

In 2023 that ‘speech’ could well be spam generated by ChatGPT. ‘Free speech’ isn’t the right model to describe coordinated inauthentic communications, spam, agenda spamming, disinformation, etc. In case where capacity to receive messages is limited, communications can be vandalism if not violence.

Every possible alternative you could suggest is worse.

Re: Speech is violence? Not if we want a liberal, intellectual society

#40

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #10
CamperBob2 wrote: post #3

People who equate speech with violence have generally never known physical violence. I've always held that position firmly. The trouble is, people are turning out to be a lot more programmable than I thought they (we) were. You could almost say that we're becoming more like machines at the same time that machines are becoming more like us. To the extent that's true, the part of the old saying that goes "... but words…

I don't know if this is true all the time. I think knowingly sending rape threats to rape victims is pretty violent behavior. I think knowingly trying to trigger someone into an eating disorder relapse or coercing someone into suicide are heinous things that fall into violence. I think there is a line where speech can be violent or said with the intent to harm someone the same as a punch is.

> I think knowingly sending rape threats to rape victims is pretty violent behavior.

This is correct, also because such speech is quite often a precursor to actual violence. View it as more than a thing in isolation, without consequence.

In a political context, violent rhetoric about a particular group of people is predictably followed by actual violence towards members of that group. Hate speech is very much a part of hate crimes. They're not separable.

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