In America there is discussion that "hate speech" news sites would also be blocked under local law.
Two different sides of the same coin.
Two different sides of the same coin.
Is "I think black people should be enslaved" fighting words? What about "All jews should be gassed"? Where do torch-wielding mobs marching down the street fit into all this?
See trope 7 from Ken White, a noted lawyer and first amendment expert - https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-...
This is not a theoretical problem. There have been ~50 hate killings in the US this year. (And we haven't even had a mass shooting.)
Where judges chose to draw the bar is incidental to the fact that this exception exists. That they chose to draw it where they did is a legal question, not a moral one.
The fact that judges draw the bar rather than you are me is critically important to prevent abuse. Innumerable boorish people would consider calling out their behavior to be "fighting words".
Yet the "you have no right to falsely yell 'fire' in a crowded theater"[1] was an opinion of a SCOTUS justice about a man who was peacefully protesting the WW1 draft, distributing papers arguing for his political ideals. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater runs a real risk of injury and it's negligent to do so falsely. Telling other people that you oppose a draft does not, yet has not been protected by the 1A (unless the person can prove some religious exemption, as did Muhammed Ali).
As "cut and dry" as we pretend the 1A's protections are, they are far less than what laymen imagine.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
I believe there's a gray, ambiguous spectrum of acceptability, and that somewhere down the line there are opinions which incite (or consist in) violence, which inspire malice, and which are overtly harmful. A line between "disgusting, but acceptable" and "reprehensible" can carefully be drawn to not permit these terrible ideas to be promulgated.
I agree that we should be cautious that this line does not creep into acceptable speech, and that the mechanisms used to enact these decisions are not re-purposed inappropriately. I understand that technology makes speech cheap, and suppression of speech difficult, and that encryption algorithms and other mathematical constructs make no distinction between acceptable and unacceptable speech. But these opinions do not need to be tolerated within society.
That's the reason why we have free speech rights ( in america at least ). So that people can't use and exploit the "gray" as an excuse to censor everyone.
> A line between "disgusting, but acceptable" and "reprehensible" can carefully be drawn to not permit these terrible ideas to be promulgated.
If the ideas are terrible, they should be promulgated and shown for all to see.
> I understand that technology makes speech cheap, and suppression of speech difficult
Actually, technology makes suppression of speech easy.
> But these opinions do not need to be tolerated within society.
Which opinions?
You make generalizations and don't speak of any specifics? And who gets to decide which speech shouldn't be tolerated?
In which case it's a good thing Larrikin has a well defined definition of "political arguments with sound reasons" we can use in legislation.
Snark aside, this post steps over and then directly back into the "who determines what's acceptable speech?" problem. Few will disagree with your extreme example, but your extreme example isn't what people are worried about.
To hell with the people who actually advocate nazi ideology - I'm a lot more worried about what the overreaction to their stupidity will bring, that overreaction being a much more clear and present danger.
So then let them say it and make fools of themselves.
I'm well of paradox of tolerance and it doesn't apply to free speech. Free speech is what keeps the nazis at bay, it's not what gives them power. It's why hitler and the nazis hated free speech and it's why they banned it.
If you tolerate hate speech, there's no paradox: you can do so, without surrendering the protection against intolerance for those members that speech targets.
While I can understand the motivation to interpret it this way, it seems directly counter to Popper:
> In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance#Discussio...
The rest of that quote does mesh well with my take on this: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise".
(Indeed, as Popper himself notes, this is a very straightforward reformulation of the paradox of freedom, whereby you need to suppress the actions of some people that are aimed at reducing the freedom of other people - so you need to reduce freedom for some to maximize freedom for all.)
Another way to approach it is via definitions. Tolerating something means putting up with it. Tolerance is generally deemed to be different from acceptance - to tolerate something means not trying to persecute it or otherwise stamp it out by violence, whereas acceptance is to acknowledge something as proper. But from there follows that intolerance is an action - merely holding some opinion, or even letting it known that you do, is not per se intolerance. "I will not tolerate X" implies that you're willing to act to prevent X from happening. If and when you do, the paradox of tolerance kicks in - people who want to maximize tolerance, have to act themselves, to restrict your acts - thereby being intolerant towards your intolerance. But if you don't act, suppressing your freedom of conscience or of expression is intolerance of dissenting opinion, not intolerance of intolerance.
This rights so important that they listed it first. It protects the deplorable because the acceptable needs no protection. You are not the arbiter of what is and isn't lawful, thankfully.
Yeah, Nazis suck, but they are still afforded basic human rights, that of freedom of expression. We've clearly decided this.
Incitement to violence, slander, false statements that result in public harm ("fire in crowded theater"), that sort of thing is where the law should be involved.
But there shouldn't be laws against bad manners.
Suppression of free speech is a cornerstone of despotism. It is paradoxical to me that people are lobbying for this given the state of our government today. I could, to some degree, understand thoughts of enabling the government to suppress free speech if we had a practical utopia of a government which you could fully trust to be judicious, responsible, and deliberate with any utilization of said powers.
But that is certainly not our present situation. And that is the issue that is confusing to me. One needs not appeal to some possible future situation to see why this would be an undesirable idea. Look at our president, look at our congress. Does anybody truly want to give these people the power to criminalize words? How long would it take before we'd have an act with a 3 or 4 letter acronym that was aimed at using said powers, we've now vested in our government, to deter critique of the government itself? I'm sure they could come up with an excellent name like the "Freedom of Speech Expansion Act". FSEA.
Of course we would go into an outrage and use all of our social media power to write lots of angry letters, start some digital petitions, and maybe even get facebook and google to show an icon on their homepages to 'raise awareness.' And the government would relent. Of course before we'd even finished cheering our amazing victory, an "Amendment for Socially Constructive Discussion" (which is oddly identical to the FSEA) would be quietly attached to a defense or other must-pass bill, and the FSEA becomes law. Feel free to complain. Hopefully it would still be legal to do so.
Does this sound in any way unbelievable or hyperbolic? Now take the contrary. Our government reluctantly passes the bill granting themselves substantially more power, but uses it only judiciously, fairly, and with the utmost concern for the implications of their actions. Constantly ensuring they never give way to companies lobbying for "speech modifications" and ensuring to never overstep any invisible boundaries that would hinder the rights of citizens. Oh yes, and this also continues on indefinitely through each and every congress. Which sounds more probable?
Consider the recent cases where LGBT customers have been refused service by small companies: because this form of discrimination doesn't fall afoul of the Civil Rights Act (no demonstrable case of discrimination due to race, color, religion or national origin here), is it still ok?
(To kill the strawman before it is erected: no, I'm not equating white nationalists with LGBT customers. But if a private hosting service can deny service to a customer because they differ with that customer on philosophical/political grounds, how is that much different than a bakery, for instance, denying service to a customer on religious grounds?)
One could argue religion is a choice too, and I'd agree with you on that, but that's not a battle we're going to win today.