Hacker News Reader

Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

I'm concerned about 1st amendment and the soft power politicians have on freedom of speech (yes I know this is in Canada). When the head politician of a country essentially calls your group terrorist, wouldn't that put some pressure on social media or other organizations to restrict access, money or censor speech?

Not all violations of free speech are literally police sending someone to jail for saying something. If the politicians pressure private organizations to censor speech, resulting in the speech being censored, then its absolutely a violation of free speech

View on HN

Remember when Trump called antifa a terrorist org? I hope we've learned by now to stop taking the "terrorist" label seriously

Antifa is a terrorist organization. They have political goals that is fighting against political stance and they are trying to achieve this by violence.

Antifa is an ideology. The obvious choice is to support antifa because we've seen what profa does, and they are much more violent.

Just like people have stopped taking the "racist" label seriously.

“Terror” about describes it if it’s your neighborhood and not just a scene on TV. The people breaking windows of businesses that don’t sport the right stickers or threatening violence against those not wearing the right clothes or making the right salutes are appropriately called “terrorists” if not worse. I don’t take the label terrorist to heart when it’s some bullshit overseas conflict, but I know what structure fires look like, I know what mob frenzy looks like. I know what actual political violence looks like. I know how dangerous self-righteous violence can be. Calling antifa terrorists is spot on because that’s what they were/are as demonstrated/experienced by their actions and goals (of which, ant-fascism seems about opposite).

Yeah, we do not have what you think of in terms of freedom of speech in Canada. A private corporation using their insured property to audibly harass a city and blockade streets is not considered freedom of speech in Canada.

Take away their toys and let them hold a protest with their boots and parkas.

Freedom of expression features prominently in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is included in Section 2, which details fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of assembly. It strains credulity to argue that this protest somehow exceeds protest norms when bullhorns, drums, honking, and other noisemaking has been a key part of protests for decades.

Civil disobedience was always a crime. Blocking streets without a permit is a crime. Excessive noise making at all hours of the day and night is a crime. These actions don't become legal if you label them "protest".

All of those "crimes" result in a ticket, not the person in question being hauled off to jail, and they typically aren't enforced on protestors. The government could direct the police to crack down, but that would just throw any pretense of evenhanded enforcement of the law out the window, and harden the protestors' resolve.

The notwithstanding clause kind of renders all those rights and freedoms a joke. The legislature can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, just like in every other country, albeit with less pretense about it.

This is the second time someone has implied this protest isn’t valid because they’re doing it efficiently. It sounds like boomer “in my day” type rhetoric but is irrelevant to the legitimacy of any protest.

Why does the insurance status of property matter? Why does it matter if it belongs to a corporation (also don’t many truckers have their own trucks)? Do you also think megaphones shouldn’t be used to protest? What about amplifying platforms like Twitter? I feel like the line drawn in Canada is unprincipled, if it is as you describe, since truckers are using their property and platform of choice to enhance their protest, which fundamentally isn’t very different to me.

It's a bit worse than that given that CBC(among others) have received 1.4B in funding from the government. CBC is just as good or bad(depending on your viewpoint) as CNN/FOX, if not better/worse.

It feels really bad to have comments removed for keywords like PoC when it's coming from your own tax dollars.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com