Comment by sleepingadmin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sleepingadmin | Hacker News Reader

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>But, again, in practice, the people in power do not allow free speech. And this is fundamentally different from most examples of cancel culture.

Here in Canada we actually removed freedom of speech. Hate speech laws are tremendously vague and are really not used to prevent anything bad. Sure the Westboro baptists have their 'god hates canada' stuff but realistically speaking it's never used to prevent anyone who is promoting genocide. Literally not once.

Instead the hate crime laws have 99% of the time been used against political opponents. This has created an environment where every single right-wing leader has been labelled a white supremacist. Not because they are in fact white supremacists but because this would put them at odds with hate speech laws and can then be silenced.

Just look at this trucker convoy. The media smeared them as white supremacists and fringe minority. This weekend there was solidarity protests and they were labelled 'nation wide insurrection' and 'occupation'. Ottawa declared a state of emergency and has started arresting and ticketing peaceful protestors.

This is the justification for Gofundme to seize the donations and disperse the money to charities of their choosing.

In reality many truckers are Indian and certainly not white supremacist.

https://twitter.com/QTRBlackGarrett/status/14876208353639833...

https://twitter.com/vonbrauckmann/status/1487614201845600257

My favourite: https://rumble.com/vu5aom-two-indian-freedom-protestors-have...

Those Indian men are the white supremacists!

Yet there were pictures of nazi flags right? Yet here we are unable to determine who that was. It seems like this flag was counter protesters trying to label these Indian truckers as white supremacists.

This is why freedom of speech is important. When you create exceptions, political opponents use these to silence politics.

> Here in Canada we actually removed freedom of speech.

Canadian here. Whether one sympathizes with the truckers or not, or has a more nuanced opinion, claiming that free speech was removed (implying some official stance) is hyperbolic. I will concede that the Charter is more vague than I'd like on where the boundaries of free expression lie.

As for GoFundMe, wasn't their decision - whether you agree with it or not - the decision of a private company that's free to choose with whom it conducts business?

I don't understand, didn't GoFundMe take money but refused a service that was paid for? If they decided to ban that particular campaign, they should return money to the donors not donate it to some other cause, no?

I am not super knowledgeable about the situation, apologies if I misrepresented something.

They have since decided to auto-refund.

That doesn't change that they first tried to misappropriate the money.

>Canadian here. Whether one sympathizes with the truckers or not, or has a more nuanced opinion,

Sure, lets put the trucker sideline aside for discussion.

>claiming that free speech was removed (implying some official stance) is hyperbolic. I will concede that the Charter is more vague than I'd like on where the boundaries of free expression lie.

The gymnastics of your following sentence proves my point.

Lets look at this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

There are exceptions to free speech. Defamation/Libel, incitement to suicide, false advertising. I find all these exceptions to be reasonable or exceptions to speech. False advertising or fraud in general isn't the speech but rather something beyond the speech. Even obscenity in which porn or even death videos are not obscene. The obscenity exception is very tight.

So there can be legitimate exceptions.

In fact, in our law we criminalized 'advocating for genocide' which I suspect both of us agree can stay. Mind you, it has literally never been used. Literally only attempt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mugesera_v_Canada_(Minister_of... but wasn't even proper. Though perhaps we can agree deporting him was a good idea?

The very next rule is the problem. "wilfully promoting hatred'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Andrews

Supreme court ruled that it did violate freedom of speech but section 1 they made the exception against this scumbag. This is what we call 'best of intentions' and its good to stop that dude but what did it open?

When Charlie Hebdo shooting happened in 2015: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Hebdo#2015_attack

There was a reaction, especially on reddit, to stand up together against these terrorists. You will find however, NOBODY in Canada stood up. The few who did ended up in front of hate crime tribunals for promotion of hatred. Of which lets be realistic, this armchair not-lawyer... they were guilty. The problem was that hate crime tribunals know the line they walk. They dismissed virtually all these guilty cases because they knew when they go over the line they lose this tool. There was a unique feature of these hate crime tribunal cases. Every single group attacked were Conservatives.

What happened there? Standing in solidarity with victims of terrorists was indeed promoting hatred of islam. It was discovered in 2015 that you can use the hate crime tribunals to silence political opponents. Suddenly the Conservatives were all racists.

How about Comedians who make dark jokes? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55959133

Sorry, but Mike Ward isn't some white supremacist or something. These laws aren't about making people good people. This isn't about making people less mean jerks.

Free speech is officially dead until this is fixed.

> It seems like this flag was counter protesters trying to label these Indian truckers as white supremacists.

That's quite a claim to make w/out providing evidence.

>That's quite a claim to make w/out providing evidence.

There's literally 3 links providing evidence in my post.

Furthermore, the onus is on the claimant. The claim being made that these Indian truckers are white supramacists and nazis; or that their friends and fellow protestors are nazis? That literally doesnt make any sense.

Sorry but the yellow journalism or, might i even say it, the propaganda asserting these protestors are nazis is a failed narrative.

> the onus is on the claimant

It seems the claim to which glial was referring was the claim that the Nazi flags were some sort of false-flag operation, that these flags were carried by counter-protestors in an effort to falsely implicate the protesting truckers. What is the evidence of that specific claim?

There are links but they don't provide evidence of the claim you're making that protesters are 'false flag' plants.

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