We have a constitution that protects our rights, and among them a right to make up our minds on the basis of an uncensored discourse. That's the other, implicit half of the first amendment: the right to listen to what others want to tell you.
Had cops show up at the home of a child that was on a sports team of my daughter's. They were looking for her brother and took him in.
Afterwards we spoke more to her mother and found out that users in game forums had told him he could make these kinds of comments and it was free speech as long it wasn't a call to violence. Well I don't know the legalities, but I do know he was never welcome back at that school. (Nor even in the district for that matter.) Worse, the neighboring district got word, and they implemented their own machinations to ensure he was effectively banned from there as well. In the end, they sent him to live with relatives.
I wouldn't be so cavalier about telling people they can say things like this. It's like, well you can say anything. But if you say things that make oblique suggestions towards violence, expect to watched from that point on. And excluded from any activities that people believe would provide you opportunity to act on what they now suspect to be your intentions. You can't talk about indirect suggestions of violence against airliners, presidents, or students in high schools and still expect to be able to show up at the White House, or board an airliner, or go to the high school you attend. Society doesn't work like that these days.
Or https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/us/pastors-praise-anti-ga...
You can not. Inciting violence and calls for criminal action is a well establish limit of the First Amendment, but that is not what they are doing from what I gathered in this thread.
From the poster a few levels above:
> In the case of Israel, the Middle-Eastern unit were literally showing videos demanding further uprising against Israel across the region directly from Hamas. Also the entire point of Al Jazeera was for Qatar to provide political influence through media, not as an unbiased news agency.
Showing a video of an enemy of the country calling for genocide of that country is a newsworthy event that is part of journalistic practice. The American media showed Osama Bin Laden videos calling for the death of Americans, to report on him.
Please learn the difference of showing a video of a terrorist calling for genocide to report on him vs the news anchor/owner of that news company agreeing with that terrorist and joining that call for genocide.
America has other limits on free speech. Foreign control of media for example which I am not familiar with.
There is more to it than that. The Supreme Court has held that “advocacy of the use of force” is only unprotected when it is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and is “likely to incite or produce such action.”
Brandenburg v Ohio (the current standard for what constitutes incitement) literally says your free speech rights run up to and include advocacy for violent overthrow of the government. The limitation it establishes is "incitement to imminent lawless action", with heavy emphasis on "imminent".
I'd hope this only applies to the government though and not towards groups of people or ethnicity.
However, if you agree that Brandenburg set the correct limit, you can conditionalize aid on it. It’s just not a first principles approach.
Saying "ethnic group XXX should be exterminated" does not meet the standard for incitement. I don't know why the debate has become about US law but I'm even more puzzled about so many people confidently stating, wrongly, that the US bans hate speech. The US has frequently been criticized by Europeans for this exact reason -- in their view, the US stance permitting hate speech is irresponsible.
Yes. We see this with open chants of "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" and "Globalize the Intifada"
...as long as the call is not likely to produce "imminent lawless action". Brandenburg v. Ohio was a decision by the Supreme Court establishing the "imminent lawless action" test for determining when speech advocating illegal conduct is not protected by the First Amendment. The Court held that speech is protected unless it is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
I particularly object to taking worst possible interpretation, and labelling the slogan as a call for ethnic cleansing.
The phrase "will be free" would not normally be interpreted this was in in any other conflict.
For several decades, Israel's Likud party (currently in power) election manifesto was...
"From the river to the sea, there will be only Israeli sovereignty".
Perhaps that's where the Palestinians got it?
"Palestine will be free" is not "openly calling for murder".
Literally nothing in the definition of the word means what you are attempting to make it mean:
free | friː | adjective (freer | ˈfriːə | , freest | ˈfriːɪst | )
1 able to act or be done as one wishes; not under the control of another: I have no ambitions other than to have a happy life and be free | a free choice.
• [with infinitive] able or permitted to take a specified action: you are free to leave.
• (of a state or its citizens or institutions) subject neither to foreign domination nor to despotic government: a free press.
• historical not a slave: the poor among the free men joined the slaves against the rich.
• [in names] denoting an ethnic or political group actively opposing an occupying or invading force, in particular the groups that continued resisting the Germans in the Second World War after the fall of their countries: the Free Dutch, Free Polish, and Free Norwegian fleets. See also Free French.
2 [often as complement] not or no longer confined or imprisoned: the researchers set the birds free | police were forced to let him walk free.
• not physically obstructed or fixed: he tried to kick his legs free | she smiled, leaned back, and waved a free arm in the air.
• Physics (of power or energy) disengaged or available. See also free energy.
• Physics & Chemistry not bound in an atom, a molecule, or a compound: the atmosphere of that time contained virtually no free oxygen. See also free radical.
• Linguistics denoting a linguistic form that can be used in isolation.
3 not subject to engagements or obligations: she spent her free time shopping.
• (of a facility or piece of equipment) not occupied or in use: the bathroom was free.
4 (free of/from) not subject to or affected by (something undesirable): our salsas are free of preservatives.
5 given or available without charge: free healthcare.
6 using or expending something without restraint; lavish: she was always free with her money.
• frank or unrestrained in speech, expression, or action: he was free in his talk of revolution.
• archaic overfamiliar or forward.
7 (of literature or music) not observing the normal conventions of style or form.
• (of a translation) conveying only the broad sense; not literal.
8 Sailing (of the wind) blowing from a favourable direction to the side or aft of a vessel.
Free as in judenfrei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judenfrei
Concrete examples: “Jews will not replace us” is protected speech; “everyone go out and find a Jew” to an angry mob is probably not.
In terms of civil law you can generally sue anyone for anything at anytime unless there is existing law or contracts halting further civil actions.
Meanwhile Israeli citizens cannot read Al Jazeera legally now.
Anyway, I get your point but the difference here is this, you're allowed to ask questions like that in the very places where this nonsense is being fabricated.
That same toxic propaganda shouldn't be allowed to spread freely and unabated within our information space or we become those very dystopias we try to avoid.
I think this blind belief that "all information" is part of "free speech" is our Achilles heel, it might destroy our country.
Haha. And we're going to let the government decide what is "correct" and "accurate"?
Letting whoever is currently in power control what information the electorate has access to is one of the single biggest threats to democracy.
> Al Jazeera making up causality figures in real-time isn’t how you make up your mind.
The correct response is pointing out that their numbers are made up. In a working democracy you get people to see truth through public discourse, not censorship.
Don't make a deal with the devil just to shut up the neighbor's annoying dog.
in an idealistic world, this is true.
Unfortunately, it is also empirically true that, at least in the USA, the majority of the voting population has become a bit dumb, and does not personally try to verify these things they see or hear on the news.
Civic duty in democracy includes this sort of scrutiny, but sadly this level of critical thinking has been in decline in recent decades.
Ok, so how did all this unchecked exposure to propaganda workout for Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Palestine etc? Did it lead to some kind of "free thinking" utopia?
Free speech hasn't been banned in Israel. Access to information hasn't been banned. What has been banned is a platform for foreign agents to easily negative influence their populace and to broadcast nonsense en masse to their people.
If any Al Jazeera staff who have a residency permit want to walk the streets and discuss things their passionate about to other people, it will be allowed. But it won't be allowed if it turns out their being paid to do so by a foreign government. It's no different.
Sorry to say this, but you have yet offered a sane alternative here.
We can't just have autocrats from foreign countries broadcasting nonsense, unabated to whoever wants to listen, else our society will look no different to those dystopias.
Domestic free speech within a democracy is one thing, foreign interference is another.
You did not think this argument through. None of the aforementioned countries have free press. They censor heavily.
In all of the above countries the government dictates what is "correct" and "accurate" information. News outlets saying anything else are shut down, banned, and journalists are sometimes jailed.
All of these non-democracies are afraid of free press. Is that the company Israel wants to keep in this matter?
> Access to information hasn't been banned [in Israel].
Al Jazeera is literally banned and blocked.
> We can't just have autocrats from foreign countries broadcasting nonsense, unabated to whoever wants to listen, else our society will look no different to those dystopias.
This defeatist argument leads to the conclusion that democracy cannot work. Democracy cannot work without free press, and according to you it cannot work if press is free from government interference.
Is that what we want to do? Give up?
You cannot let the legislative decide what constitutes an "enemy disinformation campaign" and what is "free press". It's an obvious weak spot in your democracy bad actors can exploit - far more dangerous than foreign propaganda that has to measure up against friendly outlets.
I think it would be a mistake to characterize the difference between Israeli media and pro Palestinian media as simply disagreeing about numbers. If we’ve learned anything about global conflict, numbers don’t mean anything to people. If all Al Jazeera were doing is putting a black text white background body count on screen, there would have been no issue.
The difference is the images that are being depicted. People are moved by images of suffering. And depending on whose side you’d like to benefit, there’s plenty of suffering to show. This is likely one of the reasons Israel is shooting journalists. They might show pictures that complicate their black and white depiction of the conflict.
It’s also a trap to say that showing one side diminishes the suffering of the other. Fundamentally, neither’s suffering is more important.
And the E.U. banned Russia's RT media network, and has strict rules over foreign-owned media. This is all just the pot calling the kettle black to score points with anti-Israel domestic audiences. Literally every country complaining about it has some kind of similar restriction. Qatar doesn't recognize Israel as a state and has funded Hamas for years; Israel banning their state-owned media domestically is only controversial because some people find Israel to be controversial. Qatar complaining about it is especially ironic, since they hand out life sentences in prison for criticizing the Qatari government (e.g. Qatari poet Mohammed al-Ajami).
https://www.freedomforum.org/non-citizens-protected-first-am...
The US Constitution applies to any US Person - someone within the US’ international borders, regardless of citizenship status.
Banning a foreign news outlet who broadcasts outside the US isn’t violating anyone’s 1st amendment rights.
This is basically untrue. At times, the court has applied different standards to speech by residents, but this does not mean that they would allow the government to apply any kind of limit on their speech, or indeed, more than very narrow ones.
In addition, the first amendment also covers the right to receive information.
Foreign ownership rules are not the same thing as the EU banning RT through legal means, or Israel shutting down Al-Jazeera and instituting internet blocks. You will notice that RT is not blocked in the US, nor is any other foreign media company.