The almost free speech on the other side of the ocean seems to be working pretty well. You get to say anything that isn’t actively harmful to others, but you won’t be able to advertise bleach as a way to get Corona out of your system.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
[1] https://thenewamerican.com/hate-speech-u-k-political-leader-...
[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/arrests-offensive-face...
"It has been wrongly suggested that Mr Weston was arrested for reciting passages written by Winston Churchill. I understand he was not welcome outside the Winchester Guildhall, the Police were called and he was asked to move on. I also understand that he was not prepared to move on and was arrested for this reason."
"I hate indians! They are a beastly people with a beastly religion"
Or "the Hindus are a foul race"
It's highly believable that quoting Churchill can be considered hate speach. There's a lot of races he did not like
you can't do this in the US either if you're actually selling bleach. are you saying in europe ordinary people aren't allowed to publicly speculate about cures for the virus?
Working "pretty well?" Sure, unless one tries to talk about things that really matter and strays outside the dotted lines of permissibility.
Some topics are verboten.
When you say "other side of the ocean," I assume you're talking about Europe.
Try to discuss the muslim rape gangs in the UK.
Try to discuss the surge in grenade attacks and many-fold increase in rape in Sweden.
Try to discuss the homeless migrants living on the streets and the Aljerian street wars in France.
Try to discuss Fulan Gong in China. Or tiannamen square.
Try to discuss political assassinations in Russia, or the bribes the wife of Moscow's mayor hands out.
Try to discuss alternative political parties in Ukraine.
I think there are scores of political prisoners serving time for wrongthink who might disagree with your assertion that almost free speech is working pretty well.
If you want to discover who your masters are, learn who you are not allowed to criticize.
When people advocate censorship of any kind, they're really saying, "I have the correct views held by the establishment, so I'm not worried about it."
If the establishment's views are strongly codified and checks and balances are in place to maintain them, is that so bad?
Conversely, I believe there are a lot of people in the US walking around freely that deserve to be locked up.
Russia and China do not have free speech. If you say the wrong thing there, you go to prison (or worse). That's censorship.
And potentially loosing your job is quite a big deal for most people. That's what happened to James Damore for bringing up the wrong subject.
Not saying you think muslims are dangerous is at the same courtesy level as not telling your coworker his hair looks like shit every day. Nobody is going to (immediately) fire you for it, but people will definitely start avoiding you if you do it to an obnoxious degree.
If Christians were targeted by violence on American streets after 9/11 (as they were--along with, you know, completely unrelated Sikhs), "the left" would say that's wrong, too. And the reason that the status quo with regards to anti-Islam sentiment is what it is is because Americans in a whole lot of places genuinely haven't progressed much beyond that mindset.
There's a difference of kind here.
So you're claiming that Sweden has put people into prison because they discussed the increase in rape? Citation please.
Your whole comment is a prime example of unfounded FUD. [1]
[1] With the exception of Russia, China, and probably Ukraine, but in what world do they belong in one bucket together with Sweden or France in terms of democracy?
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
In fact, that quote is on the Wikipedia page!
>> The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
That sounds bad, but I wonder how Chomsky would feel if that wasn't the case and the "spectrum of acceptable opinion" included stuff like literal Nazism.
Like front page newspaper stories, senior politicians and even a dramatisation on the desperate-to-be-inoffensive BBC, you mean? Sure, not everybody approves of people whose take on the cases obsesses about the ethnicities of the perpetrators above all else, but free speech doesn't mean a point of view has to be agreed with.
Why would you not be able to do that in Sweden? How is it limited?
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/839509/Britain-towns-citie...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grooming-gan...
But whatever.
Or how about MPs telling victims to keep their mouths shut for the sake of diversity. It certainly gives me the opinion that they are trying to cover it up.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4813870/MP-shares-T...
So, you just confused the opposition, it is a Labour MP after all, with the government. And you totally ignored the origin of the retweet and the fact that the MP in question re-tweeted and did not write that tweet herself. Nice job, really.
Alternatively, you don't go to jail for suggesting that anybody actually implied injection of bleach as a treatment for coronavirus.
The land of the almost free just doesn’t have quite the same ring to it
"The land of the free, only if you are brave enough to live free."
Also big tech is going to end democracy as we know it unless we get serious. They can decide who gets elected into office and we are on a path to replacing elected representatives with kings.
For the record this is intended in jest
“Defamation is an area of law that provides a civil remedy when someone's words end up causing harm to your reputation or your livelihood. Libel is a written or published defamatory statement, while slander is defamation that is spoken by the defendant.”
> There is no such thing as almost free speech in a free society except perhaps for clear cut physical threats.
I take your point but I think you are brave to rely on the common sense of the entire world to protect you from false or misleading claims against you. Having seen a friend being roasted in the "mainstream media" with a story which was heavily biased against her, and seeing the venomous messages sent to her in the aftermath, I think I'm ok with some limits on free speech.