"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
I wonder how things changed so quickly and where this may lead us...
People say this, but I've never seen it. Free speech absolutists weren't out there defending protest rights, lgbt activism, or union advocacy. The speech rights of the powerless have been consistently crushed by the powerful while the first amendment is used as a power defense of those who seek to harden existing power structures.
This quote often feels like a justification to support the speech rights of bigots while dodging the question of moral responsibility.
A Jewish lawyer at the ACLU famously fought for the rights of Nazis to demonstrate in Skokie, Il.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_...
My claim is that "free speech absolutism" is more consistently used to protect the rights of those belonging to traditional power structures than the rights of the downtrodden. I am skeptical of it as a viable ideology when there are populations who enjoy the benefit of this ideology who'd waste no time throwing me in prison if they were granted a legislative majority.
This is why I don't find examples of historically oppressed groups (Jewish people) defending the rights of historically powerful groups (white supremacists) to be a compelling argument that free speech absolutism will actually protect my rights if it came to that.
That's rather the point, though. There are many who hold it essential to defend free speech for Nazis, even though Nazis would remove their freedom to speak. If you balk at that thought, then you don't support free speech at all, just speech within your personal boundaries of acceptability.
Hate speech scales more effectively than individual threats of violence. The 1st amendment will do nothing to protect me.
But there are many other laws that prevent people from "enacting mass violence". Speech is not violence. Violence is violence.
Plus, the same laws that would lock-up fascists for inciting violence could be used against BLM and other left-wing groups. The 1st amendment ensures everyone can say what they like. Speech limiting laws can be abused to suit the preferences of whoever is in power.
We already have laws that are abused against BLM and other left-wing groups. I'm not confident in the ability of the state to protect these groups, despite the state claiming that the US stands for certain values. This makes me skeptical of the free speech absolutist claim that the policy helps all groups equally.
Paradox: if I say: "I don't want freedom of speech for anybody but myself". Why would anyone defend my point of view?
I don't think all ideas are defendable, but then I cannot make a list of what ideas deserve to be defended are what not: this always seemed to me like the notion of love (you don't know how to define it, besides the chemical reactions in our body, you don't know how it got into you, but you'll know when it happens to you).
if you ask me I would defend your right to express that opinion, but I would also expect that if you ever come close to having the power to make it real, you would be stopped.
Young people seems to believe freedom is a solved problem - something you memorised in history class - and are blind to the evil authoritarian regimes of our times (like China, North Korea, Cuba): they don't realise we're one step away from those realities and edging closer every day.
Freedom is not a solved problem, but your examples don't help your cause as much as you think.
None of those countries ever had anything close to a working democracy. Or a large middle class, for that matter.
And in the developed democracies another lesson has been forgotten: prosperity beats freedom/liberty. Empty bellies don't care how they get filled, be it from a dictator's hand or from a well paid job in a market economy functioning under the rule of law of a democracy.
That's what's eroding democracy. The hollowing out of the middle class. Not "freeze peach", though that part having issues isn't helping either.
At the start, only highly technical types dominated the Internet. Other types existed, but were the minority.
And at the start, the Internet had more, tech only content. Sure, there were funny memes, other silly things, but cat videos didn't take up 99.99% of all non-porn traffic.
This type of personality tends to do lots of research, read a lot, where as most of the population never picks up a book, and very rarely reads. And while the Internet forces the average Joe to read, reading a headline is all they do. And can even tolerate.
(Note that UN national literary rates, are based upon what a 7th grader can read. An average one too, not a particularly bright one.)
Couple this with tiny smartphone displays, where a three paragraph news article looks like a massive wall of text...
And, no text reflow in mainline phone browsers due to agendas...
And most Internet commentators aren't even able to listen, or understand, the other side.
One of the most popular communication methods forces tiny little sentences, forcing even the highly literate to write like Captain Kirk, in halting, disjointed sentences!
Then, couple all of this with something else readers / those who enjoy learning, do? Why, they learn history! The history of why you never do this or that, or why thing $x leads to bad outcomes time and time again, which provides significant context to the world.
In short? The Internet now belongs to the masses, and that is why it changed.
Fighting for the other persons right to speak their thought is a good and noble thing as long as the other person doesn't fight against your right to say what you like and as long as their words don't turn into actions. The more of this happens the more tolerance becomes a luxury only those not directly involved can afford.
Let us substitute something else for right wing/fascist extremism for a moment: Dschihadism. When do we stop tolerating Dschihadists? And when do we start treating every Dschihadist as a potential terrorist, which should be surveilled, silenced, imprisoned and ultimately even killed? The answer is very clear: when the frequency with which people violate other peoples fundamental rights in the Name of Dschihadism starts to rise too much. Be it their children or women who are at times forbidden basic human rights, be it the victims of their violent attacks. This is way beyond being just speech, this is anti-humanistic ideology and it should be stopped just at the point where words become actions.
Now if you ask how things changed so quickly: A significant part of the US public came closer to these actions (with a strongly visible part trying to stop the counting of a democratic election with violence). During the Trump years it wasn't just speech that was problematic. People got killed, people got attacked, people got their rights violated in many ways based on that speech. And there is a threshold beyond which tolerance makes you complicit.
Don't become the kind of person that tolerates the NSDAP party rise while closing your eyes to all the clearly visible actions that follow their Brandreden (=German for "inflamatory speech").
You can totally say something I don't agree with and I will fight for your right to do it, but as soon as you step over the line and violate other peoples rights, you waived your right to be tolerated by me.
OP however just seem to hint vaguely to unwanted opinions that should lead to loss of work, implicitly handing the power to a social media mob (or possibly organized groups posing as such) that enforces unwritten rules and targets people with precarious employment or small influencers who depend on their sponsors.
I'd prefer if we'd spell it out in a law and keep the enforcement to the courts, thanks!
How do you verify that someone is stepping over the line and violating the rights of others.
We rely on various NGOs and media reporting for the raw data and the law courts for independent verification.
So it’s no surprise of course that these are early targets for people with malign interests.
It’s a simple litmus test. Both of those functions should be made far more independent of political control.
Easier said than done.
(grammar edit)
What specific right is it that could be impinged by someone else's speech act?
>People got killed, people got attacked, people got their rights violated in many ways based on that speech.
Do you apply this logic to also justify being intolerant to anti-liberal, hate-filled, and potentially violence-provoking speech that comes from the left?
Also: how do you feel about possible harm that comes to people as a result of speech not being tolerated? For example, if openly saying that some demographics are on average more violent than others makes the people who say it unemployable, then some people probably will get injured or killed because out of ignorance, they fail to take precautions that they would have taken had speech been more tolerated.
Uhm, yes?
Jihadism is not covered by free speech, nazism is not covered by free speech but racism is covered by free speech.
You also seem to conflate jihadists with muslims - that's not the case.
Jihadists are terrorists and they want war, other muslims integrate with other societies.
There is definitely a point to be made that Islam may employ a long term strategy of integration followed by politically controlling an entire country once they reach a majority (which could start happening in Europe in 50 years or so). That could be seen as a non-violent jihad (pardon the oxymoron), but that's a scenario that would be perfectly legal and not violent. Written or unwritten constitutions in western countries should be able to protect religious freedom even in such an event - or maybe countries will decide to change and become stricter in the religions they allow (whether by becoming islamic or anti-islamic).
For a long time, gay people could be thrown in prison for having gay sex. This was mass violence against gay people. It was absolutely within free speech rights to advocate for these laws and to vote for legislators who supported these laws. This, IMO, was far more violent to the gay community than an individual saying "let's go kill that f*g". So I question whether "violent threats unacceptable, hate speech acceptable" is the right boundary.
Are you not familiar with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Party_of_...
Nazism was specifically defended by the ACLU and won. Speech is speech. And it was a Jewish lawyer who fought the case.
This is a very childish way to look at the world. Unfortunately there's more "violence" than physically bonking people over the head. State oppression is violence, societal oppression is violence, widespread racism is violence; Hitler didn't have to openly call for violence against the Jews for quite some time. All he had to do was say that they're rats, traitors, subhuman, they're why Germany lost the war, etc. Every day the state and capitalism wield their violence on the people: if you don't comply they will kick you off your home. Point being there is more violence than simply saying "I will now proceed to punch this person".