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Comment by corobo | Hacker News Reader

> If you don't believe in freedom of speech for people you despise you don't believe in it at all.

I don't think we have freedom of speech (as Americans know it) in the UK anyway so you're not wrong.

E.g. Joseph Kelly was sentenced this year to 150 hours of unpaid work and 18 months of supervision for a “grossly offensive” tweet which went viral (he deleted it after 20 minutes).

This the first I've heard of this and I assumed there must be more to it. After some Googling I'm shocked that someone can be sentenced in the UK for a mildly offensive tweet (IMO) that went viral before it was deleted in 20 minutes.

Famously a UK man was arrested for teaching his dog to raise a paw in imitation of the Nazi salute.

Exactly this issue quickly becomes a motte and bailey tactic for those who hate free speech.

You even get prison time if you tweet the word. E.g:

* 56 days: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17515992

* 6 weeks: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/30/man-19-jaile...

Of course neither article reports what the offensive tweets actually were ...

The USA only has such extreme freedom of speech because of a 1969 Supreme Court decision, Brandenburg v. Ohio.

Technically it's as easily overturned as Roe v. Wade was, but I doubt the Trump-stacked Supreme Court would even try. If it were overturned, we could finally pass sensible hate speech laws even in the USA.

Please give a very specific explanation of what would be "sensible".

Anyone who disagrees with me should have their mouth taped shut.

> The USA only has such extreme freedom of speech because of a 1969 Supreme Court decision, Brandenburg v. Ohio.

This really highlights the creeping cancerous nature of 'speech as violence'. It was Bradenburg v. Ohio that partially overturned Schenck v. United States, in which protesting the draft was considered a sort of violence against the state (creating a "clear and present danger" to the government.) The premise of 'speech as violence' always starts out with examples most people find reasonable, but its way too easy for authoritarians to expand the scope of what speech constitutes violence inch by inch until one day you can no longer protest your own government forcing young men into a meat grinder.

It's way too easy. "Your words offend me, causing a stress reaction which shortens my life. Anything that offends me is ipso facto violence." There needs to be a line drawn in the sand to prevent this escalating madness. Brandenburg v. Ohio does that fairly well.

The USA free speech is not extreme at all. It's the natural state of people.

Repression is the deviance.

> sensible hate speech laws

are an oxymoron. You cannot stop people from thinking things, or saying their mind. They'll just do it out of sight of you.

> Trump-stacked Supreme Court

Free speech is in the Constitution. It's not a creation of Trump, though if it were, Trump would be a great man.

Yah, downvote me all you like. I remain proud to be an advocate of free speech, even for those who want to end free speech.

There's a great segment in The Dawn of Everything[1] that discusses how speech we a check on the rise of authoritarian power in many pre-modern societies.

[1]https://www.amazon.com/Dawn-Everything-New-History-Humanity/...

... then, after it's overturned, the political winds can shift hard to the right and talking about homosexuality or trans or other issues like that can be branded speech-violence and prosecuted.

Power, once given to the state, is hard to take away and political winds change.

Do people not get this?

I say the same thing to right wingers who advocate giving more power to the state in other ways. "We should give Trump unilateral power to fire government employees!" "Okay, then you're fine when President Pelosi inherits those powers?"

Free speech can’t be overturned anymore than the second amendment. The constitution is rather clear.

The constitution is quite clear that the constitution is not immutable. On the contrary, the constitution describes processes by which the constitution may be changed.

Absolutely, so you think you’ll get 2/3s of the states to agree to remove it? The constitution will remain unchanged in this regard.

Definitely not.

> you'll

I wouldn't even want to.

It also does not seem to be immune to creative interpretation. See e.g. current copyright laws.

The different between the UK and the US is that the UK is trying to limit free speech via a law. In the US free speech is limited by the revolving door between silicon valley, government and political activism.

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