Are there two genders? Should I get arrested if I say yes? Should I get arrested if I say no?
Horrible approach that Germany is taking against a fundamental right to free speech. Gestapo like
I think your argument demonstrates a slippery slope.
I think probably claims should have to be more specific and inciteful to be considered illegal.
Also - I think proportionality matters as well. Saying 'the kids who died at Sandy Hook were not real people but actors' - on a personal level should be legal. But if you have an audience of 400M people and scream that nonsense, I think this might be a problem. Right now it's handled in civic courts, but we could think a bit about what that means.
It's very hard, and there are a lot of slippery slopes. Risky.
Wouldn’t some think that it would be e.g. justified to set fire to a police station or something? I mean, seeing as riots include things like other places being set aflame.
Meanwhile transgender sacrificing children would be a falsehood wholly invented to smear a group that already frequently suffers violence and harassment and with the blatant intention of promoting and justifying further violence and harassment. The statement is in effect part of the process of harassing, harming, and ultimately killing people. It ought to be illegal in the same way that breaking into a home to commit rape is also illegal and liable to be punished more harshly itself than if the burglary was part of mere trespass.
I also take issue with drawing a line between a harmful lie like Sandy Hook and mass promotion of same in the fashion you have. Both should be illegal in the same way that starting a house on fire isn't any more legal than setting a fire that burns down whole housing development. The punishment may be harsher but its ultimately the same crime. It's also not a slippery slope AT ALL.
Passing on a falsehood that the individual knew or should have reasonable known was false is not at all like parsing the difference between police arbitrarily or unnecessarily killing black people. We can forgive trespasses where the truth is a matter of opinion, phrasing, or debate while trivially punishing people who blatantly lie or spread harmful nonsense.
If you don't know that dead children aren't crisis actors or forest fires aren't caused by jewish space lasers and you can't be educated you should probably be fined or imprisoned into silence so that the rest of society can move on.
This is plainly false.
Claims that police arbitrarily kill people, or are 'killers' etc. are all over the web..
That you would blind yourself to the radical populism in some corners because maybe you don't want it to exist is not helpful.
Here's a completely random example:
"cops are serial killers. paid, protected serial killers who believe their jobs entitle them to take human life. over and over. they lie. they kill. they lie again. repeat. "
This is one of literally millions of such Tweets.
How could you possibly suggest that such language does not exist when it's rampant?
If that example isn't specific enough for you, then just Google a bit and you'll have your examples.
"a harmful lie like Sandy Hook and mass promotion of same in the fashion you have. Both should be illegal in the same way that starting a house on fire isn't any more legal "
Again, utterly false.
So plainly wrong, that I'm sure you can't have actually thought it through.
Do realize this Orwellian implications of governing speech to the point wherein saying something that is 'non factual' is tantamount to a crime?
It's not even a 'slippery slope' it's already ultra authoritarian.
Again: hop on to Twitter, right now, by your logic, millions of people would be charged with crimes, daily.
"If you don't know that dead children aren't crisis actors or forest fires aren't caused by jewish space lasers and you can't be educated you should probably be fined or imprisoned into silence so that the rest of society can move on."
You seem to have a wilful lack of understanding of what is happening in pop culture and in the commons, and yet want to enact vicious authoritarian violence on people for arbitrary words?
I wonder if you realize that you're a fascist authoritarian?
You are exactly what we are afraid of.
People can believe what they want to believe and say what they want to say, unless it really starts to damage others, and that's a high bar.
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/sheerohero666/status/127598615903...
When you really think about the middle ground, the examples get very murky. They are not simple.
They used extreme examples precisely because they wanted to avoid the challenge that will necessarily come otherwise.
For example spreading false rumors that children's hospitals are giving sex changes to young children and saying that "somebody needs to put a stop to these evil monsters mutilating children" [2][3] is definitely incitement. Calling teachers that mention the fact that they are in a gay marriage "groomers" which implies that they are child molesters is also incitement. That's not good faith debate. It's smearing people in the hopes that someone will harm them.
1. https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/2/e20210...
> We found that an average of 5 years after their initial social transition, 7.3% of youth had retransitioned at least once. At the end of this period, most youth identified as binary transgender youth (94%), including 1.3% who retransitioned to another identity before returning to their binary transgender identity. A total of 2.5% of youth identified as cisgender and 3.5% as nonbinary. Later cisgender identities were more common among youth whose initial social transition occurred before age 6 years; their retransitions often occurred before age 10 years.
2. https://tennesseestar.com/2022/10/03/matt-walsh-announces-ra...
3. https://www.losangelesblade.com/2022/03/28/gubernatorial-say...
You didn't give us examples from either side of the line to show us where the line is, you gave one example that's totally fine ("X is a jerk" isn't going to get anyone arrested in the US) and one that's a direct incitement to violence. The examples are miles apart and the line could be anywhere between them.
The Matt Walsh example doesn't really help either. If I said "someone needs to put a stop to these evil monsters pumping carbon into the atmosphere" in the context of protesting a new coal mine, pretty much everyone would understand there was an implied "...by turning up to my legal protest next Tuesday and waving some placards around" on the end. Saying the owners needed to be lined up and shot may or may not be incitement, but again that's a pretty extreme example, and it still doesn't look simple.
There are limitations.
Saying that the corona started in a lab without evidence can be defamation, which is not protected by free speech, not even in the US.
Saying that two genders exists or not has never been questioned, but telling a trans person that they are an aberration of the nature is "fighting words" and is not protected.
Telling a kid "you're a f*ot and should kill yourself" is not protected by free speech.
etc.
If you were to scream it at them in a way that would suggest to an ordinary person they are in danger of attack it would be fighting words. If you merely slung it on the street you would have no realistic means of legal redress. No cop is going to arrest them for offending you nor prosecutor press charges.
but if you write it on a social network they will probably come and knock at your door.
that's the point.
when you're writing something on a globally accessible platform you're basically making a public statement and it makes all the difference
people need to realize that freedom of speech is not the same thing as freedom of publishing anything they like without consequences
> Telling a kid "you're a f*ot and should kill yourself" is not protected by free speech.
This would be absolutely awful but you would be unlikely to face legal consequences.
Are you saying we can't agree on what reality is?
If you provide bullshit medical advice to people you should go to jail frankly, for example.
But misinformation, when it's applied broadly, does have consequences and that will have an effect.
Right now we actually do contend with it i.e voting machine lies, lies about Sandy Hook children - but we handle that in civil cases where people sue each other for 'damages' in which case we have to arrive at some truth. Point being - we legally identify 'damages' there.
But the government is responsible for protecting people from 'damage' as well, in which case we could feasibly have the DoJ take people to court for civil-ish kinds of things, or, find some way forward.
I don't know what the answer is, but it doesn't have to be entirely strict or all encompassing and may have thresholds for proportionality etc. or even depend on the integrity of institutions.
We already draw a lot of boundaries around medical information and could do the same. For example, there could be a requirement to indicate lack of authority / seek a doctor's opinion when discussing health matters. Like I like Joe Rogan, but absolutely detest when he starts yapping about vaccines etc. as his position de facto amounts to misinformation which actually can cause harm. If he were required to consistently remind people "I am not a doctor. This is entertainment. Please consult your doctor for advice concerning COVID." (He should have done this without being asked), then I think those kinds of things can help.
And probably we should err on the side of freedom of expression.
But there is a huge risk in getting into an authoritarian situation as people want to regulate others opinions, and yes, as you say, declaring that there are 'only two genders' is considered 'hate speech' by some and they will push hard to stop others from saying this, which is scary.
I'm wary that our governments have the ability to split hairs on these hard issues.
you get arrested when you ask to lock up transgender people, when you suggest anti-vaxxers (or vaccination supporters) "have a death wish", suggesting you'll look away if someone attacks them.
you get arrested for shouting group XYZ "should die"
§130StGB is about respect in political discourse. if you can't say it with respect shut the fuck up until you can.
any and all examples in your comment have their position not only freely stated online, in Germany, but even on print media, at lengths.
Not it's not, it's about protecting minorities. You're free to say "Germans are a race of dogs" in response to parliament voting on recognizing the Turkish genocide against the Armenians, for example, because Germans are not a minority. You wouldn't be free to say "Turks are a race of dogs", that would be illegal.
it's about inciting unrest against the peace of the land, specifically targetting some specific group of humans.
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_st...
so a better example would be ditib mosques to systematically suggest to their faithful to poorly service Germans and give them higher prices.
or some German political party to suggest that our current problems are caused by "the Russians" and to suggest discriminating against kids off Russian expats is fine at school.
No, it's really not, we know this, because it's been tested. Look up Malik Karabulut who said exactly what I wrote (he was also insulting individual officials, but that's not what this is about). The DA did specifically say (and that wasn't a controversial decision outside of right-wing circles) it does _not_ apply to the majority.