Is Hate Speech Legal?
thefire.org
thefire.org
Banning “hate speech” without restricting political speech is prohibitively difficult because of the target’s inherent subjectivity.
Like most rights, free speech isn't perfect, it's just the least bad alternative.
You can’t have it both ways: if you want to speak freely about what you care about, you have to let the people you hate speak freely too. Over the last 100 years, it has done far more good than harm to let people express themselves
Didn't it help that is wasn't unacceptable to call a black person n**r and to call a homosexual f**t?
Freedom of expression always goes in both directions. Your free expression can suppress my freedom of expression.
How does even harmful speech (e.g. your examples) prevent your freedom of expression?
Fear, threat of property and physical harm.
Neither of these fears are the same as actually preventing someone from expressing their views.
When threats become actual violence there are already laws to address that. Trying to preemptively protect people from mean words invariably harms more people than it purports to protect.
Only physical violence or does psychological violence count too?
What about cyberbullying and mobbing?
You don't need physical force for that.
I dislike bad stuff too. Bullying is wrong and should be stopped. Hate speech is also wrong but I'll defend people's right to speak.
But are they really?
Can you really claim to be democratic when you have wholesale determined that only approved speech can be uttered? How does democracy work when some can speak and others cannot?
The US really isn't the model country for democratic participation.
Democracy works best when unhelpful fringes cannot speak. Antisemites for instance contribute nothing of substance to any democracy. Same goes for people insisting on abusing fellow humans based on their sexual orientation or skin colour. How, exactly is democracy hurt by not letting them speak publicly? Their opinions are invalid, not based on any reason (so reasoning with them is pointless), and thus their voice is suppressed, and that's actually a good thing for all those that would otherwise have to suffer harassment and abuse.
How do you imagine the civil rights movement would have worked out if unfavorable positions of the time were suppressed?
How would that work for LGBQ rights?
There is no value in suppressing bad views. Exposing them let's them be recognized for what they are. Suppressing them causes them to grow and fester in the shadows.
What people really fear is that people will not be intelligent enough to discern these bad opinions, that is an entirely different issue.
Antisemites aren't a disfavored minority, the Jews they're hating on are.
> How do you imagine the civil rights movement would have worked out if unfavorable positions of the time were suppressed?
Hating on a group of people for who they are isn't an unfavourable position that merits being protected. Or compared to a civil rights movement.
> Exposing them let's them be recognized for what they are
> What people really fear is that people will not be intelligent enough to discern these bad opinions, that is an entirely different issue.
How did that work, historically? It didn't, and still doesn't today - see Trump, Brexit, Orbán. It's not an entirely different issue, it's the same problem - not only is a group of people directly hurt by allowing those who abuse them keep doing so, but others might get impressed for whatever reason and join the hating group's ranks.
Are you saying that:
1. the majority of the population of <Western European Country X> are antisemites
or
2. antisemites aren't disfavored
because I would say that both of these are false. Few people are antisemites, and antisemites are strongly disfavored to the point of having their speech made illegal - and "punch a nazi" is a meme.
> Democracy works best when unhelpful fringes cannot speak.
People on the whole also have a poor grasp of history and struggle to grasp how different things really were in the past.
That's fine, as long as the government doesn't declare you part of an "unhelpful fringe".
> Their opinions are invalid
I am 100% sure that you, personally, hold opinions that are considered "invalid" by a sizeable chunk of society.
That doesn't make it okay for them to shut you up.
- Lenin, probably
So are you promoting no restrictions whatsoever? How close to violence do you want to allow? How allowable is a specific threat before it is actionable? How much intimidation is allowed to influence "free" action in your mind in the name of preserving "free speech" before it has too high a cost of preventing "free action"? How does something like fraud, or the slippier forms of it called "false advertising" or "hype" fit in?
We cannot be so paranoid about potential future government harms to us that we overlook the immediate dangers of current and ongoing harms done person-to-person.
If you extended the same level of paranoia to other abuses, you'd end up abolishing the police and any other sort of government body that could be abused as well... yet very few of us would choose that world. No world will be free of harm, free of crime, free of abuse of power - we must simply try to minimize their occurrence in practice vs trying to fit things into a slogan.
We also have laws and civil actions for fraud, defamation, slander, libel. For all of them a key component is that you are lying to achieve some end- take money, or ruin someone's reputation.
These lines are actually very easy to draw. If the thing you are bothered by and trying to outlaw is the thought behind them then they are protected. If you are trying to stop something that would be considered criminal or a civil tort regardless of how it was achieved (stealing, making some think he is about to get hurt, ruining someone's reputation) then it is not protected.
We don't need to look at potential future government harms, we only need to look at past actual governments. If my past government has taken it on themselves to illegally and irresponsibly repress speech, and I believe they did, why would I want to give current governments the power to legally repress speech? The government is formed in the same structure, and is likely to repeat the same mistakes, and frankly is likely to illegally repress speech again in the future, but I'd at least like to have the courts to fall back on (although even that isn't always enough)
I see more "grudging acceptance" than any sort of good control.
And if that's what the people want, that's fine.
But in my view, if we wanted to do better on those things, we should have the freedom as a society to do those things. That's the place I argue against "free speech absolutism" from. Would we then change our mind later, or put different regulations in place? Quite likely! But that's perfectly fine. The only way to not change is to die.
No, but none of those are free speech issues. Swatting involves deceiving law enforcement; ICOs were something nobody with any real law enforcement or policy power understood well at the time but they’ve been taking the time to learn (emphasis on time) and death threats are generally more an issue of resources. Any dumbass can create an anonymous email address and send threats. Unmasking all of the dumbasses willing to send them is generally more resource intensive than providing temporary protection and investigating the veracity of the threats or the likelihood they will be carried out; but if you did unmask them it would typically mean at minimum a trip to the psych ward for them to be held and evaluated.
Note also that the comment I was originally replying to was saying we already have too many restrictions on speech. So they'd presumably want to loosen those things even more.
We could easily make the penalty for SWATting life in prison. If you got caught the only free speech defense I could imagine would be that you sincerely believed that SWAT was needed and you were mistaken. Sometimes that defense would work, but I can imagine all kinds of scenarios in which the defense would be useless, e.g. you did it to the same guy multiple times, or you don't live anywhere near the location you sent SWAT to
I agree with your sentiment to deal more with actual, not theoretical problems. However, I think there have been enough actual historical examples of abuses of power in free speech regulations that are self-reinforcing. This should create a high bar when considering any particular restriction. It’s not paranoia, it’s lessons learned.
So some restrictions? Sure, and the courts have indeed allowed some. But they are and ought to be well-reasoned exceptions with clear distinctions so we don’t end up with something akin to a thought-police.
> Even what seem like sensible categories like inciting to violence immediately get spun around and we get all sorts of things being called violence in order to try and suit political aims.
I simply don't understand why I could be sued for saying "[individual X] is a pedophile" but it is fine to say "all [race/religion/gender/sexuality Y] individuals are pedophiles" even if that individual X is included in that group Y. Aren't you defaming individual X either way? Why does including other people in your defamation make it acceptable?
Whereas accusing a group means no individual has a clear case that they have been harmed. And, there is generally no individual or organization from said group that is able to speak for it. Although there are indeed some organizations that exist for this purpose, like the ADL.
It is not so much that being non-specific makes defamation acceptable, but rather, being non specific makes it so much more difficult to go after the person.
Do we get to blame Karl Marx for the tens of millions who have been murdered by his followers?
These are trials we are talking about. We don’t have to believe everything that is said. We can let a jury look at the situation and make a decision. A reasonable person wouldn’t consider any Beatles lyrics to be instructions to murder. A reasonable person could interpret some hate speech as instructions for murder.
>Charles Milles Manson (né Maddox; November 12, 1934 – November 19, 2017) was an American criminal and musician who led the Manson Family, a cult based in California, in the late 1960s. Some of the members committed a series of nine murders at four locations in July and August 1969. In 1971, Manson was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of seven people, including the film actress Sharon Tate. The prosecution contended that, while Manson never directly ordered the murders, his ideology constituted an overt act of conspiracy.
Besides, the history of the legal system is rife with instances of juries going along with prosecutorial bullshit.
That isn't how that works. The jury can't charge someone with a crime beyond what the prosecution argued.
No, but they can find someone guilty without reference to what the prosecution says.
Neither the jury, nor the prosecution, nor me, nor even (likely) you believes that Manson was convicted solely on the basis of hypothetical speech.
Tex Watson testified that Manson explicitly ordered the Tate killings.
Manson was physically present at the scene of the LaBianca killings, and actually entered the house (again, according to Watson).
https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-a...
>> Finally, there was no pre-existing relationship between Westboro's speech and Snyder that might suggest that the speech on public matters was intended to mask an attack on Snyder over a private matter. Therefore, the Court held that the Phelps and his followers were "speaking" on matters of public concern on public property and thus, were entitled to protection under the First Amendment.
It's not defamation to say "All surgeons are butchers" but is defamation to say "Doctor (insert doctor's name) is a butcher." (that is, assuming that the doctor isn't actually a butcher... truth is a defense against defamation).
The 'n' word is mostly stopped by social means.
In the USA, however, freedom of speech is an absolute right. There are some narrow limitations (Libel, Calls to Violence), however the legislature does not have the power to add limits without a constitutional amendment, which requires a super-majority.
That there are limitations means it isn't an absolute right. The fact that the First Amendment only limits Congress means private enterprise has the right to limit speech in ways the government can't - this right is also defined in the Constitution by the 10th Amendment (The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.)
Hate speech is mostly just hurting peoples feelings. It neither helps cause physical damage nor costs the victims money. You cannot, in the US, ban the expression of a thought just because you think somewhere down the line it could result in damage to someone.
So three guys conspire to burn down a church- that could damage someone. A guy writing on the internet that churches are full of pedos and someone who reads that decides to burn down a church? The guy who burns the church only committed a crime.
There could be grey areas between those two situations and that is for law to decide. But the crime cannot be essentially the thoughts and ideas expressed
If hate speech were to be made a crime, your exact same argument "the right to free speech does not protect your right to commit crimes" could and would be used as an argument why the First Amendment supposedly does not apply.
> It neither helps cause physical damage nor costs the victims money. You cannot, in the US, ban the expression of a thought just because you think somewhere down the line it could result in damage to someone.
That is exactly what your example of planning to rob a bank is. The planning to rob a bank does not cause any damage. The planning to rob a bank does not cause any victims any money. Actually executing that plan does that, but the planning does not guarantee that the execution will happen. Yet if I were to say "You cannot, in the US, ban it just because you think somewhere down the line it could result in damage to someone" you would rightly dismiss it as nonsense.
> Hate speech is mostly just hurting peoples feelings.
We may disagree on the "mostly", but even you are acknowledging that it is not limited to that, so let's focus on cases that can't be considered that.
> Libel is a tort because you lie (important) to damage someone's reputation and this could cost them money.
Okay, now consider for instance well-known conspiracy theories that the world is controlled by (insert group here). They are lies, they damage the reputation of many if not most members of the group, and this could cost members of the group money. They are not libellous if not said about specific people, they are generally considered hate speech if based on any of a specific set of protected characteristics, but despite the exact same reasoning applying to both, libel would not be considered protected speech, and, as far as I understand, this particular form of hate speech would be.
It is also easy to think up scenarios where supposedly constitutionally protected hate speech "helps" cause physical damage: if without the hate speech, a group of people would be left alone, but with the hate speech, other people become convinced that it is morally defensible or even necessary to commit crimes against those people.
I can see no distinction in the constitution to justify this. I understand that this is how US courts interpret the constitution, but everything I can see tells me this is an arbitrary distinction drawn up by US courts with no actual basis in the constitution.
We are separate sovereign nations, allies, do not present as threats to each other, we each have our own values but Germany’s values are close enough to ours to be basically compatible and isn’t trying to export its censorship regime to the United States. Why would we rock that boat absent a reason?
https://reason.com/2022/09/23/germanys-criminalization-of-on...
As a practical matter I'd guess that even civil-libertarian Americans don't spend a lot of time criticizing Germany and France for several reasons:
1) They're allies.
2) Some of us don't know where they are.
3) For the most part, they're obviously free countries. There's simply going to be cultural variation on some things - free speech, the death penalty, etc. - for historical and cultural reasons.No, its not, just as conflicting affirmative grants of government power are not absolute grants.
Were it an absolute right, there would be no such thing as defamation liability, for instance.
> There are some narrow limitations (Libel, Calls to Violence), however the legislature does not have the power to add limits without a constitutional amendment
That’s true in theory, but in practice whether an exception exists and what its boundary is not a question which is resolved until after a legislatige body (federal or state) creates a new prohibition, and it is challenged. So there are potentially infinite unknown limitations that exist, but merely haven’t been discovered because a legislature has not created a law which would require them. So legislatures can provide an opportunity for courts to discover new exceptions via normal legislation, even if they can’t create them.
And sometimes, courts discover new ones in areas previously thought settled, like the 1st Circuit “discovering” a broader defamation exception for private matters than was generally understood to exist: https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2009/04/feder...
Currently it seems asking for rights of indigenous palestinians is hate speech in Germany.
The real question imo is:
Is hate speech immoral?
The answer, imo, is no in most cases. If you are not harming another, there is nothing 'bad' occurring. (There will be exceptions to this.) Just like you ought to be free to indulge your vices (and you are free to choose to harm yourself if you like), you should also be able to say what you like. Words might be unpleasant, but they are not actually harmful.
If there are physical consequences to your behaviour, it is the consequences that are 'bad'. Eg, if you insult some group, and someone hears you and consequently physically harms someone in that group, the immoral act that has occurred is the violence that was inflicted, nor the initial words.
It's really pretty simple.
But no, the law does not (and cannot) reflect the moral reasoning.
Doesn't sound like it. If the washington post is saying you're going too far in this category, there's a good chance you've already gone off the deep end
> The raid Wednesday came a little over three months after he replied to a tweet from Andy Grote, the interior and sports minister for the city of Hamburg, describing him as a “pimmel.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/09/pimmelgate-g...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/13...
Many Americans called it hate-speech, yet the book was freely published in many countries with anti hate speech laws.
Publishers and distributors were more willing to sell the book in countries where hate speech is illegal. After all, it’s not like it’s hate speech.
One downside of having hate speech undefined is that anyone can claim your words are hate speech.
One downside of having hate speech defined is you can stay bad things, and as long as it’s not hate speech, it’s not hate speech.
Edit: I actually read this book. I would be horrified if it was outlawed or even boycotted.
It’s of uneven quality, and tries to take on too many topics.
In reality this is a backward residue from monarchy and the laws are just as old. If Germans would have had more inclination to freedom, perhaps less authoritarian governments would have formed in the past.
So empirically hate speech legislation doesn't really seem to be effective either.
The net result, of course, is inconsistency and absurdity (see e.g. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/erding/volksverhetzung-... for a recent example).
The US (and a fewer other countries) is a political definition merely circumscribing a geography—explicitly independent of culture. Laws governing social expression therefore are more challenging to define, establish and execute.
While I'm all for debates about the pros and cons of more or less permissive speech policies, sentences like this always betray the quasi religious nature of American speech attitudes. Many of the oldest democracies in the world work perfectly fine and do not follow this line of thinking.
It would probably be worthwhile to have a much more empirical approach, trying to actually measure what the impact of prohibiting certain speech is. How many people are unduly silenced, how much intended harm is prevented, and so on. Because statements like:
"It is quite clear that the perceived benefits of censoring psychically harmful hate speech are far outweighed by the costs of such suppression."
aren't clear at all. We often don't know because these are really not evidence driven claims. In our information age there should be a rigorous science on how moderation of speech impacts networks and it deserves fairly high priority.
Free speech as the right to dissent in a democracy, almost every reasonable person in the western world can get behind this.
Free speech as the right to march in the streets demanding the destruction of democracy and the physical harassment and denial of rights to minority groups, advocating the use of political violence, the removal of democratically elected figures, the alteration of elections, and even the overthrow of the state; this is a place that most of the rest of the western world won't follow.
And -- in the actual history of the United States -- when this kind of political speech was made by the left wing in the form of the communist movement, it was heavily opposed and censored in brutal fashion. The United States spied on, jailed, censored, etc far left wing activists for decades both abroad and domestically. The intelligence agencies as they exist in the US were almost exclusively set up for this purpose. This was policy advocated for and enacted by politicians on both the liberal and conservative side of the fence. There's maybe less of it now, but that's because there's almost no far left present in the US anymore.
But there seems to be a blind spot by many libertarians of various stripes in the United States when we are talking about this kind of speech from the far right.
The organized Far Right is the biggest actual material threat to democracy in the western world right now -- not a few instances of maybe-censorship.
The meaningful discussion is to when and how and if we (as a society) intervene around the organization of these groups. I think it should be clear from what happened on January 6th that there are explicit and concrete and measurable costs to democracy and an open society itself to not intervening at all.
> It would probably be worthwhile to have a much more empirical approach, trying to actually measure what the impact of prohibiting certain speech is.
This rhetoric is exactly what I meant when I said free speech has quasi religious status. A perfectly normal, obvious fact, that measurements and decisions are made by biased people is presented as an argument to put free speech beyond questioning or a science based approach.
> that's hardly a reason against doing science
If you have a better argument, feel free to make it. If not, this line of thought can be dismissed out of hand.
The only possible interpretation is that you are either vacillating between mutually incoherent positions arguing first one than the other with no attempt to reconcile them or you would like the government to privilege one group of people by allowing them to discriminate while forcing people to accept their "free expression" however odious it is.
> I believe that the existence of protected classes means you do not enjoy the freedom of association you rightfully should
>> Employers (unless you work for the government) are not bound by the first amendment, and can fire you or penalize you for expression outside of the workplace.
> It seems like that is an oversight we should fix.
He believes that employers ought to be forbidden from using your out of work communications to make hiring and firing decisions but wants to scrap the prohibition on using your membership in a protected class to make that same decision.
You absolutely can't make a hiring decision on race. If Joe White and Joe Black apply for the same position you are required to evaluate all applicants and cannot turn down Mr White for his skin color any more than Mr Black. What you CAN do if I understand correctly is make targeted attemps to advertise to and invite people based on characteristics. You can for instance advertise in what is traditionally a woman targeted magazine in order to inspire more women to apply for instance.
In a perfect world we'd just all decide to be better people and not racist without external pressure, but that seems like a pipe dream.
You imply that it is utterly impossible to draft a law forbidding some speech without handing the tools of oppression to the next fellow to hold office but we already deal with plenty of nuanced situations now many odious examples of speech that aren't nuanced at all.
Calls for stochastic violence or terrorism are just as worrying as specific threats even when the target is not specifically called out. Someone should murder all the jews is no more acceptable than lets get together at the bar next Tuesday and kill Bob the Jew with the candlestick.
Hand in glove with the above is false information designed to spread hate. Ex The jews are setting our forests ablaze with jewish space lasers! Do you know who snuck in and stole my breakfast? Jews! Why am I going bald? Jewish space lasers pointed at my head! If you constantly spew hateful nonsense while others directly call for violence its pretty clearly part of the same shtick and you ought to be treated similarly.
This is trivially defined as clearly false information about a group of people defined by cultural, ethnic, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation yada yada yada designed to promote hatred towards a group of people.
You may trivially point out that grey areas exist. This is hardly a barrier to dealing with the numerous black and white scenarios so evident around us.
Lastly I don't want to employ or work with a "non violent nazi" just because he promotes mass murder only on his own time because such a person is an odious human being and regarding minorities as subhuman is inherently going to color his decision making even if he presents as objective. I really don't think I or any manager ought to be obliged to overlook the fact that applicant has already publicly announced that he is an odious human being.
Even were he to fully separate his odious being from the job he does his coworkers will inevitably come to understand who he is if he keeps putting it out there online under his own name and you'll find yourself at a disadvantage in terms of retaining good help and clients if everyone knows you employ nazis.
Free speech absolutism is an indefensible position. It is so far as I'm aware practiced nowhere in the world.
Giving the government more power is a slippery slope. Is Christianity arguing against homosexuality hate speech? Should we round up all of the pastors and priests? Should we demand people provide the government with a list of their personal beliefs and send those that are on the fringe to reeducation camps? Should there be a government mandated listening device in every home? Bad people and those we disagree with will always exist I'm totally good with that. I'm not good with thought police.
Specific lies leading to predictable dangers to individuals by a probabilistic vector like continually throwing rocks over an overpass knowing you are likely to hit SOMEONE without knowing who or when the damage will be done.
How is that "not a thing"?
The biggest difference between what they are doing and my statement is that my statement is carefully and actually researched truth, spoken with intent to inform, and furthermore although it pointed out how dangerous those lies were it called for a legislative solution to the problem not self help. If you took it upon yourself to take action it would be solely your action.
By contrast they pass on lies they either know are false or with reckless disregard for the truth of the matter often with vague implication of threats and calls to action.
I say the clear distinction in circumstances is sufficient for a court of law to address. I suggest that we don't need to wait until someone gets murdered we can just throw the folks promoting lies and hate in jail first. This is no more problematic than defamation as an exception to the first amendment.
>> Yet, across our nation, this cornerstone of our free society is under serious threat. Far too many of us fear sharing our views or challenging those that seem to dominate. Nearly 6-in-10 Americans believe our nation’s democracy is threatened because people are afraid to voice their opinions.
They "fear" voicing opinions because of society's backlash, which IMO, is the true regulator of "free" speech. There is no "free" speech except in one's own head. Anything said, can, and will, have impact with others, as is the nature of communication and society. OTOH, it is government that cannot silence the people, by law. Society can silence others through protest... which itself is protected free speech.
"running on an American operating system"
What operating system? I'd imagine this site is running on Linux, like almost everything else on the Internet, and I struggle to understand how you could define Linux as an American operating system.
> The FreeBSD Foundation is a 501(c)(3), US based, non-profit organization
https://freebsdfoundation.org/about-us/about-the-foundation/
> It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX® developed at the University of California, Berkeley.
(I kid, I don't actually think Linux can be reasonably described as American, but I guess that is the argument for it.)
Wikipedia has a helpful summary by country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country