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Comment by kortilla | Hacker News Reader

>traditional western values

This seems tautological because Europe is pretty weak on the values that people in the US might care about (freedom of speech, limited govt, etc).

What values specifically are you optimizing for here?

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The UK can arrest you for hate speech. You can disagree with that policy on free speech terms if you want, and that’s really a maximal free speech position. It’s a very strange position to hold if you’re claiming that the U.S. is better when it comes to free speech. The U.S. administration is engaged in active smear campaigns against anyone who speaks loudly against them, threatened to revoke licenses of media companies, they’re suing people and corporations to silence them and pressure them into conformance, they’re threatening to deport people who are simply expressing anti-Israel views, threatened to remove funding from universities, deployed the military in cities they don’t like for no other reason than intimidation of political rivals. This is just off the top of my head.

There’s just no comparison really. You must really be inhaling some nonsense X propaganda if you think government overreach is worse in Western Europe.

> The UK can arrest you for hate speech.

And that's a good thing.

I as a individual won’t get arrested for speaking my mind, and that’s much more important than some legal battle around corporate media.

„ deployed the military in cities they don’t like for no other reason than intimidation of political rivals” That’s one perspective on simply trying to enforce laws.

Moreover, let’s not forget about how Biden government tried to silence Rogan.

You know who else was simply enforcing laws? The Gestapo.

> I as a individual won’t get arrested for speaking my mind

Assuming you’re not a violent bigot you would also be fine in the UK.

> Moreover, let’s not forget about how Biden government tried to silence Rogan.

So your response to my claim that the US is worse is to point to other anti free speech practices by previous US governments? Well done!

The UK is not the EU, the UK is US "lite", they have always been that way, thats not something new.

Not getting the relevance of this comment.

> The UK can arrest you for hate speech.

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=13879460433775...

> values that people in the US might care about (freedom of speech, limited govt, etc).

The US federal government forced Paramount to take Colbert off the air. Seems that people in the US don’t actually value these things.

> What values specifically are you optimizing for here?

Probably not being fascist.

They currently have the military circling a pool to intimidate people trying to take photos of the botched paint job.

Intimidation is the sincerest form of flattery.

In fairness, it's our Berlin Wall, and I absolutely would want a piece of the delaminating paint as a souvenir. The difference is we are so early into the collapse that the armed guards are still there. But yeah, it's definitely not just pictures, I'd want a piece of the blue stuff. It'd be a souvenir and also me taking it away from there, so win/win. Of course there's armed guards guarding the swamp now, what else would there be?

> The US federal government forced Paramount to take Colbert off the air.

Not really; the Ellisons are quite close to Trump. Nobody was forced to do anything. Had the FCC actually revoked their license, and had Paramount actually been willing to fight, they could have sued. It's not easy to force anyone that rich to do anything; the state works on behalf of capital. It seems like europe is more aware of the meaningless bluster than the actual crimes being committed

There are much better things to point to to illustrate the deterioration of the rule of law, like blatantly illegal deportation of citizens without due process. Or raping children in concentration camps under the guise of cracking down on crime. We may never even know who was seized and what happened to them and there's little incentive for our very pro-corporate media to report on it.

But sure, paramount is the real victim here.

You might want to read the 3rd paragraph of this article

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Skydance_Media_and_P...

Read that timeline and then see if you're still convinced that they didn't at least seem to have done a thing or 2 to appease the federal government

Of course, but that's business. Authoritarianism would imply a conflict unresolvable outside of state violence.

If you think that's business, wherever you are is a place where I don't want to live.

Yes, companies do have to do things in order to appease regulators. But typically that's where a regulator says what they need them to do and then they oblige. Those requests usually involve market power and such, and splitting off part of the company. They don't involve the actual content/product of said company

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