Uncle Joe tried his hardest to keep the killing machines out of their hands, if George Orwell is to be believed.
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When 5% of the population is capable of actually making significant change, youāll have something resembling a point. This is assuming that all or most of the 5% are even on the same page.
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All Iām arguing for is absolute freedom of speech. If you want Charlie Hebdo or anyone elseās right to express themselves subject to prevailing consensus, thatās on you.
Once you get in the business of carving out exceptions and caveats, people are going to want theirs. It doesnāt matter how few or far between they are.
I was talking in terms of what is productive or advisable, not what should be allowed or not. Having seen a number of covers, I havenāt found anything that I think should have been banned. None of them deserved a violent response and itās clear that they were intending to combat attempts to silence them. This is a genuine case where the right to freedom of speech was being challenged and they did well not to give in to the pressure. I still donāt think a number of the covers (such as Birth of a Star) have much satirical value - they tell fanatics that they accept the challenge; but they also insult a lot of normal Muslims for no good reason and promote ridicule of peopleās beliefs with no basis in fact. While this may lead to more freedom of expression, it also adds to an existing alienation of Muslims. In my opinion, thatās too much collateral damage for the value that those particular covers provide.
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Aināt that the truth.
But are you then saying that they brought this on themselves?
Isnāt this what is meant by saying āThe bitch deserved it?ā
Donāt go interpreting what I say literally and then turn around and make my point for me, its confusing. I donāt know if were arguing or violently agreeing.
Back on topic.
If we put aside what we agree on, that killing these people is wrong, were only left to argue that we shouldnāt be dicks to other people.
And as much as I morally support peopleās freedom to say what they want, Iām not attempting to defend these cartoons at all. Or the ārightā these people had to be dicks.
Iām not even going to argue that some people deserve to be mocked, or that the mocking was appropriate in its worldview.
Instead, I would like to set aside something else we can agree on, that we shouldnāt be dicks to other people and talk about how wrong it is for these people to die because they drew something people didnāt like.
Would you then say that if indeed, these people were killed because of what they drew, then the appropriate response is self censorship? Iād like to know.
Lets not ignore that the response to whatever value of dickishness you assign to these people was not only disproportionate to the offense, It was psychotic. (I am not a mental health professional so I am using this term in a rhetorical sense).
And thatās whats so hard to understand about your point that these people were somehow wrong to draw and publish material that is offensive to some.
Not that drawing these cartoons isnāt offensive, even deliberately offensive, but that there are some crazy people who would kill you for it.
And thatās pretty hard to let go.
If these people didnāt deserve to die because of these cartoons, then thereās no reason to attack what they did in the context of this shooting.
Welcome to the concept of a discussion board! My point was that that discussion was being had with Abe. I addresses most of the other points you had raised and, as usual, you simply drop responding to those as if to forget that you ever made those points. People who cannot admit they are wrong on something usually think theyāre right on everything. Iāve not once, in every back and forth weāve ever had, seen you acquiesce or admit you were wrong on anything. Itās pretty sad, really.
Where have I suggested itās mostly used against antisemitism?
I apologise, I had mistakenly attributed Abeās comment to you:
āPeople can and are prosecuted in practice for spreading nonsense about Jews and the Holocaust, but thereās a lot of stuff that crosses the legal line about Muslims in France that just doesnāt get the same scrutiny.ā
Now you seem to be upset that these laws are being used for other purposes than antisemitism and holocaust denial, despite not seeing that there is any sort of slippery slope and the possibility of suppression of other forms of speech.
Where am I upset about that? My point was that the laws are used by various organised religions to the same ends, with varying level of success (which I see as a legal system that works). Did you also just make a āslippery slopeā argument that includes the words āslippery slopeā? When employing logical fallacies itās usually better to not include the name of the fallacy youāre committing if you want it to slip past the keeper.
Iām also failing to see why you think Poland cannot set their own laws in relation to symbols they deem to be inappropriate. In the context of what the USSR/Russia did to Poland during and after WWII, the comparison with the nazis is entirely apt. I also cannot help but laugh when people use rt.com as an āauthorityā on anything that involves Russia. Itās Putinās fucking mouthpiece. Also itās not as if the symbols are banned outright, as is made clear by the article:
However, communist attributes can still be used for artistic, research and educational purposes. Collectors will not be punished either.
All Iām arguing for is absolute freedom of speech.
So back to my original question then, do you accept Hollandās pro-pedophilia party (yes, itās a thing) as acceptable political opinion/speech?
Sure, why canāt they advocate for it? Iām not about to send them a check, but let them be assholes in public.
Edited to add: (And if you think of a position thatās even more heinous, yes I support the right to advocate for it. Unlike some people my principles are not changed by circumstance.)
No good reason? The good reason is the lesson that if they want to live in countries that have free speech then being offended is par for the course.
The basis in fact is that the mere act of drawing Modouchebag is something muslims tell people they cannot do, even if they donāt subscribe to that nonsense bullshit (to be clear I think all religion is nonsense bullshit). The ridicule is justified, especially considering my link above that disproves this nonsense that you cannot depict him.
Why is it that America is the home of christian fundamentalism? Itās because of this backwards idea that anyone can express any opinion without consequence.
Why canāt they advocate for it? Because there are real victims caused by their selfish inability to fuck people who are old enough to make an informed decision on the matter. What theyāre advocating literally hurts people for lifeā¦ Anyone causing real and demonstrable pain to others because of their political viewpoint can shut the fuck up. Being offended is not pain. The way weāve gotten rid of things like racism and sexism (to whatever extent we have) is by making it clear that itās unacceptable.
Lambasting an idea, irrespective of how much someone loves that idea, doesnāt compare to actually hurting people. Holocaust denial and promoting pedophilia actually hurts people. Americansā feverish dedication to free speech is hilarious to me because itās not as if itās actually delivered as promised. There are many things Americans can say or do the will result in extrajudicial execution which entirely disproves the idea.
Fuck that noise? Yeah, fuck that noise. Speech, used as designed and intended hurts people. Real definable individuals. Thatās why itās useful. You want to defang it? Fine. But Iām done having this argument with you. I realized that when you blamed Christian fundamentalism on freedom of speech.
All I was saying is that thereās a ton of examples where your supposed free speech doesnāt apply in your own country and to your own countrymen - you should probably worry about that before supporting scumbag pedos with your dedication to freedom. Iām all for expressing ones self and my commentary is never defanged, but itās pure unadulterated ignorance to claim that shitheads like the Westboro asswipes donāt continue to exist and flourish in America because supposedly their idiocy is protected and unassailable.
Also I disagree on the speech hurts people aspect. Hurting someoneās ego is not the same as hurting someone. Ego needs to be destroyed.
The next question then, is what makes religion special. If we decide that speech that someone finds sufficiently offensive should be illegal, what then. I find the very suggestion that someoneās religion should trump anyoneās freedom of speech about as offensive as anything (though not offensive enough to shoot people over it, so obviously some people have more capacity for offense than me) which quickly leads to a paradox, unless you decide that some peopleās righteous umbrage is more worthy of government sanction than othersā.
Itās not just religion to which hate speech laws relate and in the end these arenāt hard and fast rules. People say stuff. Other people sue. Courts decide. The system works.
IRT France:
The laws forbid any communication which is intended to incite discrimination against, hatred of, or harm to, anyone because of his belonging or not belonging, in fact or in fancy, to an ethnicity, a nation, a race, a religion, a sex, or a sexual orientation, or because he or she has a handicap.
^Seems pretty reasonable to me, and I hate religion too.
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There are no bar fights where you come from? Insult a guyās girlfriend/mother/favourite sports team/disabled brother/whatever, and you generally do so at your peril.
The US doesnāt have such an office, but prior restraint is still an issue that has come up. In the French example, the government there was put pressure on Charlie Hebdo not to publish things in the past, indicating knowledge of what was going to be published. If it were illegal holocaust denial stuff, they could have been prevented from publishing. And remember, this is a magazine whose predecessor was closed down by the government for publishing offensive material in 1970.
Currently, French prior restraint acts pretty well by preventing sites like eBay from showing Nazi memorabilia auctions to people with French IP addresses. Similar restraints prevent physical media from publishing classified ads for the same material.
I donāt think people ādeserveā violence (a normative position), just that they cannot be too surprised by it (a descriptive position). The world being what it is, people tend to pick their battles.
Yes. We self censor all the time, as Iāve repeatedly said. Some of this self-censorship involves picking the proper time and place to say something.
I mean, maybe it all comes down to this:
You seemed upset thatādespite my supposed claims that hate laws were used mainly against antisemitismāthey actually are mainly used by Christians and Muslims.
And Iām not making any sort of slippery slope fallacy. Suppression of some forms of speech have led to suppression of other forms. The general idea of hate speech laws is that they donāt simply cover one special category like the holocaust, but are open to other forms.
I donāt have a problem with hate speech laws. I think this US position isnāt particularly productive. I donāt have a problem with Poland making their own laws to ban other forms of speech; my comment was a response to this:
Of course, I also believe that other, more general, hate speech laws do silence speech in non-holocaust contexts (and the holocaust-denial laws donāt actually limit themselves to the holocaustāor even mention itāeither).
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How many civilian deaths would you be willing to inflict to wipe out Hitlerism?
If the answer is more than zero, then you and I are arguing about a difference of degree, not of kind.
If the answer is zero, then think about whether the swastika would still be flying.
Wow.
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11 persons were slaughtered because some of the drawings in their magazine were deemed offensive by some integrists.
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Then one more person was slaughtered because he was a policeman who tried to stop the killers.
All the uninformed arguing, from some in this thread, about the supposed racism they infered from whatever context-free samples they gleaned somewhere on the web, and how that should have made those now-dead people expect what they got, is quite something to see.
I think I am going to go vomit somewhere quiet now.
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How is labelling christian/muslim complainants as āwhingyā at all me being upset that hate speech laws are used by them? My point, as Iāve explained, was misdirected to you as it was Abe who claimed itās used to protect primarily judaism and not muslims. I was just pointing out that the very wikipedia page he linked contradicts the claims made.
Suppression of some forms of speech have led to suppression of other forms.
Iām still not seeing any examples of this, just the suggestion - which is exactly what a fallacious slippery slope argument is.
The general idea of hate speech laws is that they donāt simply cover one special category like the holocaust, but are open to other forms.
I understand that, but am failing to see why laws that forbid the denial of the holocaust are bad? These countries bear varying degrees of responsibility for the victims of the holocaust. Itās perfectly reasonable to me that laws there exist to make it a crime to deny that real world historical events took place, especially when that exact thing is being done by people in Europe who are pushing for the same shit all over again.
that restricts the denial of any single other thing.
Banning symbols of hate and repression is not restricting denial of facts. The French hate speech laws page you linked me to is very clear that the French law restricts peopleās ability to deny the crimes of the WWII nazi regime. That doesnāt stop people from saying āI like what the nazis did - they were really onto something we should do that againā it just stops them from being able to make up lies to support their argument. The reason this should be illegal is because most the jews who survived the nazis are dying out and when those involved are gone itās easy to rewrite history as is convenient for making your argument. This stops that.
At first I thought you wrote āhipsterismā, and I was like āas many as it takesāā¦ but seriously Iām still unsure who you think we should attack as a result of this? You sound like a Fox news anchor with all the sabre-rattling at an undefined enemy.
According to the law, if you did it to offend the belief of religious people, yes.
Judges normally just dont follow this if somebody complains because proving you wanted to offend is kinda absurd.
Doesnt mean that the law is absolutely idiotic, both if it is not going to be used, and in pretending some people have a right not to be offended in their belief.
