Interesting point. For one thing that’s a slightly different subject than government regulation of speech. For another, the nature of the internet is that - ideology aside - it’s structurally resistant to censorship (as you kind of alluded to with your gun control parallel). So to meaningfully reign in the “free speech absolutism” you see online, we’d need to radically change the structure of the internet (China is currently attempting this, it’s not going well).
It is definitely true that American fascists are helping European fascists, and vice-versa. But I don’t think it’s accurate to say that US speech standards are to blame for the rise of european neo-fascism. A lot of other factors played much more important roles. The case could be made that the internet and globalization were significant factors, and some would say that those are forces of the American state. But while they emerged from the US, I don’t think they have any governmental jurisdiction today.
I think that’s an important point. Anyone who thinks a few hate speech laws are going to magically cure what ails America is fooling themselves.
I 100% agree with this. I bring up the coming-out-into-the-light of some white supremacist groups not because I think that caused the situation in America, but because a common argument against hate speech laws is that we need to have these things out in the open so we can debate and counter them. The hypothesis that we can counter racist speech with anti-racist speech was put to the test and America voted in a president that was playing footsie with David “Actually David Duke” Duke. And while that was also because of an Archaic voting system, that hardly matters, he still got over 40% of the vote. If discussion allowed us to highlight the real horrors of racism to people who support or who are indifferent to racism then he would have gotten 2-3%.
I find this argument unconvincing. Police have been arresting and suppressing protesters for all time and getting away with it just fine. They’ll keep doing so with or without any new authority.
I think overall your point about how we should think about the change we really want to make, and if we can mobilize people then we should try to get changes more important the hate speech laws is a good one. But if we had actual mind control rays then we should just aim them at the people we disagree with instead of the ones we agree with. I don’t think hate speech laws would fix much. I just find the standard arguments about the importance of free speech are extremely unconvincing.
To me, free speech is a canary in the coal mine. While it basically isn’t having much of an effect on anything, when a leader goes after it, you’ve got to do something about that leader and fast. But American free expression, as used in Citizens United, has become actually corrosive.
Yeah, that’s nonsense, I agree. Fascism by its nature is anti-intellectual, so there’s no value to including it in “civil” debate. There’s an adjacent argument which says that hate speech laws better allow fascists to position themselves as anti-establishment - a glamorous role in a global political climate of anti-government sentiment. I think that may be a good point but I have mixed feelings.
Surely repression of radicals is not at its absolute limit, though, or you and I would be dead! The repressive capacity of the state is bounded by the power it can easily exercise. I think the tricky part is that for us, repression is highly contextual (often it’s bad, in some cases it’s fine or even good). But increasingly, the most important forms of state power are context-less. So the way we often approach politics is different from how the state does. We’re focused on directing power within a particular context, while the state is focused on increasing its power in the most general sense (and then inevitably using it against us).
Some struggles are recognizing this. For example, we don’t just oppose using military force against minority communities, we oppose the existence of militarized police altogether because their power is context agnostic. Even if the state claimed it was militarizing police to keep us safe from terrorists or nazis, it would not matter. If we tolerate the existence of that power it will inevitably be directed against marginalized communities and dissident movements.
The case this thread was originally about doesn’t really apply, since it’s not really setting a precedent about speech. That finding seems probably fine. But in general, expanded power to regulate expression seems similar to expanded police militarization, because the way the legal system works makes it effortless to apply those same precedents in another context.
Yeah, Citizens United is a strong counterpoint. But I’d say that empowering the (racist, patriarchal, imperialistic) state to reign in corporate influence is swallowing the spider to catch the fly and having the fox guard the henhouse (spider guarding the flyhouse? lol). Even if we overturned Citizens United somehow, the state can’t be trusted to reign in corporate influence. We have to do that ourselves.
I agree that the ideal of American Free Speech is bogus and never existed. But the influence of legal precedent and public norms do serve to restrain the state’s action against us, so it is of strategic importance even if the ideal is a myth.
