I am more than a little surprised at the bitter tone that Glenn takes toward France. He clearly has little understanding of French society, or just how preposterous is was to claim that Charlie Hebdo was the work of bigoted racists. There is no shortage of those, but the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo were certainly not among their ranks.
On the question of “apologie du terrorisme,” which is what these people are being prosecuted for, there seems to be something of a range of situations. One driver who caused an accident while driving under the influence, insulted the police and said that the terrorists should have killed more people. Dieudonné simply said that he felt like “Charlie Coulibaly.” I agree that simple statement seems rather slim to go after someone under such a charge.
If you understand French, there is an article on Le Monde at http://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2015/01/14/de-charlie-a-dieudonne-jusqu-ou-va-la-liberte-d-expression_4555180_4355770.html
French people were among those who perpetrated the industrial Jew extermination program in Nazi Europe.
After the war and liberation while there is a very good reason to allow free speech there was also ample reason and concern that even if there were majority support or an organized kernel of resistance the state could not permit movements of people like those who enthusiastically joined Vichy France to organize for propaganda purposes or to organize a political movement.
I personally believe that these laws only suppress public hate speech not hate attitudes, and combined with entrenched cultural attitudes are a reason that antisemitism in particular is prevalent in Europe but not so much in the US.
Canada does have hate speech laws in line with Europe but low antisemitism; the transatlantic reset probably had an affect on antisemitic culture, but c’mon, they are Canadians. There are reasons that Americans lie about their nationality when travelling and claim Vancouver or Toronto as their fake home city.
(edit) This is not a hard position statement of any kind, just throwing out the thoughts I have in my head for both sides at this moment.
Anyone unable to see a fundamental difference between C.H. and D.M. is an ass, and anyone unwilling to is a fascist. That said, I don’t think Greenwald is a fascist.
True, you need more than a simple vote to abolish them, but that’s beside the point.
Let’s consider three other core rights:
-
The Right to Life
… on which the US democratically places a limit called the “death penalty”.
Also, it is possible to shoot someone in self-defence, thus infringing their right to life. It is sometimes even permissible to shoot a burglar in order to protect your property, thus placing a law-abiding person’s right to own property above a burglar’s right to life. -
The Right to Liberty
I heard somewhere that the US imprisons people for breaking laws. -
The Right to Vote
First, there is a minimum age (is that determined by the normal democratic process or is “18” written in the constitution?). Then, it’s only for citizens, and the exact requirements for becoming a citizen are again decided by the normal democratic process. And finally, there is disenfranchisement of convicted criminals (which the European Court of Human Rights has found to be a disproportionate limitation of the Right to Vote, BTW).
All these rights have limits placed on them. Freedom of Speech is no different.
I’m not an expert in French law. Read it up there. The Austrian law, for example, contains definitions of both terms for the purpose of the law. The French definitions are probably slightly different. Rest assured that it’s not nearly as scarily fuzzy as the definition of “treason” in the US constitution.
What may actually surprise you though, is that news items sometimes have other purposes than surprising the audience.
All these rights have limits placed on them. Freedom of Speech is no different.
Quite right.
In the US you can’t, for example, shout ‘FIRE’ in a crowded room. Why? Because it could cause stress and alarm, panic, even harm. So… like hate speech then?
As much as Americans like to trot out the voltair quote, I simply don’t identify with it. I live in a country where I am free to express myself as much as I want, until the point where it becomes vile hate speech. So, in essence, we have a system that means I DON’T need to defend your right to be an asshole to maintain my right to free speech - and it;s worked just fine for centuries. The chilling result being we don’t have groups like WBC - oh no, the freedoms!
Having unfettered free speech makes no more sense to me than having unfettered freedom of your actions. You shouldn’t be able to project hate speech at me during my parents funeral any more than you’re allowed to punch me in the head. And why Americans feel the need to protect that so that they can practice the same free speech as the rest of the western world is beyond me.
In related news, the pope threatens to punch anyone who tells him a yo’ mamma joke.
“If my good friend Dr Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch.
Except that you have them. But they are hidden, out of sight and out of mind, instead of being in the open, seen and controllable. Advantage much?
Americans are funny for insisting that their version of free speech should apply everywhere as if other cultures don’t quite know how to do things right.
We would be quite suspicious of our govt if there were a sudden spike in the govt invoking hate speech laws, even if it came on the heels of a tragedy.
I didn’t notice in the article if these 54+ cases were indicative of a spike or just business as usual, but maybe I skimmed over that? Anyone notice?
As it stands the Harper govt is trying to use C Hebdo to expand police powers, etc, they are likely tabling lege that they have had ready for just such an opportunity.
Greenwald could probably make a more effective point by rounding up info on all govts currently invoking C Hebdo to expand police powers & curtail criticism (speech) while invoking the Hebdo tragedy.
Actually that SCOTUS case, the origin of crying fire, is the argument against the US permitting public speech protesting the draft during WW-I.
PS that case establishes is over the FUCKING EVIL Espionage Act of 1917.
I didn’t notice in the article if these 54+ cases were indicative of a spike or just business as usual, but maybe I skimmed over that? Anyone notice?
The 54 cases are directly linked to the Charlie Hebdo assassinations. People are saying they wished they were among the terrorists so they could have killed more people, or they’re directly threatening cops. It’s definitely not business as usual.
Funny that USians are so quick to get on their high horses berating other about infringements on the freedom of speech but when other freedoms/human rights are limited it’s not much of a problem.
What about the right/freedom to life and physical integrity? Arguably the most important right because no life = no speech. It is regularly compromised in the US because the US uses torture and the death penalty (even for minors and people with mental disabilities). So France, the UK or Germany may not have the same interpretation of free speech the US has but other equally or even more important human/civil rights are better protected.
As other have already said even Free speech in the US has it’s limitations. Who has made the US the arbiter of what approach to Free Speech is the best approach? Not surprisingly the US thinks it’s implementation of Free Speech is superior to everyone else’s.
What most US citizens seem to miss is that mass surveillance (where the US is leading from the front) impacts/hinders Free Speech. If you know that your communication is watched you start to change your behavior - you’ll avoid saying certain things, effectively censoring yourself. There was a BB article exactly on this issue:
Communications surveillance should be regarded as a highly intrusive
act that potentially interferes with the rights to freedom of
expression and privacy and threatens the foundations of a democratic
society.
Guns and freedom of speech alone don’t make a free society - especially when undermined by massive surveillance.
I wasn’t aware that Dieudonne was making threats or shooting anybody when he said “I am Charlie Coulibaly.” Yet French authorities have interpreted this as what you would seem to classify as a threat (as opposed to hurt feelings).
So people in Europe have tried to eliminate Muslims in the past few decades, yet Muslims in general don’t get protection but Jews do.
And Sephardic Jews were granted the right to return to Spain, but Moors were not, even though they were expelled at about the same time.
And presumably the antisemitism laws will be struck off the books in a few years, when no one alive can remember the holocaust.
Quick, change the subject and try to hold me accountable for things I disagree with again! If you do it quickly enough nobody will notice how bad your reading comprehension skills are!
Yes, but who are “we”? I suspect the system made more sense when France was more homogenous, but at the moment I suspect that many minorities in France do not trust the judiciary to draw the appropriate line.
In the US, Thurgood Marshall was the first black member of the Supreme Court, joining in 1967. Sandra Day O’Connor was the first female justice, joining in 1981. People (or minorities, at least) in the US consider the composition of the Supreme Court pretty important, since they’re making rules that will affect everyone, including minorities. In France nobody really knows how many minority magistrates there are.
But be that as it may, I don’t have a problem with hate speech laws. But I don’t get the sense that speech is being classified as hate speech in a reasonable manner. Instead of taking a utilitarian or empirical perspective and seeing whether certain speech actually had the claimed deleterious effects on any group, it seems like officials are merely reflecting whether or not they personally consider the speech offensive and encouraging hatred.
It’s certainly not beside the point that democratic will isn’t the tool we use to place limits on core rights, especially when those limitations may have disproportionate effect on minorities. Democracy would allow for the tyranny of the majority, while supra- and non-democratic methods typically involve balancing with other core fundamental rights.
Well, he does cite to editorials by former employees of CH who have criticized it, and I’m not sure he is saying that it was the work of bigoted racists. He is saying that there was a pattern of publishing anti-Islamic cartoons in a way that antisemitic cartoons were not published. As Boingboing has noted before, the “but I’m/he’s not racist” argument is often a dodge to get around whether or not specific acts or utterances were racist. The “what they did v. what they are” video has been posted here before.
You disagree with going after Dieudonne? Great.
But I guess that means French authorities are idiots:
This is a bit of a problem because when authorities are idiots who are able to go after some speakers and not others, you have exactly what I was describing in the first place: subjective evaluation of what is hate speech and what is not, leading to subjective enforcement of the law.
Hey Mr Greenwald :
and
and of course, McCarthyism. And don’t worry too much about Dieudonné : this will end up as usual with a fine. He will be not waterboarded.
It’s not funny at all; if we thought the other cultures were doing things right we would do things that way. As we don’t do things that way, we obviously don’t think they’re doing it right.
I agree. As I don’t like the US policies much, the free speech thing is what I consider a good idea.
