Despite BDS, hate speech laws have no place in a free society
I understand the temptation to pass hate speech laws.
But there’s a temptation to do a lot of things that are wrong and lead to an unacceptable loss of liberty. We are not free to do anything that harms another person, but with just a few exceptions (for example, the old yelling “fire” in a crowded theater*) we should be able to say anything. Once speech is made actionable because it expresses hate or harms some group’s feelings, we are already far far down a steep and slippery slope. “Speech” includes propaganda.
“I can tell you that Canada has one of the most comprehensive sets of laws against hate crime anywhere in the world,” wrote Sirois.
She highlighted what she termed “hate propaganda” provisions in the Criminal Code criminalizing the promotion of hatred against an identifiable group, and further noted that “identifiable group” now includes any section of the public distinguished by “among other characteristics, religion or national or ethnic origin.”
The article indicates that Canada is considering using these laws against the groups promoting boycotts of Israel.
Now, I happen to be a supporter of Israel, and I am completely against the BDS groups and their lying propaganda, and believe them to be highly antisemitic for the most part although they deny it. In a country with hate speech laws, they would be one of the groups I’d consider it sweetest to prosecute. But I support neither such laws nor such prosecution, because the hate speech laws are still wrong even when used against groups whose work I despise.
More and more and more as time goes on, I think that a large part of American exceptionalism is its attitude towards free speech and therefore its commitment to liberty, which is beginning to seem unique in all the world but is increasingly threatened.
[* See this for the evolution of that doctrine and its present-day manifestation.)
Following your link neo, as to the evolution of that doctrine led me to this:
“The paraphrasing [“Shouting fire in a crowded theater”] does not generally include the word “falsely”, i.e., “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater”, which was the original wording used in Holmes’s opinion and highlights that speech which is dangerous and false is not protected, as opposed to speech which is truthful but also dangerous.”
This distinction applies to ‘hate speech’ laws such as Canada’s. If telling the truth as to a mortal societal threat is hate speech because regardless of its truthfulness, it incites hate toward a group, then truth is made silent and that can and sooner or later will be fatally suicidal, as Europe is in the process of demonstrating.
The standard of “Shouting fire in a crowded theater” was later superseded by the current standard of “Imminent lawless action”:
To my knowledge only the Left is pushing in America for ‘hate speech’ laws. Their purpose is coercion and censorship. And that makes them Americans-in-name-only.
[all emphasis mine]
Geoffrey Britain:
Agree that the standard does not apply to the BDS movement that seeks to boycott Israeli products. And agreed that it is the left pushing hate-speech laws. In the case of the BDS movement, if Canada applied it to them, they would be hoist by their own petard. But as I explained, I still would not support such laws.
Years ago, Jared Taylor wrote a book called, iirc, “Paved with Good Intentions”. He’s been called a racist, possibly with real cause, possibly because he spoke the truth, which is more likely.
One of his points is that, to the extent society tries to put a lid on the knowledge of what is happening, the problem gets worse. You cannot, for example, keep people from knowing about the knockout game no matter what you do.
But when society, and, worse, the government is seen as colluding in efforts to keep you ignorant and punishing you when they find you’re not, the social pressure builds and builds and builds and then we have a real problem.
If the feds are trying to keep you from knowing something it must be really, really bad. And if the issue of hate speech becomes legitimate, or just a bit more legitimate, it will be the feds, as in Canada.
“More and more and more as time goes on, I think that a large part of American exceptionalism is its attitude towards free speech and therefore its commitment to liberty, which is beginning to seem unique in all the world but is increasingly threatened.”
I agree. Most Americans would hardly believe what is going on in much of Europe.
In France there are two particularly tricky categories of non-protected speech: one goes under a very broad label of “apology of crimes” and the other one is speech that is “racist”. Recently there was a much publicized case of a young woman previously associated with Front National, Anne-Sophie Leclé¨re, who shared an offensive comparison on Facebook (an image where there was an ape next to a photo of a black justice minister). She shared already existing material, wrote something akin to “ain’t it funny how similar they are?”, and ultimately ended up sentenced at 9 months of prison ferme and a ridiculously highly amend… after having been sued NOT by the minister herself, but by an anti-racist group from French Guiana.
France is a European country that has been historically the closest to the American sensibilities in matters of anti-censhorship tradition, protection of the dissenting intellectuals, church/state separation, anti-royalty sentiments etc. If the freedom of expression is undergoing radical abridgements in France, it is quite indicative of what is probably going on in the rest of Europe. But, the most interesting aspect of this is that many of these abridgments are not “new” as a legal basis enabling censorhip has been solidifying over the last century and half.
In Italy lately there has been much agitation over the proposal of law called “legge Scalfarotto” aimed to combat homophobia and discrimination based on sexual orientation, but includes such dubious phrasing as “promoting the ideas of superiority” which, according to some interpretations, would essentially amount to criminalizing SAYING, for example, that the traditional marriage is “better” (whether on moral, religious, anthropological grounds) than the homosexual “marriage”, or SAYING that it is “better” to reconcile with the reality of the biological sex you were born into than seek a “reassignement” surgery and similar.
To my knowledge, BSD initiatives have not been specifically attacked so far (holocaust revisioniosts have been though), but in much of Europe there seems to exist already a legal ground to penalize whatever is the current form of socially unwelcome speech without it appearing a “new” thing.
The US interpretation of free speech, as threatened as it is, remains the widest and the freest one around.
The real hate speech is speech that seeks to elevate islam and other totalitarian ideologies above the grandeur of Western Civilization. Yet, I fully support their right to speak their vile ideas.