Comment by Throwaway@lemm.ee on Tolerating intolerance

So what exactly is the alternative? Pass hate speech laws? Because that is ripe for abuse.

You’re right. There’s nothing that can be done. Racial slurs and regressive language should be taught in schools because you can’t fathom a world that has a slight amount of respect based regulation.

You realize such laws have existed in most countries for a very long time, right?

Hate speech is illegal in most of the modern world, and has been for quite some time.

The US had similar hate-speech rules to that of the rest of Europe, until the US civil rights era presented the court the opportunity to decide whether Martin Luther King’s anti-racism speech was, as charged, “hate speech”.

Long story short, the court decided that it couldn’t define what ‘hate speech’ was and so decided that it shouldn’t be against the law (or that the First should protect it). That’s why Nazis are allowed to march and have their rallies protected by the First Amendment, all because southern US states wanted to charge the speakers of anti-white-supremacy with ‘hate speech’ and that was a quick-and-dirty way to disarm them.

Yet we have good and clear ideas of what hate speech is now, so in whatever new government we build, it needs to be banned.

Yeah, they used to be called Blasphemy laws. Still doesn’t make it excusable.

I have no idea what you are talking about, to be honest. Never heard of those.

But Blasphemy is extremely different from Hate. Canada, for example, goes into explicit legal detail on what counts as Hate and constitutes a Hate Crime.

And Blasphemy has nothing to do with that discussion, nor have I ever heard of this concept, so either you are talking about something else entirely, or perhaps you have to link to what you are talking about?

When I look the term “Blasphemy Laws” up, it brings up something that has nothing to do with Hate Crimes. Did you perhaps use the wrong term?

Pakistan has a one of the more remarkably bad histories with blasphemy laws, if you’re looking for examples. I think they’re not uncommon in Muslim majority countries. Western nations had similar laws as well, but I think you have to go back a couple centuries to find them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_in_Pakistan

Yes I know what that Blasphemy Law is.

But the thing is the person I responded to seemed to be talking about some other one, because we are talking about Anti-Hate speech laws, which is definitely not what you just linked to lol

Apples and fuckin oranges my guy.

Boiled down, theyre laws against arbritary speech. Sure they might define it, but those definitions always leave enough wiggle room to abuse.

No… one is a law against speech against a large entity of power that holds control of the nation.

The other is a law against speech against fellow specific individuals.

If you are seriously trying to equate “I don’t like (religion)” with “I think (group of people) deserve to die”, then you are on the wrong side of history mate.

That would be a very bad take and I hope to hell and back again you are smart enough to see the difference between those two.

by that logic, all laws should be abolished because all laws can be used for abuse.

If its either an easily abusable law or no law, Id rather no law.

Throwaway’s thing seems to be making shallow bad rightwing takes and backing them up with nothing of substance. I don’t think they are engaging genuinely.

We need to pressure mods to start banning them then.

It literally doesn’t even matter what they’re arguing about. The fact they’re speaking in bad faith is what makes them problematic and the only ones who do that are those who have bad intentions.

Governments pay people to do that deliberately to forum slide, and there is a lot of revolutionary talk on Lemmy. A good way to stop anyone from doing something is to argue doing that action will violate a value they treasure – like freedom of speech – putting them in a hole where they try to convince the troll, and by proxy themselves, they’re not being hypocrites. Which never happens because an honest debate where the acknowledgement the victim seeks was always impossible to get, and therefore the dissonance never resolvable. It’s called cognitive dissonance, it’s a trick abusers use, look it up.

Plus we’re dealing with fascists, who take over governments from the inside, so it’s reasonable to assume it’s them doing it, too.

So speaking in bad faith needs to be policed and banned. Mods who refuse to do it should be replaced with those who will. If the mods are determined by everyone else to be ruling in bad faith, they need to be removed for that as well.

Human consensus based decision making is not perfect, but it’s all we have and we have to make the most of it.

So most conservatives when pressed on any of their beliefs.

Not have those laws is also abusable

Not as easily by the government

abuse by governemnt, neglect by government. The problems can happen either way but with a change in law at least there is attempt to make it better.

Neglect by the government is a good thing. I think we disagree on a fundemental level.

Sounds like they have some level of knowledge of history and have remotely thought their views through yes.

Punch Nazis is a good start.

And by that I mean be socially intolerant of intolerance. Personal morals and actions don’t need to and shouldn’t be held to the same standard as the US Federal government.

Individuals do have more freedom to discriminate and show “social intolerance”, but that obviously doesn’t extend to punching people they disagree with. Or violent responses in general.

I’m not morally obligated to debate someone arguing in favor of genocide, for instance. Is it legally assault to punch them, sure. Would I want the government to come in and boot stomp them, probably not. Is punching them morally wrong, nope.

The morals of your actions are for you to decide. It’s your conscience. However, if you punched someone over what they said they would be perfectly justified both in defending themselves against your aggression and in punching you right back. At that point you would have no objective rational argument that their defense or retribution was wrong which would not similarly condemn your own actions. You’re the one who chose to escalate to violence, not them.

At least then they’re busy fighting me and not furthering the cause of horrific systematic injustices against those that can’t defend themselves.

Some countries already have hate speech laws that are limited to inciting violence and they aren’t being abused.

That is an inciting violence law.

The United States. Speech that is used to incite violence, commit fraud, or is perceived to be a true threat are not protected under the first amendment.

And it is almost impossible to break that law.

I don’t know about that. I think the more appropriate stance is that it’s almost impossible to have people appropriately prosecuted when they do violate the law. Federal courts are afraid to be the court that starts the chain reaction of more appropriately defining how violation of the law and prosecution should work.

Norway

Honestly, I’d rather deal with people abusing hate speech laws and punishing them for abuse than to not have legal protection from hate and discrimination.

The past 200+ years have shown that the founding fathers’ absolutism and interpretation of social matters in terms of speech alone is faulty. It didn’t take into consideration the failings of the people as a whole and allowed for genocide, slavery and civil war, and enabled the very same tyrannical government they sought to oppose.

And this is because it’s not a speech issue. It’s an intent issue, and society needs to be completely restructured to account for intent, which despite popular belief is actually pretty easy to determine.

Banning Nazis is the first step toward that necessary change. And if social and moral progress is to continue, it must.

Here’s the thing, I agree that hate speech is bad. But then I look at countries like China and think “I like having freedom of speech”.

How about when a republican gets in office, and he gets to define hate speech?

That is not saying that Germany is abusing the law, just that they have an ineffective implementation that shitty countries could use as an excuse to enact their own abusive practices.

you can’t bring facts and actually reading their source to the discussion, you are supposed to just agree!

I said ripe for abuse, not that they will be abused. In any case, I haven’t heard of country with hate speech laws that hasn’t been abused in some form. Even in America, we don’t have those laws, but that hasn’t stopped the government from trying.

By your logic we should get rid of traffic laws because we know they are abused.

We don’t have those laws in the form of legislation necessarily in the US but we do have bars on what is covered by the first amendment according to case law.

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