Social media posts inciting hate and division have “real world consequences” and there is a responsibility to regulate content, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, insisted on Friday, following Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking programme in the United States.
Misinformation and violent rhetoric about minorities is hate. It has no place in society and allowing it achieves nothing expect the proliferation of bigotry.
Why is this just about “minorities” and what is a “minority”? Who is going to define this definition? Why is this not also for hate of any kind such as calls for violence to “non-minorities”?
Sure, but should it be illegal? Unless it’s causing direct harm, I think the answer is no, regardless of how disgusting and hurtful it is.
For example, I can stand on the corner with a sign saying something disgusting like, “all Jews must die” or “all GOP members must die,” and as long as it’s not seen as an actual, credible threat, it’s not and shouldn’t be illegal. Should we, as a society, tolerate it? No, I fully expect people to confront me about it, I expect to lose friends, and I also expect businesses to choose to not serve me due to my speech. However, I also don’t think there should be any legal opposition.
The same is true for platforms, they should absolutely be allowed to tolerate or moderate speech however they choose. That’s their right as the platform owner, and it’s a violation of free speech to restrict that right. However, people also have the right to leave platforms they disagree with, other entities have the right to not boost that content, etc. That’s how free speech works, you have the freedom to say whatever you want, and others have the right to ignore you and not let you onto their platforms.
Okay, but are Jewish people supposed to just accept that you’re walking around calling for the mass murder of their communities?
Weimar Germany was a society that was governed on this principle of a “marketplace of ideas” where “unacceptable evil beliefs will naturally be rejected”, so is the modern united states. You can see two pretty clear examples of how this does not work and just allows fascists to promote their view points.
Say in you’re example you’re not just some guy on the street corner. Say you’re a media executive. Say you’re a politician. Say you’re a billionaire. Is it still permissible? Say you make a new political party called the “kill all the jews” party, and you make friends with all the major media executives to promote your views non-stop all day every day on the air. Is it still permissible? Say you buy out social media websites, and make it against the TOS for those websites to say anything denouncing of the “kill all the jews” party. Then you flood those websites with indoctrination material and fabricated news stories. Is it still permissible?
Hate speech can and should be faced with legal prosecution. You should face legal repercussions for calling for all Jewish people to be murdered. Freedom of speech should not protect violent bigotry. The goal of government should be to provide the greatest quality of life for all. That is incompatible with allowing people to spread violent hate speech and indotrinate others into violent bigotry. This mistake has been made time and again. Fascists are the ones who fight the absolute hardest for “freedom to say nazi shit”. Because of course they want it to be legal for them to do that, they’re nazis. Protecting them from legal consequences for being Nazis literally only benefits Nazis.
And it’s not just calling for mass murder, but providing the framework to organize it. There’s a point where a threat becomes specific and actionable, and at that point, it’s not protected speech any more, it’s incitement. the problem is that the courts have so far failed to recognize that the technique of stochastic terrorism is actionable, just as a more traditional threat is.
Yep, it’s going to be cold comfort for the absolutists when they’re being mass-murdered. This is not genteel debate we’re talking about, it’s crimes against humanity, and I’m quite willing to sacrifice a few absolutist principles to prevent even more of such crimes being committed.
I’m looking forward to whenever someone decides that your beliefs are “hate speech” and suddenly you’ll be the one supporting free speech.
Fascism isn’t the only form of authoritarianism, and authoritarianism in general wants to control speech. If you can frame your opponents’ speech as “hate speech,” you can use the law to silence them, even if their speech has no chance of actually causing any harm. If becomes a political tool to maintain power.
The examples I gave are fairly extreme and most would consider them hate speech, but as soon as we allow silencing people over hate speech, we open the door to abuse for political purposes. The charges don’t even need to stick, you just need to tie someone up in the courts so they can’t properly campaign.
Look at less free countries like Venezuela or Russia, they go after speech first (e.g. journalists). That alone should give you serious pause when you hear any attempt to regulate speech.
We don’t have to, there’s no rule saying either we have Nazis or no one can say anything. I don’t agree that “saying nazi stuff” is nebulous enough that it could be construed to mean “saying not nazi stuff”.
I also don’t feel you adequately responded to my pointing out that protecting the rights of Nazis to be Nazis only benefits Nazis at the expense of literally everyone else and allowing Nazis to make political parties and manipulate society.
Your society has fundamentally failed to protect the rights of its citizens if Nazis can exist within it. They should face legal action for their views.
Allowing Nazis to say Nazi stuff doesn’t in any way limit your ability to say anti-Nazi stuff. Banning Nazi stuff enables law enforcement and courts to determine how broadly to interpret that. If Nazi simps (or actual Nazis) get into power, maybe they’ll decide your speech counts as “Nazi stuff.”
I strongly disagree. They should face social ostracization and be rejected by the public because their views carry no weight.
If Nazis exist in your society but only at the fringes because people have rejected their ideas, you’ve won. If the only way you can defeat dangerous ideas is by getting the “right people” in power to create laws, you’re on very dangerous ground.
Yeah, it’s quite the marketplace of ideas when some asshole is out in the street hitting you in the head with a lead pipe.
And excluding from power those who should never hold it seems an an entirely reasonable feature of a legitimate polity.
That’s obviously assault and should be prosecuted regardless of the content of the victim’s speech (i.e. even if he deserved it). I’d probably offer to help the aggressor post bond though if the victim was spouting Nazi nonsense.
Exactly, and that’s why voting is so important, as well as party norms. Parties are our first line of defense, primary elections are the second, and general elections are the third. If a wacko gets in power, we also have impeachment and other similar checks.
If all of those break down, I guess we need to resort to revolution if the person in power is dangerous enough, because the system obviously can’t be rescued.
Nazis will limit my speech if they get into power one way or the other, what are you talking about lol. If they get into power they will literally kill me, that’s their stated goal.
Okay, well, in FreeSpeechAbsolutismLand the nazis will now run around convincing everyone that being a Nazi is totally cool and you should do it too, fast forward and congratulations Hitler just got elected because the Nazis bought out the major media organizations and indoctrinated everyone into Nazism. Now, let’s review. Is there anywhere along the way that the government could have done something to prevent Nazis from taking over the country?
Like, come on, this is so ridiculous. You’ve been so convinced by conservatism that restricting the right to say literally anything immediately turns your country into Soviet Russia that you’re here protecting Nazis. It’s just foolish. You’re acting like it’s absolutely impossible to have any laws at all because inevitably they will be misinterpreted to their extreme. It’s like “should murder be illegal because what if people in power decide fetuses count as people and are therefore murder-able” like no we can actually restrict specific things. I don’t see many people advocating the legalization of murder so as to prevent abortion rights from being restricted by advocates of fetal personhood.
Yes:
Adding more laws that we’re not going to enforce fairly isn’t going to help, and will probably make it worse.
I’m sorry, when did I ever give the impression that I’m a conservative? I’m about as liberal as they come, in the apparently old fashioned definition of the term that prioritizes individual rights.
For president, I have voted Republican once (McCain), Libertarian once (Gary Johnson; I hated Clinton and Trump near equally), and Democrat once (Biden). I abstained in 2012 because I had recently moved and didn’t feel comfortable enough with local politics to vote (and I didn’t know if I’d stay), and the Presidential candidate was a near guarantee in my new state (Mitt Romney in Utah, no way he loses there).
I’m a left leaning libertarian, and depending on who you ask, I’m simultaneously a dirty commie, a fascist, or an anarchist, none of which remotely describe me. I am in favor of liberalizing all parts of society and helping the poor. I believe firmly that the ends do not justify the means, and will spend a lot of effort looking for solutions to problems that don’t violate my principles.
Hitler was elected my guy. There’s no evidence that his electoral victory in 1933 was in any way tampered with. He was democratically elected. He ran on a campaign of ending democracy. Same deal as Trump pretty well. He also served prison time. He was punished by the law. That didn’t stop the people for voting for him to end democracy. He campaigned on genocidal authoritarian fascism. He bought media companies and proliferated fascist ideology over radio and newspaper. He had movies made to promote fascism. But he broke no laws doing any of that. He was elected.
You are essentially saying that the government of Weimar Germany did nothing wrong. They prosecuted him legally for crimes he committed during an insurrection attempt. Then when he was free he ran about talking about how great fascism is and how awful the jews are and how great it’d be if he got elected cause he’d take all the jews out of the government and the schools and the media. All of those were actual campaign points of his. People readily voted for it. They practically worshiped him before he was even elected.
Nazis don’t deserve fairness. Nazis should be met with a fist. They advocate the destruction of liberty and crimes against humanity. They indoctrinate others into genocidal bigotry. Tolerating their presence at all is unacceptable, and they should be forcefully removed from society by legal frameworks.
I also never said you were a conservative but that you were convinced by conservatism. Liberalism is also not a left-wing ideology. Individual rights is mostly a buzzword for unfettered and unrestricted capitalism. Elon Musk loves talking about individual rights and freedom of speech from his billionaire fascist pulpit where he silences anyone arguing against him lol.
Ironically this conversation always comes up in conversation about how “we really need to let Nazis speak you guys. No don’t silence them it’ll hurt democracy’s feelings :( yes they’re convincing everyone to kill the minorities but no no no we need to let them talk, yes i know they recruit regardless of whether we tell anyone their fascists because their entire ideology is based on non-falsifiable conspiracies about minorities secretly controlling the world but no it’s okee we just need to let them talk and everyone will reject them im sure” aaaaaaaaaaand fascists have taken over your country. The same way they did in the 30s. And the 20s. The same way they have time and again over and over and over, proving without any shadow of a doubt that history will endlessly repeat itself specifically because everyone seems hellbent on refusing to learn from it.
Yeah you’re a liberal. You’re not a leftist or a progressive. I’m an anarchist, ironically as you listed that there lol Nazis can get bent, and the government should’ve had them all sentenced to life in prison without outside contact. If, you know, the government actually cared at all about preventing a fascist uprising. Kinda too late now, there’s probably a good 10 million totally indoctrinated american fascists, at least.
the law shouldn’t dictate this because that would require rigid definitions of misinformation and minorities. are Nazis minorities? What about Israelis? Or Palestinians?
is spreading a rumor misinformation? What if it is later found out to be true?
Fascist speech is not hard to point out. Advocating for the removal of the human rights of minority groups should result in legal punishment. Advocating for violence against minorities should result in legal punishment.
No one is born a Nazi. You should not be able to exist in society as a Nazi. You should face legal action for being a Nazi. We hung people at Nuremberg over this. We have already long since had established definitions of what inciting genocide is, of what spreading fascism is.
What is tiring about this conversation is that you have to balance real historically documented dangers of tolerating fascists, versus the theoretical dangers of whatever some internet person thinks might happen in an imaginary future.
I mean, it’s a tough call, right? “Regulating food sounds nice in theory but what if it gives some future government the power to ban pizza haha gotcha”.
the main problem I have with the government doing this is that they would be the ones to define who the minoritys are. If I remember correctly the US consider veterans to be a protected class, what if a government decided to extend minority status to those that themselves (as part of their “culture”) codified intolerance to existing protected minorities (such as certain religions with respect to homosexuality)?
I mean I’m not advocating for that though. I don’t think it’s impossible to restrict specifically fascist rhetoric. I don’t think it’s impossible to make it illegal to advocate for genocide of racial and gender minorities.
if the (US and many others) governments weren’t run by fascists I might agree, but I know that politics change and facist, homophobic, racists are always going to have a chance to be elected in a democratic (republic) system.
If this is already true then how does making it illegal to be a Nazi change that? If Nazis will already get into power (and then restrict non-nazi or anti-nazi speech), then what exactly is the risk of making it illegal to espouse Nazi ideology?