Comments on: Free speech and hate speech

By: james

james — Sat, 18 Dec 2004 17:23:52 +0000

Does anyone else find Chris’s position ironic? How can anyone reasonably propose that freedom of speech can be protected by limiting the right to use it? How can we be sure that those purposing this are not simply asking for the right to exclude speech they do not want spoken? With laws like this, one must be prepared for those holding ideas contrary to yours to be the final arbitrators of what is considered acceptable speech. If one is unwilling to give the bigots this power, one should not ask for the creation of such laws.

By: Urbina

Urbina — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 20:51:00 +0000

Sorry for getting grumpy… I guess my answer is that if extremists Muslims engage in speech the aim of which is to deny others, such as apostates, the opportunity to participate in public life, to express their views etc, by creating a climate of fear, then the speech of those Muslim extremists isn’t entitled to protection. Ok—continuing in the seasonal spirit—it would be nice if we could pick and choose whose voices needed getting heard—and we seem to agree about some of the more obvious ones—but my objection to any law drafted to accomplish this, um, affirmative action, is based on its inevitable consequences. I can see a flood of complaints, and by all the wrong people. They’re doing their damnedest already, and hardly need the encouragement this law would bring.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 14:14:05 +0000

Sorry for getting grumpy… I guess my answer is that if extremists Muslims engage in speech the aim of which is to deny others, such as apostates, the opportunity to participate in public life, to express their views etc, by creating a climate of fear, then the speech of those Muslim extremists isn’t entitled to protection. But whether there should actually be a law against such speech, and whether there should be prosecutions under any such law, are further questions. Since there’s some reason to believe that these further steps would be counterproductive, then we shouldn’t take them.

By: Urbina

Urbina — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 14:03:41 +0000

”The right of apostates to express their apostasy, of gay Muslims to express their views etc, is plausibly threatened by hate speech directed at them by the ultra-religious.” Can’t you read? Yes I can Chris. And my question remains: would the hypothetical (sorry, not “your”… and certainly not my) hate law be applicable in this case? And where would the MAB, Qaradawi and Livingstone figure in this scenario? This isn’t just a rhetorical question; I’m trying to understand exactly whom this law would help—and, especially, how—and what collateral damage it would inflict.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 13:46:52 +0000

Tracy: “does giving “everyone a fair opportunity to have their voice heard in the public forum” actually mean giving “everyone who holds a position Chris approves of a fair opportunity to have their voice heard in the public forum”?” No. Urbina: ” is Chris proposing to apply his hate speech law against the MAB and Qaradawi (and his accessory, Livingstone)?” Puhleese…. 1. Chris didn’t propose a hate speech law but suggested a way we might think about freedom of speech issues. 2. Chris stated his opposition to Blunkett’s proposed law. 3. Chris in his original post wrote: bq.”The right of apostates to express their apostasy, of gay Muslims to express their views etc, is plausibly threatened by hate speech directed at them by the ultra-religious.” Can’t you read?

By: Urbina

Urbina — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 13:38:53 +0000

Or does giving “everyone a fair opportunity to have their voice heard in the public forum” actually mean giving “everyone who holds a position Chris approves of a fair opportunity to have their voice heard in the public forum”? Right, Tracy. But the irony in all this is that the group this law aims to help, the Muslims, don’t seem to have any problem getting their voice heard in the (British) public forum. Certainly the more militant of them. If anyone is being cowed into silence it is the moderate Muslims. So, is Chris proposing to apply his hate speech law against the MAB and Qaradawi (and his accessory, Livingstone)?

By: nic

nic — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 12:10:06 +0000

I was the subject of sustained bullying myself, in elementary school. It left bruises, where it didn’t shed blood, so I tend to sneer at verbal bullying; I should have been so lucky to have had nasty things said about me. Brett, that’s not to say verbal “bullying”, or in this case, incitement to hatred cannot be heavy in itself and is only a matter of oversensitivity on the receiving end. Someone who has been killed would have had it luckier if he had “only” been raped; someone who has been raped would have had it luckier if he had “only” been beaten up; and so on. So even if it is about speech rather than acts, I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss all the cases where incitement to hatred is dangerous and can and does fuel actual violence, also of a physical nature. That said, legislative intervention can raise more problems than it purports to solve. The issues John C. Halasz raises highlight that. On the other hand, it does depend on the background and history, so this kind of laws can make more sense in certain contexts (that’s why I think it’s pointless to compare the approach in the US to that in Europe). I don’t think you have to have experience of being on the receiving end of such hatred to understand that, but it does change the perspective a lot.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 08:14:53 +0000

Chris, don’t get too upset about Hollywood toning down anti-religious sentiment in films. The same forces also mean that since I’ve started keeping up with the movies (about 1990) I haven’t seen any clearly sexist or racist movies. (There is a fair bit of implicit sexism or racism, e.g. the habit the heroine has of being useless at the climax so the hero can rescue her, the low-frequency of inter-racial romantic relationships, etc. However Christains tend to find a fair bit of anti-Christainity in Hollywood’s outputtings). The moral horror of being forced to fund through taxes, or, if I ever happen to become a money person, directly, a movie say presenting slaves in the Southern USA as happy, simple people lovingly watched over and guided by the caring whites, or defending violence as a way of keeping women in line I think far outweigh any restriction in debate arising from expensive movies having to appeal to as large an audience as possible. And yet, these are attitudes held by a non-zero proportion of the population. Or does giving “everyone a fair opportunity to have their voice heard in the public forum” actually mean giving “everyone who holds a position Chris approves of a fair opportunity to have their voice heard in the public forum”?

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 01:36:50 +0000

Jean-Marc, I know I was mixing categories. I’ve been droning away about exactly that for months – as a couple of people on this very blog could confirm, because they’re more than a little tired of it. But the point of that particular post was how people think of identities: people generally do mix categories when thinking and talking about identity. Identity itself is a pretty woolly category.

By: Jean-Marc

Jean-Marc — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 23:14:19 +0000

Or Muslim or Québecois or Cherokee or whatever it is. You’re mixing categories, Ophelia. Muslim is a religious identification (depite Chris’ fudging of the issue); the other two are not. Jews are a different case. My wife is Jewish and atheist. She grew up as “Cone” but decided to revert to her father’s original “Cohen”. She is Jewish in the secular way Einstein and Schoenberg were and she finds it an honour to be so identified. I agree. Myself, I was born a Catholic Québécois/Canadien. In the space of my lifetime French-Canadian society has gone from being one of the most religiously conservative and cleric-ridden in the western hemisphere (certainly in North America) to one of the most liberal. What remains of Catholicism in Québec is largely cultural nostalgia. And not too different from what Judaism (as opposed to Jewishness) is for my wife.

By: john c. halasz

john c. halasz — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 23:09:21 +0000

I appreciate the (Rousseauian?) emphasis on the integrity and fairness of access to the public sphere and participation in the deliberations concerning the disposition of collective power. But I would have two sorts of objection to the argument. 1) Speech is such a complicated, protean, and context dependent thing that I think it virtually impossible to formally regulate it in a generalized way. (Rules for a formal debate, for example, are precisely a context-specific, indeed, context-engendering, sort of thing.) Only if it is tied to a specific context from which specific material consequences result, amounting to intentional acts, such as laws concerning incitement to riot, does legal prohibition and sanction strike me as a reasonable approach. Here legal prohibition would contrast with political contestation aimed at delegitimating rather than repressing hate speech. 2) The public sphere is not necessarily a pacific and harmonious realm, (as fantasized in some classical liberal conceptions of politics as an optimization and harmonization of individual interests), nor can it be guaranteed as such by law. To the contrary, it is precisely the prime place where appeals, conflicts and contests for power are joined. And these will all but inevitably bring forth exclusionary, other-denying and incitefully hateful articulations and strategies. I would much rather that hatefully bigoted attitudes be openly expressed as part of the political process and dealt with openly there than repressed and manipulated in coded language, accompanied by resentment accruing to (paranoiacally projective) fantasies of persecution. If, for example, British Muslims are subject to hateful incitements by xenophobes or racists, then that also is a signal to British Muslims to organize their communities politically to assert their rights as citizens. By the same token, that would involve acknowledgement on their part of the basic norms of such citizenship. Incitements to murder Salman Rushdie are obviously no more legitimate than the machinations of the BNP. But it is the political process transacted in the public sphere that should establish and enforce such norms and the harm caused by the short-circuiting of that process needs to be weighed in the balance. Finally, I would add that I think it is real material impediments to fair access to and the effective functioning of the public sphere, such as poverty, educational neglect and the concentration of control and ownership in media, far more than the purported contents of what is expressed there, that call for remedy. Such merely formal proscriptions amount to little more than the self-congratulation of a status quo that is all too complacent about its defects.

By: Deb Frisch

Deb Frisch — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:32:04 +0000

God, you guys are wordy. The question is whether it makes sense to make it a crime to incite violence against a subset of the population. If the violence is imminent, I think this makes sense. You don’t want gangs of men going down the street saying things that might incite other men to rape women or attack a subset of men they deem “other.” (Black men, gay men, etc.) So I am all for laws making it a crime to say hateful things to women or sexual or racial minorities in public. What people say in writing is their own business. What about a law making it a crime to say hateful things about a religious majority? I was living in d.c., working for Uncle Sam on 9.11.01 (DRMS PO @ NSF). I felt that p(I would die) on that day was not high, but noticeable. But the horror of that day pales in comparison with the horror at the USA’s behavior since then. I hate Uncle Sam much more than I hate Osaddama. I think the war in Iraq is evil. I think that part of the reason Sam is so evil is because he’s so Christian. I am full of rage, disgust, fury, shame, guilt, anger and contempt for the old white capitalist Christian men who dominate the U.S. government. I think Jesus was an enlightened human, like the Buddha. I have no doubt that he does not consider faux-Christians like Bush, Cheney and most of the other sleazebags who control the US to be true Christians. Aside from worshiping an alleged old white guy in the sky, Sam’s other problem is that he drastically overestimates the extent to which economics is a science. He has blind faith in an invisible hand, just like he has blind faith in an invisible guy in the sky. The combination of the two delusions is dangerous. Speaking of which, this is the most disgusting example of how the christians and capitalists are in bed together I’ve seen. http://www.reason.com/hod/ww121304.shtml So fuck Blunkett, Ashcroft and other assholes who want to make it a crime to say kristians are kooky.

By: Shai

Shai — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:26:15 +0000

I’m reading a new book by L.W. Sumner titled “The Hateful and the Obscene: Studies in the Limits of Free Expression“. It’s a very good philosophical introduction to the topic. It is about Canadian law but some non-canadians will find it interesting insofar as it’s a means to discuss the philosophical issues.

By: Brett Bellmore

Brett Bellmore — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:05:34 +0000

I was the subject of sustained bullying myself, in elementary school. It left bruises, where it didn’t shed blood, so I tend to sneer at verbal bullying; I should have been so lucky to have had nasty things said about me.

By: George

George — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 20:35:29 +0000

So in the end we’re arguing about nothing, which is what all good blog arguments should be about. (Chris actually telegraphed this at the very beginning, in saying that he agreed with the death of the proposed law.) Let’s try this again when there is something to argue about. (Though I do think there is a substantive argument to be had about the film case, posted by Henry earlier and linked by Chris above. I’ve said why this is a pretty feeble case for outrage, to no apparent response from either. Not that anyone is compelled to respond, of course.)