Racist rioting in the UK

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Since the State is great at deciding what speech to police, maybe you agree with policies that would silence criticism of Israel as being anti-Semitic?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/1/us-house-passes-controversial-bill-that-expands-definition-of-anti-semitism


Or, just maybe, the state typically reflects the interests of the powerful and putting it in control of policing speech will have adverse consequences.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

^ This just obviously goes both ways.

You can think my position is extreme, I view it as pragmatic. You would no doubt balk at many speech prohibitions that could be construed as punishing "hate speech".

I might trust my government to pick the right battles and police speech in a way that improves the public discourse. But I can't be sure that future governments would have the right motivations, and so I prefer a system wherein governments police actions and violence but not speech.

[Jamiet99uk]

Since the State is great at deciding what speech to police, maybe you agree with policies that would silence criticism of Israel as being anti-Semitic?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/1/us-house-passes-controversial-bill-that-expands-definition-of-anti-semitism


Or, just maybe, the state typically reflects the interests of the powerful and putting it in control of policing speech will have adverse consequences.

As I just noted, the USA is neither liberal nor a functioning democracy. The US continuing to align with fascist Israel is no surprise.

If you want to overthrow your current Government to establish a liberal state based on collective ownership of the means of production, I'd support you all the way.

America is currently one of the primary proponents of death and suffering across the globe, and has been since the early 1990s.

[Jamiet99uk]

Speech is not harmless. Harm can be caused by words. You won't acknowledge that.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

As I just noted, the USA is neither liberal nor a functioning democracy. The US continuing to align with fascist Israel is no surprise.

If you want to overthrow your current Government to establish a liberal state based on collective ownership of the means of production, I'd support you all the way.

America is currently one of the primary proponents of death and suffering across the globe, and has been since the early 1990s.

You've upset Americans, time to go to jail.

You've upset Zionists, time to go to jail.

You've advocated for violent treason, time to go to jail.

Oh wait, you meant you wanted to police some other speech that the Bad Guys (TM) use. Hopefully the government agrees with your view indefinitely.

[Jamiet99uk]

Bert, are you an anarchist?

You simultaneously argue for the broadest possible interpretation of free speech, whilst appearing to deeply distrust the concept of the state.

[Jamiet99uk]

For reference I believe strongly in the power of the state as a force for good....

.... provided that democracy is strong enough to replace the state if necessary, from time to time.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

The state has all sorts of necessary and legitimate goals, I just don't think policing speech is one of them.

I can't help but think that, in an earlier period, state speech prohibitions would have been used against issues I care about (e.g., gay rights) using the exact same "preventing harm" logic you're describing.

I think states are partly captured by elites who would use speech prohibitions to defend their position in society. Free speech was considered a progressive and pro-marginalized people until like 3 years ago lol.

I think the dumbest, most ignorant person should have a right to sound test their ideas. I don't think banning ideas makes them less powerful, quite the opposite. And I think that, over time and on average, conversation and debate help societies discover truths and make social progress — and that this debate can't be orchestrated in advance to avoid many of the bad ideas that some people already believe in.

[Trigfea63]

In the USA of course free speech is enshrined in our Constitution in the 1st Amendment. So our country's approach is to tolerate a lot more hateful and offensive speech than would be tolerated in many other countries. You have to cross a line of "incitement" of violence, and the incitement has to be to "imminent" action before you can be criminally punished for speech.

My view is generally aligned with Esq. B's that tolerance of most speech, even hateful, offensive speech, is the right approach. However, we have gotten to a point here where certain bad actors know how to game the free-speech "system" and get away with impinging severely on other people's freedoms. Two reasonably well known examples are Alex Jones broadcasting lies about the Sandy Hook school massacre being a hoax, a pretext for the government to seize citizens' guns (https://www.texastribune.org/2022/10/12/alex-jones-sandy-hook-shooting/), and Donald Trump tweeting lies that certain election officials in Georgia were adding suitcases full of fake ballots to the 2020 election count (https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-election-threats-georgia/). In both cases, the 1st Amendment prevents criminalization of the speech. Yet, the victims of the speech suffered months or even years of harassment, death threats, severe depression, and so on. This does not seem like the right answer. It seems to me this kind of speech should be criminalized and the perpetrators punished. Alex Jones lost a nearly $1B jury verdict, but good luck collecting, and anyway he deserves to rot in jail.

[Jamiet99uk]

The state has all sorts of necessary and legitimate goals, I just don't think policing speech is one of them.

I can't help but think that, in an earlier period, state speech prohibitions would have been used against issues I care about (e.g., gay rights) using the exact same "preventing harm" logic you're describing.

I think states are partly captured by elites who would use speech prohibitions to defend their position in society. Free speech was considered a progressive and pro-marginalized people until like 3 years ago lol.

I think the dumbest, most ignorant person should have a right to sound test their ideas. I don't think banning ideas makes them less powerful, quite the opposite. And I think that, over time and on average, conversation and debate help societies discover truths and make social progress — and that this debate can't be orchestrated in advance to avoid many of the bad ideas that some people already believe in.

I'm specifically talking about situations where the "ideas" in question are a desire to kill, maim, destroy and harm other people.

In what liberal society is it worth having a public debate about which members of society should be killed? Surely the fact that killing people is fundamentally wrong ought to be a pretty settled issue in any liberal democracy?

I don't get why you want to defend that particular kind of speech?

[Jamiet99uk]

Back to the original topic of the thread:

Last night thousands of anti-racist protestors took to the streets in several UK cities to protest against the earlier racist violence.

There was no violence, little disturbance, no shops were looted, nothing was set on fire. This is the difference between peaceful protest and far-right mob violence.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/07/anti-racism-protesters-fill-streets-of-english-cities-as-far-right-threat-recedes

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Surely the fact that killing people is fundamentally wrong ought to be a pretty settled issue in any liberal democracy?

I don't get why you want to defend that particular kind of speech?

You seem to have a very Manichean view of who is good or bad and what speech is "harmful". I just think it's more complicated.

What if someone wants to advocate that some crime should be punished with the death penalty? I'm against that in general, but I think they should have a right to say it.

What if someone makes a very dark joke about, say, an assassination attempt on an unloved politician? I think that's bad, but I don't think it's a criminal offense. I believe you've wished for the death of Israeli cabinet members before lol.

I don't want to create a society where various groups have an incentive to expand the definition of "harm" or "violence" to shut down ideas they don't like (e.g., conflating criticism of Islam with Islamophobia, conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, conflating disagreements about gender ID with transphobia, etc.).

I think it's better for us to know who holds violent ideas and why. The alternative isn't no harmful ideas - instead, they go underground, unchecked, and without any potential for expression other than through actual violence. At a minimum, it's useful when violent bigots identify themselves publicly.

I like offensive people (yourself included) and thinking through bad ideas. That's harder to do when some speech is criminalized.

I could probably get behind some specific prohibitions on speech. But that would establish a precedent I couldn't control. For example, if my country prohibited speech encouraging genocide, both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict would immediately be trying to criminalize the speech of their opponents. I don't think that would be healthy or useful.

[CaptainFritz28]

Russia is not a liberal society.

I don't see how that changes anything. They believe that to preserve their form of government, they must rid the world of Nazis and Fascists. So if their neighbors won't do it in their countries, then Russia must do it for them.

No, Jamie. Extermination (which is what "not tolerating the existence of" means) is not the proper way to go about political discussion. In fact, if I recall correctly, this was the very same approach Hitler used, and is a tool not of the free but of dictators.

So you would have allowed Hitler to take power, because that's the good "liberal" thing to do?

I see.

I disagree, so fuck you.

Hitler rigged elections and killed opponents to get into office. Free speech and murder are two very different things.

What sort of straw man is that? Even the stupidest fellow can see through that sorry excuse for logic.

[CaptainFritz28]

Just to be clear, you support building facilities and allocating funds to exterminating Nazis and Fascists?

[CaptainFritz28]

Hitler took power in Germany thanks to the attitudes of people like Esquire and Fritz.

Are you drunk?

[CaptainFritz28]

^ You approve of this kind of free speech, don't you, you dirty cunt?

Yeah he's drunk.

[CaptainFritz28]

Bert, are you an anarchist?

You simultaneously argue for the broadest possible interpretation of free speech, whilst appearing to deeply distrust the concept of the state.

We advocate for the broadest free speech because of our distrust of the state. If you give the corrupt leaders the ability to decide what is hate speech, they use it for their own power. I don't see what's difficult to understand about that. Anyone with the power to decide what people can and cannot say will be tempted to, and likely will eventually, use that power not for the good of the people but for personal gain. It's human nature that power corrupts, and the more power that you give, the greater tendency to corruption exists.

[CaptainFritz28]

Speech is not harmless. Harm can be caused by words. You won't acknowledge that.

Of course I acknowledge that. And it is because speech is not harmless that to give the power to restrict it to the government, which would lead further to corruption, causes more harm than freedom of speech.

[CaptainFritz28]

Back to the original topic of the thread:

Last night thousands of anti-racist protestors took to the streets in several UK cities to protest against the earlier racist violence.

There was no violence, little disturbance, no shops were looted, nothing was set on fire. This is the difference between peaceful protest and far-right mob violence.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/07/anti-racism-protesters-fill-streets-of-english-cities-as-far-right-threat-recedes

Glad to hear it. It is good that we can agree that peaceful protest is the way to cause change, although that does seem contrary to some of what you've said in this thread (i.e. violently overthrowing America is the only way to fix it).

[CaptainFritz28]

Jamie, your political doctrine seems very heavily based on violence. We exterminate those who are a threat to democracy, and when that democracy fails because our leaders become corrupt from the power to exterminate what they deem as a threat to democracy, we exterminate them and replace them with people who will exterminate the "right" people.

Seems pretty messed up to me.