Ridiculous. no one should be jailed for words. No matter how much we hate those words. Justice is in correcting the world so we never think like this. But that would be impossible with these kind of thoughts.
The UK has it's own standards for speech. They don't need to adhere to the free speech absolutism of the United States. This would be unacceptable in the United States, but many places do not protect racist speech. Theres good arguments on both sides. We'll see which works out better in the long run.
I’m a staunch advocate of free speech, but I think that a specific and credible threat of violence should be considered a crime (assault) and subject to prosecution, even though it’s “just words”.
Words can be extremely damaging. The US has libel and slander laws. What's so different about hate speech? It's harmful, almost as harmful as some forms of physical abuse.
Don't forget that most domestic abuse and physical abuse starts as verbal abuse, so criminalising that is not unreasonable
This is dystopian. Apparently they are trying to send a teenager to jail because of a single tweet:
> Price previously admitted one count of sending a grossly offensive message by a public communication network at a hearing at Worcester magistrates court on 17 March.
Its outside of what we would expect in the United States, but dystopian is hyperbolic. They don't want to tolerate racism there. Racism is bad so I can understand. The US is an outlier in how extreme our speech protections go. Even with this England tolerates far more transgressive speech than many other parts of the world. I can't even list the number of places where it's dangerous or illegal to criticize the political class. That's dystopian. This is just different from what you're used to.
I'm not from the US. I am originally from one of those places where it's more dangerous to offend the political class. I guess that's part of the reason I find this dystopian.
I have a 19 year old nephew. He still acts like he is 10 in some cases. I can't see him as adult nor his decisions in life looks like an adult. 19 is so young and still mentally child in many cases.
Most of the world does not have a First Amendment.
There are freer countries than the USA — countries which provide access to health care and education that goes beyond "wage slavery" training — that criminalize hate speech. One incident of expressed racial hatred is enough to warrant criminal prosecution. These countries have not yet descended into dystopia. Some of them criminalized hate speech in response to dystopia in their recent past.
It's time to rethink whether an absolutist, "First Amendment-like"[0] approach to free speech is really the best approach.
[0] The absolutist interpretation of the First Amendment has only actually prevailed since 1967, when a conservative Supreme Court ruled that Klan marches were protected speech in Brandenburg v. Ohio.
> There are freer countries than the USA — countries which provide access to health care and education
So you just made up a different definition of freedom and them claimed there are freer countries? Free education and healthcare are not related to freedom. They can be present e.g. in the USSR or in a freer country like Canada (formerly). But they are not an essential ingredient nor do they imply anything about freedom in the usual constitutional sense. You're talking about the merits of a welfare state and calling it freedom
> There are freer countries than the USA — countries which provide access to health care and education that goes beyond "wage slavery" training — that criminalize hate speech.
Free education and healthcare are definitely good, but that isn’t what constitutes a “free” state.
For example, Saudi Arabia has free education and healthcare but is an absolute monarchy that comes down hard on critics.
> Most of the world does not have a First Amendment.
Almost most of the world lives under a constitution that guarantees freedom of speech, they just also live under a constitution that contradicts in another way
and I'm not talking about an ambiguous place like the UK where they is no one specific document outlining rights, clear modern constitutions
I'm thinking 3.5 billion out of 7.9 billion live in a place governed by a document that contains the same text as the First Amendment
I'm sure we can get it to over half. I just added the populations of China and India to the US, as I'm only familiar with their constitutions.
So just helping you strengthen your argument in the future, by maybe saying it differently.
This is definitely dystopian, in the US and elsewhere. It's not just that it was a single tweet, but that the police arrested someone for a racial slur (an insult). It advances equally dystopian ideas such as "silence is violence" into real-world consequences, and establishes the dual justice system that dystopian books have warned us about for two generations.
Insults are abuse. Skittles are food. Flipping off a horse in a national park is a crime. Two drunk people screwing are mutually raping each other. You can do all kinds of magic with words and categories. Some would call this magic "equivocation."
Even if I thought that insults over Twitter counted as abuse (I don't), 'insult' is the obviously more accurate and descriptive term, and one would only use 'abuse' if the aim was to blur the line between insults and other kinds of abuse.
When I read about such insane sentences in the UK, I remember that the UK tolerated child rape by so-called grooming gangs for years or even decades *.
Soon this will be used to put people critical of corrupt politicians in jail.
We've seen time and time again the corrupt oligarchs and politicians bend well meaning rules to hold onto power.
Objections like yours have been raised from the start. How well meaning can these rules and the people implementing them really be if they implemented anyway them despite warnings of this outcome?
You have a very good point.
I want to believe many humans essentially want to be nice, but cannot go from first principles (abstract) to results in the real world very well.
Though I wouldn't be surprised if politicians and oligarchs are absolutely aware that a being "nice" law, is a weapon that they can use. Ever since Epstein, I've been wondering, how many "being nice" laws are really just a tool for the elite to punish dissidents.
>How well meaning can these rules and the people implementing them really be if they implemented anyway them despite warnings of this outcome?
Well, who said the people who implemented them and the rules they implemented were "well meaning" to begin with?
Legislators and politicians are mostly scum, and have been so for most of history.
Not to mention that it's trivial (and has been done time and again) for things being implemented by well meaning people to be abused by not well meaning people.
Just looked up whatever the follow-up of guy who made remarks about Captain Sir Tom Moore ended up being and the man avoided prison time for his tweets [1]
Freedom of speech? Racist or not, putting someone in jail for saying something is ridiculous. If the article didn't mention England, I'd assume this is Iran, Russia, or some other anti-freedom country.
This is some bizarre thing to do to a 19 year old kid who clearly wasn't educated well enough to understand what he is saying. 19 is young, instead of throwing him in the locker, they should've given him maybe some community work.
How is this different than Turkey's president Erdogan throwing people in jail for tweeting stuff about him? This is nuts.
He said his account had been hacked, which I actually believe, as I remember seeing some weird accounts pop up. But the trial-by-public opinion already resulted in the estate agent losing his job.
It struck me that this would (appallingly) be an effective way to destroy someone else's life: steal one of their profile photos, then create an account to tweet abuse after a prominent event, and let the mob do the rest.
The day after the final there was a wall-to-wall media narrative that portrayed the UK as a racist country. Not until later did they report that the vast majority of abuse came from abroad. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58094408
I put this in a thread, but I think it'll get buried so I'll put it top level.
If you're from the US, you might believe you have free speech, but you don't. You already have libel and slander laws. That is, you cannot lie about someone in public written or spoken media. These forms of speech are of course harmful to the recipients of these falsehoods because they put a false representation of a public figure or a company.
Hate speech is equally as harmful. One might argue that it's not illegal yet because it only harms a minority group and not corporations.
Hate speech often grows into physical abuse too. If you can reduce hate speech at the source, it might reduce the amount of people exposed to that way of speaking, and hopefully reduce overall abusive nature of people. This is probably wishful thinking however
It's not just "hurting someone's feelings". It's dehumanising and demoralising to a culture. It benefits groups to use terms like the n-word to have power over minorities.
If you've ever lived with depression or anxiety, you'll know that these things can lead to financial ruin and suicide. The "hurting someone's feelings" idea is so harmful and belittling to this idea. And is another way that these abusers get away with it.
"Just man up! It's just a joke! It's your fault you got offended". If that person is now afraid to leave their home, who's fault is that really?
You seem to miss the other half of the puzzle, where people who have suffered trauma in their lives often re-exhibit the same toxic behaviors that they learned. If a kid grows up under awful parents and says hurtful stuff to other people, should we jail that kid when they turn 18?
I say no.
Any good therapist will tell you that you can't control other people. What you can do is control how you react and who you associate with.
It is incumbent on each of us to find self-worth and make good decisions for our own mental health. Policing everybody else is an unwinnable game and far from the most effective strategy.
I did not say they should be put in prison. But I do not believe their deeds should go unpunished. I do not want to live in a society that promotes hate speech. I appreciate that toxic households can raise toxic children. But we punish them already if they get into drugs and violence. I firmly believe that hate speech is a gateway to violence
I understand having liberties to critise the government and the state. But hate speech is different and I think it's equivalent to violence in controlling groups of people with fear
Using the n-word to refer to Markus turns him from a human into a black person. It removes all of his humanity.
Yes, this may be an extreme interpretation, but it expresses that one group is inferior, and that he is inferior because he belongs to that group. This is a power dynamic.
> it expresses that one group is inferior, and that he is inferior because he belongs to that group.
Does it actually express that? Or is it a term that is being reached for because someone is upset and it's a cheap insult that the insulter thinks will have a large impact?
You are looking at this stuff in very black-and-white terms. How people communicate is a lot more nuanced than you are giving it credit for.
Yes. If someone uses a racial slur against a white person, it has a much weaker effect.
Yes, it came from a moment of anger, but the fact it's in their mind at all implies some internalised racism and disregard for the feelings of black people.
When should insults that target a group of people be allowed just because they were angry? You're not considering the mob mentality that this causes. If people are used to hearing the n-word, they will feel more comfortable saying it. And the more they have that in their mind, the more objectifying they will be to black people.
> Yes. If someone uses a racial slur against a white person, it has a much weaker effect.
And you feel confident saying this in general, because...?
> Yes, it came from a moment of anger, but the fact it's in their mind at all implies some internalised racism and disregard for the feelings of black people.
Human beings aren't computers. They don't do logical things. You are (probably) an engineering-type trying to apply logic & engineering concepts to the actions of people. If that worked, politics wouldn't be so disgusting.
I will offer you a piece of advice. This was hard fought for me and took a while to figure out.
All people don't act and think in the same way you do. They don't have the same motivations. They probably do not have the same values.
Your logic is "I would only use a racial slur if I were racist. They used a racial slur. Therefore, they must be racist." That's a flawed way to approach the world. You are making assumptions that don't hold. Starting with invalid assumptions is one of the best ways to fix the wrong problem.
> When should insults that target a group of people be allowed just because they were angry?
allowed != condoned != legal
I would say all of them should be legal because I see that freedom of speech is an important right. We need to be extremely selective about what things we prohibit, because allowing free speech to be eroded is dangerous.
The whole PURPOSE of free speech, after all, is to protect speech that is unpopular. You don't need a law to protect popular speech.
> You're not considering the mob mentality that this causes.
Aren't I? Inciting violence is already a crime.
> If people are used to hearing the n-word, they will feel more comfortable saying it. And the more they have that in their mind, the more objectifying they will be to black people.
I have heard that slur thrown around probably 10000:1 by black people versus anyone else. INCLUDING as a way to be intentionally hurtful.
What's interesting is, you will write this in an online forum but I'm sure you'd never say that to a black person. There would be some mental gymnastics to make a slur acceptable in this narrow scope, establishing a double-standard that has never been set for any other slur.
We're here discussing an article about a 19 year old being jailed for a slur. I would be every penny I have that you have said something at least as stupid at that age. Perhaps not a slur, but something quite hurtful nonetheless. Why? Because WE ALL DO.
Coming to the defense of black people in 2022 doesn't take a lick of courage. Trying to understand the motivations (and cringe) of a stupid 19-year-old, and finding forgiveness for that person, does.
Will Smith injects heroin into his extra pinky toe to get high.
Hate speech is subjective. The pragmatic notion of free speech forbids arbitrary or subjective limitations because error in favor of opinion is more readily abused than error in favor of freedom. Recovering an acceptable ground truth from the former is far more difficult than the latter, especially in the arena of public perception and opinion.
Freedom of speech is a society level principle. As law, it works in that context - there are always individuals who can be trotted out as fundamentally inimical and dangerous, whether qanon, far left radicals, or Abolitionists. Freedom of speech is a principle that says even Hitler should be allowed to speak, because in public, ideas can be addressed and countered through the process of free discussion. Drive the ideas underground and a society might fester with bad ideas without a functional public discussion. And in the cases where good ideas overcome bad, you get the end of slavery and women's right to vote and gay marriage and so forth. Free speech requires the good with the bad or or doesn't work at scale.
Life isn't fair and awful people exist. At a cultural level It's better to deal with that openly and honestly, because you can lift such awful people out of the morass of bad thinking.
There are vulnerabilities with conspiracy thinking, qanon, flat earth, and their ilk, but the issue is this: it is never appropriate to use violence to counter words. Chris Rock getting smacked was wrong for the same reason jailing someone for a tweet is wrong - violence is not the answer.
In this case, the state as leviathan exercised the threat of violence and forced a citizen into jail. The violence is itself a symptom of a problem with the individual or collective that initiated it.
Speech is not violence. Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words don't actually hurt you. Hurt feelings suck, but... get over it.
Also, Chris Rock has three nipples.
I'm pretty sure things like context, intent, malice, and other factors play into the legality of potential libel and slander.
> ignores organized child sexual abuse for decades
No it doesn't. It actively covers it up: Police in Rotherham tore up paperwork relating to one child sex abuse victim and stopped another from being medically examined, the BBC has been told. - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-29957511
Different countries value different things. I see a lot of comments here saying this is dystopian or the first step to hitler 2.0 or something equally as bad.
These are equally as vacuous and empty as people from other countries asking “why can’t you just get rid of all the guns” or making other comments about school shootings.
It’s more complex than that, as a society we’ve said we’re comfortable with not allowing people to say some stuff, just as other countries are OK with high numbers of gun deaths.
I find one pretty natural and the other pretty abhorrent, and i expect a fair few commenters here may have the exact opposite view.
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