[vtail]

Grandparent’s is a universal argument, that applies to other countries / situations as well. Russia, which is technically not a monarchy, have the same problem with hate speech law.

For obvious reasons, it’s harder to give an example from a more liberal country, but his/her point still stands.

[JBReefer]

England has hate speech laws that produce _ridiculous_ outcomes, like a guy getting fined because he made a dumb gif of his dog Sig Heiling.

[odessacubbage]

i mean when you think about it, isn't being unjustly punished for speech the most english value of all?

[pjc50]

http://www.scotland-judiciary.org.uk/8/1962/PF-v-Mark-Meecha...

"Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 makes it an offence to use a public communications network to send certain types of messages including those that are grossly offensive or threatening. The prosecution argued that by posting your video entitled “M8 Yer dug’s a Naazi” on to the Internet, you committed that offence.

“The centrepiece of your video consists of you repeating the phrase “Gas the Jews” over and over again as a command to a dog which then reacts. Sometimes the phrase is “You want to Gas the Jews”. You recite “Gas the Jews” in a variety of dramatic ways. “Gas the Jews” in one form or another is repeated by you 23 times within a few minutes.

“On the whole evidence, including your own, applying the law as made by Parliament and interpreted by the most senior courts in this land, I found it proved that the video you posted, using a public communications network, was grossly offensive and contained menacing, anti-Semitic and racist material.

“You deliberately chose the Holocaust as the theme of the video. You purposely used the command “Gas the Jews” as the centrepiece of what you called the entire joke, surrounding the “Gas the Jews” centrepiece with Nazi imagery and the Sieg Heil command so there could be no doubt what historical events you were referring to."

[jrs95]

Personally I find this legislation grossly offensive and threatening.

[praneshp]

Thanks for the link, as well as the quote!

Now watch people fall over each other to defend Nazi-themed dog gifs.

[pathseeker]

Defending free speech is not the same as defending or supporting the content itself.

Free speech wouldn't need to be a right in the US constitution if it only applied to stuff that wasn't offensive to someone.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

[s73v3r_]

That is a grossly overused quote, that usually ends up used to defend harassment.

[reversecs]

"That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved."

I think this applies here. Freedom of speech is the right above all rights and limits to that right need to be extremely precise and generally agreed upon.

The western world is drunk on politics. Concepts of racism, harassment, violence, fascism and the like are creeping into inappropriate territories. This is not a time to start making decisions about what people are or aren't allowed to say.

[praneshp]

I don't think I (or my parent comment) were trying to defend free speech. For context, I'm not American, and I'm a supporter of UK-style online hate speech crackdown laws.

I commended them for pointing out the lie behind "guy got sued for posting a dog gif", and adding context behind it. The discussion was not "posting nazi videos is hateful, but allowed because free speech"

[quotemstr]

Yes, I'll fall over myself to defend the right of someone to post a Nazi-themed dog image. Free speech means the freedom to offend. It even means the freedom to hate. Censorship solves nothing, and it's far too tempting a power to be given to the self-righteous.

[praneshp]

Fall over yourself all you want to defend free speech, much respect to you. My parent debunked the specific lie that UK police stretched a law to fine a man for uploading a gif of his dog, and that is what I was applauding. Predictably, the replies ignore the lies and rant about free speech.

[pjc50]

What else will you fall over for the right of people to post? Does this include the freedom to post without recieving a targeted harassment campaign, doxing, etc, or are you only concerned with government action?

[reversecs]

And what other speech would you oppose? Speech in support for a "racist, xenophobic, homophobic, chauvinist, Islamophobic" president?

[gnarbarian]

here's the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYslEzHbpus

[ummonk]

Well, England is technically a monarchy...

[samstave]

I honestly can't understand this.

They have a queen and a royal family which, AFAIK, literally do nothing meaningful, aren't running the country, don't produce anything of value (from what I can see) and yet are paid billions (land holdings etc) and are forcing populous to pay fealty to them in many respects...

I just don't understand why... The only thing I can see is "Because I said so, that's why", which doesn't seem to be a sound basis for government.

[GW150914]

The most popular argument I’ve heard is that the royal family actually makes more money for the UK than they cost, although those arguments seem to assume that abolishing royalty would mean bulldozing the artifacts and architecture which are the real revenue source. I think the real reason why is that the aristocracy does actually run a lot of things, if a bit indirectly. The House of Lords is a powerful, rich group of people, and who hands out the honors thst enobled them? How many in the House of Commoms aim to become lords and retire? Would they really vote to dismantle the institution which might make them lords?

[scrame]

I saw it once described as "the perfect split of politics and patriotism". People can love the queen and hate the PM.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> They have a queen and a royal family which, AFAIK, literally do nothing meaningful, aren't running the country, don't produce anything of value (from what I can see) and yet are paid billions (land holdings etc) and are forcing populous to pay fealty to them in many respects...

I think that's kind of a backwards view of how it works these days. If anything, the royal family are a bunch of mascots that not only bring in billions to the UK, but also, for better or for worse, serve as a unifying identity for millions of people.

If anything, I think most celebrities in the US serve as a bunch of vacuous narcissists, while at least the royal family understands "noblesse oblige" and their jobs basically involve making non-stop charity appearances.

[jamespo]

If that's the only example it's not doing too badly

[gnarbarian]

Here's a great example from a more liberal country. Bill c 16 was wielded in this way by her university against Shepard less than a year after being passed.

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

Furthermore, her perceived infraction was as banal as presenting two sides of a debate over bill c 16 itself. The university's argument was that even presenting the opposing argument was in breech of university discrimination policies.

[paganel]

You can add Spain to the list (EU and NATO member): http://www.catalannews.com/society-science/item/catalan-teac...

> The Spanish Guardia Civil has arrested a Catalan teacher for publishing hate speech on social networks, according to digital media outlet Pallars Digital.

> “Which tweets, which facebook posts, I do not know,” he tweeted after his release, adding that “the accusation is incitation of hate, I suppose hate against the Guardia Civil.”

> “No aggression against the Guardia Civil and the National Police, no violence; But let's make them realize that they are neither welcome nor loved,” Riu wrote on October 3 via his Twitter account. “Let us peacefully make life impossible until they leave Catalonia.On October 3, Riu published.” He confirmed that he has criticized the Spanish government and security forces in some of his online publications. In some cases he used obscene language, specifically against Spanish politicians, and in one Tweet he called Spanish police “orangutans.”

Arresting someone for having called the police forces “orangutans” on an online forum is very undemocratic and not ok.

[icebraining]

That's the problem with "peaceful" transitions from fascist governments, where many institutions don't even change their leadership, let alone their culture.

To be fair to Spain, though, the judge closed the case.

[notafraudster]

Bill C-16 was not wielded against her by the university -- your link demonstrates that an individual professor in the meeting mistakenly believed her conduct was against the "Canadian Human Rights Code" (not a thing that exists). That the subject of conversation that led to the meeting was Bill C-16 does not mean Bill C-16 was the authority the manager in question was using to argue her conduct violated rules. I think the principles of free inquiry are more important than Shepherd's feelings, and so correcting this misconception is important.

Subsequently, she was not punished, and after she herself made the meeting a national issue by doing a sob story tour, the university ultimately cleared her. She then sued the university for being mean to her, which is exactly what you'd expect someone whose main argument is the principles of open, uncomfortable discussion are more important than hurt feelings.

Shepherd then founded an organization on campus to promote open inquiry, and the first speaker she invited was, of course, a white supremacist who had just gotten fired for being a guest on a holocaust denial podcast. I mention this for no particular reason. If someone reading happens to infer that perhaps Shepherd's martyrdom was to a large extent inflated by Shepherd herself to raise her profile by courting controversy, I couldn't possibly be held responsible for that perception.

[gnarbarian]

Your interpretation of the situation is disingenuous and politically motivated (kinda like hate speech prosecution). Literally the first paragraph from the wiki article:

>Shepherd was reprimanded in November 2017 for having played her communications class two clips from The Agenda with Steve Paikin, a TVOntario current-affairs program, which showed a debate with Jordan Peterson, a critic of political correctness, about the compelled use of gender-neutral pronouns.[2] The context of the debate was Bill C-16, a proposal to add "gender identity or expression" as a prohibited ground for discrimination to the Canadian Human Rights Act and as an identifiable group to the Criminal Code.[4] The bill became law in June 2017.[5]

and regarding the Faith Goldy event from Shepard herself:

>Originally, this event was supposed to be a debate about immigration in Canada–but every professor I invited to debate Goldy declined. One must wonder: if her arguments are so intellectually void and unreasonable, as critics claim, why was no one willing to take on her supposedly bunk arguments about white identity? Wouldn’t it be an easy win?

>Running out of time and with no opposing speaker to represent the pro-open borders side, LSOI decided to launch the Unpopular Opinions Speaker Series, for which Goldy would be the inaugural speaker with her speech “Ethnocide: Multiculturalism and European-Canadian Identity.”

>The series would feature speakers who are strong and articulate, yet polemical—speakers who discuss subjects that most might consider taboo. A central tenet of this speaker series, we decided, would be a robust open floor Q&A session at the end, so that the presenter’s views could be directly challenged and confronted.

>I had my own questions for Goldy planned: wouldn’t a theoretical “white ethnostate” be rather dull and homogenous? Doesn’t a diversity of cultures in Canada enhance our perceptions of the world and understanding of one another?

>I never got to ask my questions.

>In fact, I never even got to hear Goldy speak a single word on her topic, as protesters pulled the fire alarm while the introductory remarks were still being made. And that was that; event over.

https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/why-i-invited-faith-goldy-to...

[lawnchair_larry]

What problems does Russia share with UAE with respect to hate speech law? They seem pretty far apart.

[vtail]

I haven’t watch the full video, but this paragraph from[1] summarizes the issue well:

“Following Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, Russian authorities have increasingly used vaguely-defined, anti-extremism laws to suppress the work of human rights activists. Codified through the laws on Foreign Agents, LGBT Propaganda, and Hate Crime, the Russian authorities’ interpretation of extremism permits an arbitrary application of these laws, which allows a dangerous means of discrimination against peaceful groups.”

[1] https://www.ned.org/events/hate-crime-and-hate-speech-legisl...