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by Laarlf
1293 days ago
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Most first world countries do not really have freedom of speech. While the headlines are quite excessive from UK and Australia (for obvious reasons), there are a lot of countries where the simple existence of those laws are never talked about. Denial of the holocaust is illegal in a lot of countries, denial of historic events in a few less, insulting people in a few more. Getting pulled through the legal system because you showed a middle finger to someone or because you said that some random war crime was not really that bad is a thing that just should not happen. But it is a thing that happened before. Protests and speech being regulated has the effect of everyone just trying to not get jailed. Even if there are no big headlines about it. And that damage is arguably worse than media coverage, which pulls attention to the issue. |
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You can freely criticise all the governments of those countries. You can disagree with them, you can mock them, you can challenge their claims. Nobody in the US has gone to prison for their "alternative facts". Compare this to Russia where discussing the war can land you in prison for 15 years, China with its extreme censorship, and plenty of other countries where criticising powerful people or reporting inconvenient news can get you in all sorts of trouble.
It's true you can't say everything. That's always been true, but in recent centuries and decades it has moved from banning what's inconvenient to the powerful to banning that what hurts the powerless. Libel and slander are illegal, threats are illegal. There's the classic example of yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater. Planning crimes is illegal despite the fact that that's all just speech. But it's all speech that can lead to situations in which innocent people get hurt. Or silenced, or compelled to do things they don't want to do, or otherwise limited in their freedom. And the same is true for hate speech. We've seen what it leads to. It creates a culture where the people being attacked are more likely to get hurt. Words aren't harnless; they're powerful. It's why free speech is important. But it's also why we shouldn't tolerate lies meant to hurt vulnerable people.