This is bad. The bill does not define "hate speech"; that's left for later administrative determination. All we have so far is “expresses detestation or vilification of a person or group on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”
Combining "detestation" ("I don't like you") with vilification ("You're evil") is a concern. The first is legitimate opinion. The second is defamation. For which truth is a defense under US law.
The committee report that fed into this bill [1] is scary. "Finding that certain expression falls within political speech does not close off the enquiry into whether the expression constitutes hate speech."[2] This is at least in part about suppressing political speech on certain issues.
YMCA of Canada proposed a definition: "integrate an intersectional gender equity lens and consider the gendered impacts of anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Xenophobia in any definition of “hate” and “online hate”". Think of trying to defend against a claim of that in court.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs proposed the IHRA definition of antisemitism, the one that includes some kinds of criticism of the Israeli government.[3]
This isn't classic hate speech, intended to incite people to violence. Such as "Hang Mike Pence". This is far, far broader.
I suspect anti-white speech would not be considered hate speech according to the YMCA of Canada. An "intersectional equity lens" often implies the redefinition as racism as racism-plus-power, viewing all whites as empowered and all non-whites as oppressed.
We know anti-white speech can and does incite violence, as it did last week in Daytona Beach:
>§ 15.1 Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
>§ 15.2 Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
Indeed, this is covered by the Charter. Confer with "All animals are equal/ But some etc."
The quote from the Labour MP is absolutely correct. Doubly so when whites are told that they're always "acting to preserve their own power and privilege", even when they're not, and they've been raised to despise the behavior they feel criticized for doing. This leads to the mindset of "well, if I'm a racist either way, I'd rather be one who actually DOES look out for my own self-interest."
It's a classic Prisoner's Dilemma [0]. I feel this dilemma quite deeply myself. I vastly prefer a society that treats people as individuals, while still condemning racism and teaching its role in our history, but if every other group acts selfishly and I still get called a racist either way, then at the very least I won't be a sucker too.
Lately this manifests in access to education. Consider this excerpt from a Washington Post report on admissions changes at Thomas Jefferson, the nation's #1 high school:
>Eleven percent of this year’s offers will go to Hispanic students, and 7 percent will go to Black students — both representing significant increases. 22 percent of this year’s offers are going to White students — a number that is largely consistent with the past four years, when White students accounted for between 17 and 22 percent of offers extended. Fifty-four percent of offers are going to Asian students, a marked decrease. In previous years, Asian students have accounted for between 65 and 75 percent of all offers.
>The county at large was 60 percent White, 10 percent Black, 20 percent Asian and 17 percent Hispanic in 2020, according to Fairfax government data.
>Still, the sharp decline in Asian representation is sure to stoke controversy in the Fairfax school system, a Northern Virginia district of 180,000 located just outside D.C.
Tensions stoked by "a decline in Asian representation"? What about the white parents, whose children make up 60% of the county but just 22% of TJ students? White students are now the most underrepresented race in TJ admissions, by a lot. The possibility that they might object to this status isn't even considered. In this case, every other big racial group is now openly fighting for their own self-interest, in the courts and the bureacracy, except for whites. How long do we expect this to last?
The solution is to preserve and rebuild trust between people of different racial and ethnic groups, including white people. I don't know how best to do this, exactly, but laws like the one proposed in Canada are probably on the wrong track.
> The possibility that they might object to this status isn't even considered.
Presumably because, as you quoted:
> 22 percent of this year’s offers are going to White students — a number that is largely consistent with the past four years
The author for this article has concluded that something changing is more likely to stoke controversy than something remaining more or less the same as it has been for a while.
Are you a TJ grad? It has been wild to see so many people form incredibly strong opinions about the school but have no actual connection to it.
The new policy is race blind. It has further improved access for economically disadvantaged students and students with other special needs. That is precisely the sort of result that class absolutist leftists would hope for.
Further, the merit lottery proposal that activists wanted (which was rejected by the school board and decried by critics as racist) would have produced a more representative student body for all races, including white people because it was a lottery system. The thing you are concerned about isn’t a concern.
The conservative white racists already lost at TJ because their normal arguments of “meritocracy” failed them, so they aren’t an especially important political player on the topic.
I live in DC and read local news. The TJ article was featured in last week's WaPo Metro section. I have a personal interest in the school's academic quality and admissions policy.
>The new policy is race blind.
The old admissions policy was race-blind.
>It has further improved access for economically disadvantaged students and students with other special needs
It has removed standardized literacy and numeracy testing. The test has been replaced with a 7th grade GPA requirement, and opaque "holistic review" which lets county officials paint whatever demographics picture they want. The holistic review is a fig leaf over what many parents suspect to be de facto racial quotas, which are expressly illegal. One group of parents is suing over this: https://pacificlegal.org/case/coalition_for_tj/
What the new process does NOT do is address the root causes which led to low black and Hispanic admissions with the old system, i.e. underperformance on standardized numeracy and literacy tests. A true "class absolutist leftist", which I am not, would address those problems at the root instead of fudging TJ admissions numbers to obscure the issue. Now it looks like the county is preparing more diverse students for success at TJ, which it isn't, because the old race-blind system showed that it wasn't. We've put a thin coat of paint over a bunch of subpar middle schools and support systems.
Under the new policy, TJ will admit more students who are not equipped to succeed in such a rigorous academic environment. In response, either the students or academic standards will suffer. Underequipped students admitted under the new system replace others who in all likelihood would've been better prepared to succeed. This is the problem of affirmative action "mismatch," about which much has already been said: https://harvardpolitics.com/matters-mismatch-debate-affirmat...
>The conservative white racists already lost at TJ because their normal arguments of “meritocracy” failed them, so they aren’t an especially important political player on the topic.
The new process is not perfect and will not address all problems with biased racial outcomes in FCPS education. Many of the activists who support changing the admissions system actually support eliminating TJ entirely and rethinking how access to accelerated education works. Why is there a limit to the number of students who can get these experiences?
However, as somebody who has personal experience working with this for the accelerated programs starting in 3rd grade, it is precisely the same people who complain about policies trying to address inequities earlier in education. This makes the argument that the changing TJ admission policies won't address root issues seem very disingenuous.
If you want to help change inequities in early accelerated education, then there are places where you can help. Since you are local, I'm sure people would love to have you!
I went to TJ. The testing culture there was amazingly toxic and a huge portion of my alumni friends consider our experiences there to be actually traumatic. Not the actual learning, but the testing culture. It has also gotten worse over time, and despite continued high rankings it has become more difficult for graduates to be accepted into top universities. This is true even for institutions like CalTech that famously focus on "traditional" application processes. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the TJ test.
I was one of the students whose parents paid many thousands of dollars for test prep, which was structured in the "testing strategies" manner rather than actually teaching any sort of academic material.
I do not believe that the TJ test was actually a proxy for merit and I do not believe that the incoming class will be ill equipped to succeed at an accelerated program.
The skin color of the victims is not mentioned in these cases, so I presume they were white. If anyone were to say that white lives matter, he would be branded a racist.
You're right, there's no reason to believe that. At least, not unless you've been paying any attention at all to the rhetoric and explicit ideological content of "anti-racism" over the past decade and you're able to locate this bill in that context.
Well, but it does. People loses their job. Maybe you didn't but you know someone who did, or a public figure you like.
Also, it affects personal relationships. It's amazing how my conservative friends unload their thoughts on me, because thy are afraid to speak frankly with other people.
Right, it has psychological effects on anyone who it targets (directly or indirectly). There's a debilitating mental burden that gets put on you when you are constantly trying to defend yourself or others against assailants who don't adhere to any basis in reality or principles. Most likely it's a social problem; the pain of challenging your own community and being alienated. It's also commonly seen in people who have to deal with narcissistic abuse.
Just as a historical anecdote, it was common for the resistance in the Soviet union to have mental health issues because of having to wrestle with all of the propaganda, insane behaviours, accusations and attacks. The Soviets took advantage of that by accusing anyone who had negative views of the government or culture of being schizophrenics and locking them in institutions.
I didn't notice on any of them, but I notice the struggle of being constantly under attack, that's right. I mean, I do notice myself, being a kind of materialist and utilitarian social-democrat in country with a leftist social majority.
Well, maybe a bit of depression for those who have a softer personality.
Agreed. There is a 1000% chance this legislation will be used to muzzle valid criticism of the rich and powerful, both in and out of government. The uncritical crowd here tends to assume anyone critical of hate speech laws just wants to toss slurs at people online, but the reality is that this represents a very real threat to free society on a basic level. Governments are ALWAYS trying to get more power than they need, so that they can abuse that power, and it's the ongoing sisyphean task of the population to push back if they don't want to end up in a dystopia.
Power to muzzle people for saying something mean is power the government SHOULD NOT HAVE. And if they get it, it WILL be abused.
Every single leader of almost each of the Canadian political parties was caught breaking their own covid guidelines and going on vacations, without masks, hugging and kissing etc. Yet not a single one of them got held accountable. Similarly in UK, the health secretary was caught having an affair the entire time he was telling people to socially distance. Not a single political will ever get held accountable.
We saw the same in the US with both elected and appointed officials in many of the states with the strictest of mandates, including California, Michigan and New York.
At least CA has a recall election planned for the governor, but if I were a betting man I doubt I would bet on it succeeding.
People of all political leanings seem quick to forgive politicians (from their side) for being human, while average citizens do not receive the same leniency from the government itself.
>Similarly in UK, the health secretary was caught having an affair the entire time he was telling people to socially distance. Not a single political will ever get held accountable.
In response to this affair, the Health Secretary has resigned:
All things considered, holding himself accountable is an honourable thing to do. I don't know if I could trust him to lead a health department again, but I'd surmise he's on the road of redemption in his family and community's eyes.
Reminds me of 'Professor Lockdown' Neil Ferguson, 53, who resigned from SAGE last year after also getting caught having an affair and breaking his own social distancing policies.
Best part is that back then, this same Health Secretary Matt Hancock was criticizing Neil Ferguson for doing so. Now he's caught doing the exact same thing too. Full circle.
“Rules for thee but not for me” is an enduring part of British social stratification, while I’m glad Hancock’s resigned the time for an honourable exit was months ago. There’s a real notion among members of British high society that they’re exempt from the rules they impose upon little people, and while Hancock’s actions are undoubtedly contemptible I think this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to political immorality during the pandemic.
How can we expect people to follow social distancing rules and shoulder the burden of their resulting social and economic harm when the rule’s architects don’t follow them, seeing them as something just for the plebs to obey? It makes a mockery of the law to prosecute private citizens under the Coronavirus Act when the very people responsible for that law show such flagrant disregard for it. It’s like finding out the chief advocate of Prohibition is a habitual pisshead.
Unfortunately this isn't a "British" thing. This is a human flaw thing and is occurring everywhere including my country in Canada and in US. This is why we cannot and should not be trusting governments with such powers.
I’m curious if you live in the US, and if this is why you feel this way?
I think it’s fairly normal that countries place a restriction on what is acceptable free speech and what goes beyond your right of expression because it infringes on others.
That's right; we already have free speech restrictions. Why do we need these extremely vague, extra restrictions, and why now? Nothing in this bill would have prevented the vehicle attack that supposedly prompted this bill.
American here. The problem I see with laws against hate speech is that "hate speech" is not defined concretely. While the intentions are certainly good, and I agree with the intentions, I disagree with the law because it leaves the definition of "hate speech" as a subjective term that is left up to the courts/prosecutors to define.
I moved to this country in the hope of escaping speech controls. To this day, I am not comfortable participating in (easily identifiable) social media, simply because I am worried about when someone will black bag me for (hopefully only) a few days.
I'm sure that won't happen here, but I'll be darned if this doesn't make my PTSD seem like the master plan.
Incidentally even talking about the nations/religions that I moved here to escape from, could be construed as a "phobic" response now.
I am in the same boat. I immigrated from a third world country where journalists get arrested, women have an ongoing rape pandemic and kids get exploited for labour and thrown to the streets for begging with their limbs chopped off. But a person having lesser melanin than me criticized my country in a similar way, that would be considered hate speech in Canada.
> But a person having lesser melanin than me criticized my country in a similar way, that would be considered hate speech in Canada.
Did you read the pertinent definition of hate speech in this situation? It doesn't include banning the criticism of a political entity in general, and beyond that I would imagine political arguments are not protected grounds of discrimination regardless of the entity. Most hate speech laws try to limit the criticism of people and groups based on specific characteristics, and this one seems no different.
In the first case, my women friends are too afraid to speak up because they are afraid of being labelled a transphobic. 3 of my female friends have lost sports scholarships to biological men.
A group of female athletes who are taking their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals are getting labelled "transphobic" simply because they want their Title IX rights (USAToday went and edited her letter without informing them):
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/05/22/transgende...
In the second case, the reasoning provided is "Criticism of Israel is Anti-Semitism. Really.":
You don't think both of these will also fall under this and get censored? Stating "man cannot be a woman" or "men shouldn't compete in women's sports" is considered transphobic in current climate. Regardless of which side of the Palestine-Israel conflict you fall one, either or both sides can be censored by labelling it as "anti-semitic" or "islamaphobic".
You say: "I would imagine political arguments are not protected grounds of discrimination regardless of the entity." Just wait until the opposite political party gets in power. Also things like abortion and other societal issues are all political in nature. Being pro-life will be considered "sexist". Or being pro-choice will be consider "racist". These laws can be twisted for whichever political side you fall on.
Also once such laws get implemented, give it a few years until those limitations get chipped away on too. Trudeau already did that with gun control. Back in 2011 he ran on "I am not trying to take away your rifles". Then in 2020 he took away those rifles and promised to take away the hand guns. Remember how Alex Jones got censored 5 years ago? Then Tulsi Gabbard got censored 2 years after. Everybody who was okay with AJ's censored 5 years ago is responsible for what happened to Tulsi Gabbard.
Also, I hate to use my skin color and "immigrant" status to make this crucial point which a lot of my other immigrant friends agree on - some government run by a bunch of elite politicians who are immune to everything trying to save me against any criticism/jokes/offense from someone else makes it very patronizing and condescending. This is what we call "soft bigotry of low expectations" which the ones pushing for this lack self awareness to realize. I am perfectly capable of defending myself against criticism/comments/jokes. I don't need some elite politician to treat me like a snowflake. What's really going to happen is that this sort of law will make everyday people self-censor to avoid offending anyone and thus the bad apples of lets say my skin color will exploit to do bad things. It will end up hurting us in the end.
> Also, I hate to use my skin color and "immigrant" status to make this crucial point which a lot of my other immigrant friends agree on - some government run by a bunch of elite politicians who are immune to everything trying to save me against any criticism/jokes/offense from someone else makes it very patronizing and condescending. This is what we call "soft bigotry of low expectations" which the ones pushing for this lack self awareness to realize.
First of all, please don't paint everyone who supports a certain policy with a broad brush. I apparently have a relevant skin color and immigrant status (probably to a different country) in common with you, and yet I seem to disagree with you on the general approach. Obviously, I don't support politicians being immune to their own misdeeds, but that shouldn't have a bearing on this legislation.
> You don't think both of these will also fall under this and get censored?
Sure, I understand that this danger exists, but the social ostracizing in the second case seems out of the context of this law, as I understand it, and also (more importantly) out of the context of what I would consider hate speech. I think this can be handled on a case-by-case basis, especially as I see clear potential benefits of this policy. It's straightforward to find hypothetical issues with every policy including ones we support, but that doesn't in and of itself make a strong case against them.
> Everybody who was okay with AJ's censored 5 years ago is responsible for what happened to Tulsi Gabbard.
Are you referring to the Google/Tulsi Gabbard censorship incident? What does this have to do with a hate speech law?
I did not "paint everyone who supports a certain policy with a broad brush". I specifically stated:
> a lot of my other immigrant friends agree on
A lot is not the same as all. And based on my anecdotal experience, majority of them disagree with this.
> out of the context of what I would consider hate speech. I think this can be handled on a case-by-case basis
"consider" and "think" being the important words in your comment. So you are agreeing that this is subjective. That's the problem with "subjective" laws. They get twisted to suit whatever political party or affiliations of the judges making decisions want.
Christians not wanting to see Jesus represented as gay in a comedy show will use this power to censor it:
Muslims not wanting to see Allah in drawings will use this power to censor it.
If you are pro-life, you can make the case that abortion is racist based on the origins of Planned Parenthood and number of black babies which are aborted. If you are pro-choice, you can make the case that abortion is part of women's rights and therefore any criticism is sexist.
Similar to the other examples I already stated about women being hurt and called transphobia for speaking out against biological men in women sports or Palestine / Israel censorship. Criticism of China's slave labour Uyghur camps, or lab leak theory or wet markets will (and has been already) get labelled xenophobic.
When asked about whether CCP could be trusted and whether he would commit to ending research collaboration with China, Trudeau responded with "diversity" and about "xenophobia, racism" and attacks on Chinese people:
So can such government be trusted with "subjective" laws?
As someone else perfectly stated:
> "The true test of any bill of this nature is to hand it over to your enemies to run. If you wouldn't be comfortable with the X administration defining "hate speech", you shouldn't be comfortable with Y defining it either."
And I haven't even addressed the sheer impossibility of enforcement of such legislation on the internet without operating a full spying of citizens. How exactly will one track down online comments on anonymous message boards or alias accounts on social media? It's impossible to achieve without giving the government more spying power resources.
The "porn ban" in India already was a complete failure. Doing the same with speech will end up with the same fate eventually.
Censoring "offensive" things is simply hiding it under the rug. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. More speech to counter the "incorrect" speech is the solution. Let people say offensive things so everyone knows who they are and can counter it with "correct" speech or at least know whom to avoid. Trying to "fine" it will just let them move over to anonymous message boards and even deeper echo chambers. This legislation will create more anonymous echo chambers.
I certainly hope everyone involved understands how precarious this path they are taking is. It should be well known by now from history that this sort of thing can be very dangerous, but it seems like there is a large part of the population that is more than willing to relinquish liberties for a perceived sense of safety without understanding the potential consequences involved.
Given the current political climate, I don't have much faith in things turning out well.
Really it's left to the courts and they will do as they please - subject to the kinds of cases that are brought to the, usually by people with agendas.
Since the new Constitution, we're living in a kind of Judicial Supremacy (in other places as well) where the best legislators and lawyers in the world basically don't even know if something is legal when they make it.
It's a giant gaping hole in how our Liberal institutions were founded that's only obvious now in hindsight I suppose. There really needs to be some kind of way for the Legislative and Judiciary to work something out - maybe by presenting test cases for new proposals, advisory etc.. Because as it stands, all of the 'most important things' are decided by an un-elected and 'Council of Elders' behind closed doors, with not nearly the same level of oversight, public or media scrutiny as in Parliament.
In Canada there is a 'notwithstanding' loophole, literally meaning Provinces can just 'opt out' of something being Constitutional, which is another, weird, separate problem.
We should really err on the side of freedom of expression in the law.
YouTube is still free to have their own thresholds, which is also fair.
>Since the new Constitution, we're living in a kind of Judicial Supremacy (in other places as well) where the best legislators and lawyers in the world basically don't even know if something is legal when they make it.
Can you provide some further reading explaining this phenomenon in more detail?
I'm not a constitutional scholar, so take with a grain of salt, but in a nutshell, without a 'Constitution' which broadly codifies rights, then laws are interpreted more narrowly - government has more flexibility to 'enact laws'.
But when there is a 'Constitution' that sets a broad but vague boundaries (Canada got one in 1982), then the Courts have significantly more power to interpret laws through the lens of Constitutionality.
After Canada got a proper Constitution in 1982, a bunch of laws that were on the books were overturned by the Canadian Supreme Court.
So things like abortion, civil rights, gay marriage, euthanasia etc. ... we don't actually 'legislate' these things - even if we do - the 'actual rules' are basically going to be determined in the Supreme Court.
Euthinasia is allowed in Canada, not because we legislated it, but because there was a Supreme Court ruling [0] in 2015, which kind of 'flip flopped' on a previous ruling a decade before.
This is from the CBC [1] which articulates some of the changes. In this article they talk mostly about 'human rights' which is good obviously (but you have to think about framing bias). Most conspicuously, they note in the last section the rise of 'Judicial Activism' - kind of an American term, and kind of loaded so a lot of people don't take to it very well, but what they mean is 'more freedom of the courts to interpret the law'.
i.e.
"amounts to a significant transfer of policy making to the courts," especially in an area that could be described as "morality issues."
"The charter has meant that the courts have a major influence on those things in a way they wouldn't have previously," he says.
Some would argue that this is 'how it should be' and that previously there was Parliamentary Supremacy ... except that I do believe something is fairly wrong when we really have no clue if the laws we write are constitutional or not. That makes absolutely no sense.
The courts don't write the laws, but they're ultimately the deciding factor on all the huge issues.
I don't believe that Constitutionality should be the purview of the courts, since it kind of implies they set their own jurisdictional bounds.
In my view - the Courts should only be able to interpret the law as is. If there is a major Constitutional review - that it might get deferred to a different body or process. I don't know what that would be. But not the Supreme Court in the way that it works today.
This is a global phenomenon because a lot of 'new' constitutions are being written.
It's not talked abut a lot, but it's one of the major behind the scenes issues around Brexit.
The EU (as the EEC) established a court called the 'European Court of Justice' (ECJ).
It was never agreed to in treaty that it's laws would be 'supreme' to those of nation states.
But - in hugely impactful ECJ ruling in 1964, the ECJ basically made a constitutional assertion: "Since we have formed a union, and act like one, and since we are the court of he union, then our rulings have supremacy over national courts".
What that means is - the ECJ ruling on a fairly minor case (with huge implications) decided their own jurisdiction: they were the 'Supreme Court' of Europe, and their laws trumped national laws.
Consider how crazy that is: EU leaders never actually explicitly agreed to that. Don't you think, that if your nation was going to enter into a treaty with other nations, and that you're going to hand over a fundamental pillar of sovereignty' - that this would be explicit* and clear in the treaty? With a bunch of parameters? And a referendum?
So who has 'Supreme Power'? The ECJ? Because they said so?
Over time, it's an issue that makes it's way through the various national legal systems. In some countries (France) it's more established. In others, not so much. But there have been further EU treaties since then so it effectively becomes more 'codified' indirectly.
The Germans maintain a kind of 'backstop' to this, in that they believe they have the right to review EU laws in a certain way, and that their Constitution is 'inviolable' but it's still kind of 'up in the air'.
This comes back to the 'Constitutional' issue in an important way since the EU has established their 'Charter of Fundamental Human Rights' [3] - which codifies more strongly all the 'nice human rights things' - with the caveat that the wording is naturally very vague, and gives the courts enormous power over established law.
It wasn't talked about much, but the ambiguity of all of this, and particularly the ECJ's interpretation of this new Charter, mean that there was a kind of 'unspoken war' brewing between UK Courts and the ECJ that was going to happen basically over decades of proceedings. This is partly because the UK doesn't have a formal Constitution with all the 'nice rights' in 'clean, nice sounding paragraphs' etc..
Basically, it's a giant paradox. Everyone wants 'human rights and constitutional protections', but they're generally fairly vague and aspirational documents that some arguably put the entire legal system up for grabs by the institution that has (or 'takes') the power to do it. However much oversight, there's a kind of a back door mechanism to incredible power.
When we say 'Western Liberal Democracy' we usually mean Executive, Legislative and Judiciary with 'equal' powers - the balance of power to stop authoritarianism. (In reality you could throw in the Central Bank and 'free press' as being just as important).
So it's not a small, petty debate, it's kind of foundational material. It's a really big deal.
Finally: huge grains of salt here, I'm not an expert, just a casual observer. I reserve the right to be fully corrected by the many lawyers here on HN.
This is a very good point, policy making in Canada has shifted to an enormous degree to the courts. And the Supreme Court has also been very vocal about choosing its own members too [0].
The BBC had a lecture series [1] on something similar happening in the UK with the creation of their relatively new Supreme Court.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but perhaps provinces pushing back with the Notwithstanding clause will send a signal. It's tempting to be envious of the US and its more circumscribed constitution, but one good thing in Canada is that there's a mandatory retirement age at 75 for Supreme Court judges.
> This is a global phenomenon because a lot of 'new' constitutions are being written.
Global, but now new. US was, I think, leading the pack here: its Supreme Court has reworked its entire system in early-to-mid 20th century into something completely different than the original Constitution has intended, with Wickard v. Filburn as the keystone. Then, this "new" constitution has gotten an amendment in form of Civil Rights acts in the 60s, which again have been interpreted well beyond their original intention, often, in fact, as something that's literally opposite of what it actually says.
> integrate an intersectional gender equity lens and consider the gendered impacts of anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Xenophobia in any definition of “hate”
... so that saying "all cops are bastards" stays perfectly legal. Unless you're talking about Israeli police, in which case you're stepping onto the shaky ground.
> Combining "detestation" ("I don't like you") with vilification ("You're evil") is a concern. The first is legitimate opinion. The second is defamation. For which truth is a defense under US law.
US law about defamation is even narrower than that. "Animats is evil" is almost certainly too vague to be taken as a provable, or disprovable statement of fact by a court. Even "Animats would steal if he thought he could get away with it" is probably too speculative.
What about the second half of that sentence? "...on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination", specifically.
"I don't like you because you're Black/gay/Jewish" is an entirely different thing from "I don't like you because you're rich". Specifically, one of these is a prohibited ground of discrimination.
That statement has always been problematic, and generally, even the people uttering it know it. Those that don't, who genuinely believe it, well, yeah, that's hate speech. That should be addressed.
Many feminists have been working to address this exact issue with their messaging. Discussions around "toxic masculinity" being the issue, not men themselves, and "Not All Men, but Yes All Women" draw attention to the fact that _enough_ men are dangerous, and enough men allow it, that there's a good chance that any woman you meet has a "harassed by a man" story.
Further, you and I are using the phrase "men are scum" without it being hate speech just fine, since we're using it to discuss an important social point. But using it to vilify an entire gender? Yeah, that's hate speech. You've hit the nail right on the head.
I'm a traditional Catholic man. I'm as far as you can get from a feminist really.
But yeah they have every right to say men are scum and mean it. How stupid can a country get? It might be sinful, it might be pride, but it should be legal.
> The bill defines “hate speech” as the content of a communication that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.
> These grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics, disability, or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.
> In addition, the hate speech would need to be communicated in a context where it is likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group on any of these prohibited grounds.
> Speech that expresses dislike or disdain, or that discredits, humiliates, hurts or offends would not fall within the definition of hate speech. This distinction is intended to reflect the extreme nature of hate speech captured by the proposed amendments.
The prohibited ground of discrimination are inline with existing definitions (this isn't them caving into the YMCA of Canada or IHRA or something...)
That references some decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada. There's an analysis of those here.[1] The Court, in a 4-3 decision, did find that some pamphlets (this was 1990, when people still printed pamphlets) were "hate speech". The court didn't come up with a definition of hate speech. They merely outlined roughly how far the legislature could go in that direction.
So passing the buck to the Court here is evading the issue.
This is a criminal statute. In common-law countries (UK, Canada, US, but not France) there's a general rule of construction that "Criminal law must be clear and unambiguous, so as to give ‘fair warning’." The legislature owes its citizens a clear definition of each crime. They're evading that duty.
This point in particular makes me wonder about how it can get applied...
> In addition, the hate speech would need to be communicated in a context where it is likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group on any of these prohibited grounds.
Any communication that is negative about a certain group, or even overly positive about one with the implication that it's considerably better than another's could end up contributing to this effect... Who gets to decide it's "likely"?
The right and the left really can't agree on the balance between equality/equity for who's actually vulnerable enough to need these laws to protect their human rights. This will be applied unevenly, maybe even arbitrarily.
When the government collects 16,000 dollars from every person it can fine for this, would social media even be worth the risk, for a poor person? Some rich kid with the right connections could pull some strings, and financially gut a person they disagree with who said something "likely to foment detestation" on their worst day, putting them 5 figures deeper in debt and driving them off social media. And then the ensuing storm foments hate between both groups. Maybe the poor kid gets a gofundme that won't get shut down so he doesn't have to pay it back over the course of many years, if he's lucky.
People seem to forget or not know that Canada is already in a grey middle ground where free-speech is limited, and hate speech is considered a crime. And so far, the fact that Canada doesn't take a free-speech-absolutist position on the matter doesn't seem to have led to the unavoidable-slippery-slope that free-speech-absolutists profess it should lead to.
I'm of the opinion that free speech is important but I think absolutism is a red flag, and here is a case where a pragmatic middle ground has proven to work out just fine.
It's funny how quickly forget about Stephen Harper and how he tried desperately to turn Canada into its anti-thesis.
The same laws that protect speech that you may not agree when your party is in power, protect your speech when the opposite party is in power. And the way things are going with Trudeau, I really don't expect him to survive the next election.
Looking at what goes on inside human rights tribunals (at least in ontario), I don't see how things are just fine. If anything, the tiny population size of Canada means nothing particularly exciting ever happens in Canada..
"The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs proposed the IHRA definition of antisemitism, the one that includes some kinds of criticism of the Israeli government.[3]" - the definition is against equating zionism with fascism and/or apartheid, and against questioning legal status of existence of Israel. The definition is obviously meant to outlaw BDS, and to push diaspora Jews towards taking sides. Other than that no one objects to criticism of Israel, its government, its defense forces, and zionism.
There is already an asymmetry codified in the CCRF, as to which groups can be (putatively) protected by this legislation, so the gov't has little to worry about w.r.t. swapping places.
> If you wouldn't be comfortable with the Trump administration defining "hate speech", you shouldn't be comfortable with Trudeau defining it either.
I disagree with this. I wouldn't trust the Trump administration with coming up with a list of human rights, that doesn't mean that the only acceptable compromise is that we shouldn't have any.
Your first sentence is solid advice, but I think you've drawn the wrong conclusion from it. It's a totally reasonable stance to be more comfortable with someone who's at least vaguely competent being in charge when discussing a complex and delicate issue.
Perhaps the point you were intending to make was that we shouldn't be comfortable with it being ambiguous enough that it's up to any particular government's definition, rather than being inherently uncomfortable with the definition itself?
> I wouldn't trust the Trump administration with coming up with a list of human rights, that doesn't mean that the only acceptable compromise is that we shouldn't have any.
The point remains the same. If you don't trust Trump (or the simple majority of voters in a given election) with the power to set rights, then you shouldn't give them such power. Rights are supposed to be restrictions on the govt. If the president can define hate speech then there is no right being protected from the govt.
"Hate Speech" is a super political term, and I would argue probably should have special protection at this point. It's not much of a leap to see this used to enforce current political orthodoxy.
We already have laws about inciting to violence as I understand it, which is justifiable. This makes it an offence to "expresses detestation or vilification of a person or group on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination".
Worth noting that Canada already considers hate speech a crime.
For example (from wiki), the two most relevant existing laws would be:
> Section 319(1): Publicly inciting hatred—makes it an offence to communicate statements in a public place which incite hatred against an identifiable group, where it is likely to lead to a breach of the peace. The Crown prosecutor can proceed either by indictment or by summary process. The maximum penalty is imprisonment of not more than two years. There is no minimum punishment.[15]
> Section 319(2): Promoting hatred—makes it an offence to wilfully promote hatred against any identifiable group, by making statements (other than in private conversation). The Crown prosecutor can proceed either by indictment or by summary process. The maximum penalty is imprisonment of not more than two years.[15]
What the planned legislation does is take the current working definition of hate speech (as set by Canada's Supreme Court) and put it into law, as well as (effectively) defining the relationship between online speech, and the public/private statements in the existing law.
Just reading what you are quoting, it sounds like 319(1) is not allowing for truth or intent as a defense.
And it raises the question of what "likely to lead to a breach of the peace" means. Hindsight is one thing. But does the law imply a proverbial "reasonable person" standard in advance?
Regarding 319(2), by saying "identifiable group", it sounds like it is covering all political groups or parties. Canadians are more polite, I know, but it seems like at this point 319(2) would cover virtually everything that passes for political discourse south of the border.
I wouldn't assume these are enforced as written, or as they appear to me to be written.
But if they were, they seem kind of extreme. Not because I'm insisting on the arbitrary standard of the US first amendment, but they do seem very broad.
In short, there are four defenses for hate speech (my summary): statements were true, statements expressing sincerely held religious beliefs, statements were of public interest, statements were talking about hate speech or hate.
We've had hate speech laws for a long time, my entire lifetime, and they are not used to quell debate or political discourse, unless you consider calling for violence against various groups "political speech". The bar is high, and defenses are strong.
> statements expressing sincerely held religious beliefs
I have an issue with this one. What is it about a religious belief that makes it any more important and protected than an atheistic belief? And how can "sincerely held" be defined? If I make a religion for the sole purpose of hating a group I would otherwise be prohibited from hating, is that OK? What if I indoctrinate somebody into that religion, can they say hate speech and be OK because they're sincerely holding that religious belief?
There's already a defense for truth, so I imagine the religious belief defense is there to avoid the Crown getting stuck in an argument about whether or not a given religion is "true", and the courts having to rule that it is not.
For a secular belief, you'd probably stick to arguing that it is true, seeing as you sincerely believe it to be true.
>You read a single sentence, and presumed a LOT about the law.
Which is to say I assumed sufficient context was provided as is customary in polite conversation.
I also made it quite clear in the first six words of my comment that I was allowing it might not be, as frequently happens.
Thanks for the elaboration.
The claim that the law regulates only "calling for violence against various groups" doesn't seem to jibe with what I read on the Wikipedia page though.
It mentions promoting, inciting, tending to produce feelings of, hatred. And 319(2) doesn't even appear to me to require the speech to be "likely" to result in violence.
I'm not telling you what the laws should be, how they are enforced, or what effect they have had, because I don't know and don't particularly care.
I'm just interested in what the law is. On my first impression it seems rather broad, and after considering the additional context, it still seems potentially rather broad.
> Section 319(3): Four defences—provides specific defences to the offence of promoting hatred. A person will not be convicted if:
> the person establishes that the statements communicated were true;
> in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text;
> the statements were relevant to any subject of public interest, the discussion of which was for the public benefit, and if on reasonable grounds the person believed them to be true; or
> in good faith, the person intended to point out, for the purpose of removal, matters producing or tending to produce feelings of hatred toward an identifiable group in Canada.[15]
As for the 'reasonable person' standard? I think that's how most laws as interpreted. For "identifiable group", the definition is:
> any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.
Certainly hate speech has the potential to be widely/broadly interpreted, and one could imagine scenarios where they would be problematic. I think broadly speaking, Canadians are aware of the potential of mis-use, but are generally "okay with it" based on the relative restraint that decades of different governments from different parties have shown.
Which I think is why I am kind of weary of changes to the law and policy in general (though I really haven't processed this particular change yet. I think the inclusion of the Supreme Court definition is pretty benign, but not sure about the online carve outs...). I think that have this 'oh shit, this is a real baddy' recourse is useful, but it's validity and usefulness can only be sustained with restrained use. I am not particularly optimistic on this current government's ability to show restraint (and I broadly support their policies and platforms...).
If I'm reading this correctly, an opinion about, say, regulating marriage could be permitted if it was based on a "religious text", but if not, or the authorities didn't recognize the religion/text (e.g. Pastafarians or something) then the same opinion might not be allowed.
It still seems to me open to interpretation whether promoting hate of political parties is permissible. A political party can be considered a "mental disability" - maybe that seems silly in this context, but it isn't uncommon for partisans to literally say that the party they dislike is a mental illness or made up of the mentally ill.
Furthermore, it seems clear from the list that "identifiable" doesn't necessarily mean visually identifiable. So the concept they had in mind eludes me. In legal writing, sometimes they will list things and say it is "not intended to be exhaustive". So I wonder if the list of identifiable groups is or not.
(And about the "reasonable person standard" - since it is explicitly written into law in some cases, and it has a name, I would expect it isn't always implicit. I am not a lawyer, and realize civil, criminal, American, and other law isn't the same, but the "eggshell rule" seems like an example of how and why the expectation of a "reasonable person" might not be considered an appropriate standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull)
> Just reading what you are quoting, it sounds like 319(1) is not allowing for truth or intent as a defense.
With the recent unearthing of the hundreds of bodies of children who died in Residential schools that were often run by the Catholic Church many Canadians have been very vocal for their dislike for the Catholic Church.
It will be very interesting to see how law enforcement chooses to enforce these laws when it comes to public dialogue about powerful institutions like the Catholic church.
Interestingly in Quebec (unlike other provinces), truth does not constitute an absolute defense against libel and defaming. Truthfulness is only a defence if the information was published in the public interest and without malice.
Here in the United States, criticism of Israeli state policy as it affects Palenstians is often labeled antisemitic. Laws have been passed on that basis to proscribe the pro-Palestinean Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement [0]:
>In the US, a large number of anti-BDS laws have been passed. As of 2020, 32 states have laws that prevent boycotts against Israel and a number of non-binding resolutions have been passed denouncing BDS. A majority of these have passed with strong bipartisan support. Two federal acts have been introduced, the 2017 Israel Anti-Boycott Act and the 2019 Combating BDS Act, both intended to deprive entities participating in boycotts of Israel of government contract work. In several states, these laws have been challenged on First Amendment grounds for violating citizens' freedom of speech.
There's a good overview of it here [1]. The author of the article has a lot of weird twitter opinions these days, but the incidents he's citing here are all real.
These events are real, but also more nuanced than how they are presented.
For instance the ruling against activists boycotting Israel was based on them focusing on a whole country (with kind words like “Israel murderer”) which by definition will englobe unrelated individuals, in a shop targeted at the diaspora.
Think about how it would look if today we had “fuck off China” protests in the middle of Chinatown.
> In 2015, France’s highest court upheld the criminal conviction of 12 pro-Palestinian activists for violating restrictions against hate speech. Their crime? Wearing T-shirts that advocated a boycott of Israel — “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel.”
If pro-Uighur activists wore t-shirts that said "long live Xinjiang, boycott China" in Chinatown, do you think they ought to be charged with a crime? Frankly, I find that idea appalling, and I find the conviction of those pro-Palestine activists appalling too.
The center of the case is that they didn’t just wear “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel” shirts and silently shopped for milk.
They did a tad more than that, enough to each get 1000 euros fines. Also it’s not like they’re now in concentration camps, they just got a slap on the hand.
You don't seem to understand the basic concept of division of power. The law is enforced by the judicial branch based on the written law + legal precedents on an impartial manner, not by the "current political orthodoxy".
If you question the judicial branch impartiality about this matter, you question the judicial branch itself because there is no reason to trust their impartial judgment in any other matter. If that is the case, I suggest that you make and argument for anarchy instead of this one.
I hate mudflinging as much as the next guy, but how would someone even engage in politics at all without statements that could be described as detestation or vilification? Politics is saying mean things about the other side in support of your side. If you don't believe the other side to be fundamentally bad in some way, why are you fighting them?
Yes yes, there's "on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination." That seems about as firm as a plastic bag blowing through a parking lot. I'm sure that category won't grow larger and larger until it's impossible to criticize the powerful or the status quo at all.
> Politics is saying mean things about the other side in support of your side.
This is not the definition of politics, this is how it is being executed in some places, there are plenty of places where this is not the default method.
> If you don't believe the other side to be fundamentally bad in some way, why are you fighting them?
This only makes sense if Twitter is your only source of political news/opinion.
You may think the other group is swell but have different opinions on how to get to the same end goal. You may have a disagreement on what an ideal world looks like or what our current one looks like (ie. different perspectives) . None of that includes "fundamentally bad".
See: all parties that have splintered off from a common one. They are still in the same corner but have adjusted their views, strategy or goals. They don't suddenly think their earlier compatriots are evil incarnate.
Interestingly, I think an argument could be made that ‘having a disagreement on what an ideal world looks like’ is equivalent to thinking the other is evil or at minimum immoral.
Disconnect the statement from actual politics and think about the concept in a more local setting. Here's a somewhat contrived example.
There are two engineers in your company trying to work out the best way to reduce the rate of bugs being introduced into a system. One of them is advocating for pair programming, and the other is advocating for a dedicated testing team. Both are trying to convince the other engineers that their method is best.
They may argue in good faith. They may resort to calling the other silly names. This is politics on a local scale. There's nothing to imply that the other side is evil, immoral, or even wrong. The fact that current democratic politics has devolved into mudslinging isn't an inherent fact of politics - it just seems to be an effective way to win these days.
There can absolutely be moral disagreements but it's not a given. That's probably the main point contested in this thread - that not all politics is about thinking the worst of your opposition. Certainly it happens, but it's not predicated on it.
"Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
This was written in 1944, intended as the preface of the "Animal Farm". It was not published until 1972.
For another pillar of this scary new age, look at the absolute willingness of big tech to censor anything that goes against the message of those in power.
this is probably a good point to quote the article
"The proposed law would likely run afoul of the First Amendment in the U.S., but despite popular misconceptions Canada is actually its own country."
Contrary to popular (American) opinion laws regulating speech are in fact not a new and authoritarian invention but have existed in the so called 'West' for literally centuries.
To have a rational discussion about this when it comes to countries that don't happen to be the US, like in this case, it would probably be good to not act as if these laws were somehow conjured up out of nothing. The United Kingdom, probably having a claim to be one of the world's longest lasting liberal democracies, has laws concerning speech that in many cases go well beyond laws on continental Europe, so any discussion about speech in the Western (and even specifically Anglo) tradition probably should be had on that ground, rather than just vague pointing about slippery slopes.
It's almost as if America was a radical attempt at a new kind of government, where its founders tried to avoid many of the pitfalls they had observed in Europe. The "United Kingdom" ("England" when we broke up with it) had (and still has) a method of governance that was flawed. That's why we didn't copy it. Any country that still has an intact monarchy, however ornamental, has no business lecturing others on the ideal forms of government.
>Contrary to popular (American) opinion laws regulating speech are in fact not a new and authoritarian invention but have existed in the so called 'West' for literally centuries
It's common sense that without a history in the West of regulating free speech, there wouldn't have been a first amendment in the US. You don't have to know what the regulations were.
So you are not just generalizing Americans as ignorant of history, but also as unable to use basic logic.
It's common sense that many American institutions are a reactions to old European institutions, and you don't need to know that history if you don't care, but if you want to have a discussion about speech in Canada (which is still part of the Commonwealth and the topic of this thread), you better have an actual idea of the way those countries function rather than applying your standards to them.
If you want to claim you have an idea whether the American reaction and discarding of old norms was actually a good idea nor not, you need to have an actual understanding about what the ideas you were discarding were actually for. Otherwise you're actually ignorant, and arrogant and that is a bad long term combination.
That is the most American response I could have read. It’s basically “well I don’t have to know the history. I can just trust that our brilliant founding fathers got it right.”
Yes, and the UK arrested a man for teaching a dog the Nazi salute. A dog. In fact they arrest over 2400 people a year for saying mean things on the internet. I find that deeply chilling.
So everyone who holds any restrictive position on speech, incompatible with your own is uncivilized and philosophically unsophisticated, as in the rest of the world? Civilizations thousands of years old are... uncivilized?
See this is the supreme irony. You've turned freedom of speech into dogmatic faith. Ironically enough, no discourse is so dogmatic and blind and unable to question its own values as the American one. You can question everything, just not your own values on speech. It's all just platitudes about authoritarianism and slippery slopes and ironically enough unoriginal, replicated talking points.
> Ironically enough, no discourse is so dogmatic and blind and unable to question its own values than the American one.
This speech seems rather ... hateful. Shall we fine you? Officers! This man is screaming hateful speech in the public arena!
Or maybe you disagree with that being hate speech? In an uncivilized society, if I have the power then it doesn't really matter. You still get fined or worse.
> You can question everything, just not your own values on speech
No, you can still question that in a free society if you so choose. But you may not necessarily be able to in an unfree one.
> You've turned freedom of speech into dogmatic faith.
This is entirely disingenuous. Supporting a philosophical position is not without reason, as you well know, and is not automatically dogmatic.
> It's all just platitudes about authoritarianism and slippery slopes and ironically enough unoriginal, replicated talking points.
Perhaps, you can better explain your dogmatic devotion to your belief that freedom of speech is not an important tenant of modern civility and sophistication?
It doesn’t seem hateful whatsoever, and everyone knows it, including you. So I don’t think you’ve made your point very effectively here.
I think the well-known distinction between “freedom to” and “freedom from” is relevant here. In the wake of Nazism, Germany also banned hate speech. You could argue that Germany made it less free to be a Nazi. You could also argue that Germany made it easier to be free from Nazism. You may disagree with the choice they made but I don’t think many would reasonably argue that Germany is not a free society.
Thank you for this. I'm so tired of the rhetoric lately decrying "intolerance of intolerance." Sorry folks, but me nor the state should respect someone who hates others for who they are. "I hate Jews" is not the same as "I hate those who hate Jews", and it should not be tolerated as such.
The rationale behind this regulation is insincere, and in my view, it is an expression of weakness and fear by an out of touch governing class who know they have overstepped their remit, however, the effects could be interesting.
The interesting effects will be toward one of two poles: either the regulation will relieve conservative forums (if they even exist anymore) of the burden of dealing with people who abuse their tolerance with extreme behavior, which will improve their conversations and make the discourse of those forums clearer - or - the regulations will be used by a provisional group of party affiliated trolls who will flood opposition sites with "hate speech," to get them "investigated" and knocked offline using this as a pretext at key moments under the regulation.
I suspect the latter will be the case. The actual path for Canada is something much more cynical. If this sounds extreme, it's worth remembering that Canada is not the US. It is not a republic, and it's only nominally a democracy, and its charter of rights has a "notwithstanding clause," which means a government can do whatever it wants. This regulation is part of a set of enabling acts for the Davos movement to form its own country using Canada as its first host.
If that sounds like a conspiracy theory, we used to call it opposition criticism, but apparently that's not a thing anymore either. Discourse about policy in Canada is dead, and we are all but officially no longer a nation state, and so we are left to commenting on the realpolitik of our various administrators.
>“Hate speech directly contradicts the values underlying freedom of expression and our Charter of Rights,” Lametti said. “It threatens the safety and well-being of its targets. It silences and intimidates, especially when the target is a vulnerable person or community. When hate speech spreads, its victims lose their freedom to participate in civil society online.”
Just want to note the extraordinary audacity of this statement: reversing the adversely affected parties, while posturing as an affirmation of the very values it is attempting to undermine.
It is an audaciously wrongheaded statement. It puts a veneer of concern for the oppressed and their rights over a violation of the rights of those this law intends to oppress.
> Except how many people now upset at this we’re glad when Twitter and Facebook banned Trump?
I'd think that the people who were glad when Twitter and Facebook banned Trump, aren't exactly opposed to this new law, likely thinking this would never be used against them. But as we learned from the JK Rowling affair, an opinion that is progressive or PC in 2021 might not hold up to standards 5 or 10 years later thanks to the purity spiral[1].
When trump was banned, many actually did say that it would go this way and were upset due to that.
I may hate what you (anyone) have to say, it may hurt me to hear it, but i will do whatever I can to defend your right to say it! Because unlike many who cheer this on, I've lived in a country that followed this to its logical conclusion (USSR). It was not fun.
If trump was the establishment, why did the military disobey his order to withdraw from Syria.
I mean this honestly. To me the establishment means being able to influence the ruling class. Despite trump's presidency, in several important policy points, where he clearly stated his policy, his rules were violated by a seemingly out of control bureaucracy.
The us diplomatic staff to Syria was caught bragging that the army had left 900 troops without informing the president. How is that establishment. Quite clearly, someone else is in charge
I don't know, you'd need to ask him. My guess is that he was informed that it would be infeasible and dangerous to pull out all of the troops immediately, and took that I to account.
The major complication here is that trump had a pattern of lying and blistering to the American people. But given that the trump white house is on record that hundreds of troops would remain in Syria indefinitely, and that there was no specific withdrawal timetable, I have a hard time seeing how this was them disobeying his orders. Do you know the order he actually gave the military, or are you assuming the simplified speech was the extent of it (when it's clear that his actual orders, thankfully, had more nuance)?
Edit: I looked further into this, is appears to be not that the military lied to trump, but that a trump appointee lied to trump. Which like, still bad, but not a conspiracy by anyone except trump's own staff. Perhaps he should have hired better people, or perhaps he just didn't care.
He was still lied to. Any decisions he made were based on lies.
> Perhaps he should have hired better people, or perhaps he just didn't care
The problem is the bureaucratic class.. ie those qualified to run these things all have similar views, regardless of party.
Trump did not share those views yet still had to pick from them. The american people also don't have those views, or at least a large percentage of them don't. This myopic perspective amongst Al the bureaucratic class is what people call 'the deep state'.
A president that wants to get rid of this ought to embrace the unitary theory of the us executive and start making decisions and managing the various departments himself. for example, if a president believe hi predecessor bribed a foreign country, he can simply ask the other country to investigate, and has whatever foreign policy levers he has to get compliance, like us aid.
Unfortunately, when you do that, the ruling class doesn't like it and then they try to impeach you.
I mean that's what happens when there's a single party running Washington DC, but most people don't see it.
> The problem is the bureaucratic class.. ie those qualified to run these things all have similar views, regardless of party
This begs the question.
> Unfortunately, when you do that, the ruling class doesn't like it and then they try to impeach you.
This reads as unfounded conspiracy. Your thesis is that impeachment by republicans was both a real threat to trump, but still failed, as a threat to step in line? Why are they still clinging to him as head of party then?
> Why are they still clinging to him as head of party then?
Where have you been? They're not. At least not the elected ones.
Trump is broadly popular with the voters and with a select few republican office holders that you end up hearing about a lot because the gop voter base loves them. The establishment gop.. not so much.
I mean the head of the RNC is Romney's niece . Do you think she really likes trump? Or Mitch McConnell, current highest ranking republican.
I have no idea if any of them "really like" trump or not. I do think they're catering his support, which is what matters. Clearly he has power in the republican establishment, enough that all these powerful people you mention can't get rid of him.
So either the establishment supports him, or he's more powerful than the establishment and they're forced to support him. Anything else and he'd be gone.
> I do think they're catering his support, which is what matters. Clearly he has power in the republican establishment, enough that all these powerful people you mention can't get rid of him.
Because they want his endorsement to be voted into power.
Look, if the GOP voters get their way and remove every so-called 'RINO', and install Trump supporters, I will agree that Trump has become establishment. But until then, it's obvious he wasn't. When he had both branches of government with Paul Ryan as speaker, he still couldn't get his agenda through. Both the GOP house and the dem house stopped his agenda in various different ways.
Consider the border wall. This is incredibly popular amongst his base. The same base that voted Paul Ryan and his ilk into the house. And did they continue this agenda? No. They actively prevented it. Trump was -- his entire time in office -- a lone ranger. I don't see how this is even controversial.
Contrast this with Bush, who did have periods of GOP dominance, in which he got everything he wanted pushed through (his wars...). Or look at Obama with Obamacare and the dem house.
See, but this line of reasoning doesn't make sense, I can apply the same argument to get the conclusion that Biden isn't "establishment", because many of his policies aren't getting done, despite on paper Dem control of the house and senate. This would make...Joe Manchin the "establishment", I think, and everyone else in the democratic party, something else.
Having autocratic control of the government and policy isn't what makes you establishment or not, because politics is complicated. It's also not clear what "establishment" we're talking about now. The decision to ban trump was derided by pretty much everyone on the right, even the people you've called "establishment" GOP politicians. So if Ryan is "establishment", and Google was acting against Trump and Ryan when they banned him, which "establishment" were they working with?
The most frustrating thing about the Trump admin was the number of people on the left that didn’t realize he was fighting the GOP every single step. So much for “the enemy of my enemy”.
This was obvious to me from Reince Priebus on. McConnell and Graham played their parts until they didn’t have to anymore.
Trump was never the "establishment". Cable news, major newspapers, public universities & academia, intelligence agencies, NGOs, social media companies - THESE are the establishment, or the Cathedral.
"Unfortunately, if you were to confront the people engaging in this sort of behavior they would (if they talked to you at all) claim that presumption of innocence is only required in a legal context, not a social context. You see a similar pattern with free speech: people try to defend private censorship by saying that the First Amendment only applies to the government, while ignoring the fact that the amendment is just a legal codification of the general principle of free speech. It's a poor defense in free speech cases and it's a poor defense here, but I'm sure that's the defense you would hear.
It's shocking that so many are unable to grasp the values that generate cultural mores, virtues, and customary law. As you note, the principle of free speech is codified in law. The underlying value is truth. Without the free exchange of ideas humankind cannot arrive at truth. The same with the principle of due process and innocent until proven guilty, without which we cannot arrive at justice, which, in turn, requires ascertaining truth. The practices of free speech and due process are both manifestations of truth-seeking as the virtue by which we find truth. The scientific method is also a codification of truth seeking methods. These people are without principle and seek only power. Truth is their enemy. Evil defined."
I cannot agree that there is a principle of free speech, even if it's for truth.
A store owner may be unhappy when some guy stands right at the entrance telling everyone that the same stuff is available cheaper across the street. While it may be a complete truth, I find it very hard to blame the store owner for kicking that guy out.
Facebook is not a store though. It's essentially a communication monopoly - akin to a utility company, which legally has a "duty to serve".
While in theory there are alternatives to, say, electric public service - from building your own electrical company to using wax candles, in practice it has been recognized by courts [1] that access to electricity, water and phone is a basic necessity in a modern society.
Facebook is not a communication monopoly. I haven’t used it in a decade and have no trouble communicating. It also is under no obligation to publish content it doesn’t want to publish. I can’t stand Facebook but I’ll defend their right to keep (their definition of) crap off their site. Just like HN is free to moderate crap off their site.
> It also is under no obligation to publish content it doesn’t want to publish.
So you are agreeing that they are publishers and not platforms? Yet they continue to get away with claiming immunity for "being a platform".
Rosa Parks should have just started her own bus company too?
Railroads, telecom, electricity and water companies should be able to refuse service too?
Are you against the FDA, EPA, FCC, FEC etc?
How about Net Neutrality? Private businesses should be able to charge whatever they want and for whatever content they want right?
How about the government-forced lockdowns forcing private businesses to shut down and go bankrupt?
And how about the baker who refused to bake cake for the gay couple for religious reasons?
> Facebook is not a communication monopoly
They are openly coordinating with other tech companies and even the state government of California. Over 50% of the population's viewpoints are being censored/throttled. Zuckerberg was coordinating with government employee Fauci to censor the lab leak and other news. When exactly does someone become a monopoly in your book?
They are pretty clearly acting as a publisher, as they exercise editorial control over what user content they choose to publish. They are not like a telephone, which just passes everything through regardless of content.
Under American law, a business has the right to refuse service to customers, but you can't discriminate against customers based on certain clearly enumerated factors such as race, religion, sex or national origin. Facebook is not a public utility and has no duty to serve.
They are also not a communication monopoly, because they are not the only way you can communicate online. You are free to use E-mail, telephone, and many other messaging systems that do not moderate content.
I'm not sure what the rest of your comment (Rosa Parks, EPA and lockdowns) has to do with Facebook's business.
> They are pretty clearly acting as a publisher, as they exercise editorial control over what user content they choose to publish. They are not like a telephone, which just passes everything through regardless of content.
Funny enough, FB used the exact opposite excuse to get away with anything they get sued for. Section 230 was supposed to only apply for platforms, not publishers. Publishers like NYTimes can be sued for knowingly publishing false libellous content. But you can't sue FB for the same because they claim to be a platform while acting as publishers. Currently they are "having their cake and eating it too".
> I'm not sure what the rest of your comment (Rosa Parks, EPA and lockdowns) has to do with Facebook's business.
It has to do with how your logic was used by people in the past to discriminate based on race. The "it's a private company" crowd forget that at one point, segregation, Jim Crow, slavery etc were all allowed. We had to write laws to prevent that from happening. Same needs to be done with any company which has more than a million user generated content users.
> They are also not a communication monopoly, because they are not the only way you can communicate online.
I have already addressed this in my original comment but you are cherry picking and ignoring it.
This is a far-too-common complete misunderstanding of the law.
Section 230 says that web sites are not liable for user generated content. If facebook published a blog post, authored by facebook, you could sue them for that. But you can't sue them for a comment made my another user, much as you couldn't sue the NYT for a comment someone left on their website.
Note that in both contexts, the NYT and Facebook are both acting as publishers, but are still not liable for the user generated content.
One can choose to moderate content, and still retain section 230 protections, in fact that's the entire point of 230, to encourage sites to moderate content without increasing their liability. The legal context, original authors, and judicial history all support that interpretation.
> We had to write laws to prevent that from happening.
Well, you're simplifying a bit here. Jim crow, slavery, etc. were all legally mandated. But you're correct that when the forms of mandated discrimination were no longer mandated, many were also made illegal.
That's different when Facebook, YouTube, Twitter are hiding behind the disguise of "algorithms" to push content they like and throttle content they don't like. The "trending" or "for you" or "promoted" etc are all decisions made by the platforms. It's well known that the "trending" videos on YouTube or posts on Twitter are not actually organic.
When they use "algorithms", they are equivalent to publishing. Similar to how newspapers can't just publish everything. They make editorial decisions on what to publish and what not to. The "algorithms" are the editorial decisions. That makes them a publisher. How's this a misunderstanding of the law?
> When they use "algorithms", they are equivalent to publishing. Similar to how newspapers can't just publish everything.
No, that's the point. Facebook, even if it moderates content, and no matter how it moderates content, still isn't liable for failing to moderate some content.
The misunderstanding is so completely fundamental: Section 230 doesn't actually make any distinction between "platforms" and "publishers" that entire distinction was made up by conservative pundits.
The relevant section of 230 is, in full "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider" (there's more, but it has to do specifically with child porn). You can't "lose" section 230 protection by doing or failing to do certain things or acting in a certain way. The law just doesn't include anything about that.
> When they use "algorithms", they are equivalent to publishing.
No, moderation is not equivalent to publishing, and the legislative history of section 230 makes this incredibly clear. Prior to 230, a website operator had two options: they could attempt to moderate content, but in doing so invite liability, or they could do no moderation at all and have no liability. Section 230 provided "good samaritan" protections to allow site operators to moderate user-generated content without inviting additional liability (the wikipedia section has a good rundown of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#Background_and_pas...).
So yeah, there's no such thing as a platform, everyone is a publisher, and all publishers have section 230 protection which allows them to moderate user generated content without inviting liability. You've been lied to about the law. It is intended to allow website operators to engage in certain forms of "editorial decisions". That's the point. That's why congress passed it.
"Promoted content" and fake "Trending" is moderation now? Sounds like "moderation" is being used as a head fake for publishing.
You are talking about how things are right now and I am talking about how things should be to make things fair. 2 very different things.
Your logic would have been used to claim slavery/segregation/Jim Crow/railroads is okay because it's the law!
Trillion dollar companies deciding what can and can't be said, promoting some view points, and suppressing others. They've gone from platforms to publishers. That's how we get the "lab leak" debacle.
> You are talking about how things are right now and I am talking about how things should be to make things fair. 2 very different things.
You may have pivoted to that now, but no, you started by talking about what you believed the law was, and how you thought Facebook was breaking it.
I have no problem with you being of the opinion that we should regulate publishers. I mean it's usually a first amendment violation, but I too want some of those on occasion. However just understand that the law does not, and never has, made a distinction between a platform and publisher. That difference was invented in like 2017.
Online “platforms” have always been publishers; CDA Section 230 was adopted expressly to preserve that without exposing them to traditional publisher liability.
I think by "principle of free speech", it's referring to the "I disagree with what you are saying or believe in but I will defend your right to say it until I die".
Any corporation which has more than 1 million users who operate user-generated content in the country should be a common carrier similar to the telecom industry or railroads.
Right, yes, and this is totally unrelated even when you have one campaign begging FAANG to censor a political rival before the election… https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/23/politics/facebook-dnc-bid... (Notice CNN’s take that it’s bad Facebook didn’t do more, not that this was a political kneecapping… still, CNN accidentally did a journalism)
It’s a private company! Build your own Facebook! (Nevermind that Google with their nearly infinite money tried and spectacularly failed). Ignoring the reality it’s a monopoly.
The spirit of free speech extends past the US Government. If it’s not illegal it shouldn’t be censored by what is effectively a common carrier, this is why everyone is in a rush to expand what is illegal.
The native Americans in your population will beg to differ, specially in the light of current news, but they don't count to you don't they? That is why we got to the point were we need this law. Because no matter how horrible other are treated all is good as long it doesn't happen to you or your group. The past were you were able to abuse these groups and commit atrocities with total impunity was "so much better" and we are going down from there according to your view of the world.
Some societies used to have caste system and did human sacrifices, yet it took thousands of years for them to collapse. When they did collapse, it was due to outside invasion rather than their ideologies.
Good news: your society isn't collapsing. Bad news: it looks like it is going to shit.
Canada has some very real problems, most-recently in the headlines the atrocious ways we have treated our indigenous population through the years. In many ways, we have always been shit.
Regarding our laws protecting people from discrimination in speech and deed, however, I'm going to have to disagree with you.
> Canada’s society is going to shit and the primary reason is this anti hate speech law?
No, it's the ideology behind proposing laws like this. Demonizing the existence of white people and at the same time expecting them to cheerfully provide the main tax base.
This comment confuses me. There’s plenty of reasons to wring hands over a new law, and the existence of an old law doesn’t change this. It’s well known that the old hate speech laws have existed for 20 years, and also that they have been unevenly applied (not investigating extreme hate from Imams for instance), and harassing journalists for engaging in basic acts of exposition (publishing the Mohammed cartoons).
The concern is obviously that the new provisions don’t do anything to address these issues, and seem likely to exacerbate these concerns by expanding the scope and the range of punishments in a way that could chill speech, especially since the law doesn’t adequately define its terms leaving that up to unelected bureaucrats.
This law also follows on the heels of bill C-10 which similarly leaves a lot of unanswered questions about how popular youtube channels will be regulated. So Canadians hackles are already up.
The think that always worries me about "hate speech" is the lack of clarity of definition.
If you said 'Kill all X' where X is any protected group you would almost certainly fall afoul of hate speech regulation. By all metrics "Kill all X" is online vilification against a group of people because of superficial characteristics. Yet for some reason "Kill all Men" is totally acceptable in online discourse.
Because of the lack of punishment, anyone against whom "Kill all X" is acceptable finds themselves opposing hate speech regulation - as for them it is useless and does nothing to protect them.
Secondly, because of the lack of consistent (and biased) enforcement of hate speech rules, everyone should be concerned about if and when hate speech against them goes from being protected to normalised.
I would honestly like to see that challenged in court. If the Canadians truly are vying for egalitarianism, anybody saying that should be fined. If they arent, then we know its just a bootlicking law.
"The think that always worries me about "hate speech" is the lack of clarity of definition."
That is probably a bug, not a feature. Once something as nebulous as an emotion is being punished, people will stay away from controversial topics just in case.
Freedom of speech is absolute. One cannot outlaw what one does not want to hear. If you want your freedom to speak you are required to let other people speak. It's really that simple.
Hate does not go away by outlawing. It only makes martyrs of those impacted by the law.
The only way to fight bigotry is with information and enlightenment. It is a fight that will never stop and there are no short cuts.
One would have thought we, as a species, would have learned that by now.
I've heard lot of Americans defending that line as if "freedom of speech" was literally an unconditional universal right given by God to the human race.
Freedom of speech is either nonexistent or heavily restricted in most places because total freedom inevitably ends up with other people losing their own freedom/rights.
It's illegal and punishable by law to be openly homophobic in France. it's illegal and punishable by law to be openly nazi in Germany.
>I've heard lot of Americans defending that line as if "freedom of speech" was literally an unconditional universal right given by God to the human race.
Freedom of speech is an unconditional universal right given by God to the human race. The government taking away your rights does not mean those rights do not intrinsically exist.
>It's illegal and punishable by law to be openly homophobic in France.
I don't think you have read much Voltaire by the way, he was very much pro tolerance and anti hate. People love to brandish "freedom of speech" without understanding neither its history nor its meaning.
It's almost comically opposed to hate speech actually, let Voltaire out of this.
I wouldn't be surprised if the only thing you know about Voltaire is this misattributed quote that everybody like to parade with:
> I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
> Freedom of speech is an unconditional universal right given by God to the human race.
Which God ?
Do you also complain about the government taking your rights away when they tell you not to drive the wrong way on the interstate after drinking half a bottle of vodka ?
Recognizing a legal right to think is only a pretext for someone to justify taking that right away. Of course you can think freely, and it's ridiculous to even imply that taking that away is an option through stating so in the law.
Obviously homophobia is wrong, the problem with this kind of thinking is that there isn't any real evidence that outlawing speech protects people's rights. Rights are not given by anyone's graceful speech - that's why they're rights.
> Recognizing a legal right to think is only a pretext for someone to justify taking that right away. Of course you can think freely, and it's ridiculous to even imply that taking that away is an option through stating so in the law.
Have you heard of the Lumières ? These principles basically created modern Europe, but sure, it's just a trick to steal your freedom of thought...
> there isn't any real evidence that outlawing speech protects people's rights.
Plenty of people are being harassed in public for their sexuality, race, etc. you don't need a 20 years long control study to prove that outlawing hate speech will improve their rights.
> Rights are not given by anyone's graceful speech - that's why they're rights.
? People wrote the laws. Rights are made up, they're not universal constants
> Plenty of people are being harassed in public for their sexuality, race, etc.
Harassment, regardless of motive, is illegal. Is there a need to make it more illegal?
> you don't need a 20 years long control study to prove that outlawing hate speech will improve their rights.
Restricting a collective right does in no way grant more rights to a minority. It may (superficially and short term) improve their lives but do you really thing people will be less hateful from being told they are hateful? I always found that conclusion odd
"Hate" is fuzzy. Some Jews believe hate is any kind of critique of Israel. "Racism" is fuzzy. Some black people believe it is racist to dance a certain way if you're not black. "Sexism" is fuzzy. Some women believe they have been violated by a compliment.
Definitions change. Most of the time irrationally. What was well-intentioned yesterday becomes hateful tomorrow.
This is a slippery slope my friend. Not many things in life are absolute but freedom to speak your mind must be one of them.
> Plenty of people are being harassed in public for their sexuality, race, etc. you don't need a 20 years long control study to prove that outlawing hate speech will improve their rights.
Being harassed is wrong and illegal but what I meant to say is that it doesn't take your rights away. These two things are fundamentally separate. Someone breaking your rights does not mean that you then don't have them under the law. Which is the reason I wrote this:
> Rights are not given by anyone's graceful speech - that's why they're rights.
Because even though people codify laws they write them into law for a reason, so that the current mainstream discourse or some refuse someone throws at you cannot easily take them away. Hopefully I'm making myself clearer in that regard, since it's not the kind of thing I wanted to equate. I definitely wasn't asking for the requirement of any kind of long study on this topic.
I think you lack the historical culture and can't understand the context of these texts. If these texts were revolutionary at the time it's because they were not enforced before. You could be legally imprisoned for your thoughts (which you had or people thought you had), and it still is the case in many places around the world.
> Hating someone is an opinion. It is not an act of violence.
> What good is an opinion if you cannot express it?
So which is it ? Because obviously walking around and insulting people based on their race or religion is an act of violence
Those statements are not in opposition to each other,
> Because obviously walking around and insulting people based on their race or religion is an act of violence
If you define an insult to be violent in the same way as taking a life then I see why we are so far from each other. I make a clear distinction between the two. Do you really think an insult is an act of violence? I'm curious why you would think that
Inciting to violence and performing a violent act is not the same thing. If they were one could defer responsibility to the actor who incited one to be violent. That ends all personal responsibility for ones own actions.
> I think you lack the historical culture and can't understand the context of these texts.
Such derogatory remarks does not further any conversation. I'm here to debate - to learn - to expose myself to different worlds. I hope you are as well. Question - don't assume.
In some parts of geography and history, freedom of speech did exist, including freedom of vile disagreeable speech, like the example you gave. The place used to be USA:
What a lot of people don't understand is that speech has a legal definition that is especially relevant in cases of libel or incitement. Once it can be considered speech, the content of that speech in public areas is allowed to vary under the first amendment in the US.
It's not splitting hairs, because this is routinely debated in courts all over the country. As for whether or not people having the ability to speak freely leads to a loss of rights, the US has been around for some time now and is pretty quickly gaining rights for people in the grand scheme of things. The suppression of speech has not fared the same, and both sides of the aisle can (hypocritically) point to suppression of speech leading to a loss or possible loss of rights. If we want to talk about speech and history, it's much easier to find examples of control that goes too far, and often a lot more quickly.
There is no society (existing or historical) where freedom of speech was absolute. There have always been consequences for some types of speech.
The US conception of freedom of speech is basically, "Your ideological speech is safe from government censorship, but not from anyone else's." And even that has been unevenly supported by courts over time.
So while your philosophy is interesting, it seems to have little to do with the way societies actually behave.
"[Hate speech] threatens the safety and well-being of its targets."
The UK is in the throes of trying to define what sort of speech warrants protection in a free society. The problem seems to stem from the parameters of 'harm' being defined almost entirely by the victim. There are claims that arguments against certain idiologies "deny the existence" of groups, and further that expressing these idea seems to lead directly to self harm and suicides. So, "speech that causes harm" and makes people feel hated. Bingo: 'hate speech'. But what happens when there isn't any hate or targeted 'detesting' going on? (Or good data on suicides for that matter.) It's open for abuse by a mob. Not a good path to head down in a pluralist, liberal society IMHO.
It's strange to me that at least within nations, the previously war-starting disagreements about the finer details of the Abrahamic religions seem to have chosen different orbits within society, politely nod to each other and know no good will come from trying to lock horns. The kids on Twitter now have apparently equally strongly held beliefs about other stuff but are utterly gob-smacked that other people won't agree with them even though they KNOW THEY'RE RIGHT.
> Which is a quite generous definition which yet excludes the infamous "fire in the crowded theater" case.
That stems from the 1919 Schenk case[0] which hinged on "dangerous and false" and was reconsidered in Brandenburg v Ohio[1] and the standard was raised to "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action".
Effectively:
- If the "dangerous" speech is false or likely to "incite imminent lawless action", you have trouble.
- If the "dangerous" speech is debatable as true or not OR debatable on if it would "incite imminent lawless action", then it's way less clear.
It's also worth mentioning that the Schenck case was about distribution of leaflets with anti-war (WW1) propaganda and encouraging draft dodging. So not only there's an obvious slippery slope in this argument, but it was exercised as soon as it was presented.
To be fair, that just puts it with "those who give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither", "information wants to be free" and "I'm not my brother's keeper" in the category of aphorisms that are valid as typically used despite their original coinage being in service of bullshit. (Edit: or possibly honest mistakes for the information one; I don't remember offhand.)
Big Tech San Francisco censored the lab leak hypothesis, now accepted as credible.
During the lockdowns, politicians freely held dinners and mingled, mask-free with their friends. For those less equal than others, you were fined or arrested.
Invading in the Capitol was "peaceful protest" in 2018 when Democrats did it, but "insurrection" in 2021, because Republicans did it.
The New York Times now ranks below Breitbart in terms of credibility.
Same goes for universities. You know why people don't "trust the science"? Because when you mix politics and science, you get politics, not science.
"Dangerous and false" now just means "isn't approved by CNN today, but might be tomorrow if convenient".
"Big tech san francisco" has no obligation to platform anything. They can choose which posts they want to leave up based on their own whims. Now, if the government were to crack down on lab leak speculation, that would be a legal free speech issue.
Slander, meanwhile, is by definition false (as determined by a court). If the court finds that it isn't false, then it wasn't slander. Thus it isn't protected by law, and the state can prosecute you over it.
The one person who died violently was one of the rioters, an unarmed woman who was shot by Capitol Police. Four other rioters died of natural causes around the time of the riot.
I keep seeing this sentiment in all the comments here. Can you show us an example of speech that is ambiguous in whether it is hate speech or not? I accept that everyone has a different opinion on a lot of topics, but I think on average we can discern hate speech from simple discussions and arguments.
> The arguments the two sides put forward, in other words, are complex and debatable. But many trans activists think that any disagreement is tantamount to hate speech and try to suppress it. Some universities with policies that reflect the belief that trans women are women have acted on complaints about people who do nothing more than express a contrary view. In May, after students at Abertay University in Dundee reported that a student had said at a seminar that women have vaginas and men are stronger, the university launched an investigation.
Regardless of personal opinions on the topic, the fact that it gets this sort of is-it-or-isn't-it treatment in a major newspaper, on top of the seesawing behavior from universities described in the article itself, is a good indication that the topic's nature as "hate speech" or not is fairly ambiguous.
When everybody is participating in good faith, "I know it when I see it" obscenity test type stuff works fine. It's less obviously useful of a yardstick when there's a clear incentive to make bad faith claims against ideological or organizational rivals.
So this almost word for word reminds me of the moral panic of the 1990s about political correctness. “There is a professor, he is doing professor thing and he know a bunch about this subject but the students went after him and he wasn’t allowed to continue to teach and now we have less education.”
In reality in those cases there was almost no backlash and in fact everyone treated the professor with kid gloves while what he purported to have done was way worse and what the students had done was way overblown (see the Political Correctness of the excellent podcast called You Are Wrong About). So pardon me if I don’t buy this particular article/story line.
Sorry but how is this a case for debate??? This is not a matter of opinion, it's an extremely serious accusation that a foreign government institution caused a global catastrophe of historic proportions. Do you have the type of incredibly solid evidence that would take to back that type of accusation in court?? If you do, then go to court, if you don't then there's nothing to "debate" unless you are shopping for a defamation lawsuit that is what would be a fair and logical consequence to that type of baseless accusation. People abuse free speech because they are not facing the due legal consequences for all the defamation they incur on. But just because it's hard to prosecute so many offenders doesn't make it right or legal.
When the people who are championing this theory while presenting no evidence happen to also be very pro-white power, yeah it sure sounds like hate speech. Just because a broken clock is right twice a day doesn’t mean you should go by it.
Have you never heard of the little boy who cried wolf? If 99% of the time when the things you say aren't even lies but just straight up rejection of reality altogether, yes your reputation as a truth teller might suffer.
I got banned from Reddit for stating that “all murderers should be executed,” which is literally a policy position. I think online free speech is not long for this world which will leave the voting booth the only remaining anonymous forum. I expect many more “how the %%*$& did THEY win?!” elections.
Every modern attempt at starting competing services to major online forums has met with:
-A firestorm of slander from media outlets controlled by competitors.
-Cartel-style harassment and denial of basic services required to run the site, hosting, financial, etc, again, by competitors.
Competition is not a solution when the game is rigged. People literally are "stopping you," and they are some very powerful, influential people at that.
Canadian-American here. From what I've observed of Canada I'd expect the law will be narrowly defined and the penalties weak and rarely applied. Plus, the courts are slow as can be so I wouldn't expect an unleashing of prosecutions (though I realize this isn't a defense of a bad law). The US, in my experience, is far more severe in its criminal penalties for all kinds of things. In Canada, you wait years for trial (not in jail, you're out free) and then get a slap on the wrist.
The chilling effects it will have on free speech should not be discounted, though. Despite the patchy enforcement and relatively small fines, people will self-censor rather than risk saying anything "illegal".
This "hate speech" is the modern heresy. The trick is tired, but still works surprisingly well: invent a gibberish buzzword, e.g. "truth denialism", pass a law to ban the buzzword without specifying what the buzzword means, generously extend the meaning of the buzzword and label anyone you disagree with a "truth denialist". It's a form of hijacking democratic societies.
This is literally a south park episode when Randy says the n word on wheel of fortune.
But I agree wholeheartedly. Leftism has become a religion at this point. Almost like a pagan religion where pandering priests with political power grant some winey peasant a right to claim something antithetical to democratic societies for an arbitrary reason.
Be interesting to see what they would say in this new law about someone wearing black face like our prime minister has more times than he can remember.
That means it's going to be very important for Canada to know who is writing what on the internet. Attempting anonymity on the internet may eventually become a crime akin to structuring.
I used to believe in the absoluteness of freedom of speech, especially with living in the United States, and that any attempts to regulate free speech were the slippery slope to regulating speech itself. However after witnessing firsthand, hate speech played out to its apex I am not so sure. The denial of other freedoms and the death and destruction it can leave in its wake leave me questioning this ideal.
Would it be considered “hate speech” if I point out that the current cabinet is 100% incompetent largely due to Trudeau putting diversity goals above good governance?
New Zealand is proposing a similar law change: https://consultations.justice.govt.nz/policy/incitement-of-h... ... it's ostensibly in response to the Christchurch mosque shooting of 2019, but I'm very wary of the scope of this. And who defines the terms, including "hatred"? As a Kiwi, I intend to read the NZ legislation and comment (though the government has a habit of "taking submissions" and then ignoring them).
No, the real place to leverage this is before the courts.
I'm not sure of how it works in Canada but in the US, the District Attorney can choose which cases to pursue. A savvy DA (or the Canadian equivalent) can pick cases that fit the public's current notion of "hate speech" and quietly pass on the ones who don't. Therefore, setting precedents for later cases.
Judges can't rule in cases which aren't presented.
Some people identify disagreements as hate speech, so this will be interesting.
I wonder if it will have a freezing effect on society that won’t be comfortable making decisions based on preference.
E.g. most people don’t realize that politics is simply preference. Once you make a decision, you are preferring one outcome versus another, and it is therefore political.
It's quite hilarious to see this sentiment from all the Americans in the comments while the actual Canadians seem to mostly say "this was already the case?" and people from other countries not being impressed at all.
Yes, laws around speech should be well designed, but the entire premise of them seems to already induce this pearl-clutching. That's quite puzzling to me, especially since the US has lax laws around speech, but definitely has them, it's not free.
The political status quo is trying entrenching itself. Hate exists with or without speech. I'd rather know who hates me - it's that simple. People today are like ostriches - they'd rather stick their head in the sand and pretend everybody loves them, which is so far from the truth! Silencing voices only increases hatred.
I feel like there's a misunderstanding here. Hate speech isn't Anakin going "I hate you!!" or even "from my perspective the Jedi are evil." Hate speech is the Chancellor giving a speech in front of the senate that the Jedi are the greatest threat to the republic leading to widespread violence and discrimination against them across the galaxy.
I mean "me" as my "protected class". I am a Christian and there's a lot of hatred against Christians these days. I also happen to be perceived as "white" although I don't identify as any race as races are unscientific and unfair. But people often hate white people online. So, I want to know who these people are, but now they will crawl back under the stones and I won't know who those bigots are. You don't fix one unfairness by replacing it with a new one!
I don't understand, hate speech online is already illegal.
It seems like they are shifting further the responsibility of hate speech to individual, rather than the social media platforms that encourage it with rage-bait?
"The proposal would punish social media users who broke the law but exempt social media companies that host such content from fines."
As a Canadian, discussions like this threat make me slightly wishful of better options for national forums or censorship of foreign speech. Of all the comments decrying how horrible this is, how many of you are Canadian or at least familiar with the practice of limits to expression in Canada? At present I don't feel too strongly either way about this bill but I think by and large the judicial system has shown itself to be capable of reasonable enforcement of necessarily vaguely defined terms so I don't anticipate many/any outrageous enforcement actions. We are much less politically polarized than the US, especially the judicial system, so there is a smaller risk of the law being interpreted in extreme ways. That's not to say this is necessarily a good law, just that I don't find it as horrible as many of the comments are making out.
I feel like our culture and values are at risk of being overwhelmed by the US's since the media and online spaces are so dominated by American voices. Apart from a few Canadian themed subreddits (and who knows how many of the comments are actually from Canadians) and maybe friend groups on Facebook, there aren't many online spaces for Canadians to talk. I don't know how to deal with this problem. I love forums like Hacker News and and any nation-specific space would be unlikely to be as good. I don't want the great firewall of China either (I wonder how the Canadian Shield will turn out [0]). So I don't know what the solution should be but threads like this do feel like a small part of the problem.
Why is it every day I read the news things just seem to get progressively worse? Is it just me or are we converging on absolute breakdown of civilisation?
“Progress” is the new religion and it seems to be compiled with bandaids that solve no real problems.
The "war on drugs" was very effective. So lets do this to speech and guns and everything political. The "porn" ban worked out great for my home country too...
Someone with multiple black and brown face incidents legislating "hate speech" is ironic.
What an odd straw man. The war on drugs failed because it unrealistically tried to ban all drugs. No one is trying to ban all guns, and no one is trying to ban "all things political." If your entire belief system is lumped in with "hate speech," it's a good signal to reexamine your alignment over crying censorship.
> If your entire belief system is lumped in with "hate speech,"
This ad hominem and odd straw man projection is exactly proving my point. Keep pushing it further until the pendulum swings back and the censorship you are pushing for comes back to bite back in the behind. And I won't be there to defend then.
Just yesterday we had a trending post on HN about the censorship of Palestinians. The Palestinians are getting censored under the mask of "anti-semitism" and the Israelis / christians are getting censored under the mask of "islamaphobic". Women not wanting biological men competing in women's sports are being censored under the mask of "transphobic".
> The Palestinians are getting censored under the mask of "anti-semitism" and the Israelis / christians are getting censored under the mask of "islamaphobic"
Are you comparing Palestinian life under apartheid to Christians getting their "all Muslims are terrorists" Facebook posts deleted?
This is something that authoritarian regimes do to eliminate their political enemies through color of law. They create vague laws that only get applied to their political enemies.
Really unfortunate to see this is the path Canada has gone.
This is very upsetting. The liberal party is giving me reasons to regret voting for them, but I suppose we'll see if they can pass it in a minority government. If the NDP also back it along with the conservatives, I may have no political alignment left.
My opinion is to abandon these "traditional" parties and go back to the fundamentals of what makes a society free and prosperous. Then vote based on that.
If I remember correctly, he was mainly against "compelled speech": not when someone tells you not to say something a certain way, but when someone tells you you're obligated to say something a certain way.
Perhaps "white" is not a group people should identify with.
"Black" is meaningful in the US because it represents a distinct group of people who have a common culture, not because they have dark skin. The thousands of ethnic groups that live in subsaharan Africa aren't "black" in this cultural sense. Black Americans are a uniquely American ethnic group that was formed from broadly west African stock (i.e., various ethnic and tribal groups in that part of the continent). This is not to deny the racial characteristics, only that ethnicity, while it tracks race, is not strictly racial.
Capital W "White", on the other hand, is not an ethnic group. The history of this term is a rather strange one. The US used to be a patchwork of ethnic European neighborhoods. Only later was the label "white" imposed on them over time, especially as they lost their ethnic character through assimilation. But because this imposed identity isn't a real ethnic identity, it doesn't really have any substance. So the content of that identity is supplied by whoever controls the meaning of that label. And because those who control it have determined that "white" means "racist", you will have adopted the identity of "racist". So what do you do? You take on that identity and then either do penance for how bad you are or you double down and "own" your supposed racism. Or you renounce or reject whiteness as your identity. Frankly, because it's not a real identity, the last option is the best it seems, but then what are you?
In the US, once assimilation happens, your only remaining identity is religious identity; American identity itself is vacuous. Religious identity functions as a kind of substitute for ethnic identity (though I would argue not entirely). Even if you don't believe the faith of your ancestors, your cultural upbringing can still reflect that history in some way (this reminds me of how someone in Ireland might have asked "Yes, we know you're an atheist, but are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?"; absurd in that religious identity is more fundamental than cultural identity, but still provides insight). Now with the waning of religious identity, American identity crises are flaring up again. This is a crisis of identity. This is why ideologies and subculture are attractive to people: they're (very mediocre) substitutes for ethnic and religious identity.
We are in the middle of a religious war, a war for the soul of a society. Secular liberalism, itself a religion, has been demonstrated to be unworkable, not least because the very pluralism it purports to celebrate is its executioner. No social order tolerates a true pluralism of religion because then these other religions would not be subject to the constraints of the religion of the social order which is impractical. Here, liberal tolerance constrains the scope of valid religions according to its own norms. This liberalism lasted as long as it did because there was at least a very broad religious consensus which is now finished, but even then the situation was tense. Gutted of this consensus, the collapse of a hollow worldview is accelerated. Motus in fine velocior.
I see a lot of comments from Americans criticizing this (with what seems like a knee jerk reaction to the title only) without actually knowing anything about the history of this law, how hate speech is defined, how enforcement works, what the limits are, what is defensible, and what cases have been tried under this law. Hint: controversial ones go up to the Supreme Court so it’s not even that hard to find the boundary cases of the law that paint it in the worst light.
I wish the discussion here was more interesting with people pointing out their problems with the law specifically rather than using vague arguments from first principles. Heck, one of the commenters implied this law makes Canada a shit country. Yet Canada has had a peaceful transition of power my entire lifetime and has tried to curb all extremist conduct in its society, whether Quebec separatists, white power bikers, or Islamic fundamentalists. I don’t recall hearing any stories indicating the RCMP or Canadian military has been infiltrated by white supremacists, whereas American law enforcement institutions at all levels seems to have this as a perennial problem.
Now it’s totally fine to say “these are the trade offs and this is the society I want to live in” but it’s important to acknowledge what those trade offs are and important to consider that few people actually want to live in a society run by libertarians ruling everything from first principles. The first amendment already has limits (eg yelling fire in a crowded theater).
These rules are about how to keep the discussion civil in public life and “hate” here means primarily speech that incites violence. It can also mean speaking disparagingly over any identifiable minority but that’s really a much narrower definition with smaller penalties, easier to defend, and fewer and lesser repercussions. I’m sure there are bad parts of the law but I would love to hear what the specifics are and how the law might be better constrained. Having lived in both places, I think America would benefit greatly from such a law. The challenge is that such constraints generally are non-starters within the framework of the US political and legal system because of the challenges in changing the first amendment. This has good and bad things and it’s entirely possible that US culture is not amenable to what works in Canada and that’s ok too. American laws that don’t work in Canadian culture wouldn’t be appreciated in Canada. For example, apologizing in a car accident in Canada used to be an admission of guilt which is something that was imported from America - that was reversed after massive popular protests against that.
So expressing distrust in election outcome can be taken as hate speech. Expressing suspicion of political corruption is hate speech. Expressing misdoing by police is hate speech.
ITT: Typical rampant status quo bias, social zero-sum thinking, and conflating the freedom to incite violence online in 2021 with the freedom to publicly criticize theocracies hundreds of years ago.
The comments in this thread are incredibly disappointing.
Hate speech is already a crime in Canada, as many others have pointed out. As someone who has experienced a lot of American and Canadian culture and lived in both places, I think this is A Good Thing overall.
Canada is not America. The two countries have different histories and different charters. This isn't a slippery slope. For christ's sake it's a fine even.
The article subtitle hits the nail on the head:
> The proposed law would likely run afoul of the First Amendment in the U.S., but despite popular misconceptions Canada is actually its own country.
Hate speech is a pretty strong form of speech. It's typically not even telling racist jokes or making sexist remarks. It doesn't typically encompass civil debates or policy opinions. You're always free to speak your mind, you just shouldn't use those words to harm others.
I've yet to hear any argument for why there should be a forum for hate speech, either in the physical world or on the internet.
It is very easy to suppress inconvenient opinions by labelling them as controversial or hate speech. If you're only free to speak when nobody is listening, it's not freedom of speech.
> Hate speech charges are a serious crime and often see lengthy court time.
I think this is part of the objection, too. The opposition to online hate speech laws seems to be reflective more of an increase in the scope of existing hate-speech laws, which I assume the parent thread would also oppose.
> If you cannot express your inconvenient opinion without being hateful towards or potentially harming a group of people, then that is a problem.
The issue here is that hate speech is a constantly moving target. We're okay with muzzling speech that we consider too far, until something that we don't consider too far gets muzzled as well.
The recognition of structural oppression in more and more places increases the likelihood that an opinion or argument in favor of some random thing, is also an opinion or argument in favor of the oppression of a marginalized group. And I think you will have a hard time claiming that that isn’t hate speech.
What you'll find is those who support hate speech will cry "free speech" when they're under threat of censorship.
What they're not saying in the same sentence is they would love to silence the groups they are preaching hate speech against.
Many would also like to silence any criticism of their own hate groups. If they ever made it into any real position of power, it's likely this would be attempted by them.
Just look at any of the Facist regimes of the past where this actually happened.
So they are in effect abusing free speech values when in fact it's really just their own speech they're interested in protecting.
Combining "detestation" ("I don't like you") with vilification ("You're evil") is a concern. The first is legitimate opinion. The second is defamation. For which truth is a defense under US law.
The committee report that fed into this bill [1] is scary. "Finding that certain expression falls within political speech does not close off the enquiry into whether the expression constitutes hate speech."[2] This is at least in part about suppressing political speech on certain issues.
YMCA of Canada proposed a definition: "integrate an intersectional gender equity lens and consider the gendered impacts of anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Xenophobia in any definition of “hate” and “online hate”". Think of trying to defend against a claim of that in court.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs proposed the IHRA definition of antisemitism, the one that includes some kinds of criticism of the Israeli government.[3]
This isn't classic hate speech, intended to incite people to violence. Such as "Hang Mike Pence". This is far, far broader.
[1] https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/JUST/report...
[2] https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/12876/inde...
[3] https://www.jta.org/2021/01/15/global/the-ihra-definition-of...