Free speech versus hate speech

So this has been mentioned a few times in the social media thread: the lack of regulation, which allows people to express harmful, hateful views, and the reasoning behind it, that everyone has a right to express their opinions.

I've been thinking about this dilemma for a while. One time, my then-girlfriend and I were discussing the instance of neo-Nazi Richard Spencer being punched in the face on live TV. Our housemate (who was extremely morally neutral and fond of playing Devil's Advocate) approached and asked her if she'd want to be forcibly silenced for being a feminist or a socialist. We both countered that hate speech was not just a difference of opinion, because its very purpose is to hurt others, incite violence, and reinforce unequal power structures. And that bigots want free speech only for themselves while silencing minorities.

The kicker: They're both Jewish. He, a Jew, was telling another Jew to respect the opinions of Nazis.

Still, the fact is that hate speech remains protected in many countries, including the US. Should it be? I've been looking into arguments for and against.

I say no, for the reasons mentioned above - abuse goes beyond merely causing offense, and does serious psychological damage which can in turn cause physical illness. Very often, it escalates into actual threats of violence. (One example being the case of journalist Martina Mlinarevic, who was forced to leave her hometown due to misogynistic bullying.) Propaganda can easily radicalise people, especially in the age of social media. The normalisation of overt hate desensitises the public to it. And tolerating intolerance means treating the right to be a bigot as more important than the right to not experience bigotry. Notice how "free speech absolutist" white supremacists throw tantrums if anyone dares speak out against them.

Yes, there are fears that restricting freedom of speech at all will have negative consequences, for instance if a racist gets into power and spins those laws to ban campaigns for racial equality. But laws that limit free speech if it actively causes harm in other ways, such as slander, are already commonplace. And in England where I live, hate speech is illegal, and as shitty as our government is, we haven't turned into the kind of Orwellian dictatorship these absolutists fear (although admittedly, we can sometimes go a little far with it, like viewing someone posting rap lyrics with certain words online as hateful even though it isn't intended as an attack on anyone).

One of the arguments in favour of protecting hate speech, though, is that it makes bigots visible. Some people say that instead of banning overt hate, we need to take notice of it and use our own freedom of expression to counter it.

Thoughts? Should expressions of neo-fascism be banned? Or would that be similar to fascism in itself?

Edited by CalicoCaitSith on Dec 30th 2023 at 1:45:38 PM

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever. The goal is to create something that will.

Opened.

To allow for tolerance, you have to be intolerant of the intolerant. It's a known paradox, but it's one you have to accept.

Like, say you have the archetypal public square, and you want everyone to be welcome. What happens if you get someone standing in the corner and just screaming "ALL GAYS SHOULD BE EXECUTED" over and over and over every single day with no end in sight? If you go "well, we need to be tolerant of everyone", you're gonna drive all the gay people out because they don't want to listen to that, and the people who like gay people will start leaving too, and you'll end up with a public square of the few people left who either don't care that some freak is just screaming that in the corner all the time or agree with them.

And now you've created an extremely intolerant space that almost no one wants to use because you didn't kick out the one guy who was ruining it for almost everyone else. Kicking the one bigot out and not giving him a platform enhances tolerance because it forces people who want to do that to hide how they feel and to be forced to engage properly with everyone they meet.

And the idea of keeping bigots visible is insipid, because the more visible they are, the more people they're hurting and it's basically an argument that their targets are expendable in the name of letting people argue with their tormentors, which isn't great.

Edited by Zendervai on Dec 31st 2023 at 11:56:18 AM

Not Three Laws compliant.

Pretty much. If you have the metaphorical town square, and Person A talks about how much they like making pasta out of kale, Person B talks about fun things to do in video games, and Person C talks exclusively about how they'd like to kill Persons A and B with a hammer, then letting Person C keep it up not only makes the other people feel unsafe when Person C is around, it creates a systemic inequality. Persons A and B now know that someone who wants to hurt them hangs around the town square, and the system isn't going to do anything about that specific person or anyone else who also wants to hurt them.

So basically, allowing entirely "equal" free speech is by nature unequal. It's the whole "equality versus equity" thing.

It's been fun.

First, I will express my agreement with the "paradox of intolerance" consensus. Second, I think ethically hate speech is the same as threats against specific individuals. In both cases, it is about the speech an individual made.

Edited by Risa123 on Jan 1st 2024 at 12:28:18 PM

I'm all for harmless free speech, but a line does have to be drawn somewhere. Slander/libel and hate speech shouldn't be allowed just because free speech exists as they're harmful, they can hurt people

If some Joe or Jane wants to make a speech about say, why badly seen company is just misunderstood then one could argue that's harmless enough to be within freedom of speech and therefore should be allowed to make said speech

However if someone wanted to make a speech about fascism and how it's misunderstood that would fall under hate speech due to the nature of fascism and that someone shouldn't be allowed to make such a speech, as it could lead to victims (whether of bullying, harassment or worse) whereas saying a bad business isn't that bad at worst leads to the speaker being ridiculed

Yeah. This is why I don't allow the expression of hateful views in Discord servers. If you make homophobes welcome, that by its very nature makes LGBTQ people unwelcome because we don't want to be harassed.

It's so incredibly depressing to go onto a forum, see people post openly misogynistic statuses or "There are only two genders", and notice they've received a ton of likes. (And no the latter isn't "just an opinion" like many people claim, it's consciously invalidating people's identities as it's telling non-binary people they're lying or deluded.)

And it's ironic that these people who shout bigoted views argue those on the receiving end should just stop being so sensitive, but can't stand being called out. Does this sound like Psychological Projection?

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever. The goal is to create something that will.

Yes it does

And this is why I feel free speech absolutism does more harm than good

Allowing people to express disinterest or dislike for a political party or financial plan is one thing but allowing hatred and apologism to spewed is another

This. Expressing an unpopular opinion is one thing, expressing a hateful and dangerous one is another.

As the saying goes, I'll respect your opinion if you respect my existence.

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever. The goal is to create something that will.

I have always understood both sides of the argument.

The best argument for unlimited Free Speech in my opinion has always been: There is nothing stopping Speech Laws being used against YOU, once the powers that be change. For example, maybe in Trump's America 2025, it will be "Hate Speech" to call out white Conservatives.

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The Problem with that argument, tbh, is that nothing is going to stop the people doing that anyway.

I doubt the Fascists on Project 2025 will be "Oh no, no hate speech law on the book, fascism is cancelled it seems" just because they have no convenient fig leaf.

Worrying about Laws being abused by people who *do not believe in the rule of law in the first place* always feeels to me a bit shortthinking.

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Doesn't mean that we should give them legal precedence to make their job easier, does it?

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Just to explain what exactly leads to this position. For me, morality of an action is a cost/benefit analysis rather than an absolute principle. There are situations where honest and non-violent is a good idea, but in some being dishonest and violent is a good idea.

I would say that Trump already considers calling out conservatives hate speech. What the other side has to say about that changes nothing.

Edited by Risa123 on Jan 1st 2024 at 12:42:47 PM

But we also shouldn't deny ourself the tools to restrain them when they are aiming to do harm because they *might* be used for bad things.

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@Calico Cait Sith

Perhaps you did not mean it this way, but I should note that there is a difference between a public policy and policy on your private server. Generally, it is recognized that people are allowed to make whatever policy they want in a private space they have control over, unless such policy would involve something illegal.

If you ban someone for expressing their love for Yoda from Star Wars, you are within your rights to do so. In fact the server was explicitly about non-Star Wars topics and such person was constantly doing this, it would actually be a reasonable policy.

Now in other situations it may not be reasonable, but I think are still going to be within your rights. However, if you made a law that punishes such expression in the country with a fine, that would be another situation.

Edited by Risa123 on Jan 1st 2024 at 1:03:52 PM

Punishing hate speech with a fine seems reasonable

It shows advocating harmful stuff is punished as opposed to just saying something controversial but with relatively little consequences

So what exactly would we consider hate speech ? I guess that all of us agree that outright threats of violence against a group count as such, but about other things ?

Edited by Risa123 on Jan 1st 2024 at 1:34:30 PM

Basically anything that deems a particular protected group as in some way worse and or inferior, subtly, openly or both

Whether it be sexual and or romantic orientation, gender identity, religion/faith including lack thereof, race etc

Probably what you would expect to count as free speech

?

Yeah, to make politicians less likely to use legal loopholes, what constitutes hate speech has to be defined at least to some extent. In the UK, it's hateful speech based on a person's race, gender, gender reassignment, sexuality, disability, nationality or religion.

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever. The goal is to create something that will.

What about hate symbols ? I concluded that the only way to define a hate symbol is that it is widely used as such. Public display of Qing Dynastic flag is generally not see an expression of Machu supremacy, despite the policies of said dynasty. However, a public display of CSA flag is seen as an expression of white supremacy because it is widely used as such.

One thing to remember is that what is considered Hate Speech is SUBJECTIVE – it changes with the times because Morality Marches On. Here's an extreme example:

Jim and Joe, while still underage, were bullied and eventually raped by a guy named Jack, who was older and stronger.

Jim grew to hate all gays. He openly claims that all gays are monsters and don't deserve to live.

Joe grew to hate all pedophiles. He openly claims that all pedophiles are monsters and don't deserve to live.

Both openly hate a group of people and call for the death of all members of said group. Yet in most parts of the present day world Joe would get a lot more sympathy, even from people who don't know what happened to him.

Go back a few centuries, and at least in some parts of the world, due to a number of factors, Jim would have gotten a lot more sympathy due to attitudes toward gay people... even today, in some parts of the world, people might agree more with Jim than with Joe.

Agreeing that Hate Speech is bad and that a line must be drawn somewhere is easy; agreeing on where exactly to draw the line is the hard part, especially since not everyone has the same ideas what Hate Speech even is. And then there's the issue that while morals change with time, laws tend to not change as quickly and oftentimes lag behind. Thus laws need to be carefully worded, lest a seemingly-good law ends up causing harm down the line.

Then there's the problem of getting people to agree with you so that they don't feel like you are trying to force your own morality on them... the more I think about it the more I am glad I am not the one trying to write Hate Speech laws – this job sucks...

Partly that goes around to the whole paradox of tolerance thing again. By not restricting hate speech, you de facto restrict everything else. Plus the idea that if laws are put in place that will restrict hate speech, and the fascists get in power they'll weaponise it always misses: they can do it anyway. They could easily pass the law themselves if they're in a position to weaponise it so much, or ignore the laws entirely.

The only thing slippery slope arguments about combating hate speech achieve is to make hate speech more common.

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Yes exactly, and it's a tricky issue. Especially as neo-Nazis often claim they're the real oppressed group.

Something needs to be done about expressions of hate, because it's impossible to have a space where both bigots and marginalised groups are welcome. The problem is deciding how to go about it, and word laws in ways that won't bring about the same fascism they're meant to prevent.

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever. The goal is to create something that will.

... then that means that something that wasn't hate speech at the time now is hate speech and the law needs to be expanded to include it. You sound like you're worrying about the opposite somehow, where hate speech now becomes acceptable, which would A) mean that the place implementing this law has somehow decided that an entire category of people are valid targets now, and B) is completely acceptable collateral damage as a consequence. Because really, new socially acceptable bigotry might get in trouble? Eh.

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