If you are alluding to restricting people's speech of views that are unpopular. Those powers will be used against the general population when it becomes politically expedient or will be abused by the authorities.
This week a man was found guilty in Scotland of "grossly offensive" tweet. What is and what isn't grossly offensive has no objective standard.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/man-convicted-posting-...
Potential sentencing could mean that he could be jail for 6 months. Being in jail for 6 months for posting something that is inflammatory (and has no call to violence) is ridiculous.
This is the result of not protecting free speech rights for people that have abhorrent views. Fairly normal people that say stupid things are criminalised.
More cases (both civil and criminal) are decided on those bases than you'd expect. (Can't speak for all places, but I'm passably familiar with UK law and precedent... and I suspect the US is similar)
1) No that isn't true. There is one rule for those that are in the club and another rule for the rest of us. e.g. Just today I saw a new story of Jimmy Carr being criticised for jokes about the Holocaust. I had told the exact same joke and uploaded it to Youtube / Facebook or Twitter I would expect to have a visit from the authorities.
2) Even 1) wasn't true. What you are describing is not an objective standard. I would rather they have in black and white "You cannot joke about the Holocaust", "You cannot say <slur>". At least you know what you could and couldn't say.
The standard is vague so it can be applied selectively and arbitrarily by the authorities when they see fit. Social media platforms do the same.
> More cases (both civil and criminal) are decided on those bases than you'd expect. (Can't speak for all places, but I'm passably familiar with UK law and precedent... and I suspect the US is similar)
You should not be criminalising unpopular speech because it may "caused offence". What is and isn't offensive is entirely subjective and what is an what isn't considered offensive is entirely transitory.
It's still something that can be "objectively" figured out, like you did.
it is a nonsense because. Firstly There simply isn't enough for these people to be politically relevant. The number of KKK members in the US IIRC is approximately 10,000 in a country of ~350 million. That is 0.002% of the population. Nobody likes these people, they are abrasive and have abhorrent views. They are not going to gain power and start a genocide through airing their views.
The hate speech laws in the UK was sold to the public as stopping islamic extremists, however many of the people that have been affected are ordinary people that pose no threat to anyone saying stupid stuff on social media, usually while drunk. That was not the original intent of the legislation yet it has been abused (and we were promised this wouldn't happen).
Secondly most abuses of power come from the state that is already in power. Over the last two years they have made it illegal in some cases to leave your home or not to wear a mask under the guise of the "greater good". In some cases people been have arrested people for organising protests against such measures, or even been visited by the police for questioning the orthodoxy of the state mandates on social media. In the US I heard they can literally take your property if they suspect (have no proof) that it might be used in illegal activity.
This childish idea of white nationalists taking over the western world if you don't curtail speech is simply the state justifying why it can take away your liberty. You shouldn't be worried about white nationalists they are a statistical anomaly now. What you should be afraid of is how the state is going to abuse its power with new legislation.
It's called civil asset forfeiture. Many police departments use this as a tactic to fund their departments. Some have been said to fund police parties and drink machines with it, among other things. The federal government incentivizes this as a "cut" needs to be send to the federal government while the local and state departments need to keep the rest. In 2010, estimated $2.5 billion in assets was seized. They made no distinction between legitimate and illegitimate seizures.
Here's a recent example of an innocent man (and former marine) getting around $80k seised and left with $10. The corruption is at all levels.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/stephen-lar...
Also, in the US, all civil servants have what's called qualified immunity, which means they can't be sued for wrongdoing unless the exact thing happened before qualified immunity was enacted in the 60s. This is an example of a corrupt government protecting itself.
> Also, in the US, all civil servants have what's called qualified immunity, which means they can't be sued for wrongdoing unless the exact thing happened before qualified immunity was enacted in the 60s. This is an example of a corrupt government protecting itself.
I didn't know about this. But yep it is another example of the state protecting itself at the detriment of the citizenry.
If you are have an rebuttal, I am quite willing to hear it.
To paraphrase him:
> Those who cry about free speech are weak, they don't have political power. Those that are strong (those in power) will censor.
His view of free speech is that whichever group doesn't have power and being censored will claim to want free speech. When they get power (culturally or politically) they will then start to censor.
I happen to think his framing of it is the most correct. I've personally seen happen over the years.