No Stupid Questions

What are your thoughts on people who say hate speech is free speech?

Free speech isn't about a list of allowed words from which you can remove ones you dislike. It's the ability to speak your mind freely.

Hate speech is very much part of free speech. As is defamation. Banning them is limiting free speech. It's just that civilized countries determined that's justified and morally right in some cases and decided to define some red lines. But that doesn't remove hate speech from the umbrella of free speech.

Freedom to say what you think =/= Freedom from the consequences of that speech

Free speech means the government is not allowed to censor your speech.

Free speech does not mean you have carte blanche to say whatever you want with zero consequences, and those consequences may involve getting curb stomped by people who are deeply offended by reprehensible things you say. There is nothing in any social contract anywhere that says you can say literally whatever you want without any consequences whatsoever.

No country in the world has ever allowed unrestricted free speech, find me a country where at least one of the following is not a crime:

• Knowingly cause unnecessary panic, e.g. Screaming FIRE in a cinema
• Lie about someone causing them harm, e.g. say you saw them murder someone during a trial when you weren't anywhere near the scene.
• Publicly plan an assassination or similarly directly threat someone in a credible manner.
• Draw/write/or reproduce in any manner copyrighted material.
• Disclose secret government documents.

Fully unrestricted freedom of speech is not possible unless we radically change the way our society is structured so that there's no privacy or private property anymore. Until then some speech will have to be restricted, might as well include any speech related to fascism as it falls within several of the categories above.

Total freedom of speech is the most obvious example of the paradox of tolerance.

Fascists rise to power. They silence their critics, corrupt the judiciary and other independent organs of state power.

They are eventually destroyed by liberal forces.

Liberalism then creates a system of free speech, giving all voices equal credence and is tolerant of hate speech.

Fascists use that tolerance to further spread their messaging, eventually leading to the downfall of liberal democracy and a rise of fascist totalitarianism/populist etc etc.

There's a lot of words and they mean different things to different people.

What is "free"?

If all speech is free from consequences, that's something the law cannot regulate. If someone kicks you in the face for calling him a bitch, the law can only punish him retroactively but it can't unkick your face. If all speech is free from legal consequences, that also wouldn't be great. Saying "I will kill you tomorrow unless you pay me", that's a crime committed by language. Ofc if you have a weapon the chance that you mean it increases but regardless, we shouldn't let people do this. And in the same way you could allege someone is a murderer. And that might not be true. That's defamation and we shouldn't let people say that if it's not true. And there's a bunch of less impactful speech based crimes. So we can agree some speech should be pursued legally.

But on the other hand, we don't want censorship. We don't want a company to censor us when we give our opinions on them, we do wanna comment freely if a politician is a rapist, and we definitely wanna freely talk about the US government being a corrupt piece of shit currently. There's some things the government should actively shield. In fact, sometimes it's so important, even if we are restricted by contract about what we can say we should be allowed to talk about it if the bigger purpose is worth it. We call that one "whistleblowing".

So it's a threshold in both directions. When should the government protect speech, when should it ignore speech and when should it punish speech? It's complex.

Side node: free speech in the American sense kind of just means you can say stuff and the government decides afterwards if that's legal or worthy of special protection. Which incidentally is basically what most other countries do iirc.

So yeah, "free" is just the framing of it, we deal with speech very similarly in most countries. Of course some are fascist, some just stricter, some more relaxed.

Saying hate speech is free speech to me is one way to frame it. But to me it doesn't change how we do or how we should look at it legally. Let them speak, and if there's a law against it, we react. And technically that means anyone can say anything. And also very technically that's free speech for all speech. And I really do not care about it, because I don't look at technicalities, I look at statistics or examples, and with that I think we're doing ok on the average. Of course trump's cabinet is really stretching that to its breaking point but for now they haven't gotten there yet.

The American model of free speech is anything but. It's a narrative cover over reality.

The US government has always and will always choose what speech is unacceptable and repress it. They have been doing so for centuries. They have killed so many people for speaking. They have entire departments dedicated to media manipulation and censorship. They have vast financial incentives organized by the government to limit speech. There have been at least 2 open purges of communists and a third purge is burgeoning as we speak.

The American model is not actually that the government should not have the power to limit speech but rather that the government will limit violent speech if it goes against the government's goals and will protect violent speech if it supports the government's goals. That's why white supremacist hate speech is protected in the US - not because America is a shining beacon of free speech but because America is shining beacon of white supremacy.

Free speech is the idea that anyone can voice their own opinions, yes. However, if these opinions hurts others or restrict their free speech in some way, I feel like that shouldn't be allowed. I think most people would probably agree with this.

"Hate speech" is a very broad term that describes all sorts of nasty ideas, but let's give an example of a bigot who wants to relinquish women's suffrage (right to vote) and is advocating for this idea in a public area. This would be an attempt to block the free speech of women, and should not be allowed! You could insert other discriminated communities into this analogy, bigots hate anything that's even a little bit different from themselves.

Hate speech, in a nutshell, is advocating for the removal of rights and/or violence against certain groups of people. In either case, it restricts the freedom of speech of these communities. In many countries where free speech is not as strong, the removal of rights and state violence have both been used to silence opposition.

Freedom of speech...

Yes, well

Free speech isnt just the speech we like, its ALL speech.

For example "HAIL HITLER" or "DIE YOU [insert extremely insultive words]"

All hate speech is free speech, but not all free speech is hate speech

People who say that are correct, but their motive for saying it is always suspect.

People often mistake freedom of speach / expression to mean they can say anything they want without reprocutions while ignoring laws that already exist to set restrictions (perjury, libel/slander, obscenity, etc).

The rights of one person stops when it infringes on the rights of another. If a person's speach or actions is determined to be producing harm then there should be consequences.

Freedom of speach does not mean freedom from being responsible for that speach.

Hate speech is free speech

So is criticizing the assholes who say it, turnabout it fair play.

There are some cultures, religions, etc. with pretty abhorrent customs that people should be free to criticize, and if you're not careful with how you craft and apply hate speech laws, people may not be able to speak out against those injustices like they should be.

I'd also rather have the assholes be out in the open about their shitty beliefs. If you're dumb enough to, for example, fly a Nazi flag at your home, business, on a bumper sticker on your car, etc. that's convenient for me because I know not to give you business, hire you, stop to help you with a flat tire, give you a friendly wave, etc. If you're keeping your nazidom in the closet and pretending to be a decent human being, how would I know not to give you the time of day?

I have a tiny bit of a libertarian streak, I'm not a "Big L" libertarian who thinks that roads should be privatized and corporations should be able to do whatever they want, and all of that other bullshit, I like receiving government services when I need them and I'm generally fine with my tax dollars paying for them for others (not that I don't have some strong criticism about some of what the government does with my taxes)

But I do like individual liberties, and I think that with the right guard rails in place (mostly strong public education and social safety nets to make sure that people can afford to "vote with their wallets" and the ability to make responsible, informed decisions about how they do that, as well as strong limits on corporate power to make sure that there can be alternatives that people can take their money to) capitalism can be a pretty neat and tidy solution to a lot of problems.

In my sort of ideal world if someone is spouting hate speech, they just become a social pariah, no one would want to hire them, no one would buy their products, no one would sell products or services to them, no one would give them a platform or an audience, and when they get up on their soapbox they'd be immediately shouted down off of it by everyone within earshot. And if the local bakery, car dealer ISP, grocery store, energy company, etc. happens to be owned by one of those pieces of shit, it should be within the reach of anyone to start up their own competing company and drive the asshole out of business because given the alternative everyone should want to give their business to them instead of the asshole.

Didn't watch the nearly half hour video, so just answering your question.

Free speech is free,if you limit it, its not free speech anymore, I will not argue against that. If you are for free speech, then government shouldn't interfere and hate speech is part of that.

And honestly the way especially the UK but also other western countries are handling criticism against Israels actions under the umbrella of hate crimes is exactly what free speech proponents warned about. Hard to argue against that after the current events.

But I am not a free speech proponent, exactly because I think there should be limits to what is allowed to be said regarding lies and AlTeRnAtIvE fAcTs.

Hate speech is something that is regrettable, but nowadays I think it should be socially shamed and judged, not by the government (except if they are government workers). So moderators of social media are free to ban it in their rooms, but not enforced by the government.

Hate speech is not a well-defined word.

I see that as THE major problem in this debate. But many of the campaigners/influencers/politicians avoid to define it clearly. They try to only discuss whether hate speech should be free or limited, but they don't say what it even is.

These are THE DISHONEST ONES among the campaigners!! Some of them try to limit every word you say so only a fine polished meaninglessness remains allowed, and no criticism anymore.

I have no problem with disallowing hate speech according to a most strict and narrow definition: if its purpose is to incite hatred on large scale, like a war or a racial genocide etc.

But all things like a common bar brawl or telling a politician what he is, that must always be free speech.

Free speech is used nonsensically, because it is now mostly used by far-right extremists that try to manipulate their audience. It doesn't mean just "free speech" anymore.

I'm going to exercise my free speech here: what a good job ChatGPT did at summarizing this video. Is this really a thought provoking post or just a way to boost the views over at YT?

If the US model is so great, why is the country so royally fucked right now? The first amendment only tells governments not to limit what people can say. If you have enough money you can buy CBS or the Washington Post and silence critical voices or just scuttle the whole ship respectively. And that's not the government censoring, it's just a good buddy of the big guy or some brownnoser doing it looking for favors at the court of the king. Freedom of speech becomes something you need to be able to afford. When even the big guy files frivolous lawsuits against media outlets that didn't want to get up his ass for a gazillion dollars. Just to tie them down in courts hoping they will settle and in the meantime be extra careful not to incur more wrath. What happens when hate speech and libel laws don't work, you get Alex Joneses who make a business model out of being a despicable excuse for a human being. Your freedom of speech situation is very much like your healthcare system, in that it is very different from lots of other developed nations and the consequences are tragic.