Anarchy and Free Speech

Everyone should have the right to believe whatever they will. However, that does not mean that people have the right to act and speak on those beliefs without meeting resistance or facing the consequences of saying prejudicial, hateful things.

"We have no power to censor them... But we will not let them come into our communities to build the power they need to enact their hatred."

Sounds pretty reasonable, eh?

 

Yeesh, y'all sound like you should be working for the UK government. I hate racists and bigots, but who has a right to decide who can say what, where they can say it, and about whom? Nobody. And anyone who says they have the right is more dangerous than any Nazi thug or BNP creep. The forum policy is not censorship, it's kicking people who are unwanted out. Like how one would kick bigots out of their lives, like how we boycott, say, the Casualties, rather than breaking up their shows and wrecking their equipment. Should bigots become a threat, or get in your way, thats another story. Lethal force, no mercy. Words are just words. The only threat hate speech holds is infection and division between the target and the hater's group. These can be powerful forces, sure, but they are easily snipped in the bud if you try. Without resorting to measures that Punk has always been about fighting against.

 

After rereading this article, I can really see your point.

I hate censorship, but I also hate fascism. I could see why these students would want to make it clear that there is no space for this on their campus, however, if it there is a sizable group of people who adhere to this on campus, doesn't that mean that there is, indeed, space? And wouldn't public censorship only drive them further underground? Perhaps it is, in a way, better that this be out in the open so that it can be dealt with there. Disallowing the expression of certain views is a means of attacking the symptom and not the disease.

I can support the anti-fascist sentiment behind the protest, but this particular tactic makes me uneasy. Yes, fascism is hate speech, but if we don't allow fascists to express their views, where do we draw the line?

 

Thank you for that, nodogs.
Before anyone brings up the Nazis, I would like to point out that the effectiveness of fascist/racist hyperbole has been dampened severely by the memory of the Holocaust, and that other circumstances in our times put two hypothetical political fronts, fascist and any other at an equal level of ease of expression, on an uneven field, with the fascists in disfavor.

 

[quote="RememberGlencoe" I hate racists and bigots, but who has a right to decide who can say what, where they can say it, and about whom? Nobody. [/quote]

You're in the wrong place. And i won't even bother to explain why. Hate speech is not free speech. All nazis should be shot on sight, no matter the gender,age,religion or anything else. There is no peace and anarchy until you radicalize.

 

For you, punkmar77:
http://reason.com/archives/2014/11/08/b ... emist-spee
Bakica, did you read past the second sentence of my post?

 

I misunderstood you

 

I don't think anyone claimed that Chomsky was a prophet, here.

Those who engage in hatespeech should not be protected from the consequences of their words, and the second they begin acting on those sentiments and oppressing other human beings they absolutely should be stopped in their tracks. However, I don't see where anyone has the right to stop them from saying what they please amongst themselves. DOING what they please or harassing minorities with hatespeech is a very different matter.

 

Water under the bridge, my friend

What I'm saying, punkmar, is that banning someone from spreading their ideas and outlawing/fighting an organization are different things. The latter is warfare, the former, censorship. Attacking those who threaten the people you are charged to preserve the welfare of is harder to mutate into something harmful, than restricting people's freedoms. Because it's more resource-intensive and actually deals with the disease, not the symptom. Can't have a scare if there's nothing scary going on. I would also like to point out that as much as I despise the man, Varg didn't "incite" anything. Where was the riot, the pogrom? What he did was vile, but you cannot even claim that this was a trumped-up charge to hinder him from some supossed terror attack. He's not stupid enough to get caught buying guns if he was actually planning something. Besides, even within the supposedly narrow, rational parameters of what defines "racist" speech, there is tremendous stretching ability. Would you jail Helen Thomas? Mads Gilbert? Louie CK? Would that scumbag Donald Sterling earn himself a jail cell for spewing his filth in his own home? And what about he said, she said scenarios? One can already destroy someone's life minus corpus by screaming rape, screwing over the unjustly accused and actual victims. I don't see Bill Cosby in prison, nor Jorge Herrera.

 

I have to agree with that. Everyone must be accountable for their actions but to restrict someone's right to freedom of speech automatically restricts my own right to freedom of speech. I feel I have the right to speak out against religion for example. Should this right be revoked because some religious fanatic calls it blasphemy?
I'm ethnically white, and if a black person calls me a white what-not on the public internet I have to accept that that's his right just as it's my right to tell him/her to fuck off. Or, if I'm so inclined to engage in a lengthy pointless argument with them. That's my right!I accept and welcome that there are safe havens on the internet where people are protected from that but I do not want to see the open internet censored because I want others to be able to see and engage in it. We must fight an open war.

 

That was well said.

 

Scots/Irish, also part Jewish.

 

No, I disagree. That sounds really privileged to even say it's a privilege. I see just as much racist bullshit and hate speech coming from both the black community and from the white community alike on the internet, and where I live I'm part of the ethnic minority. But as a consequence of that I also see some amazing alliances forming between both black and white who stand together against such bullshit.
A lot of these racist cliches come from younger kids who just don't know any better and by having it all out in the open and uncensord we have the ability to even change a few of those minds here and there by enlightening these kids that the real enemy is not each other but those hatemongers who have their own agenda. We can reach some of those people and make a difference, and I've seen it happen.

We can agree to disagree but maybe you've missed the part where I said that I appreciate and welcome that there are places where hatespeech is not tolerated? But if we start censoring and policing the public internet we'll be well on our way back to the dark ages. This will create a chain reaction where our freedom of speech and with it our freedom of expression will start to erode more and more with no way of defending ourselves and no hope of making a difference and creating understanding between each other.

 

Most hate speech actually comes from minority groups and not majority groups, and by spewing out hate speech you're setting yourself up for all sorts of counter-abuse, so I don't know what priviledge they have that we don't.
And if hate speech were to be censored they would just tone it down to the point where it would seem almost benign and even acceptable for many who may otherwise have found it unacceptable. This is where it gets dangerous.

Freedom of speech inherantly means is that if you don't want someone else to suddenly turn around and dictate to you what YOU're allowed to say (and that's exactly what would happen if we start this censorship bullshit on public internet) then you have to take the good along with the bad, even if it means being exposed to hate speech.
There are many countries which have no or limited free speech... I myself have experienced that during apartheid. I got expelled from one high school (I actually got expelled twice) for "influencing people with anti-religious ideas", all I did was speak to some of my classmates about it and somebody reported me to the principal. He called me into his office, I answered a few questions, then I told him there is such a thing as freedom of speech, you know (true as bob ), and the next thing I know my parents had to find me a new school!
So yes, if anyone should feel priviledged it's you and I, for enjoying the benefits of being able to speak our minds and express our ideas freely.