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Posted
2 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

And that's an evasive non-answer.

Do you or do you not agree that "The Koran causes terrorism" involves the same logic as "Hate speech causes violence against minorities"?

If you agree that they are the same, why do you support censoring "hate speech" but oppose censoring the Koran?

If you don't agree that they are the same, what is the important difference between the two arguments which makes the first one invalid but the second one valid?

If the Koran contains passages that would qualify as hate speech, then yes, there's a conflict between the right to religious freedom and the rights of those who are targeted, just as with hate speech.

Where a right conflicts with another right, it can no longer be automatically absolute. It's the task of society to find a consensus on whether there's a conflict, how severe it is and then what balance should be struck between them, based on the weight of each right.

On the matter of the Koran, my understanding is that it should offer the faithful guidance on how they should lead their lives. It does say they should seek to spread Islam, but to my knowledge not by force or coercion, which as Destined says would be problematic in a society with human rights. Nor does it dehumanise unbelievers, which may have steered the faithful towards the use of such aggressive methods.

And the concept of Jihad, as I remember it to be described in the Koran, is more of a spiritual process by which one should come closer to God. The idea of "waging" Jihad as a holy war on infidels seems to have come from those interpreting the text for their own selfish needs. That would seem to be the root of the problems that stem from the practice of religion.

 

Quote

Even if you ban the worst types of language, racial slurs and the like, people still find ways to indirectly insult each other with endless comments like "Wrong!", "Learn to read", "Some really stupid comments in this thread", "So much suck and fail" and so on. Perhaps such comments drive away fewer people than directly calling them a "cunt" or a "n*gger", but it's certainly not the case that aggressive moderation automatically leads to a pleasant, welcoming community.

If a community attracts people who call others "cunts" and use racial slurs, I don't see how that community could thrive without getting them to tone it down or getting rid of them. A welcoming community is definitely thanks to its members, but moderation may be necessary to ensure it stays one.

Fortunately the majority of insults I've seen here are more like your less severe examples, which I believe are considered tolerable in what is a mature community. There's no clear cut-off for when an interaction becomes unacceptable, but that's a cause for caution and discussion, not a reason to do nothing.

  • Like 1
Posted

This is the reason, because the religions caused conflicts in the whole history, because all of them are the only with the real truth.

Maybe we can exclude the atheist religions, like budism, taoism..., focused on self-improvement as human beings and not on that of others.
Both Islam and Christianity have caused so much damage in history, precisely because everyone who did not believe the same thing that they were heretics and that they had to baptize or if not, exterminate, this even worse in Christianity than in Islam, quite a bit more tolerant.
Remembering Al Andalus, Spain ruled by the Muslims, where all other religions lived in peace, with a flourishing of art and science, it was even reconquered by the Catholic kings, with the result of throwing Spain back 500 years into the past, submerging it in ignorance and barbarian and brutal customs.

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Posted
1 hour ago, Springheel said:

 

Oh please.  You're going to try and argue that the Quran and Bible get a pass because they aren't "current"??  They're among the most widely read books in the world.

"The Holy Bible is the most read book in the world. In the past 50 years, the Bible has sold over 3.9 billion copies. "
 

Coming in at #3 in the world, "The Quran is believed to be the words straight from God, Allah. It is the book that the Muslims use as a guide full of religious texts of how they should live their lives. ... The Quran is the most read book in the world by the Islamic community. "

https://capitalizemytitle.com/what-are-the-most-read-books-in-the-world-of-all-time/

They are first and foremost art and history to me. A lot of fictitious events impossible to prove too.

Is your argument that just because art contains violence or disturbing content then it should fall under hate speech? We have better candidates such as American Psycho, especially the book. I recommend it strongly. It is anything but.

We've already established that context is everything. A thorough, good faith human analysis by independent decision making bodies can correctly identify hate speech - I believe so. It's all about the human factor empowered to apply the long arm of the law.

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, Zerg Rush said:

Nothing to do with this, it's a cuestion of ethic and common sense to have a peaceful coexistence in a society, not possible with hate, fear and violence.

 

Dy4Y5VI.png

But "human rights" TODAY are not "intrinsic values" of mankind - the same stands for democratic values - but state/law-based.....so we get back to what I'm talking: POWER (->state/law) handling.

Of course I stand for collaboration among ALL human beings - and it's why I love so much this community - but the state/law enforcement of this IMHO can't work: when you make the "collaboration" (or the social justice) a political goal.....you're building the foundations for a possibly hellish situation.

 

And NOT because politicians are stupid, but because they are among the smartest bastards.

Edited by lowenz

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

Posted (edited)
5 hours ago, Dragofer said:

If the Koran contains passages that would qualify as hate speech, then yes, there's a conflict between the right to religious freedom and the rights of those who are targeted, just as with hate speech.

Where a right conflicts with another right, it can no longer be automatically absolute. It's the task of society to find a consensus on whether there's a conflict, how severe it is and then what balance should be struck between them, based on the weight of each right.

On the matter of the Koran, my understanding is that it should offer the faithful guidance on how they should lead their lives. It does say they should seek to spread Islam, but to my knowledge not by force or coercion, which as Destined says would be problematic in a society with human rights. Nor does it dehumanise unbelievers, which may have steered the faithful towards the use of such aggressive methods.

And the concept of Jihad, as I remember it to be described in the Koran, is more of a spiritual process by which one should come closer to God. The idea of "waging" Jihad as a holy war on infidels seems to have come from those interpreting the text for their own selfish needs. That would seem to be the root of the problems that stem from the practice of religion.

 

If a community attracts people who call others "cunts" and use racial slurs, I don't see how that community could thrive without getting them to tone it down or getting rid of them. A welcoming community is definitely thanks to its members, but moderation may be necessary to ensure it stays one.

Fortunately the majority of insults I've seen here are more like your less severe examples, which I believe are considered tolerable in what is a mature community. There's no clear cut-off for when an interaction becomes unacceptable, but that's a cause for caution and discussion, not a reason to do nothing.

Actually, the Quran does hold a verse about "after the months of fasting, go after the nonbelievers and slay them wherever you find them". I also believe the claim that Islam and Christianity are "the same in terms of violence" can easily be refuted by looking in the Quran and Bible. The Bible might be plenty violent, but it's still not as bad as the Quran. Likewise, Christians on the whole have taken Jesus' teachings and peaceful life to be a way towards a better person and are able to focus on how Jesus lived as a better alternative to the mishmash other Christians added into the Bible. The Quran, on the other hand, demands following it to the letter, says each sect's Quran is the only truth and all others are hellbound, that "shirk" or refusing to follow all of the Quran is a sin worse than murder, and Muhammad's life was a travesty that included necrophilia with his dead aunt, murder of countless innocents, the statutory rape of a child, beating of said child of she questioned his insane claims, claims of having split the moon in half but nobody noticed because nobody on Earth besides him was awake that night, and God glued it back together so don't bother asking why it isn't in two halves. Not only that, but Muhammad also owned sex slaves and was such an awful person, that on his deathbed after 2 years of health complications from when his Jewish sex slave who he raped after murdering her father, brother, and husband in fro t of her during the genocide of the Jews of Abu-Qurayza for siding with the Qureshi pagans over his mad cult, he spent his final hours ranting and cursing out the Jews and Christians.

Edited by Kurshok
Posted
4 hours ago, lowenz said:

But "human rights" TODAY are not "intrinsic values" of mankind - the same stands for democratic values - but state/law-based.....so we get back to what I'm talking: POWER (->state/law) handling.

Of course I stand for collaboration among ALL human beings - and it's why I love so much this community - but the state/law enforcement of this IMHO can't work: when you make the "collaboration" (or the social justice) a political goal.....you're building the foundations for a possibly hellish situation.

 

And NOT because politicians are stupid, but because they are among the smartest bastards.

This is what happens in dictatorships, but not in moderately decent democracies, it is the difference between policies that are based on power and policies that are based on the work of the people's representatives, as most of the magnan letters say. in which sovereignty resides in the people who form the state.

@Kurshok, certainly the Qur'an has such passages as does also the Bible and the Torah and all other Abrahamic religions.
But the different branches of religions also use translations of these writings modified according to their own dogma, more literally or in a more philosophical and metaphorical way.
A Wahhabi is not the same as a Sufi, both are Muslims, but in their interpretation of the Qur'an diametrically opposite.
The former are the most dogmatic and fundamentalist, practiced by Saudi Arabia and also by terrorist groups, such as ISIS and AlQaeda, and the latter the most liberal, oblivious to all kinds of violent acts.

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Posted
3 hours ago, Zerg Rush said:

This is what happens in dictatorships, but not in moderately decent democracies, it is the difference between policies that are based on power and policies that are based on the work of the people's representatives, as most of the magnan letters say. in which sovereignty resides in the people who form the state.

@Kurshok, certainly the Qur'an has such passages as does also the Bible and the Torah and all other Abrahamic religions.
But the different branches of religions also use translations of these writings modified according to their own dogma, more literally or in a more philosophical and metaphorical way.
A Wahhabi is not the same as a Sufi, both are Muslims, but in their interpretation of the Qur'an diametrically opposite.
The former are the most dogmatic and fundamentalist, practiced by Saudi Arabia and also by terrorist groups, such as ISIS and AlQaeda, and the latter the most liberal, oblivious to all kinds of violent acts.

Ever notice that the Wahhabists are always the ones in charge of Islamic majority countries, and even the most "liberal" Islamic sects are still blatantly conservative? This Islamic apologist nonsense is a damned mental sickness that has spread across the world in other left-leaning people. They're so desperate to make peace with these people they're willing to turn a blind eye to slitting animal throats in the street every Eid so blood rivers form in the neighborhood, to harass cops who actually used to patrol to stop grooming gangs into being silent for fear of being cancelled, to make excuses for online rape & death threats against a teenage lesbian in France for rightfully saying Islam is a shitty religion for how it treats women and gays! If it was a Conservative of the Christian persuasion, whom I still oppose on most major matters, the rest of the left would be calling for them to be fired and harassed, and Antifa would like to firebomb their car, but because it is a religion whose home country is perceived as a "brown" country, they must be the victims of imperialism, not the perpetrators as they were in the East African Islamic slave trade, which was longer lasting and even more brutal than the Western slave trade, and that's saying something. What I can't stand is the goddamn doublethink hypocrisy.

Posted (edited)
8 hours ago, Zerg Rush said:

 but not in moderately decent democracies, it is the difference between policies that are based on power and policies that are based on the work of the people's representatives, as most of the magnan letters say. in which sovereignty resides in the people who form the state.

The sovereignty resides in who already has actual power to wield and exert it thanks to popular consensus 😛

Edited by lowenz

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

Posted (edited)
5 hours ago, Kurshok said:

Ever notice that the Wahhabists are always the ones in charge of Islamic majority countries, and even the most "liberal" Islamic sects are still blatantly conservative? This Islamic apologist nonsense is a damned mental sickness that has spread across the world in other left-leaning people. They're so desperate to make peace with these people they're willing to turn a blind eye to slitting animal throats in the street every Eid so blood rivers form in the neighborhood, to harass cops who actually used to patrol to stop grooming gangs into being silent for fear of being cancelled, to make excuses for online rape & death threats against a teenage lesbian in France for rightfully saying Islam is a shitty religion for how it treats women and gays! If it was a Conservative of the Christian persuasion, whom I still oppose on most major matters, the rest of the left would be calling for them to be fired and harassed, and Antifa would like to firebomb their car, but because it is a religion whose home country is perceived as a "brown" country, they must be the victims of imperialism, not the perpetrators as they were in the East African Islamic slave trade, which was longer lasting and even more brutal than the Western slave trade, and that's saying something. What I can't stand is the goddamn doublethink hypocrisy.

There's no such thinks as "apologists", there's the petroldollars. Market world needs them. And heroin. About talibans, you know how talibans control the heroin production for the West?

You search for "hypocrisy" (it's a psycho-ideological interpretation) but in reality there are only market and political interests. Islamic terrorism and "conservative way of life" is perfectly functional to these interests.

52a1c37869bedd476f5aaefd?width=750&forma

Edited by lowenz

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

Posted (edited)

"Businessman" -> "It's one of us, it's a hero fighgting for freedom against damn communists who want to take away our FREEDOM!!!111" (re-read my former words about "freedom fighters" engagement dynamics ) :)

Really Kurshok, you are misundersting the reality and how it works beyond ideological propaganda words and "the law".

Edited by lowenz

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

Posted
16 hours ago, OrbWeaver said:

Do you or do you not agree that "The Koran causes terrorism" involves the same logic as "Hate speech causes violence against minorities"?

If you agree that they are the same, why do you support censoring "hate speech" but oppose censoring the Koran?

If you don't agree that they are the same, what is the important difference between the two arguments which makes the first one invalid but the second one valid?

I agree with what was said later on: "The Koran causes terrorism" and "Hate speech causes violence against minorities" is not comparable. It is the agressive interpretations of the Koran (which can be interpreted as similar, if not the same as hate speech) that causes terrorism. So, I would give the books a pass, the same I would give violent games, films or other media a pass. It is not the source material, but rather people interpreting it in a way that causes violence, that is the problems. This can be the Pope that incited people to go on the Crusades for Christianity or Imams that incite Muslims to terroristic acts. In a more secular context, it is public figures that blames certain groups for everything bad that is currently happening and inciting people to attack said groups. For me these are all comparable as well as condemnable.

Al Andalus mentioned by Zerg Rush is a nice example that religions can live side by side in peace, if they respect each ohter. I am not sure what the reason for the attack by Christians was, but I would suppose it was either secular lust for power or a more violent interpretation of spreading your faith (which again I would interpret as inciting by religious leaders).

Having thought more about it, I would agree that hate speech alone will not be enough to cause violence. You always need people that listen to it and heed the message. This works best on a fearful, frustrated, and insecure (?) mass of people. In the 3rd Reich Germany was recently destroyed in a war and had to pay reparations to other states. People were poor and frustrated and then a person appeared that told them that it was the Jews' fault and they are bad and should be eradicated. If the people would not have been in such a bad place, it is likely that the whole thing would not have worked. Similarly, today the target audience for hate speech (that actually causes violence) are mostly the poor, the unemployed, and/or the poeple frustrated with the current government (for whatever reason). Coming back to the question if, when, and how hate speech should be prohibited, I would say it is very difficult to say. It would be better to change the circumstances that cause hate speech to lead to violence, but in many cases these are very deeply rooted and cannot be changed on a whim. So, the next best thing to prevent violence is to remove speeches that trigger violence.

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Posted
18 minutes ago, Destined said:

So, I would give the books a pass, the same I would give violent games, films or other media a pass. It is not the source material, but rather people interpreting it in a way that causes violence, that is the problems.

18 minutes ago, Destined said:

So, the next best thing to prevent violence is to remove speeches that trigger violence.

There seems to be some contradiction here (or maybe I just don't understand what you propose).

On the one hand, you don't want to censor actual source material or media, such as religious books, films or video games. But on the other hand you want to censor "speeches that trigger violence".

By "speeches" are you exclusively referring to actual public speeches made by politicians? What if the speech is recorded in a book, or posted online? Is Mein Kampf a speech or source material? What about Protocols of the Elders of Zion? At what point does a speech (worthy of censorship) become media or source material (which should be given a pass)?

And what would be the test for whether a speech actually triggers violence? Hopefully not yet another correlation fallacy, like "a violent attack happened after a speech therefore it was caused by the speech". Would you restrict the scope of the law to speeches which directly advocate violence ("Go out and beat up these people, they are scum!") or is it sufficient to argue that criticising some group of people might encourage violence against those people (as modern hate-speech campaigners often do)?

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Posted (edited)
8 hours ago, Kurshok said:

Ever notice that the Wahhabists are always the ones in charge of Islamic majority countries, and even the most "liberal" Islamic sects are still blatantly conservative? This Islamic apologist nonsense is a damned mental sickness that has spread across the world in other left-leaning people. They're so desperate to make peace with these people they're willing to turn a blind eye to slitting animal throats in the street every Eid so blood rivers form in the neighborhood, to harass cops who actually used to patrol to stop grooming gangs into being silent for fear of being cancelled, to make excuses for online rape & death threats against a teenage lesbian in France for rightfully saying Islam is a shitty religion for how it treats women and gays! If it was a Conservative of the Christian persuasion, whom I still oppose on most major matters, the rest of the left would be calling for them to be fired and harassed, and Antifa would like to firebomb their car, but because it is a religion whose home country is perceived as a "brown" country, they must be the victims of imperialism, not the perpetrators as they were in the East African Islamic slave trade, which was longer lasting and even more brutal than the Western slave trade, and that's saying something. What I can't stand is the goddamn doublethink hypocrisy.

First to clarify something, apart from being an atheist, I am absolutely anti-cleric, I think that all religions are superfluous in this world. Of course, they are conservative by nature with their ancient dogmas, coming from people who slaughtered goats so that there are good harvests.
I live in the south of Spain with a large population of Muslim immigrants and I know some of them and I know how they think. Many of them are less conservative and more tolerant than many fervent Catholics in Spain.
The problems begin when governments, instead of being democratic, as we know it with all its defects, are replaced by theocracies that act and legislate strictly according to these 'holy scriptures'. Imagine living in a Catholic theocracy, it causes me nightmares just thinking about it.

Example Iran in the 60-70

jvQDHPe.jpg

Today

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Same Afghanistan

9bJTVPQ.png

Not the muslims itself, the muslim goverments are the problem and their fanatic followers.

To remember, the Vatican to this day has not yet signed the universal declaration of human rights, it has not condemned torture or the death penalty.

Edited by Zerg Rush
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Posted (edited)

Catholic theocracy would be the SAME as iranian (Shi'a) one.

Really really the same. So not bad as ISIS 😛

 

How/how much Franco's legacy is still in Spain today?

Edited by lowenz

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, OrbWeaver said:

There seems to be some contradiction here (or maybe I just don't understand what you propose).

On the one hand, you don't want to censor actual source material or media, such as religious books, films or video games. But on the other hand you want to censor "speeches that trigger violence".

By "speeches" are you exclusively referring to actual public speeches made by politicians? What if the speech is recorded in a book, or posted online? Is Mein Kampf a speech or source material? What about Protocols of the Elders of Zion? At what point does a speech (worthy of censorship) become media or source material (which should be given a pass)?

And what would be the test for whether a speech actually triggers violence? Hopefully not yet another correlation fallacy, like "a violent attack happened after a speech therefore it was caused by the speech". Would you restrict the scope of the law to speeches which directly advocate violence ("Go out and beat up these people, they are scum!") or is it sufficient to argue that criticising some group of people might encourage violence against those people (as modern hate-speech campaigners often do)?

This is a really good and difficult question. I consider myself to be a rather rational person and as such, I would consider even books like "Mein Kampf" as source material. I was taught in school that the book, while present in almost all households at the time, was actually read by only a very small portion of the populace. If more people had read it and understood what was proposed in the book, Hitler might have had far fewer followers than he actually had. Protocols of the Elders of Zion was unknown to me before your post. This is more difficult in that it is based on fake and fictional texts, but the intent of the book seems to be furthering the antisemitic narrative. I am not sure in how far this book calls for violence, so I cannot really tell how I would classify it. Books are generally more difficult to classify, because they have to be read and interpreted and especially the interpretation can vary from reader to reader. Ideally, during their discourse people would notice that a book calls for violence and decide against it; finding a reason why the call is in there and realising that it contradicts a respectful together and/or human rights. This is at least how I would handle books. Unfortunately, as said before the interpretation can go other ways as well and further an aggeressive reasoning.

As for a test whether a speech triggers violence, I have none. The correlation would be the only suggestion I have, but this has two important faults: it can only be done in hindsight, so it is too late anyway and you cannot transfer this to other speeches and, as discussed at length here, a speech alone is never the only reason for violence. It can be a factor that added to the general atmosphere of aggression, but it will never be the sole cause. For the examples you brought up: speeches, which explicitly advocate violence, would definitely fall under this label (and if I am not mistaken are already covered by the law). Critisism is much more difficult, because in this case the question how it is delivered is very important. It makes a huge difference, if you say "Child marriage is bad and should be abolished by this group." or if you say "These people are child fucking pedofiles and don't deserve to live." In many cases you can see a difference between critisism that tries to start a dialogue and critisism that wants to antagonise the other side. The latter is of course more likely to further aggression and violence against the other side, but as I said it can only be a factor, never the sloe reason.

EDIT: I just thought of another reason, why it is so difficult to correlate speeches and violence: You can never verify that the violence would have occured without the speech. You are stuck with the situation that includes the speech and cannot see the outcome of the same situation without the speech. In some cases (like the video Lowenz posted) the violent people will cite the speeches or name the author of the speech, which clearly shows a connection, but as said before the speech will always be a factor of many.

Edited by Destined
  • Like 3
Posted
58 minutes ago, lowenz said:

Catholic theocracy would be the SAME as iranian (Shi'a) one.

Really really the same. So not bad as ISIS 😛

 

How/how much Franco's legacy is still in Spain today?

Too much for my liking, not in the current government, but in the opposition we have, which unfortunately is not a conservative and democratic opposition, but rather aligned with the extreme right. Instead of providing ideas or alternatives that can be debated, they only defame, obstruct and even sabotage government decisions, even against the interests of the own voters.
They go with the motto: Either we rule or no one does.

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Posted (edited)

I think context depends not only on the book, speech but also it implies a certain social context in each region. So if Germans hate on Jews too much you can ban something to cool things down. Then when Jews get integrated better in society you can relax the ban. Hate speech laws probably shouldn't be indefinite either. Sadly I guess that'll happen when there won't be shootings in Palestine anymore. Not too soon.

 

Laws themselves sometimes discriminate and provoke hate speech, hate crimes against minorities. For example the restriction to wear a niqab that conceals the entire body and face in a courtroom prevented the applicant from appearing before court as summoned. Therefore she was fined. This constituted a violation the applicant's right to manifest her religion. It is also a form of intersection discrimination based on gender and religion.

It's hypocritical too because you don't see these rules applied to people who wear masks and who also conceal their faces. Double standards. At the time masks weren't mandatory but I wonder what are the latest developments on this in France.

Sonia Yaker v. France

https://docstore.ohchr.org/SelfServices/FilesHandler.ashx?enc=6QkG1d%2fPPRiCAqhKb7yhsjvfIjqiI84ZFd1DNP1S9EJKqYIhlmL6rhNwXcqOYJuUH9VE6Tyb9XTHWEHhF9nf4xnwrkTHOoRf0UGeTt71ldOVTOS8UARQkjHV6izalS45LLW1wZ11zTW1%2bfp4LoonzA%3d%3d

Edited by Anderson

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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Posted (edited)
53 minutes ago, Zerg Rush said:

even against the interests of the own voters.

Against the interest but sustaining their power fantasies. It's how you manipulate a tribal-minded right voter (in every state of this miserable :D world). And yes, they are happy with this, thanks to the criptospiritualism hidden behind right/far right ideologies.

Edited by lowenz
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Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

Posted
3 hours ago, Destined said:

This is a really good and difficult question. I consider myself to be a rather rational person and as such, I would consider even books like "Mein Kampf" as source material. I was taught in school that the book, while present in almost all households at the time, was actually read by only a very small portion of the populace. If more people had read it and understood what was proposed in the book, Hitler might have had far fewer followers than he actually had.

 

Another irony...while hate speech advocates list Nazis as one of their primary enemies, and point to Nazi Germany as what can happen if hate speech is allowed, the Nazi party was actually one of the most enthusiastic supporters of banning "problematic" speech...as all power-hungry proto-dictatorships are.

 

2429d354-8446-4a60-8075-7ee7d67bdae6.jpg

 

 

 

3 hours ago, Destined said:

As for a test whether a speech triggers violence, I have none. The correlation would be the only suggestion I have, but this has two important faults: it can only be done in hindsight, so it is too late anyway and you cannot transfer this to other speeches and, as discussed at length here, a speech alone is never the only reason for violence.

You can never verify that the violence would have occured without the speech.

 

This is exactly why preventing violence is not a sufficient argument for banning "hate speech". 

 

Quote

A thorough, good faith human analysis by independent decision making bodies can correctly identify hate speech

 

If you can't see the problem with making laws that require "good faith human analysis", where two reasonable people can't even agree on what is or is not against the law, I don't know what else to say.  If we could rely on good faith, we wouldn't need laws at all.

 

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Springheel said:

 

 If we could rely on good faith, we wouldn't need laws at all.

 

True. At the same time all laws require a degree of abstraction in order to be applied correctly.

In principle all laws require a "good faith human analysis". That's why homosexuality criminalization laws eventually became obsolete and at the end they were repealed when society wouldn't resist it too much anymore. It's an evolutionary process. Something changes, disappears, other things remain the same.

Edited by Anderson
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"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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Posted
46 minutes ago, Anderson said:

 That's why homosexuality criminalization laws eventually became obsolete and at the end they were repealed when society wouldn't resist it too much anymore. It's an evolutionary process. Something changes, disappears, other things remain the same.

 

It's odd to me that you would, in an attempt to justify hate speech laws, compare them to a law which we now recognize to have been unjust and without valid justification. 

Laws against homosexuality are exactly the kind of laws states should not be allowed to make...ones where the state cannot justify making the behaviour illegal beyond vague statements about protecting society from "offensive" behaviour.  In that way, they are precisely like hate speech laws. 

And while hate speech laws may eventually be recognized as obsolete and be repealed in the same way homosexuality was decriminalized, that's not an argument in their favour.  If a law can't be justified, it shouldn't exist.  Period.

 

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Posted
5 minutes ago, Springheel said:

 

It's odd to me that you would, in an attempt to justify hate speech laws, compare them to a law which we now recognize to have been unjust and without valid justification. 

Laws against homosexuality are exactly the kind of laws states should not be allowed to make...ones where the state cannot justify making the behaviour illegal beyond vague statements about protecting society from "offensive" behaviour.  In that way, they are precisely like hate speech laws. 

And while hate speech laws may eventually be recognized as obsolete and be repealed in the same way homosexuality was decriminalized, that's not an argument in their favour.  If a law can't be justified, it shouldn't exist.  Period.

 

Decriminalization of homosexuality, of drug consumption and other progressive movements go in tandem with the adoption of hate speech laws to protect and safeguard these achievements. Else, all of these efforts would have been only half steps. We already see how democracy is eroding, rule of law goes down a slippery slope in Poland, Hungary, Russia, Turkey.

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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Posted
5 hours ago, Destined said:

The correlation would be the only suggestion I have, but this has two important faults: it can only be done in hindsight, so it is too late anyway and you cannot transfer this to other speeches and, as discussed at length here, a speech alone is never the only reason for violence. It can be a factor that added to the general atmosphere of aggression, but it will never be the sole cause. For the examples you brought up: speeches, which explicitly advocate violence, would definitely fall under this label (and if I am not mistaken are already covered by the law).

I think we're basically in agreement then. Speech that directly and explicitly advocates violence should not be, and generally isn't, protected as free speech.

Linking other forms of speech to violence is too unreliable to form the basis of legal action, for the reasons you mentioned. Removing speech after the violence has happened is too late to protect the victim(s), and prosecuting the person who made the speech would be unjust because you would be punishing them for the behaviour of somebody else. Trying to censor speech in advance, on the other hand, involves guesswork and speculation about what might cause violence, which is unprovable and subject to the particular biases and prejudices of the censors.

5 hours ago, Destined said:

You are stuck with the situation that includes the speech and cannot see the outcome of the same situation without the speech. In some cases (like the video Lowenz posted) the violent people will cite the speeches or name the author of the speech, which clearly shows a connection, but as said before the speech will always be a factor of many.

Indeed. This is why correlation fallacies are so dangerous. It's often the case that A happens before B but B could still have happened without A, which is why a mere sequence of events can never prove a causal relationship.

Even using the claims of the violent criminals themselves are not reliable, because criminals very often try to blame other people for their actions. I've seen this before with anti-porn campaigners, who sometimes talk to convicted sex offenders who say "the pictures made me do it", then the campaigners accept this as fact and use it as justification for more censorship, without ever considering whether people in jail for sex crimes might have a strong motivation to find somebody else to blame.

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Posted (edited)

Porn is art.

 

Now this is next gen police abuse - using copyright to block access to information. Unexpected consequences for copyrasts.

 

Edited by Anderson

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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