Free Speech Issues in the UK???
I'm American, but I moved to the UK about 13 years ago. Been living and working here since then.
Over the last few years, there's been a significant increase in a feeling by a large part of the UK citizenry that the government is overbearing in what kinds of speech it's willing to punish. I frequently hear, "You can go to prison for a politically incorrect tweet these days!"
Now if that's true, this is definitely an issue worth being concerned about. It's my belief that you shouldn't be punished by the government for just saying something other people don't like. That's not to say you can just say ANYTHING, but if you say something like, I don't know, "I think women are stupid" or "I think asians aren't very good at driving", there shouldn't be any legal action at all for something like that.
So I did some looking yesterday, googled around, and almost all cases of someone going to prison for a tweet, it wasn't things as harmless as that, it was usually people who could be said to be inciting some kind of actual violence. One of the most prominent examples, someone made a racist tweet about immigrants and included the line "Set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care."
I couldn't find an example of someone going to prison for a tweet that didn't include some kind of actually violent rhetoric.
So... is this concern about free speech in the UK legitimate? Is the UK government genuinely overstepping its bounds and not allowing speech that we absolutely should allow? Can you give some examples?
Over the last few years, there's been a significant increase in a feeling by a large part of the UK citizenry that the government is overbearing in what kinds of speech it's willing to punish. I frequently hear, "You can go to prison for a politically incorrect tweet these days!"
Now if that's true, this is definitely an issue worth being concerned about. It's my belief that you shouldn't be punished by the government for just saying something other people don't like. That's not to say you can just say ANYTHING, but if you say something like, I don't know, "I think women are stupid" or "I think asians aren't very good at driving", there shouldn't be any legal action at all for something like that.
So I did some looking yesterday, googled around, and almost all cases of someone going to prison for a tweet, it wasn't things as harmless as that, it was usually people who could be said to be inciting some kind of actual violence. One of the most prominent examples, someone made a racist tweet about immigrants and included the line "Set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care."
I couldn't find an example of someone going to prison for a tweet that didn't include some kind of actually violent rhetoric.
So... is this concern about free speech in the UK legitimate? Is the UK government genuinely overstepping its bounds and not allowing speech that we absolutely should allow? Can you give some examples?
Comments (160)
It is a legitimate concern for anyone who cares about freedom. People are being arrested over tweets, one of which you just quoted and published on a public forum.
As you know, it does not meet the threshold for incitement in American law, as there is zero evidence it incited anyone to anything, and because the violence was never immanent. The charge of “inciting racial hatred” is even more ridiculous because racial hatred does not come about by reading someone’s angry words.
But when people pooh-pooh such concerns it makes me curious. Was there any time in your entire life that you read something and it incited you to violence or hatred or anything that can be construed as a crime? When you read the above tweet, did you feel yourself reaching for the pitchfork?
Not in that particular case, but at other times, yes. Words are not movement, but they can unlock the door to it, or influence its direction.
I'm not a UK resident and have no emotional connection to writing this post, but I do have a question for the author.
Do you think it's necessary to distinguish between freedom of private speech and freedom of public speech?
I'll give you my thoughts. Freedom of speech is a social construct. It didn't just fall from grace, but is a perfectly reasonable human choice. The idea itself was invented long before radio or Twitter. Freedom of speech in that era meant the ability to speak loudly. But even when the idea was invented, and not during its existence, was this freedom ever fully realized. Restrictions of one kind or another have always existed. Our modern world is even more sensitive to freedom of speech, because any thought, even a bad one, can instantly acquire high intersubjective weight, which can easily lead to dire consequences. While in the 18th, 19th, and even 20th centuries, freedom of speech was subject to mild religious or social restrictions (which prevented people from speaking nonsense), today this restriction is gone, meaning greater government intervention is only a matter of time.
Furthermore, if we take a sober (and not idealistic) look at today's world, we can conclude that freedom of speech will be further restricted.
Is it because I said “fucked”?
That’s probably too metaphorical for my own tastes because to argue from a metaphor is to substitute imagination for judgment. That might not be the best approach wherever law is concerned, but then again that kind of rhetoric is built into the law itself, which, to me, shows how flimsy it all really is.
It is not the ones going to prison that is really an issue, it those who get arrested when they should never have been arrested in the first place. Rowan Atkinson made a speech about this around two decades ago I believe (?) about this.
Someone being arrested for nothing and then released is poor policing. The example given was someone getting arrested for calling a horse 'gay'.
The biggest difference today is simply social media. Everywhere I look people are glued to their phones watching every little thing going on. If people wish to make X look like Y they can pretty easily.
When it comes to 'inciting violence' I think it is hard to draw a line as to what constitutes incitement and what does not.
This is an important (and impossible) distinction.
Certain things are not allowed to be discussed on this forum even though they are pertinent to philosophy. This is a private domain though.
What counts as 'public' and 'private' is not always clear. This is especially the case when it comes to the simple fact that most of what people say can easily be spread on the information highway with a simple click.
Naturally this question is about the various hate speech laws or in the UK case, similar laws and the implementation of these laws, which are various in the UK (starting from legislation like the Football Offences Act of 1991, which prohibits indecent or racialist chanting at designated football matches). The ordinary type of libel suits that happen between individuals isn't here the focus. People participating in public and political discourse is the real issue here.
Quoting I like sushi
This seems a bit odd to (us) foreigners, who don't know so well the UK legal system and the actual practices.
One simple reason can be that the UK police simple focuses far more on social media/public speech than other countries and is far more active in going after for example "hate speech" than in other countries. Then the UK has for example Extremism Analysis Unit in the Home Office, that surveys Social Media. Anti-terrorism or simply going after football hooligans can create an environment where the police and intelligence authorities keep large databases and simply follow activities in a far more broader scope than in other countries. As the UK has had it's share of terrorism, this is totally understandable.
Here I think it's very important that authorities aren't biased in the surveillance of different extremists. For example the US authorities like the FBI were quite impartial (prior to Trump and Kash Patel etc) and went on to survey everybody, be it right-wing extremists or left-wing radicals, everybody from animal rights activists to pro-life groups attacking abortion clinics or white power groups.
This actually works, because In my view real damage happens when it is the perceived or actual is biased with differential treatment. What is essential is usually in these cases is transparency on the actions that the security establishment does.
But I'd gladly hear opinions or comments from Britons themselves here.
Why? People are falsely arrested in other countries too.
Arrests are one thing, convictions are another. I think the question is if in the UK these arrests/convictions are multiple times more than in other OECD countries.
Individual cases don't tell so much. There can be these "accusations of a horse being gay"-incidents or something. These are the incidents Elon Musk fills his X to bash the Starmer administration. Individual cases yet tell only so much as you can obviously find them everywhere. For example one ex-minister of justice in Finland was accused of hate speech when she referred quotes from the Bible. Yet the case was immediately dismissed by judge, which brought credibility to the system.
This is precisely the point Rowan Atkinson was making. It is not credibility to the system if someone is falsely arrested. Someone should not be arrested for such acts in the first place.
It is what it is though. Could be far worse.
From 2012: Rowan Atkinson on Free Speech
This is a topic that cannot actually be discussed.
People shouldn't get falsely arrested. Yet actually convictions are where the actual issue lies. Anyone can make claims that this or that person's public views are basically hate speech etc. First level is if someone takes this to court or a prosecutor makes a case of it. The real issue is there is if someone gets a conviction. Just like Trump is now behaving by going after people he doesn't like, many of these cases have been thrown out of court.
I think this started in the UK with the grooming gang scandal. If it happened earlier, please let me know.
The solution to this is simply transparency: never, ever hide the statistics or the ethnicity of convicted felons. Do not give an impression that you are hiding something, nothing erodes public trust more and gives credibility to issues like. Also treating ethnic groups differently, if they react differently to arrests etc. is a very bad strategy.
Just to give an example of how political leadership can dismantle political landmines: When Finland closed totally it's border with Russia and stopped to follow the earlier guidelines on treating asylum seekers as before, several legal experts raised questions of this going against the current laws. The Prime Minister simply acknowledged this indeed "this was very problematic", yet that national security overrode this. The Russian intelligence services were actively pushing undocumented immigrants to the border (something that was extremely easy to verify from interviewing the immigrants) and making a "hybrid attack" in this way, which everybody understood. There was no criticism from EU, which understood the situation.
This is perhaps something that many politicians don't understand: you have to talk about the actual problems and difficulties and especially not give some fringe group to be the only one noting the issue, be they on the right or the left. If you simply refuse to admit there is no issue, this only gives credibility to the fringe group, which likely has utterly destructive and self-defeating extremist answers to handle complex policy issues (like we see now in Germany, where the ADF is pushing to divide German citizens to a two-tier standard).
We are seeing political censorship trying to pass itself off as something legitimate. If someone argues against immigration they are called a "racist" and that's the end of the story. They must be silenced.
Regarding violence, if Linehan had spoken of punching a pedophile, or a rapist, or an anti-immigrationist, he would not have been arrested. It's obviously not about inciting violence, given that the form of speech that is censored has to do with political points of view, and if someone had the "right" political perspective then the same level of "violence" would not be prohibited.
The other point about violence is that the lower classes will of course resort to violence if you destroy their lives with bad policies and then gaslight them whenever they attempt to voice their concerns within the system. You can only gaslight the majority for so long, especially in democracies. If you don't allow them to have a say within the political arrangement, then they will disregard that arrangement. They are very naive who think they can carry on with the censorship and the gaslighting and the problem will just go away.
The problem is that liberalism does not acknowledge the value of the preservation of the realm, and therefore what Finland did is not justifiable on liberal principles:
Quoting R. R. Reno, The Return of Strong Religion
The whole notion that opposition to immigration, or transgenderism, or Islam, is per se wrong, is a classically liberal position. In our day and age the problems with liberalism are becoming increasingly obvious, and the ruling class in Europe is slow to admit this.
I say this because some posters are saying that in the US you couldn't be arrested for a "mean tweet" but in fact if you're in communication with people trying to burn down a hotel, and you're saying burn down the hotel, I'm not so sure this would be protected speech there either.
In any case, the big picture recently has been Americans have been sold this idea that free speech is "under attack" in the UK and Europe, pushed by the likes of JD Vance, but the reality is the US is much worse right now. Whether it's free expression, freedom to assemble or the free press: all are being suppressed.
You could get arrested or investigated. It's in the context of that moment.
I think you’re addressing the wrong crowd, I’m sure we’re nothing but a bunch of harmless philosophers.
I completely disagree. If someone is arrested on false grounds they have had their freedom removed. If you had to spend the night in a cell, and suffer the indignation of being hauled away, then I think this is a major issue.
Not taking this seriously can lead to people being arrested on trumped up charges simply because there is a political motive to do so. That the conviction goes through is way worse, but the root of the problem lies in false arrest rather than false prosecution.
Quoting ssu
This happened due to social media. When I was growing up and you heard of this or that crime being committed the identity of the perpetrators were kept mostly out of the public eye. The world has changed, that is all.
In this light I can argue just as well that nothing erodes public trust more than being exposed to information seasoned and cooked up by platforms with a money driven agenda to rake in $$$$ rather than provide a vague and distanced picture of current affairs.
Note: I have no solution. Just pointing out that there are just too many factors to consider here and most people have no time to filter through even half of the data out there. Even less have the ability to moderate their own opinions or form a reasonable representation of what is going on.
Being blind can tell you more than having full sight in some circumstances. I think everyone is politically hoodwinked. Such is life as a human :)
I so judge other countries based on my own personal experiences :D
I think here you are mixing liberal idealism and practical statecraft and thus argue that liberalism hinders the latter. Even now in laws we universally do have things like martial law in a case of hostile attack, which hinder dramatically the liberal freedoms we have in peacetime. Thus liberal democracies are totally capable and do have legislation that basically is illiberal.
We have representational democracy (and yes, career politicians running it) to solve these political problems, be they ideological or moral.
Quoting Mijin
This is quite hypocritical, because burning down hotels is basically terrorism, and the US has very harsh legislation against terrorism and even performs extrajudicial actions when it comes to terrorism. The US can kill and has killed it's own citizens, even under aged ones, without any trial or legislative process, but by a decision by the US President. And this was totally accepted even before Trump defined drug smugglers to be "narcoterrorists" and disregarded even the laws of war while killing them.
In fact during the War on Terror, legal experts in my country noticed that giving financial aid to terrorist organizations gave far longer sentences than murdering several people (committing an act of terrorism itself). This because the US insisted that countries would have similar legislation it had on this subject and Finland complied with this.
Yet of course, for totally similar actions, people won't be giving a sentence for of hate speech in the US.
Hence it's whimsical to argue that the US would uphold a justice state more than the European countries. It would be similar to arguing that except for Scotland, because Scotland does have the Hate Crime and Public Order Act 2021 while England and Wales have no laws against hate crimes directly, the UK doesn't convict people because of hate speech.
I agree with this, so I think you aren't getting my point here. Or do you consider that a sentence on false grounds is less of a breach of one's freedoms? I don't think so.
Quoting I like sushi
Again, I'm not saying here that we shouldn't take arrests on false charges seriously.
Quoting I like sushi
I agree with this.
I assume that now simply the incitement toward hate crimes (or something equivalent to it) is extremely easy to make and thanks to the vitriolic discourse in the social media, people participate in the social media can be judged then on incitement. One real cause is the lack of refereeing: if someone has for example here on PF such opinions that can be seen as incitement, they will be quickly banned. Earlier when public discourse was in the opinion pages of newspapers, there were the referees of the paper itself on just what was published.
Yes.
An actual example of this kind of reasoning is the Palestine protests. A lot of Americans I talk to insist that you can't be arrested for protesting in the US. The 3,200 people arrested protesting Gaza were arrested for things like trespassing and public order offences (and the majority were subsequently released without charge), and because the arrest didn't specifically mention their speech, so they claim it is not an infringement of free speech.
But of course, by this logic, one could probably argue that there's freedom of speech in north korea.
disclaimer: I think the UK proscribing the group "Palestine Action" has been a shitshow. Not that the US or other countries would have necessarily done differently: PA has committed some acts of terror. But obviously things have got out of hand when elderly people are being dragged to jail just because of words on a banner. I'm definitely not defending that.
There have always been taboos. The reason for a taboo is to leave no doubt that something is wrong and should never be done. When it comes to prejudice and violence, there must be no question that the violence is taboo. This would mean being firm about a boundary and not leaving any wiggle room. When something is taboo, not only is it not done, but we don't even think about it.
Your question to us of if we have experienced a violent urge because of what someone said or did is meaningless because such people are not likely to be in this forum. Such a person is more apt to use a public platform where they are apt to find agreement and maybe even encouragement. It is rather shocking how many of the killers talk about their intention before following through with it. These emotionally unstable people are the ones we want to stop, and that's why humans have always had taboos. To stop the 1 out of a million people who is about to go off the rails.
The problem today is that we no longer understand taboos, what they are, and why they are important. This unfortunate reality has made the problem a governmental one, instead of just a social one. This is a cultural problem made worse by today's technology. We now understand that such violence has a copycat effect, inspiring others to do the same thing.
More examples of extremely questionable results (from my current understanding) are found in cases for Jordan Parlour, Joseph Haythorne,
The UK is definitely sliding towards totalitarian censorship. The cases I've found are obviously stupid. Victims getting longer terms than their abusers, for saying something mean for instance.
Ridiculous imo. Mean tweets (something which might offend, is how it is worded) shouldn't ever be fodder for the Law. You do not need new rules to criminalize more speech. Many countries have done this.
Largely, it is the pattern of intimidation that people have an issue with - it's hard to put people in prison over words, like the above cases. But cases like Elizabeth Kinney illustrate extremely well how hte UK is attempting, using law enforcement, to dampen and reduce speech. It would be silly to think otherwise anymore. Arrests for Tweets by county is something like"
1. UK 12,500+
2. Belarus - 6,000+
3. Germany - 3500+
4. China 1200 +
Very weird state of affairs. Though, fwiw, I think people should be able to say anything. At all. Our laws already deal with causing harm pretty well. Hurt feelings aren't a matter for the law.
I have moments where I kind of agree, but the fact that hotels really were being lit on fire kinda changes the vibe of it a little bit. It sounds like a suggestion. It's definitely some kind of APPROVAL at the very least. It's certainly not neutral on violence.
I definitely see where you're coming from, but it's not cleanly divested from violent rhetoric enough for me to say "oh the uk jails anybody for saying anything non-woke". Someone would need to be put in prison for a tweet that had no suggestions of violence or approval of violence at all for me to say that, which is what I'm looking for. Like, just tweeting "I hate that so many immigratns are in our country" or something like that.
People have been temporarily jailed for tweets completely devoid of suggestions of violence, but never fully sentenced and imprisoned. Jailed is, of course, already too far, and I consider that a trampling of free speech in its own right, but of course not quite bad as sentencing and imprisoning.
I don’t think anything should be illegal, especially not speech.
Do you have anything in this world you care about? Anything at all? Would you care much if you died right now? If not, that's a perfectly understandable viewpoint. But that's not how the world works or how normal people are or think. Certainly you recognize that.
fwiw, I don't claim this. It is getting dangerously close, but that only works with my internal nuanced use of 'woke' which hasn't fit with any uses i've seen around here.
Quoting flannel jesus
Definitely not as bad, but the slippery slope is almost at completion at this stage. The idea that we shouldn't be worried about it strikes me as sanguine to a fault. Most comments tend be specifically about 'illegal migrants'. A group which is not protected.
I care about a lot of things. The impositions of state jurists isn’t one of them.
Do you require law to know how to act around others?
Great. Problem solved. It is true, I'm a Canadian, and I have no idea how you can spend so much time living in the UK and not know this to be true?
Crimes, some with prison sentences, are the extreme end of the sanctions, numbered in the thousands, but non-crime hate incidents are a better indicator of free speech under siege in the UK.
I know this to be true from sources like Greg Lukianoff noting that there have been 250,000 non-crime hate incidents investigated since 2016. Lukianoff and his org, FIRE, are American, but likely the most powerful free speech voice on the planet, happy to defend the fire left and far right both.
Just google Lukianoff and UK non-crime hate incidents.
Quoting flannel jesus
What about that guy sentenced to years in jail for telling his mom something racist in their own home?
Quoting flannel jesus
The only ones you found seem to be on the extreme end. I think of the parents who spent the night in jail for critiquing their kids school. Try conservative sources. If you live in a progressive bubble, you won't hear this stuff. And the moment you step outside the bubble, you see the problem.
The bubble is the problem. And of course, this applies to the right too. The JD Vances of the world are transparent hypocrites on free speech.
Lucy Connolly seems to be the example people are referring to in their 'incitement' argument. Please make the case for her 31 month jail sentence being justifiable.
I am not going to source this, given you have obviously not researched, but please, do this five minutes of googling and I will engage with you in good faith, with all the sources you might request.
Quoting Astorre
You seem not to find this terrifying?
The laws pertain to everyone in a given jurisdiction, including those who do not reach for pitchforks upon hearing words. As such, millions and millions lose their rights to speak and to hear whatever speech they want because some who live among us fear words.
But why are they state jurists though? They're fulfilling the will of the people. Said will being peace, law, and order. This requires a robust and powerful underlying system of codes and ordinance.
These series of remarks seem to imply you don't care about what other people want, only yourself (and those whom you favor or who otherwise think like you). This is the mindset of a small child with little understanding of the larger world around him.
Quoting NOS4A2
I like to think not, but I would never delude myself into thinking every other person, even the majority, does. There's 8 billion people on this rock. You've likely only ever even been in the same room with a few hundred thousand of them. And that's a very liberal estimate.
You know how to act because someone or something taught you how to. One might assume that's because you were raised in a functional healthy household with both parents who knew and were equipped mentally, physically, and financially to raise a child (that child being you).
Not everybody has that luxury. Did you not know this?
You and I both know neither one of our wills have affected any law, code, or ordinance. No jurist has ever fulfilled anything that you or I have ever willed. And if you already possess a will for peace, law, and order, a system of enforcement ought to be entirely redundant.
I don’t care what you want, but only because I don’t know what you want. What I do know is, these institutions, like the ones they are adapted from, have been a scourge on the earth and the species, and the sort of obsequious fealty to them is unimpressive. The admission that you require them in order to satiate your own fears does not imply that everyone else does.
Who has killed more people, your imaginary criminal, or governments? Who has led to more famine? Genocide? War? Who takes from the fruits of your labor in order to fund his activities? Who drops bombs on weddings, or nukes on cities? The one you describe as not being raised in a functional household, or the ones you now defend?
Not only that, but the examples they cite are only within the areas of commentary being stoked up by the far right. Where the issue is not being stoked up, not a word.
A ripple in a pond can always knock against something larger. Societal rules did not predate society. It is literally the result of people before us, maintained by those of us who understand and respect their sacrifices. Sacrifices that, again, due to theirs, you and I don't have to make, and therefore lose meaning and reverence toward. As you perfectly illustrate.
Quoting NOS4A2
"Show me a man without fear, and I'll show you a man with nothing left to lose, whose death would only benefit the world around him." - M.E. Outlander
Quoting NOS4A2
This is a lot to unpack. Allow me a few moments, or perhaps a day or two to get back to this.
What about it? I obviously don't know about it - and I still don't. You've just written a sentence on a forum, not given me a link to a reputable source about it. I want something real man, not just people blabbering. I want to -know- it's happening. You telling me is next to useless, link me up.
When I google, "guy sentenced to years in jail for telling his mom something racist in their own home", I get no results. You haven't even given me a name to google.
A claim like that should really ping the BS meter.
From a quick googling, it's from a meme spread by Tommy Robinson (for non-Brits who are not familiar with him: he's someone who's been in and out of jail many times for violent offences, and is popular on the right for being an outspoken racist). The data isn't cited, but seems to come from different sources, and so compares apples and oranges.
In the case of the UK, the data is the total people arrested in 2023 under the Communications Act and the Malicious Communications Act. Importantly, these aren't just arrests for "mean tweets": it covers obscene images and direct threats targeted at individuals. From the Times article that originally published this data, a police spokesman claimed a large proportion of these arrests are domestic-abuse related.
...so incidentally; the 2023 figure might include an arrest of...Tommy Robinson, who was stalking and harassing someone at the time.
You don’t mention that out of the 12,000 or so arrests in 2023, there were only 1,119 sentencings, according to the Times article you cite.
We can hold these numbers against other statistics of that year, like that only 5.7 per cent of crimes were solved by police. The charge rate was at 3.6 per cent for sex crimes, with rape at 2.1 per cent. Apparently that’s around 2.7 million crimes being dropped without a suspect being found.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/crime-unsolved-data-labour-b2384679.html
No wonder people are pissed off in the UK, where it appears everything is policed except crime.
Societal rules and the sacrifices involved in maintaining them… maybe you can name one of these societal rules and one of these sacrifices that you so much revere, because so far I have no idea what you’re talking about.
You guys really aren't honest interlocutors are you?? The point that matters was this, which you conveniently ignored:
Quoting AmadeusD
I don't require those numbers to be correct for this point to stand, I didn't cite them as some authority, I didn't get them from a meme. Your continued dishonesty is continually noted.
Quoting Mijin
I see you've devolved into several fallacies at once. Good job. I can see why Banno likes it.
Right, and that's my point. I'm not sure how this fact can simply be smoothed over.
Engaging with your cite (and pointing out the flaws) is not being an "honest interlocutor"?
What exactly am I allowed to post in this discussion forum? I must agree with you uncritically?
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes you do; that's the whole point of trying to cite something.
Your argument is baseless right now, and, to use your words I think a bit more accurately than you did: an honest interlocutor should be questioning whether their position is actually correct at this point.
Quoting AmadeusD
If I posted anything incorrect then please correct me.
In the meantime I was trying to do you a favor: as well as the claim in the meme being absurd on its face, it was posted by someone with a history of posting false things on social media. He's been successfully sued multiple times as well as serving a jail sentence for contempt of court -- all for things he made up. As well as starting multiple riots with disinformation.
So I am trying to demonstrate to you a bit of critical thinking.
But no the problem was with us telling you it was nonsense or what kind of source you are getting your information from.
:grin:
"Anecdotal evidence reliable? One man says 'yes!'"
I did not cite it - you'll note from my language that this is obvious. As I've addressed. Please read clearly and carefully before responding. I think it's pitiful to be engaging in this way.
Quoting Mijin
As above. You do not read posts clearly before responding. It makes things very difficult.
Quoting Mijin
Err, nope. You haven't even identified it, despite my pointing it out clearly and concisely. And here you go anyway. This also shows that the comments above about domestic-abuse related crimes both doesn't hold up, and doesn't make sense.
ChatGPT warns that, given the limitations in the data, arrests are likely to be higher.
There we go. Now my argument is perfectly well founded, even based on your misreadings and fallacies.
Quoting Mijin
Fallacies are not 'incorrect'. They are bad arguments. You:
1. Poisoned the well;
2. Made statements without backing (about an identifiable person);
3. Strawmanned.
Anti-Islam isn't racist. It isn't even bigoted. It's having a preference against a religion. Antichristian themes have been well-accepted across most of society (to the point of extremely offensive provocation) for decades. Nothing wrong with it.
The majority of claims about Robinson stem from reports. Not facts. He's clearly not the greatest spokesperson for anything, but these claims are just lazy and uninteresting.
Still not actually doing anything. Cool man. Perhaps just don't post in threads you have nothing to add to.
It's a de facto part of a democracy. Having democracy and a justice state is just a safety valve (and something that gives legitimacy for power). The people (and their representatives) can still have quite illiberal tendencies. And one still needs for peace things like military deterrence.
Ideologies are fine when they are building blocks for actual policies. But if idealism and ideological purity is the only guiding light when you decide actual policies, you get zealots who basically throw the baby out with the bathwater and create enormous damage.
I've always said that if you would have a democracy that would be the closest to libertarian values, the libertarians themselves would be the ones very disappointed with the system. But that's their problem, not mine.
LOL. Yep.
As I pointed out in my first post to you, the issue is that liberalism provides no grounds for the preservation of the realm (and your example of martial law is but a single, more extreme, example of this). Combine this with the common liberal view that that which cannot be justified by liberalism is "very problematic," and you arrive at a remarkably deep level of political incoherence. The pure liberal can't justify martial law, but it's so much worse than that. The pure liberal can't even justify the distinction between citizens and non-citizens. Again, smoothing this over as if it were a minor problem with liberalism is wild.
Quoting Leontiskos
Given your dissatisfaction with liberalism, has there ever been an established political system in the world you can point to as your preferred alternative, or is this an ideal yet to be realized?
It's only a problem or incoherent when you take liberalism as the premis and then use logic to look at the consequences of what then all politics and laws should be like.
Even if you have liberalism, you also have collectivism, all the conservative and religious values etc that mold the behaviour of a society and these other ideas don't go, or have to go, hand-in-hand with liberalist ideology.
I think the real problem is that collectivism or ideologies based on the well being of the collective were utterly damaging nightmares in the 20th Century, namely Marxism-Leninism and Fascism/Nazism. Liberalism that starts from the individual has difficulties then to focus on the group or society as a whole. It simply assumes that as the society is made of individuals, then there's not much else than think of the society as just an aggregate of individuals. Well, people as part of a family or a larger group don't actually behave as the self-centered individual.
You’ve nailed part of the problem in the U.K. here. The bellicose right of politics who brought us Brexit, Boris Johnson and Liss Truss with the help of a compliant media are the most unhappy people. All that winning, they got everything they wanted since 2016 and they are still crying and throwing their toys out of the pram and shouting louder and becoming more extreme.
Fortunately we avoided the worst nightmare of all which would have been Boris Johnson as PM at the same time as Trump’s second term. They would have trampled across the world stage hand in hand opening the floodgates to corruption. Fortunately we got a principled, yet boring Prime minister instead and can breath a sigh of relief.
This springs from the split in the Tory party forming a new party called Reform (previously Brexit Party and UKIP). They have been fighting like cats in a sack with each other throughout this whole sorry saga. The Tory party has literally lost touch with reality, descending into political bankruptcy. All their policies are in ruins and all they have left is populist culture war rhetoric and disingenuous political point scoring. While Reform is struggling to keep the leash on hard core racists and libertarians, which they want to keep quiet until they get into government at which point they will be let off the leash and we will have Trump mark 2 here in the U.K.
I'll agree with you on "pitiful" -- this is one of the most embarrassing crashouts I've seen on this site.
You couldn't just acknowledge that it is disinformation and move on with your life.
Quoting AmadeusD
"reports not facts"...I don't even know what that means. Reports are of facts, you can dispute the correctness of the claims but they are not separate magisteria.
Anyway, the fact that Tommy Robinson has been convicted of assault multiple times, been in jail several times (same cite), lost lawsuits for lying (such as this one defaming a schoolboy), found in contempt of court multiple times, are all public record. Objective facts.
And as well as posting the nonsense you uncritically believed, he's done things like claim a video of a black man with white children was a "grooming gang", hence making his life hell (it was actually his step-children).
But hey, who cares if this guy gets his facts straight, if he's got the right brand of hate, amirite?
Well, it is. The UK is not an exception though. Freedom in any form has to be fought for. Differing freedoms compete and conflict.
Be worried when no one is attacking or defending any form of freedom. When that happens it is game over!
This is why I am more in favour of tackling ideas that conflict with people's hard fought for freedoms, rather than pushing them aside. Conflict is a necessary state of being as far as I can tell.
Well if we can agree that the freedom of speech issue in Britain is being whipped up by the populists and the Tory’s who are aping the populists, along with the media organs aiding them in this. Then we need to identify what freedoms are actually being attacked and what is media hype, gaslighting, conspiracy theory being pushed by the above actors (or in other words false attacks on freedom of speech).
As a person on the ground I can’t think of any speech, which wasn’t already taboo, being restricted in the population. What there is is some cancellation in University speaking events around sensitive issues such as gender, transsexuality, issues which have been exploited by the populists and some political correctness around these issues in institutions. These are limited circumstances and forums, while the public at large has no restriction at all on their free speech.
However we do seem to now have freedoms of speech extended to be racist in public and on media platforms, mysogonist, to lie in the media, unquestioned and to spread conspiracy theories as fact.
It now seems to be much worse to accuse someone of being racist (you’re not allowed to) than it is to actually be racist (which is fine).
I think it is mostly down to social media that makes what was already there present in your face. I do not honestly think anything has gotten much worse overall in day-to-day life. I could be completely wrong though. I am not really in the best position to say and nor can I judge your view as I do nto know you at all.
Quoting Punshhh
Much worse compared to when exactly? What is the metric? I am not being snarky at all here, just want to know on what kind of information you are basing this on.
I know there is a going to be a substantial declin ein living standards in the UK (and already has been) over the coming decades and that this will undoubtedly play into the hands of populists, so I am likely to take your perspective seriously. I have friends and family there who say things have generally gotten worse in many areas of life; financially, socially and politically.
What I’m referring to here is a the rise of Reform, to the point where they are regularly polling above 20% in the polls, in the lead above the other party’s throughout 2025. Nigel Farage is spreading populist fuelled anti immigration hate. This can be seen clearly in the media, when his party won control of a council in the north last year, he gave a speech which was almost word for word like a Trump speech. In which he said things like all DEI (diversity, equality and inclusion) officers and case workers will be sacked immediately (there weren’t any). Budgets would be slashed across all departments etc etc. He often cites antifa an anti fascist left wing group as taking over the country (it doesn’t exist).
This is another incarnation of the British National party (BNP) or the National Front. Which has become mainstream through the spread of miss-information on social media, gaslighting millions with their lies.
I don’t know if it’s worse than in the Enoch Powell rivers of blood speech era. As I was young and wasn’t exposed to it at the time.The hatred is palpable at the moment, recently thousands of St George’s flags were secretly erected on lampposts in most towns and villages around the country overnight. Roundabouts painted red white and blue. And aggressive rows and abuse reported when people would take down the flags, or put up other ones in protest.
This alongside a narrative of accusing people of what they themselves (the populists) are doing. Such as shouting that their freedom of speech is being restricted, while demanding the people who push back against their hatred and racism be silenced, or branded as unpatriotic. While wearing a St George’s flag and shouting that it is them who are patriotic, while in the next breath shouting Tommy Robinson (this is a caricature, but is reflective of what is going on).
The Daily Mail and the Telegraph are pushing all this hatred and lies. The BBC news is dumbed down and doesn’t give any pushback and the people believing the lies are taking their news from social media anyway.
So it’s the same pattern as in the past, of the periodic swing from political correctness, to the push back from the BNP and predjudice, which would then swing back again and so on. But this time the swing is bigger and there’s a chance that the racists will get into power.
Yes, the cost of living crisis is starting to hit a lot of people now.
Is that the "premise being pushed"? Aren't both sides being argued for in this thread?
Yes, I suppose so, but isn’t one side just saying nothing has changed and the other side insisting things have changed.
Hi Flannel. Mine was a subpar response to your OP. I couldn't find my own example via Google either, for one thing, but mostly, having been cancelled over a free speech issue, I just let myself get irritable. Sorry.
Today, I have Christmas cheer. Two links to evidence, more available if you'd like.
Greg Lukianoff is American, but to my mind is the best critic of free speech restrictions in the English-speaking world.
https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/yes-the-uk-really-is-that-bad-for
An example of a specific case: parents arrested for disagreements about their school:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/11/17/the-borehamwood-whatsapp-farce-shames-the-speech-police/
To re-articulate a point, there is evidence of threats to free speech everywhere, including this thread. People do not know the extent of the problem, which is a problem. This is not a partisan issue, and both sides are terrible, although, generally, the right took the playbook from the left, who started this crap game earlier.
One of the arguments Chomsky and others make is that we ought to defend free speech so that our opponents can’t claim it, and use that persecution as publicity. Rather, you should win the argument.
The Nazis were routinely censored. Hitler himself brought up the fact of this censorship in his debates and used it as justification to censor others. The one time censorship ought to have worked, it didn’t.
Should we have the freedom to insight people into violence, or racial prejudice?
Should our freedom of speech extend to being able to tell people to kick vulnerable people in the balls, when they need to use the lavatory, on a public platform.
Also there is the issue, when this extends into politics of populists exploiting the duty of impartiality on media broadcasters. Farage is a skilled operator in this regard, he will get his followers to spread a malicious rumour across social media, for example two tier policing. Eventually it will become widespread enough that media broadcasters will report on it. Then Farage will be invited onto TV to discuss it. He will misrepresent facts around the issue and when challenged, say I’m just asking questions, questions which the people are asking. On the assumption that he’s a man of the people, speaking for them. Then the next day newspapers lead by the Daily Mail will splash their front pages with disinformation about two tier policing. Papers funded by dark money, with shady interests around smearing the government (always left wing, or socialist, never on the right). For the purpose of installing Farage into government so the business interests can extract wealth from the population, spread corruption and rule by divide and rule principles.
Well, I don’t believe incitement is a real thing, so the answer for me is yes. However, if incitement was possible, you could just as easily incite them to peace and love, incite them to change their minds, incite them to join your side. So why don’t you just do that instead of violating everyone’s rights and shrinking the margins of everyone’s existence?
That’s because you don’t have one.
If incitement is a real thing not all incitement is equal. If incitement is real then certain things would seem easier to incite than others, no? Someone who is in a highly emotional state of anger who is also full of hatred towards someone or something then it is easier to incite them to violence towards it. That is, if we are supposing its possible to incite at all then I think you also have to suppose not all incitement is equal in the effort required.
I dont see a problem with that, since its easily observed in instances of what people call “incitement”. A soldier is much more easily incited to violence than a pacifist monk and so on.
So to answer your question about inciting people to peace rather than conflict, it is because people in a frenzy or charged environment like a protest are easier to incite to violence than to peace.
At least thats the answer if we presuppose incitement is possible.
Thats not what incitement means.
Ah, I see.
One time, eh?
I think there's far more examples of "censorship" actually working and it being positive that the actions worked, even if freedom of speech is extremely important to a functioning democracy. Let's start from things like the ideological teachings and the propaganda of Al Qaeda and ISIS that aren't permitted to be freely distributed due to "freedom of speech" laws anymore. In the UK earlier their message could be openly published and publicly preached. Not anymore.
Now you may have your ideological views and believe that incitement isn't real, then start from the writings of those above mentioned terrorists and their texts where they incite people to kill all Americans, including civilians, being the correct thing to do. Perhaps that shows you better what incitement is than the historical and present example of incitement against the Jews.
There does exist actual hate speech, not just what the woke consider to be hate speech or the term just used as a rhetorical tool to denounce someone.
One might argue that it isn't censorship, but that is quite hypocritical.
Brilliant. Now we don’t know who is espousing that message and are blind to the content of that message. After all, the aim of all censorship is ignorance.
Oh, you get it so wrong. Prior the terrorist attacks, the UK police didn't care what was preached in various mosques or what kind of leaflets were distributed. When some people noted just what kind of hate speech was distributed, the answer given back to them was that there's "freedom of speech". Now it's different.
Attempt to distribute ISIS material and you will likely notice that even the Canadian security apparatus will take a notice of what you are doing, nos.
When nothing has happened there's actually indifference, then people and politicians hail things like freedom of speech. Yet once something bad happens, the same politicians are the first to brush aside "freedom of speech" issues in an instant. When the discourse changes to fighting terrorism, then all those rights seem to go out of the window. Populists like Trump and his cohorts are the perfect example, but usually even with the conventional American politicians this was obvious.
In fact, it takes really strong institutions in a society to sustain a justice state and things like freedom of speech, when a society is faced with a traumatic terrorist attack or something similar. Too people many cry for revenge and for them "following the laws" is too lax and just shows the failure of the state. Worst thing is if politicians are eager to give this crowd the blood what they cry for and disregard the law when doing it.
Prior to the terror attacks in Australia they did care what people said. In fact, earlier the same year they strengthened certain hate crime laws, mainly their incitement laws.
https://humanrights.gov.au/about-us/news/explainer-new-national-and-nsw-hate-crime-laws
Of course, most if not all ISIS propaganda is already banned there.
Do you believe the terror attacks there would not have occurred had they stronger censorship laws?
Guess who else bans speech they do not like. ISIS.
I found the 'racist man in bedroom' free-speech story,
https://jonathanturley.org/2021/05/26/toxic-ideology-english-neo-nazi-given-four-years-for-his-extremist-views/
Turley is an American lawyer and key free-speech advocate. Another by him on Great Britain's free speech crisis.
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/11/22/great-britain-cracks-down-on-non-crime-hate-speech-including-playground-taunts/
“Non-crime hate” investigations are meant to maintain a constant sense of oversight and monitoring of speech, even with our children.
Chilling.
Definitely an interesting case. He wasn't imprisoned just for being generally racist, it seems. It was for "possessing materials which could be of use in preparing terrorist acts." Never heard of a crime worded quite like that before.
No.
The response to terrorism from small cabals and individuals who are fighting for some messianic lunacy is very difficult. There's no one silver bullet. Let's just remember how small the cabal was that formed the "Al Qaeda" in September 2001. Yet an excessive response that undermines the democratic institutions themselves is counterproductive. Many terrorist organization actually intend to act this way: they attack the government in order for the government to "show it's real ugly faces", which then will create the actual revolution. The Red Army Fraction of West Germany was a case example of this, it's members were totally convinced that the West Germany government was actually the Third Reich in disguise and from their actions the true "Red Army" would emerge.
Not to treat a tiny group of criminals as criminals, but as an enemy in a war basically gives the terrorists credibility and undermines the institutions in a justice state. Just like Trump inventing that drug smugglers are "narcoterrorists".
ISIS is direct result from US actions in Iraq and has basically nothing to do with censorship laws. Yet do I consider that ISIS propaganda ought to be banned? Yes. Democracies have to defend themselves from those who do want to overthrow it's institutions. Is it a complicated issue? Sure.
Quoting NOS4A2
For extremists "freedom of speach" has always been only a vehicle to get their message spread and something that afterwards can be done away with as it poses a threat to them.
I see a lot of tortured, hypothetical reasoning in 'woke' argumentation, but I think the judge (Lodder) is pretty clear. Per Turley,
"Lodder makes clear that it is harboring these views, not disseminating them or taking action that is the crime"
It's worth clicking through on Turley's links - he has a lot of specific examples of UK censorship that are worrisome.
did you not read the very next quote?
Of course I did, I sent it to you, after searching through his 2025 in review post for the article I read previously. I read nearly everything Turley posts to Substack, and read his essential book on the subject of free speech, which I recommend.
You are quoting the judge's tortured logic. I am quoting Turley, the author of the piece. His analysis is what matters, in that my intent was sharing with you his analysis. I assumed that when one shares an opinion piece that this is the obvious intent.
To summarize said logic, the paraphenalia is potentially harmful in the hands of someone who poses an imminent risk, which Brooks did not. To be fair, this detail is confirmed in his links, not the article I sent you. But the police did not consider Brooks a risk. If I recall correctly, he has limited mobility and is essentially a shut in.
In your OP, you requested examples, but you seem determined to discount the ones I am sharing, by leading figures in the field, in Turley and Lukianoff. When Turley rattles off a 'here, and here, and here' list of links, click on them. Each one is an equally disquieting example. Perhaps my point is best understood as an accumulation of incriminating anecdotes.
Someone could likely find a way to disqualify each, individually. Taken as a whole, the body of evidence suggests a pattern of clear free speech violations by the government. In particular when combined with the analysis of macro trends, for example, the hundreds of thousands of non-crime hate incidents.
Turley again:
"The prosecution erases any clear line between criminal conduct and criminal thoughts. Brock gathered these materials and videos from public and legal sources. It was his collection — and clear agreement with the underlying ideologies — that led to his prosecution. The same material might be permitted for someone who collected such material for research or historical interest".
I think the fact that people do not see this as a problem is the problem. You seem to value a sort of preventing hypothetical risk, regardless of how minimal. Per the law, to paraphrase Turley, ideas are not dangerous in themselves, and words are not violence. I guess we disagree on first principles.
That's literally all that's happening here. It's not just his views, it's his views in combination with the terroristic methods he's researching.
If he just had a blog saying "I hate jews", fine, who cares? Plenty of people hate jews, we can get over it. But if he's obsessed with hating jews AND intensely researching how to blow up a synagogue, there's a fucking problem.
You can be hung with a rope. But you might not see several threads slowly coming together.
This is hte basis for plenty of legal argumentation. That people do not apply this to society for a bit of forethought is baffling.
Or then there are people that hide from their own citizens and the rest of the world when people researching deadly viruses simply fuck up and the virus leaks out by accident and seven million die around the world. :wink:
Or an issue around pedophilia and abuse of women being facilitated by AI?
I missed that entire exchange a while back, but agreed. Embarrassing. I was thinking about doing a thread about this, and it’s a good example: “if anything contradicts me, it’s biased.”
So my citations are complete bullshit? YOU are to blame somehow: you don’t read carefully enough, you misunderstood, you’re biased, you’re a bad “interlocutor.” Basically, you’re doing something wrong, not me.
It’s not that common, and not as blatantly obvious as in this example, but it’s common enough to warrant a little reflection.
I thought the issue about Grok should be included here because it has been treated as a free speech issue in the press. It was the lead story in the U.K. yesterday, after Iran.
I’m not sure what to think about that, but I do think it’s a publication issue. Because People are using Grok to alter images with skinny bikinis on X, which are immediately posted on a public forum. Meaning embarrassing pictures of people which are non consensual are being published. This seems to fall foul of the U.K. online safety act.
Interestingly the two main political party’s are in agreement that it should be stopped. While only Elon Musk and Nigel Farage are claiming censureship, or a free speech issue.
I think if you, in the privacy of your own technological world, create AI images of someone public you have a crush on for sexual gratification, as long as that never leaves your technological bubble, I don't see the harm. But making anything of this kind public immediate violates several things that we don't even need to look at digital communications legislation for, i think.
But this shines a light on what Musk and Farage are doing. They are claiming it is censorship, a free speech issue. So they are claiming that free speech includes the right to publish embarrassing, or defaming images of anyone on public forums, without their consent.
This looks like an overreach of the free speech narrative, exposing it as a false populist narrative, or culture war.
I think Musk, at least, is clumsily trying to point out the amorphous nature (and this is somewhat corroborated by the history of common law on the matter) of 'defamation' and the various ways that can be claimed. He's just both autistic and has a huge ego so it's difficult to parse anything that specific publicly.
This is an interesting angle, maybe it doesn’t matter if the image is of the actual body of the person in the photo. As long as it is believable, or the public can be persuaded that it is. Also there is that visceral reaction people have to indecent, or explicit material. This can increase the impact and where it is used maliciously to blackmail, or abuse a vulnerable person, it is a serious issue.
There have been reports in the U.K. of a rapid increase in the amount of pedophilia related material. Where the line between real images and AI generated images is becoming blurred. I heard reports that the photo’s of Renee Good were micro bikinied and spread in social media within hours of her murder last week.
Then there are people in the public eye being depicted with bruising, smeared in blood, or with tattoos. Where defamation may be involved.
It looks like Musk backed down yesterday and is taking down the facility. As there were indications of government action against it in most European countries.
This is essentially hte basis (and sometimes goes awry) for defamation proceedings in most jurisdictions - truly held belief is one of hte only get-out-of-it cards and that wont be available here, so you're probbaly right that this would cover the same sorts of behaviours in regard to currenty generative AI.
Quoting Punshhh
Yep, 100%
Quoting Punshhh
Yeah, this gets interesting (although, it's morbid and tragic for some - I don't mean to be entirely detached). I don't necessarily think that Goode situation is something worthy of legal ramification, but I do think, Like with many other types of images, the family should have the right to at least enforce take-down orders even if actual criminal prosecution isn't really on the cards.
The latter is definitely an issue - although I, and I presume many on this forum, can either spot, or intuit through context, a fake image in most cases. It seems a bit odd to cater to the less-discerning in that sense - but that's because I'm not in that group and I know many friends who've fallen for these things. So i think your caution is totally warranted.
People do not act out on the freedoms they have because people do not really want to take responsibility for their actions.
If you believe your statement you should go to speakers corner perhaps and voice this concern and see what happens?
The free speech issue is about punitive laws, not about anyones actual ability to speak or act. That people face prison time for jokes or because some sucktit decides it offends them should concern us all.
Also, suppressing speech doesn't address the actual problem. Banning language (say some racist term or phrase) doesnt stop the views from being held it just pushes the folks who hold those views into the shadows. I prefer my racists, especially violent ones, right out in the open where I can see them.
Ok
Secondly, you are publishing a cartoon and social media is a form of publishing.
Part of the problem with this debate is the difference between speech which is published and which isn’t published. If it is published there are greater restrictions, because it can potentially reach large numbers of people and be used by groups to incite further hatred etc.
So this whole issue is about conflating personal freedom of speech and published free speech. And the sheeple who follow the populists either propagate the conflation, or don’t understand it.
If you want to see a racist out in the open, just watch Farage on the BBC and not being challenged by the interviewers.
Globalists apparently express such polarity when the intersection and interests of national and regional democracy and tribal values don't facilitate the ease of their projects towards ideologies and abstract social utopia.
I wouldn't say that tribal values have to be racist. And being against racism isn't in my view an abstract social utopia.
Im not concerned about that distinction Im afraid, I don’t care whether its published or not. For me the issue is about arbitration, who gets to decide what I or anyone else is allowed to say. I certainly do not trust the government or some legion of self righteous twats to decide. Freedom of speech is about protecting your other rights, throughout history oppression always comes for speech first. The most effective way to combat bad or dangerous ideas is with good ideas, correcting ignorance with discussion. Suppressing it only shoves it under the surface like a festering cancer until one day a bunch of assholes in white hoods show up at someone's door. M
You want to learn how to actually combat racism? Google Daryl Davies. Single handedly done more to combat racism than all the speech control efforts combined.
Are you not seeing that this is the exact problem? "See what happens" when you use your right to speak 'freely'? It's hard to understand what could support such an attitude, unless I've misunderstood.
True. But in-group bias is a Human standard. Racism is a somewhat direct consequence of tribal values. In modern times, we've had the privilege to construct tribes of multiple ethnicities. It wasn't so in the past.
I also think it's largely a cultural resistance, not an ethnic/racial one. But that will always mask actual racism. Quoting DingoJones
Yep. Something the current strand of "Trump's a fascist' don't seem to understand, as compared to the swathes of undemocratic, 'liberal' protesters preventing many from speaking, even those on their own side.
Racism is extremely illogical and basically is a result of bigotry, hubris of oneself and shows the lack of needed social cohesion in a society. So when the current American-style racism is marketed in Europe, it seems very odd at first, because the classic "Untermenschen" of the Nazis are White Europeans also, starting from the Poles and Russians.
Yet "Tribalism" shouldn't be so negative as we use it now. Things that tie strangers together are actually needed in any society. Just like if religion gives us fundamentalism, we shouldn't forget all the positive aspects that people get from religion and their faith.
I can't conceive of what you're talking about. The current claims about any kind of widespread racism in the US seem, factually, ridiculous. The tenuous connection you're making between Nazism and US policy is unserious, sorry to say. I can't really engage it.
Quoting ssu
I disagree, but understand what you're saying - we should be able to extract them, not have to prop up the rest on their behalf. The aspects of tribalism that I think are good seem to me only 'good' in a naiive analysis. They necessarily lead to the types of out-group negativity which reduces social cohesion when taken beyond their immediate and tangible effect of, lets say easing the overall burden of children care and rearing. But that also means necessarily restricting children to certain social, political and moral precepts. That seems to be why places like the Mid East are how they are.
I think suggesting there's anything remotely close to this anywhere in the USA is tantamount to a lie. I understand we're probably going to have just wave and walk on by on this one, but the premise being that the US "is a racist country" is risible to me.
I think you understood me incorrectly as this has nothing to do with US policy.
In "American racism" you have Caucasians, whites. In European racism you make difference with West-Europeans (Germans etc) and with Slavs for example. Well, Russians and Poles, Czechs etc. are white in the US. This just to show how illogical racism is.
And racism is something that every country has, btw. There's ample amounts of those here too.
So are you saying everyone should have the freedom to publish anything they would say in private without any consequence?
Without legal consequences for sure, and not the consequences of a self righteous mob calling for your head to get fired etc
You’ll be demanding we leave the ECHR next, presumably?
Good point. I should make a few exceptions for those things. I had in mind opinions but you’re right libel and incitement laws are important. Those aren’t just opinions, they are also attack vectors. Its a fairly clear distinction to me so I failed to consider them, thanks.
"publication" is an amorphous concept. Standing in the town square, giving everyone around you a taste of your nonsense is protected (good). A badly worded joke on social media is not (bad). Publication usually requires a benchmark of dissemination to reach an actionable level. Usually, a non-public person is not going ot reach that. So the Online Safety Act (Harmful Digital Communications Act here in NZ - cant remember the analogous in the US) steps in to capture those who don't actually meet any establish criteria for causing harm. The multitudes of detentions along these lines are chilling. And are wrong, in principle imo. Anyway.. The initial delineation..
That's a serious problem (to me), and while Dingo is quite stepping on the right tiles here, that remains within your analysis, to be addressed. The ECHR does have problems. But that's an entirely different conversation and suggesting that's Dingo's next step is not good faith.
Definitely misunderstood. Sorry mate. I agree.
What now? You suspect Im not acting on good faith?
No worries.
This is the issue which keeps coming up in this thread. That the row over free speech takes situations where incitement and racial prejudice are occurring in a public arena insisting that it is a free speech issue. It isn’t, it’s a public order issue.
Where it occurs in private, not in a public arena it is allowed (within reason) and there are no restrictions on what you can say. But in a public space, it can be amplified by group activity and bad actors can use it to stir up a crowd.
This can clearly be seen in relation to the Southport riots (Farage riots) last year. Where incendiary comments and ideology were used to stir up mass rioting across the country. Farage and his cronies had started spreading the idea of two tier policing over the preceding months. Causing a large cohort of Reform Party followers to think that the police were victimising (white) people expressing racially controversial views, while allowing people of ethnic minorities free rein to say whatever they liked. This just required a trigger to set of mass rioting.
And yet, no one challenges Farage about this in the media and no charges have been brought. The only convictions were for criminal damage and assault for some of the rioters.
Yes, I’m being a bit of an attack dog here, I’ll try and tone it down a bit.
I think he was suggesting I was acting in bad faith, not you.
Isn't it the case that the one, Libel, is clear cut, but the other, incitement, is highly politicised with indoctrination of controlling word and term codification even to the extent of censoring metaphor and language rallying to a cause through poetic speech evoking valiant determination and such like?
Yes, incitement is a bit murky. Any laws surrounding it should be carefully considered.
As they are by the authorities. Unfortunately the tabloid press and the populists don’t operate to the same high standards.
You snuck racial prejudice in there. That isnt incitement. By Incitement I mean direct calls to violence. Expressing opinions other than that, no matter how much I disagree or am disgusted by, is free speech.
Quoting Punshhh
Thats the responsibility of the bad actors and the crowd. As long as there is not a direct call to violence its free speech and I want it protected.
Ah, I see what he meant now.
Incitement is just as easily used as an excuse that shut down free speech when it is wielded as a weapon by press and authorities. Thats why its tricky with incitement, it becomes a tool of politics and culture wars. Bad actors in the press and in positions of authority are exactly the reason free speech is so so so important. Free speech protects all other rights and authoritarians, dictators etc always come for language and speech first.
Quite, so it’s not applicable in the case of the U.K. then.
And with regard to the press, in the U.K. the press is shouting the loudest about protecting free speech. Unless, by the way it’s the kind of free speech they don’t like.
The UK is fucked on free speech. Its insane so many refuse to even admit there is a problem, but humans are gonna human what can you do?
It isn’t, it’s a culture war fabrication whipped up by the tabloid media and populists.
Riots are the “public order” issue. Peoples feelings do not justify violence. Public order is maintained through laws other than free speech laws, like no rioting and violence and looting.
And the bovine beast that chews the straw once, chews it for a second time.
And the riots were incited through social media groups and the tabloid press. Now what are the police supposed to do about that? Just sit back and let the mob just roam around on the streets?
In the U.K. the authorities seem powerless when the ring leaders are politicians, or Media moguls. Either there aren’t the requisite powers in place, or they won’t go near them for fear of a backlash and greater public disorder.
It is commonplace for the authorities to label an issue political and then just leave it alone taking no action. So rather than the authorities clamping down, or repressing free speech. The opposite is happening. Political free speech is left alone, even when it is inciting a breakdown in public order, or crossing a line into racial prejudice. Leaving the authorities only able to deal with offenders when they commit criminal offences.
This is where the breakdown is happening. So infact free speech is alive and well in the U.K. and now includes incitement, where it is labelled political and racism because it’s alright for people to be racist if they have [I]legitimate concerns[/I] about immigration. Infact it seems to be a greater offence in the media space for someone to accuse someone of being racist, than to actually be racist.
So…no problem to see here.
That’s not what I’m saying, I’m saying it isn’t about free speech, but rather about public order and the authorities grappling with the recent developments in social media. While trying not to get drawn into political rows.
So…no problem with free speech to see here.
I answered that earlier in the thread;
If you can give an example of speech which is becoming more restricted I’d be interested to know. Then we would have something to debate.
Quoting DingoJones
This, for instance, isn't the strongest thing to bring up as its very, very context-dependent and perhaps the only example of a similar approach working en masse (even then, Daryl's output isn't not 'masses'. KKK were mostly thwarted financially).
It wasn't an attack.
Didnt mean to be combative, but I see now the opening tone of that text could be taken that way. Apologies.
I compared Davies method to free speech controls, not all methods. I will take your word for it that financial methods have worked best. My point was that speech control isnt an effective method.
You would call them hate speech Id imagine, hate speech is free speech to me though so short if direct incitement or libel I think it should be protected. Certainly no one should be going to jail or paying a fine for teaching their girlfriends pug to Nazi salute, if you want an example.
When it comes to publishing the law is more strict because the extent of exposure could increase exponentially and is unpredictable.
You realise that's the benchmark right? Someone claimed to be upset by something you said? If the state can intervene in such circumstances, you do not have free speech. Plain and simple.
As you’ve stated already yes. I just dont buy the distinction as I’ve already stated. The same argument was used for violence in video games or movies, even comic books. It wasnt convincing then either.
“May” be “risk” of incitement or abuse (huh?) is flimsy and weak as a basis for authoritarian control.
Cool, that’s your prerogative. I didn’t see an issue particularly when I first took to social media. But then I kept hearing stories of posters being sued for defamation. Then I realised that posting on social media is legally a form of publishing. To publish speech is to amplify it, meaning that large numbers of people will hear it. This makes it a special kind of free speech, the freedom to communicate what you have to say to large numbers of people. It’s like walking around in a crowd of people with a loud haler shouting everything you’re thinking, so that everyone there has to hear it.
Now we are free to say anything we want to our friends and our family, even a stranger. There are no laws against it. This is free speech. But should we also be free to shout it through a loud haler in a crowded place? Is this a necessary part of free speech? Or should free speech include the freedom to publish in a paper, or broadcast on the TV anything I want to say, whenever I like?
Well the police have a role to play in society, they are experts at their job and that job includes maintaining public order, amongst many other things.
Its not like that at all, no one is forcing people to read and listen to published material so your analogy fails.
Quoting Punshhh
Some things are worth authoritarian control, like preventing murder or rape and aforementioned incitement (direct incitement) or libel. Not opinions, jokes or pugs doing the nazi salute (yes, even to a wide audience) are not. Indeed the police have more important things to do, such as preventing murder or rape.
Yes and the police will do their job. I would think that the police would only look into it after a specific public order issue has been brought to their attention.
I agree that some content on social media is harmless when it reaches a wider audience. But there is a spectrum of material and there is a clear phenomena of populists, or bad actors, for whatever reason exploiting the process. This is also on the police’s radar.
There is also a pattern emerging in these debates. It only seems to be issues given publicity by the right wing press, or populists groups where there is a free speech concern. When the speech doesn’t not fit these agendas, it is of no concern. Indeed it is often the same people who might start saying this other speech should be restricted. It’s odd that, isn’t it?
Publication benchmarks tend to only be met by public figures. If not many people see your comment, this owuldn't apply. Which is likely why there haven't been more prosecutions.
In either case though (lets assume that every case is a publication issue) that is still clearly wrong in a democratic, adult society. Particularly one where, increasingly, use of social media is akin to talking shit with at the pub. Its a bit of a category error to capture social media posts by non-public figures with that i think (but this is just my opinion).
Im saying I don’t care. I do not recognize/accept your exclusion of published material as separate from free speech. Free speech isnt about how many people are reached. I make no distinction between public or private free speech on this matter.
Quoting Punshhh
As Ive said, incitement and libel. The “spectrum of material” has to be directly and clearly one of those otherwise my stance is it should not be restricted.
Certainly not jokes and certainly not opinion, whatever they may be.
Yes, agreed. There probably does need to be a distinction made between the two.
Well ideally I would agree with you here. But there are differences in the effects of the speech on the public. So there is a difference. Also, I am a cartoonist in my spare time, I know there are no-go areas, even if I am only disseminating them to close friends, or family. But I don’t feel my freedom of speech to be restricted. I know there are taboo words, or opinions and there always have been. There is no absolute free speech within a society. Also within all the people I know, I haven’t seen any evidence of anyone’s free speech being restricted (other than in the case of long established taboo areas) and no one has ever told me, their free speech is being restricted.
The use of explicit material, such as revenge porn, grooming of minors and online fraud which also interest the police.
There is also gaslighting, manipulation of the Overton window and the manipulation of elections. The corruption of politics. Which can occur. Areas which are of no interest to the police, at this time.
Going back to the cartoons, there is a famous cartoonist I follow on X, who inadvertently included an anti-Semitic trope in a cartoon a couple of years ago. He was chastised in the media, had to give serious apologies and nearly lost his job for a national newspaper. And yet, nothing illegal was done and the police would not have any interest in it. I can give many more examples like this. None of them cases where censorship was enacted by the authorities. But where there is often some kind of chastisement by society. As there has been in one form or another throughout history.
So I’m still not seeing these new restrictions of the freedom of speech. Care to give an example?
Just repetition at this point.
From Chapter 1:
"Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself."
From Chapter 4:
"The likings and dislikings of society, or of some powerful portion of it, are thus the main thing which has practically determined the rules laid down for general observance, under the penalties of law or opinion. And in general, those who have been in advance of society in thought and feeling have left this condition of things unassailed in principle, however they may have come into conflict with it in some of its details... In our age, from the highest class of society down to the lowest, everyone lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship. Not only in what concerns others, but in what concerns only themselves, the individual, or the family, do not ask themselves—what do I prefer? or, what would suit my character and disposition? but—what is suitable to my position? what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary circumstances?
So its right to make a point about censorship, in the modern sense, being somewhat rare (although, I imagine many cases are unjustified beyond discomfort grounds anyway) but I think the above is illustrative of what's really wrong.
People shouldn't be interfering with other's beliefs in these ways, and we have literal roaming gangs of enforcers of political opinions, whether Islamic or Democratic (I simply don't know of any on the right at this time - if i'm ignorant, i'm ignorant).
The inarguable effect of social opinion precluding women from dobbing in their abusers is a prime example we may not want to lose sight of in these discussions.
The epistemic injustice meted out in yesteryear appears to have sort of turned on it's head, rather than diminished appreciably. Maybe this is just the nature of humans in large groups.
I think the authorities are struggling to adapt to this and politics is in turmoil because of the way it can be manipulated.
Yes, there is some of this going on in the U.K. There are two main groups at the moment. The Islamic, anti-Jewish crowd and the far right anti-immigration crowd. (There are a handful of smaller groups, but they don’t really cut through like the main two) The Islamic crowd has been stimulated into action due to the genocide going on in Palestine and the fact that Western governments seem to be endorsing it and supplying the offender with weapons. The far right group has been mobilised by Nigel Farage over the issue of illegal immigration, which has amalgamated with the traditional right wing groups such as the BNP and the Tommy Robinson crowd.
However, I don’t see any censorship going on here. Rather a public order issue due to large and regular protests and marches. Along with some extremely violent terrorist attacks, from both sides. The tabloid media has been using this to stir up a range of angry opinions including on immigration and the idea of free speech being under attack and two tier policing. Both which may be happening in a very small number of notable cases, which are blown up into national issues by wall to wall coverage in the media.
Definitely - I think its partially baked into how information travels though, right. Unless you're there, in the moment, people are going to draw different conclusions to any kind of reportage - apparently, even video evidence (I can restrict, to keep us relatively neutral, this, to condemning anyone saying Alex Pretti was in any way responsible for his own shooting. That's insane).
Quoting Punshhh
Unfortunately, I think this formulation is probably evidence of the type of issues we're talking about (but obviously, I would - we have different views haha so I'm also doing it - to be sure). I'm not talking about protest groups - but roaming enforcers of Sharia in that case (and this well before Oct 7), and in the other, roaming groups of unhinged leftists assaulting and harassing random passersby(unfortunately, I have only instagram videos for this. If you'd like those links, I'll DM you) to agree to certain tenents like "fuck ICE" or whatever (this is restricted to current milieu, but it happens across many cultural 'events' as such in the last 20 years or so - most notably COVID - again, just to clarify, I am unaware of any groups on the right doing this sort of thing. Protesting, sure, but not this kind of genuinely fascist type of behaviour and that will speak to what's been available to me, If I have missed it).
That said, I'm not totally dismissing that formulation about the protest groups - but i think you're being charitable to one, and uncharitable to the other. As, likely, i would come across if I had carried out the same exercise. Just goes to the bolded above, I think. There is also, though, hte issue of people being genuinely uninterested or maybe unwilling to look at contrary evidence. For example, my position on the ICE/anti-ICE thing is that I see absolutely insanity on both ends of the spectrum: Some of the responses to Pretti's obvious murder have been absolutely baffling. But in the same vein, there are people defending all-out assault on ICE agents and military-style organizing of essentially militia groups to disrupt Federal law enforcement, and harass/assault random members of hte public.
Something prior to either of these positions need be the stopping point, or we can't talk to each other.
If we understood each other's goals to be so totally different as to warrant desisting from conversation, that would be bizarre but at least mutual. Currently, there's no mutuality even of the facts admitted. And yeah, I understand its easy to say "yes, one side is allergic to facts" but that would be to betray the issue, imo.
Regarding “unhinged leftists”, there is no such thing, it’s possible there are a handful in a population of 65 million, but it really doesn’t exist (Unless you are referring to climate protesters).
Regarding extreme right wing violence, there is a fare amount, it just doesn’t make the news so much these days. Remember a member of parliament (Joe Cox) was murdered by them in 2016.
Yes, I know, it’s a highly charged issue.
The problem with this is that I've seen several first-hand videos (i.e the person is in the situation themselves while filming, not following up some other person's claim) of Islamic groups literally roaming streets and accosting people for their garb, what they're eating, how their women are presented and behaving etc.. across the UK (so, no-go might be a bit far, but these videos generally result in criminal assaults from the groups trying to enforce Sharia). Of course you wont get some official statement confirming this - they, self-admittedly - ignored at least two long-term rape gangs in the UK for risk of "sounding racist". It cannot be taken at face value - but then, I can't use the videos i've seen as evidence of some widespread issue.
My point is that we need to be able to actually hear each on these instead of just making blanket claims like "there are no.." or "All x are..." etc.. I'm not someone who thinks "Immigrants are taking our jobs". But I do tend to see videos and take them for what they actually are, in the video, as I'm watching it. This cuts both ways. I also see plenty of horrific behaviour on the part of so-called "progressive" thinkers and protestors that are criminal, immoral and unacceptable. I don't then paint all progressive protesters are jobless louts.
Quoting Punshhh
We live in different worlds and I do not think you're adequately paying attention to the neutral point i'm making: You have no seen evidence to convince you of this. That is fine. I have slews of evidence of unhinged leftists carrying out assaults, property damage and behaviours that genuinely appear to be mental illness let loose. If you want to see it, I can give it to you.
If you are unwilling, that would confirm the hypothesis I've put forward:
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting Punshhh
I would be more than happy to see the evidence for this. I currently am not aware of anything similar to what I'm talking about.
Regarding Joe Cox, an Islamic Extremist killed David Ames much more recently. It doesn't really matter to the point. We're not arguing facts here, we're talking about how people are so intensely unwillingly to see examples of their side being assholes.
The problem with this is that it is difficult to determine what is going on in videos, or what that is saying about a community. There are a lot of videos of dubious origin circulating on social media and I mean a lot. I follow accounts on X where such videos are posted continuously day and night. Backed up by armies of followers with a political disposition to the right. Insisting all sorts of things. Usually twisting truths and spreading disinformation, hate and prejudice. Also a lot of these people are making a living posting content which their followers want to see. Giving them an incentive to continue and grow their base. So I don’t see any point going down the route of viewing this material and coming to views or opinions about real places and communities.
I follow current affairs closely in the U.K. and have a wide range of sources through which what you describe would show up and I’m not seeing it. There are always some extreme, or unusual events going on somewhere in a large and diverse population and when something that fits the bill becomes known by the above crowd, it is picked up on a broadcast far and wide on their platforms. And before you know it Farage is talking about it on the BBC, unchallenged.
Now when I look to the left of the political spectrum, the groups are far fewer in number and are usually bickering on about how Jeremy Corbyn was smeared by the establishment. Or fighting amongst themselves.
Can you define an unhinged leftist and describe the sort of behaviour you’re describing. Or provide a link (I don’t want it on DM, it needs to be here, this is what the thread is about).
I’m not seeing a two sides situation here. Are you assuming I’m on the left side? Or that there is a left right thing going on in the community?
It's not. I think this is a way to avoid looking at the videos and go off a fairly vague, unactionable take on what's going on. Again, we're discussing exactly this right now - not the facts themselves. Presume those videos exist, and it seems odd that you would immediately try to move away from it instead of facing it, to me. Some good faith would go a long way on both sides.
Quoting Punshhh
I am very sorry to say - this is an explanation of your biases, and refusals. It is not a justification for such. You don't like the source, even though you're following them, so you wont view the material or come to views about it. That is strange, but it illustrates exactly why each side refuses the reality they are most likely living in.
Quoting Punshhh
Ok, that's fair as a step one**. If I were able to provide say thirty videos in different boroughs which were fairly obviously what they purported to be (let's be real - video tends to be what it is presented as because it is video, no description), I think you'd rationally need to change your view on the matter. But it seems you're not willing rather than not able. Can you maybe say something about that directly? Am i just getting that wrong from you?
Quoting Punshhh
In general, I can see and understand and accept this concern. But ... **You said posted day and night. I have a feeling you're maybe shying from the implications of that because, fair enough, the people posting them are either bigots or at least super stupid.
But If they're being posted day and night on these Twitter feeds, one assumes there are a lot of them and it is not some vanishingly small sliver of that population. I'm not even suggesting it isn't - I'm suggesting this is exactly the unhelpful approach causing the division and "misinformation" claims we constantly here - no one has the same information, let alone "mis" information (which has been shown to be a political term anyway, so take it with salt). Why not just accept the claim, investigate, take the evidence that comes and sort through it? This is roughly what I did over about 10 years to come to such an, i assume, middling place, based on the responses I get.
Quoting Punshhh
I think this may be a bit sanguine. I agree, they fight among themselves a lot and I agree named groups are probably less prevalent, although I have to assume there would be plenty the 'other side' would put under this somewhat undesirable label which you wouldn't - and vice verse. But I think its slightly self-serving to conclude this when you're not actively following up claims from the otherside. If there is some kind of a bias or cover up or whatever, you'll need to look deeper.
Quoting Punshhh
Well, no, it doesn't need to be here. Umpteen links from Instagram is not something I am prepared to slot into a thread on TRP and I have upwards of 50 links to these videos. I am happy to DM and contextualize the clips (e.g "There's a dickhead talking after 20 seconds in this one, ignore - just watch the clip itself")
I would describe anyone unhinged as someone who reacts emotionally, without rational reflection and in this specific area, I required a double-down before I'll use that label. The types of behaviours include:
Property damage;
Attacking random people based on how they look;
Fascistic neighbourhood check points;
Attacking law enforcement;
Refusing normal lawful commands (as opposed to super-situation specific ones which could be deemed inappropriate)
Attacking anyone who looks like law enforcement;
Defending violence/encouraging violence;
Blocking traffic;
Blocking/damaging businesses;
Traffic violations of other kinds;
Defending intrusions on privacy;
Disowning family or friends;
Doxxing;
Invading other's constitutionally respected spaces in order to non-peacefully protest;
Making claims like Nazi, rapist, pedophile, thief, murderer etc.. etc.. without any reasonable basis for doing so.
I would say the vast, vast majority of situations in which these unfold (in the climate of political/social unrest lets say) are monopolized by the left and are far, far, far more pernicious than what I certainly see, and propose to accept I don't see, on the right. They are more pernicious because there's an ecosystem in place to stop you knowing about it. That's not a conspiracy, it's just how algorithms work. Although, throwing in what seems to be unwillingness will make that worse.
Quoting Punshhh
I assume you are bent to the left. Everything you do and say says this to me. There's nothing moderate or right wing about anything I've seen you say. If that's wrong, sure.
This is clearly a left-right paradigm issue as best I can tell. The ecosystems which insulate us are essentially along party lines.