Divides over Free Speech and Free Press
December 1, 2015 10:26 AM   Subscribe

A new Pew survey looks at attitudes towards free speech from around the world. It explores how different nations think about free speech and government, the press, religion, minorities, the internet. Also in the report: attitudes towards democracy, religion, and gender. (SLP)
posted by doctornemo (56 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Hey, something good that the US actually comes in first on! People will rightly point out that what people say they support and what they actually support in practice are not the same but that's true everywhere and so a broad expression of support is still indicative.

One thing that I note is that there are big swaths of the globe where there is broad support for the proposition that "people can practice religion freely" but also virtually no support for the proposition that people have the right to say things offensive to your religion. From which I infer that when they say "people can practice religion freely" what they often mean is "people can practice MY religion freely".

I'm looking at you, Lebanon, with your 1% support! I'm not sure I've ever seen something with 1% support before. You could ask people if they support kicking puppies and it would get more than 1% support.
posted by Justinian at 10:36 AM on December 1, 2015 [10 favorites]


Also, Malaysia got a * (*question not asked in Malaysia) for whether people should be able to make statements that are sexually explicit. One assumes if they can't even ask the question the answer is gonna be most "no".
posted by Justinian at 10:37 AM on December 1, 2015


Was this the same survey that found 40% of Millennials were OK with limiting speech offensive to minorities?
posted by gottabefunky at 10:47 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Only 40%? Kind of surprised by that figure.
posted by entropicamericana at 10:49 AM on December 1, 2015


Hey, something good that the US actually comes in first on!

American praises American norms, news at 11. :)

Seriously though, I'm an American and I'm constantly embarrassed that the US allows hate speech under the 1st amendment. The US goes too far on free speech concerns--it is not an unalloyed good.
posted by TypographicalError at 11:03 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


The problem with barring hate speech is if we did, you know darn well that every racist, homophobic, misogynistic idiot would insist anything criticizing their beliefs is hate speech. It would be like You're Attacking My "Christian Values" argument on steroids.

The Framers were forming a country from colonies founded by religious wackos who had gone to war because they didn't want to pay their taxes and wanted the right to bear arms against people entrenching on their property and liberty while stealing the land and liberty of others. Maybe they weren't fully cognizant of it, but on some level the Founding Fathers knew the kind of assholes that would make up this country.
posted by bgal81 at 11:16 AM on December 1, 2015 [13 favorites]


Seriously though, I'm an American and I'm constantly embarrassed that the US allows hate speech under the 1st amendment.

Yeah, the mildest critiques of Christianity would certainly be construed as hate speech. Do you really think that hate speech laws would help the oppressed, or the oppressors?
posted by el io at 11:22 AM on December 1, 2015 [10 favorites]


Relevant: Thai printer replaces International New York Times article with blank space. [The Guardian]
The International New York Times has blamed its local Thai printer for removing a front-page article on the country’s moribund economy and leaving a blank space on the cover. Self-censorship is on the rise in the south-east Asian country which is ruled by a military junta. In September, the same paper’s printer stopped its publication over an article on the country’s ailing king. Tuesday’s story, headlined “Thai economy and spirits are sagging”, reported that Thai households are among the most indebted in Asia, robberies and property crimes have risen more than 60% this year, and the ruling generals are not eager to hand power back to politicians. It quoted a fruit and vegetable seller who said: “No one feels like smiling anymore”. A white space on the front page and page six carried the message: “The article in this space was removed by our printer in Thailand. The International New York Times and its editorial staff had no role in its removal.”
posted by Fizz at 11:42 AM on December 1, 2015


Do you really think that hate speech laws would help the oppressed, or the oppressors?

Considering the abysmal track record of free speech absolutism, I don't think your argument is as solid as you think.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:43 AM on December 1, 2015 [3 favorites]


We should acknowledge though, that in Soviet Canukistan, enforcing hate speech laws has dire costs, one counted in the lives of our comment section moderators.

More seriously, the dilemma the government-funded CBC faces over allowable speech is one of the reasons I'm not a free speech fundamentalist.
posted by bonehead at 11:51 AM on December 1, 2015 [3 favorites]


Canada's hate speech laws (1, 2); quick overview on limits; Wikipedia; one view on it. (I am pro anti hate.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 12:00 PM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


The Framers were forming a country from colonies founded by religious wackos who had gone to war because they didn't want to pay their taxes and wanted the right to bear arms against people entrenching on their property and liberty while stealing the land and liberty of others. Maybe they weren't fully cognizant of it, but on some level the Founding Fathers knew the kind of assholes that would make up this country.

I could not care less what the Founders thought, because:

1) They're dead,
2) They gave us a system of governance that allows us to answer these questions for ourselves, and
3) There's that whole issue of how their inability to let go of owning people made a mockery of the ideals they espoused.

But the real point is simple - Americans don't actually believe in free speech. Sure, we talk a good game about it. But how many times have you heard "well, nobody has the right to not be offended", or a call for comity when someone is heavily criticized for their words - a call that all too often is one sided? That's where the rubber meets the road, and it shows that we're big proponents of free speech, right up until the underclass starts wielding it. Then we're happy to beat it down societally, even claiming that we're defending free speech in doing so.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:13 PM on December 1, 2015 [5 favorites]


I'm not sure the cesspool known as online comments is what people are thinking of when they talk about freedom of speech. People being free to say hateful shit, doesn't mean the government has to host a forum allowing them to do so.

That's where the rubber meets the road, and it shows that we're big proponents of free speech, right up until the underclass starts wielding it. Then we're happy to beat it down societally, even claiming that we're defending free speech in doing so.

Leaving the delicious irony of this very discussion aside - who is "we"?
posted by bgal81 at 12:14 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Considering the abysmal track record of free speech absolutism, I don't think your argument is as solid as you think.

When do you consider the era of "free speech absolutism" in the U.S. to have begun, in order to establish the track record you are considering?

The passage of the Communist Control Law in 1954 criminalized support for the Communist Party, so I don't think you could call that a period of free speech absolutism.

In 1978 the Supreme Court ruled that a George Carlin routine on 7 dirty words couldn't be broadcast on U.S. radio, not something you'd expect under a regime of free speech absolutism.

The same station that last the Carlin case in the 70s decided it was to risky to broadcast Allen Ginsberg Howl in 2007, even though the work had been explicitly determined not to be obscene 50 years earlier.

Instead of free speech absolutism, the history of the United States has been one of selective government control of speech. An examination of whose speech was permitted and whose was sanctioned in any era doesn't make me sanguine about government control of speech, even with the best of intentions.

Any if you want to use the standard of "speech offensive to minorities" as the rubric for limiting free expression, don't forget that women slightly outnumber men in the U.S. population. Careful with any discussion of rape culture you plan to have; I don't doubt there's a man somewhere who's going to find that offensive.
posted by layceepee at 12:22 PM on December 1, 2015 [4 favorites]


And yet the people who would scream censorship over Carlin and the Communists are the first ones who will happily reach for arguments about "not having the right to not be offended" and calls for comity, as events over the past month or so have illustrated.

There's nobody here who actually believes in absolute free speech, but there are people who will drape the language over themselves as a cloak, so that they don't have to face their own issues with free speech.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:33 PM on December 1, 2015


Considering the abysmal track record of free speech absolutism, I don't think your argument is as solid as you think.

I used to think of myself a free speech absolutist. It was at a visit to Yale that I realized that I'm absolutely not a free speech absolutist.

Speech that shouldn't be and isn't protected in the US:
* Slander
* Libel
* Commercial speech (it is allowed, but it isn't protected to nearly the degree that non-commercial speech is)
* Inciting speech (this is narrow, and it's use can be problematic, but leading a rioting crowd to violence is against the law)
* "True threats" against people (non-specific threats or threats don't have a chance of being carried out are often within the law)

Threats of threat of government censorship is how the comic code, the film rating system (a gay kiss shown to teenagers, not allowed; graphic violence shown to teenagers, no problem), parental advisory stickers on music (which was briefly established into law in WA state) came to be.

Much of the far right and much of the far left would very happily do away with the first amendment. But given the makeup of state legislatures, it's quite clear to me that the far right would be the ones making the rules.

All that being said, feel free to attack and criticize the First Amendment; that's your right.
posted by el io at 12:50 PM on December 1, 2015 [9 favorites]


Considering the abysmal track record of free speech absolutism

There is none because it has never existed. Did you mean the belief in such? I suppose that would have a bad track record because it doesn't make much sense.

Right now, hate speech laws have a track record we *can* evaluate. And I don't think it's a good one. Most of them don't really have any teeth -- where hate speech laws exist, there are still Neo-Nazis and people are still posting odious comments on the pages of newspapers. The only difference is now, where they exist, one can file claims against people for publicly expressing opinions you don't like.
posted by smidgen at 12:51 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Maybe they weren't fully cognizant of it, but on some level the Founding Fathers knew the kind of assholes that would make up this country.

The Founding Fathers were trying to make a country which wouldn't self-destruct despite having a bunch of Tea Partiers in it. They have so far met with mixed success but the experiment is still in progress.
posted by Justinian at 12:58 PM on December 1, 2015


Canada has broadly similar attitudes from the data. Yes, there is modestly less support for speech which is offensive to religion or minority groups but its not that different and is still a majority. In fact, the biggest single difference is that Canadians are much less supportive of the right to practice religion freely (84% in USA, 62% in Canada) so that's a mixed bag at best regardless of your positions I think.
posted by Justinian at 1:07 PM on December 1, 2015


Oh I apologize if its gauche to talk about the actual data in the links.
posted by Justinian at 1:08 PM on December 1, 2015


> * Commercial speech (it is allowed, but it isn't protected to nearly the degree that non-commercial speech is more's the pity)
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:11 PM on December 1, 2015


In fact, the biggest single difference is that Canadians are much less supportive of the right to practice religion freely (84% in USA, 62% in Canada) so that's a mixed bag at best regardless of your positions I think.

The Americans may say that's what they believe, but I don't recall seeing any news stories about how communities are trying to prevent mosques from being built in Canada. I have a feeling American's are supportive of Christianity being practiced freely, and then consider themselves diverse when they mean they even support Catholics, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, and Amish from practicing their flavour of Christianity.

But I would say Canada is far more tolerant of diversity of religious belief than the US, despite the self-reported opinions of its citizens.
posted by el io at 1:12 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Well, sure, if we're just going to completely disregard the actual data.
posted by Justinian at 1:15 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Well, sure, if we're just going to completely disregard the actual data.

Data based on self-reporting? Polls don't tell the whole story, and it's quite possible for people to say one thing, and then do something completely different.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:17 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Well, sure, if we're just going to completely disregard the actual data.

Self-reported data. All those jackasses protesting outside mosques armed to the teeth go on and on about the First Amendment despite clearly not believing that they're impeding the free exercise of religion and interfering with the right to peaceably assemble.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:20 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Mod note: A few comments deleted. Don't get into some kind of personal back-and-forth here. Go ahead and make your points without the sidelong "isn't it funny how people like this always say that" stuff.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:24 PM on December 1, 2015


I don't read it that way Justinian.

From this table:
...............................US....EU....CW*
Freedom of Religion............82....63....61
Gender equality................91....86....93
Speak w/o censorship...........71....65....57
Use internet w/o censorship....69....58....55

*CW=Commonwealth, the average of Australia, Canada and the UK. The UK is in both EU and CW numbers.

The US is clearly more absolutist when it comes to censorship issues than either the EU or the Commonwealth (as well as on freedom of religion). Free speech is much more valued by Americans than most other countries.
posted by bonehead at 1:26 PM on December 1, 2015


But the real point is simple - Americans don't actually believe in free speech. Sure, we talk a good game about it. But how many times have you heard "well, nobody has the right to not be offended", or a call for comity when someone is heavily criticized for their words - a call that all too often is one sided? That's where the rubber meets the road, and it shows that we're big proponents of free speech, right up until the underclass starts wielding it. Then we're happy to beat it down societally, even claiming that we're defending free speech in doing so.

I've been trying to track your position on free speech limitations in this and other threads, and I'm having trouble figuring out what you actually believe with regard to what forms of speech should be proscribed and when, and how those proscriptions should be enforced and by whom.

Based on my observations, segments of both the left and the right glom onto free speech when it's immediately convenient to them and tend to minimize its importance when it benefits a political prerogative with which they disagree. Others on both the left and the right (I count myself among them) believe in a judiciously limited version of free speech (with the most significant exceptions being shouting fire, defamatory speech, etc.) applied evenly and consistently regardless of political prerogative. I find the idea of outlawing or otherwise regulating offensive speech to be a logically and morally impossible task, in part because there is not and will never be a consensus definition of what is or isn't offensive, and because regulating offense is in effect a backdoor way of regulating political speech. I don't personally know a single person on either the right or the left who advocates absolute free speech.
posted by echocollate at 1:40 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


But the real point is simple - Americans don't actually believe in free speech.

So it happens that there is actually a body of work on exactly this. I don't recall the citations offhand but it goes like this:

We ask people if they believe in free speech and of course almost everyone says yes.

Then we ask them how they feel about a bunch of social groups -- homosexuals, klansmen, communists, religious fundamentalists, atheists, what have you. Whichever group you like the least is, cleverly, your least-liked group.

Then we ask you if $LEAST-LIKED-GROUP should be allowed to hold a parade in your town, and a bunch of people say no. Then we ask you whether $LEAST-LIKED-GROUP should be legally forbidden from being President, and a bunch of people -- as in some huge, sweeping majority -- say yes. ISTR that some versions even ask whether $LEAST-LIKED-GROUP should be outlawed and lots of people say yes.

It's really horrifying, but ISTR that it's also pretty much universal across the world and that only slim minorities of people anywhere think that whoever they like the least should have any expressive rights.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:40 PM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


There's nobody here who actually believes in absolute free speech, but there are people who will drape the language over themselves as a cloak, so that they don't have to face their own issues with free speech.

Speak for yourself. I'm personally in favor of Communists' right to hand out propaganda, Carlin's right to curse on radio, Trump's right to insult Mexicans, and your right to complain about free speech, even thought I might not agree with any of them.

You're pretty clearly against absolute freedom of speech, so I'm curious--do you support laws against obscene speech, or politically subversive speech, as well as hate speech? If not, why not? What makes hateful speech categorically worse than other kinds of speech that we grudgingly tolerate?
posted by Rangi at 1:51 PM on December 1, 2015 [3 favorites]


I find the idea of outlawing or otherwise regulating offensive speech to be a logically and morally impossible task, in part because there is not and will never be a consensus definition of what is or isn't offensive, and because regulating offense is in effect a backdoor way of regulating political speech.

Except that we, as a society, do regularly regulate offense. More specifically, we regulate the vocalization of offense, making it out to be something improper to do.

What makes hateful speech categorically worse than other kinds of speech that we grudgingly tolerate?

Because hate speech chases people out of the agora - it tells them "you are not welcome here".
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:57 PM on December 1, 2015


I'm not a pollster, but I wonder whether it's possible to control for meta-effects in asking these types of questions. For example, say that I am a survey respondent who says they support free speech in the main (i.e., I would agree with the following statement: "Speech should be free from government control except in cases where it leads to immediate danger (fire in a theater, inciting a riot) or specific character damage (libel, slander)"). If a subsequent question is framed thusly: "I think muslims should be prohibited from founding a mosque in my town" -- well, that framing kind of divorces the statement from the larger themes around free speech. My personal biases or natural tendency to tribalism (i.e., wanting my personal [non-muslim] religion to "win" the survey), combined with the low stakes of answering a survey, might lead me to check of "agree" even though I might not have actually done so had I thought everything through with general principles of free speech in mind.

I'm doing a bad job at articulating what I mean here, maybe, but I think there's a gap between what people will say on a survey and what they'll actually enshrine in law, particularly when you have a judicial system set up which includes some notion of good-for-the-goose-is-good-for-the-gander (that is, 14th amendment equal protection, or the like).
posted by axiom at 1:57 PM on December 1, 2015


Mod note: One deleted; if you want to talk about another aspect of this, just go ahead and do so, don't complain that other people aren't spontaneously discussing the thing you want them to.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:00 PM on December 1, 2015


Speak for yourself.

Do you also support the right to threaten someone with rape, assault, murder, or any other bodily harm?
posted by zombieflanders at 2:03 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Because otherwise you're not a free speech absolutist.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:04 PM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


Because hate speech chases people out of the agora - it tells them "you are not welcome here".

But that can be accomplished (and is accomplished) without hate speech as well. Banning hate overt hate speech does not make unwelcomed classes of people suddenly welcome, it merely changes the words that are allowed to expressed their bigotry and prejudice.
...

The article in question does look at specific types of speech restrictions. There are some interesting data points there (that I would love to see examined carefully by other folks), for example more people in Vietnam support censorship of protests than not.

Americans support censorship of things that are said to impact national security (think Snowden), while Poland has a tiny minority that supports this position. Young American's support government transparency in national security matters much more (19 points) than older Americans.
posted by el io at 2:43 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Because hate speech chases people out of the agora - it tells them "you are not welcome here".

From some of your previous comments, I thought you were in favor of chasing some people out of the agora. Isn't that one thing that restrictions on hate speech does, chase hateful people out of the agora, and tell them, "You aren't welcome here."?

Are you opposed to chasing people out of the agora, or only chasing the wrong people out of the agora, or chasing them out for the wrong reasons? Like echocollate, I'm having trouble getting a coherent take on your position.
posted by layceepee at 2:46 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Canada has broadly similar attitudes from the data.

Even if we take for granted that this is true (and there are good reasons we shouldn't, noted above), I'm not sure populism is always the best way to drive legislation. I like David Butt's argument (3rd link I posted; context is Charlie Hebdo etc):

in the Our Supreme Court suggested the hate speech law has symbolic value such that even without being invoked, it silently validates a national ethic of multicultural accommodation and respect; and in the decision by Canadian media not to re-publish the cartoons, that very ethic can be seen in action. So it may be that our hate speech law was a silent point of resonance with the values, not the legal obligations, that motivated the media outlets who chose not to publish.

That kind of top-down nudging is a-ok with me. I'm not convinced by the value of giving extreme rightists "even or consistent" consideration. Some of what they advocate is not only garbage, but garbage that grows in volume exponentially, the more it's fuelled and stoked (see any online cesspool [gamergate, Redpill communities] or other extremist ideologies. Which persist because of their viral, decentralized [online] locations, and can & have become actively dangerous garbage). It is ok to claim particular values over others.
posted by cotton dress sock at 2:48 PM on December 1, 2015


I spent some time in Sweden and had some interesting discussions about free speech with Swedes. We had very similar intuitions on what a just state would look like (more like theirs than the US state). But on hate speech? It just seemed clear to me that the government should be very careful about making hateful speech illegal. It didn't to them at all.

I felt very American.
posted by persona au gratin at 2:51 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


The majority of Americans aren't behind banning mosques and the like. It's easy to move from a few million people think X to all Americans think X, especially in the context of a more general argument against America. (Not attributing that to anyone in the thread.) But there are small minorities of odious people all over the place. Even Sweden, where the Sweden Democrats are doing so well!
posted by persona au gratin at 2:55 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


From some of your previous comments, I thought you were in favor of chasing some people out of the agora. Isn't that one thing that restrictions on hate speech does, chase hateful people out of the agora, and tell them, "You aren't welcome here."?

No, it doesn't, no more than a law prohibiting littering or vandalism chases people out of physical common spaces. If they feel that the public space is off limits for them because they can no longer espouse their hate openly, that's on their head.

You're falling into the difference of opinion trap, where saying "hey, espousing hate isn't acceptable here" becomes a problem because it's pushing a certain opinion out, and if that opinion can be pushed out, then ones I support can be as well. There's a vast difference between someone feeling excluded because of their race, gender, creed, etc., and someone feeling excluded because they're not allowed to espouse hate publicly.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:59 PM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm broadly opposed to hate speech laws - and I especially don't like the UK ones, which are stupidly broad in their drafting - but I still find some US romanticism about the First Amendment a distraction from the real debate. I think it's very plausible to say that hate speech laws have bad outcomes or don't always achieve their desired outcomes. But the US love affair with the First Amendment means you sometimes can't even have the conversation in these terms, because you're confronted with someone making the argument that First Amendment style speech protection is the ONLY THING holding back the tide of fascism or madness and, without it, you couldn't ever have a discussion because anything that could offend someone, somewhere, would be illegal. Whereas obviously the experience of the U.K. and France and Germany and Sweden is that liberal democracy basically scrapes along, despite hate speech laws, and it remains perfectly possible to have many conversations offensive to someone, somewhere, that are not illegal because they aren't hate speech. Of course we get the occasional stupid moment - because our laws are too broadly drafted - but the sky never quite falls in on us.
posted by Aravis76 at 3:08 PM on December 1, 2015


The majority of Americans aren't behind banning mosques and the like.

This may be true, but the leading republican presidential candidate is.
posted by el io at 3:32 PM on December 1, 2015


There's a vast difference between someone feeling excluded because of their race, gender, creed, etc., and someone feeling excluded because they're not allowed to espouse hate publicly.

There certainly is a difference, but the thing about them that's the same is the fact of exclusion. Your comment that hate speech was especially pernicious because it chases people out of the agora and informed them that they were unwelcome suggested that it was the fact of the exclusion per se that was objectionable.

But your focus now on the reason for exclusion means that isn't exclusion per se that you identify as especially harmful, but only certain types of exclusion. You don't seem to find signficant harm in excluding racists from public discusion. Which is fine, but it contradicts the claim that what's wrong with hate speech is its exclusionary aspect, because you seem to be saying that in some cases exclusion in and of itself is not a problem.
posted by layceepee at 3:34 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Because there's a vast difference between someone being excluded from participating because they feel unsafe due to hate directed at their race, gender, religion, or other part of their identity; and someone feeling excluded because they are no longer allowed to openly espouse hate. It's a matter of agency and action versus identity.

The fact that this is what you are getting hung up on - that when I mentioned exclusion earlier, I didn't explicitly state that I meant exclusion based on identity as opposed to conduct - makes me feel like you're not arguing entirely in good faith.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:46 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Because there's a vast difference between someone being excluded from participating because they feel unsafe due to hate directed at their race, gender, religion, or other part of their identity

And you think that with hate speech laws that the such laws allow people to be and to feel safe? Do you think that racial hatred and bigotry disappear when such laws exist? Hate speech laws could exist and black people would still be followed around stores, would still have the cops called on them merely for shopping in to upscale a store, be racially profiled by the police.

Right now in America there are no hate speech laws, yet public figures are being shunned, fired from their jobs, and publicly shamed for their hateful speech. (on the other hand, the most popular Republican candidate regularly uses racist language and espouses openly racist policies).
posted by el io at 3:58 PM on December 1, 2015


...can we please stop letting the perfect be the enemy of the good? This is not going to be some magic cureall for the multitude of issues we have with the various minority groups here, but perhaps if they're not being routinely attacked for their identity, they might feel like they belong more to society than they do now.

Your argument is the same sort we see when people say that codes of conduct aren't necessary at events, and it's just as flawed.

Oh, and yes, people are getting publicly shunned and facing opprobrium for this sort of speech, but every time it happens, there's always a chorus saying how this is an infringement on free speech, and that nobody has a right to not be offended, and as such they should let things go.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:16 PM on December 1, 2015


This is not going to be some magic cureall for the multitude of issues we have with the various minority groups here, but perhaps if they're not being routinely attacked for their identity, they might feel like they belong more to society than they do now.

This hasn't been my experience as a gay man. I feel vigorous support for free expression is a better guarantee of my ability to participate in public life than any authoritative enforcement of which forms of speech are acceptable and which are offensive. As you and many others have pointed out, this position is not a moral absolute, and I welcome continued debate to develop social norms around speech. But as a member of a minority, I personally feel more secure when the consensus skews closer to unlimited expression. I value broad public support for the notion that it's important to allow speech one finds offensive, both as an ethical principal and as a practical measure that maximizes my own freedom to speak.

Regarding the argument that "nobody has the right not to be offended," I'm not sure whether you are saying that it's a bad argument on its face or that it's often invoked disingenously by people who really mean "nobody has the right not to be offended--except for me and people like me." Or that it's invoked facilely by people to whom offensive speech is not likely to create significant problems.

I've certainly seen examples of the latter two cases, and I think it's important to provide pushback when the argument is insincere or jejune. But the principle itself--no one has the right not to be offended--is one that I generally support.
posted by layceepee at 4:57 PM on December 1, 2015 [6 favorites]


I think the concern is that people move from that right to thinking it's permissible to say awful things to marginalized groups. It's not morally permissible, of course. The further question is whether the government should curtail this sort of speech. I'm inclined to say it shouldn't, prima facie.
posted by persona au gratin at 6:40 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


On a non-free-speech point, I thought this was interesting: "Japan is the only nation surveyed where men (67% very important) express stronger support for gender equality than women do (53%)."

I've talked with other American male friends here, and everyone has had discussions where they were advocating greater gender equality and their Japanese wives/girlfriends were opposed / thought that it was unimportant. I had always assumed the key factor was the cultural difference between Americans and Japanese, but perhaps the key factor was actually gender? Interesting.
posted by Bugbread at 11:58 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Regarding the argument that "nobody has the right not to be offended," I'm not sure whether you are saying that it's a bad argument on its face or that it's often invoked disingenously by people who really mean "nobody has the right not to be offended--except for me and people like me." Or that it's invoked facilely by people to whom offensive speech is not likely to create significant problems.

I myself believe that people cannot avoid being offended by the actions of others, because there is no way to really prevent that offense from occurring. But on the same token, I also believe that if someone is offended, they have the right to state that they are offended and why, and they can do so in the manner they see fit. (They may, depending on the source of their offense, make themselves to look like a git - but making a complete fool of oneself is also a cherished right we all have.)

The problem with the argument that no one has the right not to be offended, as I've stated in the past, is that the vast majority of the times it's invoked, there's a usually unsaid codicil to the phrase. That codicil states that offense is a natural result of people saying what they want, and as such, the person that is offended should hold their offense to themselves, and just quietly accept being offended. There is routinely made the argument that to espouse one's offense shows that one is "coddled" - conversely, mutely tolerating offense in a twisted form of Stoicism is lauded as a virtue, as Conor Friersdorf did in his response to critics over his responses to the controveries at Missou and Yale:

It is with painful awareness of racism’s persistence, not ignorance or apathy or a desire to divert attention from it, that I reaffirm a belief that resilience is among the most valuable things anyone can learn in an institution of higher education.

This is why that particular turn of phrase angers me - because it's very much an attack on free speech by defining specific forms of speech mainly held by the disenfranchised as being a form of weakness and privilege, wrapped up in what is phrased as a defense of free speech.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:48 AM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


So when people critique the reactions of hurtful speech... You consider that an attack on free speech?

Look, everyone in this thread agrees that hate speech is distasteful, awful, repugnant, etc... But the question becomes what is the proper state response to such hate speech?

Would you like to imprison people that say things you don't like? Fine them? What if they can't afford those fines - plenty of poor people say hateful (and racist) things - would you lock them up if they couldn't pay the fines?
posted by el io at 10:23 AM on December 2, 2015 [2 favorites]


Except it's not really a critique - it's a blunt statement that if you find that something bothers you, you shouldn't say anything.

But the real issue is here:

Look, everyone in this thread agrees that hate speech is distasteful, awful, repugnant, etc... But the question becomes what is the proper state response to such hate speech?

Would you like to imprison people that say things you don't like?


Hate speech is not such because it is something that I don't like.

Hate speech is such because it is speech intended to diminish people based on their characteristics, in order to other, intimidate, and frighten them.

The fact that you resort to words reflecting distaste rather than the effect of hate speech illustrates the issue with actually discussing hate speech - it's always framed in the context of "well, you don't like what's being said", ignoring the issue that overall, it diminishes free discourse by pushing people out of the public sphere
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:12 AM on December 2, 2015


And this is why what I refer to as the difference of opinion fallacy is so insidious - because at the most base level, the statement is true. Yes, I don't like hate speech - but that is because I find the othering effects of hate speech and how it intimidates people out of fully participating in society to be a corrosive influence on society as a whole.

So to answer your question, no, I don't want to throw people into jail because they say something that I don't like. But when someone is making public hateful statements that makes the targets of said speech feel othered and isolated, perhaps we should be less tolerant of that sort of behavior as a society.
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:39 AM on December 2, 2015


That's a platitude, though, unless you can specify what you mean by "less tolerant as a society". Social sanction? Fines? Jail time? Those are important distinctions.
posted by Justinian at 11:48 AM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


Well, I think that what needs to be done varies on the situation, much like anything else. For the random person just spouting off, social opprobrium is proper. But when you get into actual coordinated campaigns intended to intimidate, then perhaps there is a role for the government to step in there.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:02 PM on December 2, 2015


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