R. Crumb is a comic book artist. Among his work is a page from Zap Comics titled Niggers Over America. Crumb described the piece in an interview for the New Yorker by saying "I just had to expose all the myths people have of blacks and Jews in the rawest way possible to tilt the scale toward truth." In the UK, Sheppard and Whittle were found guilty of race hate for publishing Niggers Over America.
I think I would like to know if people who strongly support the right to free speech believe it is possible to abuse that right, and why (not just the shouting "fire" in a theater example, though).Of course it's possible. Any time someone speaks and thereby makes the world a worse place, they're abusing their right to speak. I don't support criminalizing everything that I wish people wouldn't do, though. In particular, I'm leery about criminalizing actions that don't cause identifiable harm to particular people, but instead "weaken the social order" or "corrupt morality" or whatever you want to call it.
Women—as many of you know well—will be happy to tell you what you can and cannot say. Women are ascending to power. How long will they continue to allow you to freely and openly question them? How many feminists would defend your right to free speech if they found what you wrote threatening, insulting or “politically incorrect?”Women not wanting to date me because I'm a fat, ugly, and sexist is a violation of free speech!
How is that class, perhaps an already unpopular minority, to defend itself? Is it solely their responsibility? What if no one else comes to their defence?Well, fascists are a minority these days too. If the minority is actually unpopular what's to prevent the government from pandering to the majority by attempting to limit the free speech rights of said minority? For example, in the past the government could go after gays as perverts. In the south they passed laws that made it illegal to teach black people to read, etc. Australia banned witchcraft until the 1990s. Without free speech, truly embattled minorities are at a greater disadvantage.
I often hear that the cure for hate speech is more speech -- what if that doesn't work? What if, in fact, suppressing the original propaganda is effective in preventing violence spurred by propaganda, and public service announcements aren't?Again, you don't get to pick what speech gets censored and what doesn't. How do you know the religious right would get into power and ban atheism as "religious hate speech". Or some islamophobe like Guiliani coming in and claiming that Islam is a hate-filled religion, etc. You could say those aren't real examples of "Hate speech" but like I said, you're not going to actually be the one who picks.
8.4 In the opinion of Evans, the views expressed by Holocaust deniers include the following:From the judgment it seems to me that he isn't called a denier simply because he questions the number; it's because of the character of his claims and arguments generally.
* (i)that Jews were not killed in gas chambers or at least not on any significant scale;
* (ii)that the Nazis had no policy and made no systematic attempt to exterminate European Jewry and that such deaths as did occur were the consequence of individual excesses unauthorised at senior level;
* (iii)that the number of Jews murdered did not run into millions and that the true death toll was far lower;
* (iv)that the Holocaust is largely or entirely a myth invented during the war by Allied propagandists and sustained after the war by Jews in order to obtain financial support for the newly-created state of Israel.
8.5 According to Evans, whilst the expression of those views is typical, Holocaust deniers do not necessarily subscribe to all of them and the views of some deniers may be more extreme than others. Irving made the point that it would be absurd to label a person a Holocaust denier merely because he or she questions the number of Jews killed under the Nazi regime.
« Older A rap song that mentions Chomsky!... | Nontransitive dice are sets of... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by eccnineten at 1:06 PM on January 24, 2010