The United Kingdom just denied entry to a Dutch Right Winger because he supposedly said bad things about Muslims, and meanwhile, Germany continues to imprison people who say bad things about Jews. Who came up with this idea that if you can just shut speech up that that somehow solves the problem? That’s got it totally backwards, doesn’t it?
Free speech, even when it is hateful speech, actually serves to often times open up channels of communication between 2 groups of hostile people. Worried about hate speech? If you solve the problem in the first place then you won’t have that hate speech follow more often than not.
Sure, there are hate mongers who will never respond to any speech to them other than mere repetition of their own hateful attitudes towards the target group for their hate. That being said, if you outlaw the expression of their hate through their speech, then you just hide it away where it begins to fester into more dangerous possibilities of expression.
Society has much more to gain by not outlawing speech of any kind than it generally does in trying to limit and outlaw it. Does anybody really think that if a person is thrown into jail for 2 years for saying bad things about Islam or Judaism that they will return to society a better person? Isn’t that just a version of a school yard bully who tells the smaller kid that if he doesn’t shut up that he will go and kick his ass? What’s the lesson learned there?
It’s time to stop making hate speech an illegal speech threatened by jail time if you engage in it per somebody else’s opinion. That’s pretty stupid law. Meanwhile, we have all sorts of other laws on the books that actually do more harm than good. We have laws that legalize torture, and laws that throw people in jail for life for the use of some self abusing substance or other. Jailing people for saying nasty things about other people or their religion or social grouping is also a stupid law that does just the opposite of what it is intended supposedly to accomplish. It makes people hate others more instead of less. It’s time to do away with this sort of law hiding behind the idea that it is in someway a supposed tolerance campaign for multi-diversity. It just isn’t so.
I believe you’re thinking of the law in Germany prohibiting the denial of the Holocaust, a law punishable by imprisonment that is shared by Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Israel, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland. Rightly so, given the sharp resurgence of violent anti-Semitism in Europe. Filmmaker Geert Wilders, on the other hand, has been denied entry into the UK ostensibly over a film critical of Islam. The truth of the matter is his banning is based on fear in Great Britain of Islamic violence and terrorism were Wilders allowed entry. Both situations are apples and oranges: One involves the denial of a historical fact while the other involves a truthful examination of Islam.
Jews of all political stripe are generally comfortable with free speech and open debate. The old joke is get three Jews in a room and you get five opinions. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that there is a strain of the Muslim community who are intolerant of views divergent to their own, often violently so, even if those opposing points of view are expressed in a cartoon. The fate of Theo van Gogh provides an even more extreme example of Muslim intolerance.
Certain elements of both the Jewish and Muslim communities promote laws that criminalize free speech for others. In this, they are most often aided by a predominantly Christian tinged secular liberalism that thinks that ‘hate speech’ should be specially criminalized.
>Certain elements of both the Jewish and Muslim communities promote laws that criminalize free speech for others.
Nah, not even close. Perhaps a tiny fringe Jewish group exists, but there are probably Jews who also believe Elvis is still alive. No comparison to the radical Muslim crazies. And, I haven’t heard of any Jewish groups resorting to violence and savagery associated with Islamic groups. Bernard Lewis’s book, “What Went Wrong”, expores factors causing the outbreak in Islamic terror.
The usual bullshit from the Zionist Spammer Guy, ‘Mitch’. The major Jewish groups and the Jewish State itself are Numero Uno in demanding that free speech be outlawed and criminalized in European countries. They want people to be thrown into jail for saying that the Holocaust might have been smaller than the fixed numbers they like to quote all the time.
Ditch, when does your shift of spammers go off and the next one come on?
>The usual bullshit from the Zionist Spammer Guy, ‘Mitch’. The major Jewish groups and the Jewish State itself are Numero Uno in demanding that free speech be outlawed and criminalized in European countries. They want people to be thrown into jail for saying that the Holocaust might have been smaller than the fixed numbers they like to quote all the time.
Ditch, when does your shift of spammers go off and the next one come on?
Yeah, Israel strong-armed the 12 European nations into enacting legislation forbidding Holocaust denial. Yeah, uhuh, that’s how it went down. And, I suppose it was Jews, not Muslims, who murdered Theo van Gogh in cold blood and who rampaged in the streets when a mere cartoon criticized them.
They all want to be so helpful you know, ‘Mitch’? They want to be good folk and outlaw hate against both Muslims and Jews, even as they enable US government policies which murder hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of Arabs.