I'd just like to say, I'm an animal, you're an animal and Dr Daniel Ubani is also an animal.

Statements of fact, however, appear to be no defence in Germany where the good doctor recently won a libel case.

I'm guessing I've now laid myself and Webdip open for action. Oh well, sorry about that.

By the way the good doctor is also a charlatan and a killer. The court allows use of both terms, so no need to worry.

Back on topic re the article. I've always thought it odd that some guy burns a poppy which may or may not offend those who witness it, but then such things are picked up by the news media who then offend countless more people.

If people want to burn flags or poppies, let them - just don't give them the oxygen of publicity to fan their flames.

great article, have a light blue +1

Wow, we have really gotten really deep into shit when the raving loony raises a good point about censorship. Free Speech, sure. Free transmission, no. The article is hard to agree with, mostly because it is horribly biased, and partly because it mixes good ideas with bad. For example, restricting speech, bad. I agree with him there. But, this guy suggests there is a right to be heard, which is obviously bullshit.

This guy seems to thing that libel laws are a bad idea, I am not too sure. Libel frequently causes a great deal of damage, and can even cause death. That is not something to be taken lightly. I do oppose locking a jack-ass up for a racist tweet (though I think they should be blocked from Twitter) unless it is incitement to violence. I don't oppose locking up a jack-ass at an illegal demonstration (ala Westboro Baptist Church) even when he doesn't incite violence, since what he is doing is illegal.

"But, this guy suggests there is a right to be heard, which is obviously bullshit."

I disagree with this takeaway. Where was that suggested in the article?

"use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming so that people don’t feel they have the support to do what we abhor" is described as a bad thing to do, while it is actually just what society does with anything it doesn't like to see happen.

He is opposed to universities moderating speech, clearly seeming to think that a university is supposed to be a soapbox for everyone. That sounds like the right to be heard.

He suggests that the street is an appropriate place for homophobia. I don't agree, since carrying around a sign with hateful speech on it is either a nuisance, or worse, unless it is part of an organized demonstration.

I looked, and found out that his point about Mann vs. Steyn may not have been entirely valid. Unfounded accusations of academic fraud and comparisons to Jerry Sandusky happen to be libel.

phil,

' "use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming so that people don’t feel they have the support to do what we abhor" is described as a bad thing to do, while it is actually just what society does with anything it doesn't like to see happen.'

It's a little different when it comes from the government, though.

"He is opposed to universities moderating speech, clearly seeming to think that a university is supposed to be a soapbox for everyone. That sounds like the right to be heard."

Moderating speech isn't telling people they can walk away -- it's telling you you can't speak. It is you who are conflating freedom of speech with a right to be heard (it is the former that is violated by campus speech codes).

"He suggests that the street is an appropriate place for homophobia. I don't agree, since carrying around a sign with hateful speech on it is either a nuisance, or worse, unless it is part of an organized demonstration."

Again -- you're saying that somebody should not be able to engage in a particular type of speech. This is not about a right to be heard (people can walk away and ignore you, and you can't change that), but about your right to engage in the speech.

True, the government doing it is less okay.

I guess we disagree on the definition of right to be heard, then.

Anyway, I guess that matters less than the bias present in the article, which I doubt represents actual bias in how speech is limited.

""use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming so that people don’t feel they have the support to do what we abhor" is described as a bad thing to do, while it is actually just what society does with anything it doesn't like to see happen."

It's certainly problematic when we're talking about a government official saying that the president's administration intends to do it in lieu of outright legislating restrictions on free speech. The point is that a government shouldn't be involving itself in such affairs; and while I would independently argue that peer pressure and shaming promote no goods and obvious bads to the marketplace of ideas and rational discussion, if we were to assume that their net impact on society is positive, then surely we could at least agree that people should be left to do such pressuring and shaming on their own, without invoking the state's support.

"He is opposed to universities moderating speech, clearly seeming to think that a university is supposed to be a soapbox for everyone. That sounds like the right to be heard."

I don't see how that follows, unless you equate freedom of speech with a right to be heard. In the sense that one cannot abridge the right to be heard in a public sphere without removing freedom of speech, yes, a right to be heard follows from freedom of speech. But that's simply a necessary consequence of freedom of speech, and not a defense of a right to be heard generally.

"He suggests that the street is an appropriate place for homophobia. I don't agree, since carrying around a sign with hateful speech on it is either a nuisance, or worse, unless it is part of an organized demonstration."

There are quite a few arbitrary categories introduced in this argument without explanation. Questions:
- What is hateful speech compared to non-hateful speech?
- What differentiates hateful speech from other forms of speech with specific respect to protection of the right to say it, under a right to free speech?
- What is an organized demonstration compared to a disorganized demonstration (or whatever it is we call free speech not classified as organized demonstration)?
- What differentiates such a demonstration from other free speech that influences whether or not hateful speech is protected under a right to free speech?

I would suggest at once that no place is an appropriate place for homophobia, and that inappropriately-placed speech in the public sphere must nonetheless be protected if free speech is to exist at all.

"I looked, and found out that his point about Mann vs. Steyn may not have been entirely valid. Unfounded accusations of academic fraud and comparisons to Jerry Sandusky happen to be libel."

I'm not familiar with the example given, so I'd grant, if your summary of the facts is right, that the example is poor and do away with it. I think there might be a decent point to be had regarding the structure of libel (and by extension slander) laws, but in absence of a clear example on that point it's difficult to argue. (Specifically, if libel laws are constructed such that people innocent of libel are nonetheless significantly adversely affected by the process of being accused of libel, it stands to reason that libel laws pose a threat to free speech along the lines the author describes. But absent actual examples of this happening, it's difficult to pass judgment on the validity of the claim.)

God damn I got ninja'd hard. Lol

Anyway, you raise a good number of points semck didn't, and you go into detail more.

I would suggest that social pressure on speech should not be done in the form of governmental stuff, but rather personally. So, I believe a politician has a right to say that someone should be disregarded, not given airtime, whatever, but only as long as he does it at a personal press conference. Such stuff certainly has no place as government policy, and no place in a press conference representing part of the government (see generals at military conferences, senators in senate discussions, the president and his cabinet at official cabinet or presidential press conferences). I am not aware of the circumstances of what Hillary Clinton said, or the general context. If it was indeed that the government would suppress speech, then it was wrong. But Hillary Clinton does have a personal right to publicly shame people expressing opinions she dislikes, as long as she doesn't resort to libel.

I find a guy standing in the middle of the street with a sign a nuisance. For hateful vs. non-hateful speech, that is up to the viewer, and not the law, to determine. A man with the sign described is expressing a political view. I have no opposition to that, when done in an appropriate place at an appropriate time. I don't know whether he expressed it in the appropriate place at the appropriate time, but there are a lot of circumstances in which the street is not appropriate.
And as for organized vs. disorganized, I refer not to organization, but to fore-warning. It is always nice when it is publicly known there will be something happening, as it allows municipal authority to react appropriately.

Fell asleep on you, my bad lol. From the top:

The issue of a politician encouraging shaming etc. is a little tricky to me. I agree that a politician, speaking personally, has the right to use peer pressure tactics to discourage people from doing things she doesn't like. To suggest otherwise would make for a rather curious understanding of "free speech." And yet how readily *can* a politician simply say "This is my personal opinion and is strictly limited to my personal life and choices, and does not extend to my politics or policymaking?" Particularly with a push, of late, to make the personal political, I can't but think it's not so simple. Of course, there's no good solution to that which doesn't infringe on free speech rights.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we're really in disagreement on your latter paragraph. Nor do I find your position to be exclusive with the article's position. I don't think the article advocated for the idea that there is no such thing as hate speech, but rather that there shouldn't be as far as the law is concerned - which is, in effect, saying that determination of what speech is hateful should be left to society instead of law.

This thought has been on the tip of my fingers for a couple posts now, and I think it could move the conversation to a more interesting point, so I'll make it. I think that a rational, healthy, liberal society has no place for shaming political ideas, regardless of how terrible they may be. The reason is fairly straightforward: shaming distorts the marketplace of ideas, determining not through rational discourse but mass approval which ideas thrive and which are lost to history. While in most cases, ideas that are shamed out of the public sphere have serious flaws to them, their extinction in the public sphere can be achieved through rational discourse instead. The problem arises when there are false positives - ideas that are rational or helpful get wrongfully shamed out due to a lack of mass appeal. The public sphere becomes less informed as a result. There's also the attachment of serious real-world consequences to not going along with mass consensus on what ideas are proper, which creates a chilling effect on public discourse every bit as deleterious as government sanction. These bads are pretty readily apparent, yet the goods of shaming aren't, so I would actually go further than the article and say that shaming has no place for anyone in a rational, healthy, liberal society, not just government agents.

Rational discourse on a mass scale about everything is difficult to attain, so frequently it goes on on a small scale, which then tells the public sphere what to think. It is not a good state of affairs, but it is easy to do, unlike rational discourse in which all of society takes part about all ideas.

Shaming an idea seems unnecessary to me as well, though perhaps not for the reason you describe. Shaming an idea mostly requires the shamers to be either highly influential, or have massive public support. Thus the shame is unnecessary because the opposing idea can either be defeated through influence, or through a vote.

When does an issue cross the line between moral and political? Abortions are a political issue, but one based almost entirely on differing moral values. Racism is widely taken to be immoral, yet racist policy is political. Is moral shame acceptable?

And lastly, while shaming may have no place for anyone in a rational, healthy, liberal society, I do not happen to be in one. I can think of very few rational, healthy and liberal societies.

"Rational discourse on a mass scale about everything is difficult to attain, so frequently it goes on on a small scale, which then tells the public sphere what to think. It is not a good state of affairs, but it is easy to do, unlike rational discourse in which all of society takes part about all ideas."

Sure, but I think we can at least agree that where the individuals involved in a particular discussion have the capacity to hold informed, rational debate, they should attempt to do so. Yet this doesn't play out; I feel like I see a lot of people, even here on webdiplomacy, who have proved themselves capable of informed, rational debate, and then on some subjects choose the intellectually lazy way out with shaming. I don't really see the purpose from the perspective of seeking truth. (Of course, when truth-seeking isn't the goal, there's plenty use for it in shutting out opposing views. This is why shaming is so prevalent, on both sides, in political discourse.)

"When does an issue cross the line between moral and political? Abortions are a political issue, but one based almost entirely on differing moral values. Racism is widely taken to be immoral, yet racist policy is political. Is moral shame acceptable?"

I still say no, it isn't. Racism is pretty clearly a bad thing and it should be a trivial matter to vanquish racist ideas on their merits. Shaming doesn't assist in this venture. What shaming *does* do is legitimize rather harsh treatment of people who are revealed to be racist. This is not only incredibly problematic on its own, as everyone is at least a little bit racist, and thus potentially susceptible to falling into the crosshairs of shaming - it also creates a chilling effect with respect to espousing views which are popularly considered racist. When racist views are so easily vanquished in rational discourse, what benefit is created from this chilling effect? I see none.

Abortion policy is much the same way. It's actually even more of a mess since rational discourse has, to this point, been inconclusive in determining a singular proper policy position on abortion. So there's a real risk that mass shaming of one side of the abortion debate or the other ends up shaming the proper position out of the popular discourse. Even if we could determine what the correct position is, though, the argument from above regarding racism would still hold: shaming wouldn't enhance the discussion and would run the risk of creating an unnecessary chilling effect which can only be harmful to the discourse.

"And lastly, while shaming may have no place for anyone in a rational, healthy, liberal society, I do not happen to be in one. I can think of very few rational, healthy and liberal societies."

Certainly, but then that brings it own worry. Clearly we don't live in a rational society, but I'm not convinced that's the source of phenomena like shaming; like I mentioned before, there are plenty of intelligent individuals even on a relatively informed forum like webdiplomacy's who resort to shaming in lieu of rational debate, and do it often. While these instances represent individual failures of rationality, I'm not convinced the symptom is an inability to be rational. This implies that the issue is that we are no longer a healthy liberal society, which worries me greatly. Either we are a liberal society struggling to live up to our ideals, or we are no longer a liberal society.

Ostracizing dissidents, or trying to, is unfortunately human nature. We can try to limit it, but we won't ever stop it happening.

The idea that we ever were a healthy liberal society seems slightly confusing to me. When exactly were we? The US can't be taken as anything even close to it until the 70s, and even after, I don't think it was healthy or liberal. In the Czech Republic, we never had anything close to a healthy liberal society.