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British Men Jailed For Online Hate Crimes
chrb writes "Two British men have become the first to be jailed for inciting racial hatred online. The men believed that material they published on web servers based in the United States did not fall under the jurisdiction of UK law and was protected under the First Amendment. This argument was rejected by the British trial judge. After being found guilty, the men fled to Los Angeles, where they attempted to claim political asylum, again arguing that they were being persecuted by the British government for speech that was protected under the First Amendment. The asylum bid was rejected and the two were deported back to the UK after spending over a year in a US jail."
This is old news in Finland. We have had at least 4 convictions on dubious basis within one year. "Insulting" muslims and negroes seems to be verboten while insulting christians and white males is ok. 1984.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
Publishing words that incite hatred is not "thoughtcrime". Words are not thoughts. You can think whatever hatred or whatever else you want. But speech is an action, a real act in the world that affects other people. Not all acts, not all speech or expressions, particularly in public, are protected. You do not have the right to speak in a way that harms people. And currently, as always in history, published hate speech forms links in the critical path from protected hateful thoughts to non-protected violent acts that physically harm people. Those links are on the action side of the thought/action boundary.
You can't tell someone that you're going to kill them and expect to get away with it. You likewise can't threaten everyone who's a member of a group, racial or otherwise, and expect to get away with it. You can think about genocide, but the moment you do something, including organizing or inciting others to carry it out, you've crossed the line. And that's when we have governments to protect us from you, not you from the consequences of your speech.
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make install -not war
Inciting sectarian hatred is not pointless there. It matters deeply and gets people killed. As it does in those large parts of the world still riven by ethnic, sectarian, and tribal divisions.
The USA is one of the few countries that can AFFORD freedom of speech.
I piss off bigots.
"Hate crime" is a blanket term for laws that regulate speech with the intent of suppressing racism. More recently this has expanded to include homophobia. How those laws are viewed largely depends on whether the viewer feels more strongly about bigotry or censorship; whether you see a greater evil in suppression of speech or unreasoning hatred.
I'd call censorship the greater evil, but despite that I'm ambivalent about this particular case. On the one hand, I do not think such a law ought to exist at all, on the other hand, I just can't muster any outrage at a neo-Nazi getting jailed. I suspect that it's cases like this that allow such laws to remain in effect - try to oppose the law on principle and you'll find yourself in the position of having to defend the bigots, something that even those most committed to free speech find repellent.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Who are "most people"? Do you have a cite or statistics to back this up? I didn't think so.
The fact of the matter is (and I'm a centrist Democrat) that minority groups of various persuasions have squealed to the media about hate motivated crimes and laws have been put through by self-righteous cappuccino Dems while vilifying anybody who dares oppose it.
I'm from Cincinnati (yeah, we've got one hell of a past, check dangerous neighborhood listings and witness our #1 glory) and I've seen it happen: five white guys beat the shit out of a black guy and it's a hate crime. Five black guys beat the shit out of a white guy and it's just a "crime"... in fact it's business as usual. I work in the engineering field and I personally know three engineers (including a female) who have been assaulted while trying to get to data centers on off-hours calls. Hint: all the perps were black and all the victims were white.
You can bleat anecdote and I can show you trends.
There are just as many black racists here as there are white. I lost count of how many times I've been called cracker, honkey, casper, etc. Just for walking down the street. I've spoken to others, and yes, it's the norm. I'm a pretty big guy so nobody ever acts on it (and I'm a prior military CCW if they do), but for more "average" people you're pretty much screwed.
And remember, when you're getting your teeth kicked out in the gutter for being a stupid white motherfucker in "our" part of town during the night, it's not a hate crime. We just don't like you straight white folks.
Though the US version seems ripe for abuse, it still seems more sensible than the UK version, and I don't think the US version is totally unreasonable. Take the recent holocaust museum shooting... a white man murders a black guard in an attack on a symbol of Judaism. Clearly it was a hate crime - not against blacks, even though that's the only person he murdered - but against Jews. But he didn't just think about hating Jews, he took forcible action to terrorize them, so I can at least see the rationale in some extra punishment for that, on top of murdering a guy.
Speaking of the murder of the guard, cop killers get harsher sentences too, likely including death, since cops represent a symbolic group with extra risks - in other words, a hate crimes. I wonder if all those against special protections for minority groups are also against harsher penalties for killing cops, assassinating heads of state, etc?
It worked very well, indeed. Only after Yugoslavia was broken up in little pieces, when there was no government oppression anymore, people started being nationalistic and trying to kill all the others.
Same thing happened in the ex-USSR republics (the war in Georgia last summer was a perfect example). In the times of USSR there were minor ethnic conflicts but worst thing could happen were some broken noses. After the government suppression was gone azeris started to kill armenians, georgians started to kill abkhasians and ossetins, chechens just started to kill everyone around.
Seems that government suppression has some good sides after all.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I hope your God one day deigns to assist you in gaining some perspective.
First of all, Obama is not anything like a Socialist. European states that any reasonable political scientist would describe as essentially capitalist have socialized many more industries than will ever fall under government ownership in the US (this is true even under the assumption that every policy Obama wants to see implemented is implemented, which is unlikely).
Second of all, tyranny will never again manifest in the way it did in the first half of the 20th century. Totalitarianism very clearly failed as a means to suppress a population, because citizens of totalitarian nations were aware at all times whom their enemy was. The system implemented currently in the US, from which I don't think we'll see much deviation barring a first order natural or political disaster, is much more tenable: a corporate oligarchy that uses their financial power to control a changing cast of politicians and their market saturation to encourage mass complacency. This system results in the illusion of democracy and freedom, and it ensures that the average citizen has too much at stake to consider any sort of revolutionary activity.
So, the end of that slippery slope? We're there. The sled ride is over. It's not so bad if you're solvent, but you're not really free. The Left and the Right aren't really the bogeymen, so you should get over that. If this sounds like conspiracy theory, it's not, because there is no centrally organized conspiracy. The system has its own inertia, and it enables those with the means to take advantage of those without.
Can't keep your money and now you can't say what you think.
What freedom is left there?
Usually everyone does it. Kids that don't do it in some places might be chastised (and have been in the past) but nobody's actually required to do it. It's more of a social thing, such as how you are supposed to face and salute the flag when the national anthem is played. I'm sure it seems strange to someone who's not from here, but it sounds a lot creepier than it actually is.
Full text of the pledge of allegiance: "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
The US is a much more openly patriotic country than European countries, for better or worse. It's part jingoism, part honest patriotism, and partly a way to indoctrinate new immigrants. The pledge of allegiance was created around the same time as many of our national myths (Paul Revere, Thanksgiving, etc.), and was part of a conscious effort to create a universal American culture that could be easily taught to the growing and increasingly diverse American population.