We have been discussing the crackdown on free speech in the West, particularly in England, France, and Canada. It is a rising concern that seems to be lost on Montana legislators and prosecutors who want to follow the path of speech criminalization. The Montana criminal defamation statute criminalizes speech that exposes religious, racial, and other groups — “to hatred, contempt, ridicule, degradation, or disgrace” — an absurdly broad standard that would make a Sharia judge blush.
I have long been a critic of the criminalization of symbols and gestures, even deeply offensive symbols like Nazi gestures. Europe has plunged into speech regulation and criminalization – showing that such laws create a slippery slope for the criminalization of unpopular speech. This course inevitably leads to increasing — and increasingly absurd — speech crimes. For example, I fail to see how arresting a man for a Hitler ringtone is achieving a meaningful level of deterrence, even if you ignore the free speech implications.
The problem is trying to draw such lines rather than embracing free speech as protecting not just popular but unpopular and even hateful speech. Once you start as a government to criminalize speech, you end up on a slippery slope of censorship. What constitutes hate speech remains a highly subjective matter and we have seen a steady expansion of prohibited terms and words and gestures. We have been following (here and here and and and here and and here and here) the worsening situation in England concerning free speech. As noted in a recent column, free speech appears to be dying in the West with the increasing criminalization of speech under discrimination, hate, and blasphemy laws.
My friend Eugene Volokh has a good piece on the Montana law. It includes a type of group libel claim that has always been problematic in torts. Criminal defamation and hate crime cases have presented the greatest threat to free speech. Indeed, Muslim countries that have long fought for an international blasphemy standard has latched on to the same approach as Montana to criminalize anti-Islamic speech. Unputting aside the questions constitutionality of such laws, Montana seems utterly unconcerned about the implications of this criminalization effort.
Source: Washington Post
NYC Police Commissioner Bratton wants UK Guardian to retract story over this comment: which bears the headline “NYPD chief Bratton says hiring black officers is difficult: ‘So many have spent time in jail”.
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Bratton-Demands-Retraction-NYPD-Race-Black-Cops-Guardian-306744921.html
Bully boy Christie goes head to head with PC liberal reporter over speech tone and some kind of combativeness. Bully boy says, “you ought see when I really get pissed”.
The criminalization of speech & ideas associated with the losing side in WWII is not accidental. It is the direct result of American imperialism that makes Europe follow like a puppy dog the US in trade and economic policy, not to mention continuing to host the US Armed Forces all about, as a staging ground for ongoing geopolitical conflict with Russia. Perhaps the ideas don’t matter half as much as the geopolitical reality that leaves no room for an independent Europe not beholden to either side.
“Nobody is going to jail in the west for discussing…”! I am sorry to inform you of this sir but in many if not most of the nations of Europe there already are laws like this which are used to imprison racists for incorrect speech whether it is “incitement” or “holocaust denial” or the mere gesture properly defined as a Roman salute. Just the facts, Ma’am!
Darren, I wish I had your optimism. Religous fanatics the world over are overjoyed every time a legislature passes a law like this.
Blacklisting and the criminalizing of though and speech is really not appropriate in a country that claims it is committed to freedom. If speech is truly “free” we must protect speech with which we disagree.
Justice Homes,
I agree. On another note, you might find it interesting that Washington had a criminal slander law on its books until 2005 that read:
RCW 9.58.110 ((( repealed )))
Slander of woman.
Every person who, in the presence or hearing of any person other than the female slandered, whether she be present or not, shall maliciously speak of or concerning any female of the age of twelve years or upwards, not a common prostitute, any false or defamatory words or language which shall injure or impair the reputation of any such female for virtue or chastity or which shall expose her to hatred, contempt or ridicule, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor. Every slander herein mentioned shall be deemed to be malicious unless justified, and shall be justified when the language charged as slanderous, false or defamatory is true and fair, and was spoken with good motives and for justifiable ends.
Wasting legislative and judicial time by working to pass laws destined to be held to be unconstitutional with certainty does not reflect well on their priorities.
Darren – Montana has an interesting history with hate crimes. Some years back, a Jewish family in Billings, MT was being harassed for being Jewish. The Billings paper took the full front page of the paper and printed a menorah. People all over Billings cut the menorah out and put them in their front windows. A few days after the paper printed the menorah the daughter in the Jewish family was telling her mother that she didn’t know that there were that many Jews in Billings. Her mother told her “No, honey, those are Jews, those are our friends.”
Religion is tyranny. That’s the point. Control over diet, behavior, sex, expression, and thought, leading only to censorship for all that offends its (in reality) faux authority.
Why debate when the religious can instead attempt to block any and all challenges to such belief.
Always shows how weak their beliefs really are, whenever they try to immunize themselves from criticism. Especially through legislation.
Gonna have to get some popcorn and soda and watch this thread go. It is a doozy already.
@randyjet
Jesus H Christ, are you on drugs or something??? Here, let’s look at just one sentence of your drivel:
“The US CP was very small and insignificant, PLUS the FACT the Soviet Union was our ally and basically destroyed Nazi Germany for us.”
Well, if that small and insignificant little party is overly entrenched in Hollywood, or the newspaper business, then they will have an outsized influence on the country. Why do you think that the Gaystapo has had so much success. Gays are only about 2-3% of the country, and yet they have parlayed their over-concentration in media to effectively promote their agenda. Read Bernays’ paper on public relations, which is the blueprint for much of this crap from Goebbels all the way up to now.
And yes, the Soviets were our allies in WWII, but are you so daft that you don’t know what happened AFTER WWII??? They flew Migs against us in Korea,and supported the Norks, and the Vietnamese in Vietnam. There was this whole little thingy called the COLD WAR.
And you think it would have been just spiffy to let the Commies write and produce movies for us??? Answer my question above. Do you think Roosevelt would have let the Nazis have free reign in Hollywood AFTER the Krauts declared war on us??? If sooo, then just jump on out there and say so. And if you don’t then explain why chasing the Commies out of Hollywood wasn’t exactly the same sort of thing.
My God, the stupid, it burns sometimes around here!!!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
SFrom, You keep on digging. That the capitalists control and run the USA is obvious and is hardly a conspiracy. As for a small number of people controlling our thoughts and ideas and our country is the same idea that motivated the Nazi charge that the JEWS are to blame for all of our ills. Glad to see you are out in the open about your ideas. That you also miss the fact that gays are about 10% of the population is another indication of your lack of knowledge and to say that they control Hollywood is a bit bizarre. Sort of like saying the commies controlled Hollywood back at the end of WWII. The people who controlled Hollywood were the owners of the studios, who in many cases were Jewish.
Their main and only concern was to make money, which is what capitalism is all about. Thus if commies wrote good movies, they were doing what they were being paid to do. The idea that the government has to control the content of movies is one that is right out of the totalitarian view, especially bad in peacetime. As most folks on this blog agree that free speech is the corrective to bad speech. Too bad you think that jailing and killing off those you disagree with is the American way. In fact, if the commies produced BAD movies, they would be out of a job with no help from the government. Your views are that of National Socialism. It also forgets that in the 50s TV was the mass medium, not movies. I love Clint Eastwood movies and I think he is an excellent director and actor, but it hardly means I agree with his rather dumb politics. I guess that a person like you would find that impossible to understand and think that Clint influences the electorate by virtue of being an excellent film maker.
As for the Cold War that is one area which I have studied rather extensively. The final piece of the puzzle was found in the book MI-6 which delved into the now declassified documents from that organization. It shows that MI-6 started the Cold War by giving Nazis shelter and organizing armed groups to infiltrate the Soviet Union, and carry out sabotage, and murders in the Soviet zones. The reason they gave for helping the Nazis was that the former rulers of those areas, knew who their collaborators were and who could be used by MI-6 against the Soviets. One wonders what the US would have thought of the Soviets sending people into the US to blow up oil refineries, kill police, etc.. That is what the US and the UK did after WWII. I suggest you read Churchill’s book Triumph and Tragedy in which he states that Stalin adhered to his promises made with Churchill in Moscow regarding the division of Europe after WWII and was later ratified by the Yalta agreements.
As for Vietnam, you might read what the Brits did when they took control of Saigon after WWII. Ho Chi Minh was our ally along with all Vietnamese who hated French colonialism and Japanese occupation. In fact, the OSS arranged a fly over by USAAF planes when he declared Vietnam’s independence after the Japanese surrender. When the Brits arrived in Saigon to take the Japanese surrender of those forces, they found our allies the Vietnamese had things well in hand. They were running things themselves and had imprisoned the French colonials who had collaborated with the Japanese. and had the Japanese under arrest. The Brits did NOT like the idea of the wogs running their own country, and marched to the Japanese, RE-ARMED them under British command, let the French crooks out of jail, who then proceeded to kill hundreds of Vietnamese in retaliation for having been jailed. The Brits did nothing to stop that slaughter. They gave Stalin a good lesson in treachery, which was no small feat either. The US merchant crews who came to transport the Japanese back to Japan, were outraged to find ARMED Japanese troops on the docks. The GIs were not too happy about that. The rest is history as they say.
randy…by cp I presume you went up in comments to ‘communist party’….if so the CP is alive and well….even putting up bernie agaisnst hillary the commie. Ya wonder why the tpa…tisa….tipp…tpp aren’t working out for the commies? There are enough repubs and their cousins of your old man’s party who know better tonight. Who know the blood that was spilled for america wasn’t so some snot ass congress person could get rich. America has it’s limits. The CP isn’t entrenched or redefined. We know communism as central secret planning and that is what we see. Millions of russians didn’t die for nothing. The commies took their wheat grinders for self reliance away. They died
for america. Let’s not make theirs and our own’s death vain.
Ahhh. Nothing like diversity to improve a blog.
Welcome, j.
SFrom, spoken like a true NAZI! That was the excuse Hitler used to establish his dictatorship, and by the way the KPD was the largest CP outside of the Soviet Union at the time. The US did have a number of films that were very sympathetic to the Nazis and Hollywood DID in fact tailor some movies to meet objections from German interests. The US CP was very small and insignificant, PLUS the FACT the Soviet Union was our ally and basically destroyed Nazi Germany for us. The influence of the CP was slight in the US and was used for political purposes to move US politics to the extreme right. The so called Cold War was started by the British, MI-6 with the US jumping on board.
Most rational people here learned from the Nazis so as not to repeat the stupid things the Germans did when they gave Hitler power and carte blanche under the bogus threat of the Communists. I know you are disappointed that your side lost WWII, but try and stay under cover a bit better.
randyjet – it is known as the CPUSA and had two divisions. Above ground and underground. The above ground was supposed to be ineffectual. The underground was very effectual.
@Randyjet
Oh, you aren’t bringing up all that blacklisting stuff are you??? Because I read about that, and I think they were right to blacklist those commies. What rational country would sit there with its thumb up it butt and let its enemies run the major media???
Gee, do ya think during WWII, if there were Nazi sympathizers in Hollywood making movies and writing scripts, that the government wouldn’t have done something about it??? Or shouldn’t have done something about it???
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
SFrom, I am not surprised that conservatives are for this since they were the ones who put people in prison during the McCarthy era, and denied them jobs, money, passports, etc. They also banned a number of books along with their ideas about correct thinking. So I am not surprised that most liberals are against this kind of crap. Look at your own political buddies horrific past crimes along these lines.
Gee, I am surprised the liberals aren’t all for this! Just think, if somebody says homophobic stuff, they could go to jail! Why wouldn’t Rahm Emanuel and Gov.Malloy of Connecticut be all for this??? After all, they wanted to penalize Chik Fil A because the owners didn’t believe in same sex marriage. They didn’t mind bringing the power of the state to bear on people who they disagree with. Plus, there are some calling for penalties against Global Warming Deniers.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Reblogged this on pundit from another planet.
Thank you for defending free speech rights. We have way to many people in prison for non violent crimes. We do not need to build more prisons for censorship crime.
When I was living in Montana the legislature only met every other year for 6 weeks, so it could be a while before it is overturned. This is how the day time speed limit got dropped.
It is a double edged sword. It cuts both ways and society will arrive at a middle ground. This is certain because no one is going to jail in the West for discussing and debating. The issue surfaces when someone takes it to an extreme. And, there in the extremes reside the problems.
Sounds like a covert way of abolishing any protests against Israeli military activities. And to use the word “insulting” as the trigger – wow – that’s a big, big net.
They don’t have a lot to do in Montana on those long winter evenings, but I do not see this surviving a court challenge.