As many on this blog know, I am hold a near absolutist view of free speech that has led me to long criticize hate speech laws around the world. We are seeing a steady expansion of criminalized speech, often under ill-defined or highly subjective standards. That is why a recent decision of a court in Cape Town caught my eye. A controversial art display inSouth African National Gallery entitled Fuck White People was reviewed by the Cape Town Magistrate. The court declared that the display, including both art, tee-shirts, and other items was not hate speech. I am always relieved when free speech prevails over criminalization. However, there is still uncertainty over the standard. Because the artist invoked the struggle of Albert Luthuli and Nelson Mandela, the campaign was deemed non-hateful speech. Would that have been the same result is an Afrikaner printed works and tee-shirts with the same message about Black people? Again, the point is not to disagree with the ruling. The point is that speech regulation often rests on uncertain and shifting standards.
What is curious about the court’s logic (I would have preferred a higher court decision striking down the criminalization of speech) is that the artist, Dean Hutton, has made it clear that she is speaking to all white people:
We are individuals first, with little to no collective responsibility for actively dismantling the systems that keep us white. Being white is a construct which we have too heavily invested in emotionally and spiritually, and which asks us to turn a blind eye to oppressive behaviour that continues to destroy our humxnity. It is too easy to blame racism on the “bad whites” and give ourselves a cookie for good behaviour but every single one of us profits from white privilege and, until we actively deal with systemic racism, with both everyday and extraordinary action, identifying as white to the exclusion of our humxnity will continue to be problematic. The discomfort of feeling racialised in spaces, to honestly ask ourselves if we belong, or how we achieve belonging, is a very necessary part of unlearning oppressive behaviour.
The stated purpose behind the art is also directed at the intolerance generally of white people — not just the intolerance shown to blacks. Hutton ties the art to what she views as a white hatred for transexual people like herself:
I have a dropbox folder entitled “White People Made Visible” filled with hundreds of dehumxnising, threatening and hurtful comments about my fat, queer body. My body has always been a site for white violence and today I have had to seek legal help to apply for an interdict against people who want to hurt me, and to destroy creative works which make them uncomfortable. My body presents outside of gender-binaries, people are confused by that and it’s online where I experience the most hateful transphobia. I have been made into a monster, people on those sites refer to me with a dehumxnised “it”. To them I am a waste of white skin, a traitor to my race and for that I am disallowed any right to humxn dignity.
So what is the standard for hate speech in South Africa? The law itself is chillingly broad and ill-defined:
The Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, 2000 :
[N]o person may publish, propagate, advocate or communicate words based on one or more of the prohibited grounds, against any person, that could reasonably be construed to demonstrate a clear intention to―
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be hurtful;
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be harmful or to incite harm;
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promote or propagate hatred
To be harmful or “promote” hatred is so vague as to allow the most arbitrary applications. You end up, as in this case, distinguishing between profane attacks on races as either elevating political statements or racist screeds. There is an alternative. It is called free speech where you let good speech drown out bad speech. That is why this is the right decision for the wrong reason.
When the slave owner says F-U to the slave, the owner suffers no harm. When the slave says F-U to his owner, he loses everything.
Listen to transcripts of the early court proceedings of the Oscar Pistorius trial. If they’re any indication of the level of sophistication of the South African court system, I offer my advance apologies to Macropods everywhere for referring to RSA magistrates as “kangaroo courts”.
“Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech,…”
Government based on freedom is limited to security and infrastructure.
Morality, manners, etiquette, opinion, love, hate, sexism, discrimination, racism, marriage, social
acceptance, social ostracism, etc. are not within the purview of a government under freedom.
“Hate speech” laws are biased, ideological, incoherently redundant and unconstitutional.
“Hate crime” laws are biased, ideological, incoherently redundant and unconstitutional.
Private property owners have the right to deny speech.
Public property managers have the right to deny or approve based on support by voters.
Courts must support any and all freedom of speech.
Courts must support private and public restrictions based on “community” standards.
Example: pornography is simultaneously freedom of speech and indecent exposure.
This “artist” is just riding the waves of identity politics to get some fame. And apparently she/he/ze (it?) has succeeded.
For those who are interested in exploring the very complicated history of South Africa I would suggest reading “The Syringa Tree” or seeing the powerful play. Written by a while woman who grew up there and actually offers a nuanced perspective.
Clearly, it’s hate speech. Clearly hate speech should be protected.
My question is, who wants to live this way? Isn’t there enough hate to go around already? I hardly find this arty, it’s banal. It’s certainly not transgressive because hatred is what rules many, many societies. Transgressive is acknowledging the fact that power over others takes and has taken many forms. There is nothing holy in being oppressed.
We need an honest look at prejudice, all of it. White racism does exist but it isn’t the only prejudice to exist and that harms people.
More importantly, what is the point of looking at harm done without any desire to make things better? What is the goal. The goal of hating others is easy. The goal of reaching out towards others is difficult. It requires a brutal honesty not possessed by apparent poseurs trying to make a name for themselves! We should all be better people and stop trying to score “cool points” by saying such stupid things. That’s for losers. People of courage are people who care about others. No “cool points” are awarded for caring–just a good life.
This artist seems to be in desperate need of psychiatric help. Look at how she refers to herself. Look up the definition of “gender-binary” if you are interested in a view of psychotic thought process. As far as these racist rants go, best to ignore them. The more attention they receive, the more demanding they become.
Of course it’s hateful, racist speech.
The definition of racism is “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.” The statement clearly shows antagonism towards an entire race of people.
No, it is not OK, because of wrongs in past history. That’s how the Hutu started the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi. Hatfields and McCoys. And, if the artist was going to be historically accurate, why not apply that statement to the African tribes who deliberately sold their rivals into slavery to the Dutch or Portuguese?
I tire of the belief that racism against Caucasians, Asians, and Latinos is perfectly fine as long as it is done by African Americans. No, it’s not. That’s what equality means. We all are supposed to be held to the same standards.
That said, hate speech should still be free speech. I read recently on social media how some really vile racist comments were posted to a news story about Malia Obama. The response was that the police should investigate and prosecute anyone who wrote such things, and that the law should be changes so that people who talk like that should go to jail. The people who wrote that were diametrically opposed to Trump…I wonder if they really thought about that – wanting a Trump administration to define what speech would be deemed illegal.
The comments were disgusting, but the best remedy for bad speech is good speech. We should never seriously entertain the idea of having our government decide what we are allowed to say. A better response to that example would have been sending Malia comforting messages and support, as well as caring that she may have been hurt by such taunts.
What utter crap! The Tranny Freak said, “Whiteness is a powerful drug and no one is immune. It is not the only problem we face but it is a very powerful foundation for patriarchy and capitalism.”
Hmmm. OK, so I put that to the test. I tried using my “Whiteness” instead of a cup of coffee to get woke, but it didn’t work. Sooo, I made some French Press coffee with Seattle’s Best Very Vanilla® and Voila! I woke right up!
Tomorrow, I will use Seattle’s Best Noir No.5, just to make sure it wasn’t the vanilla.
All in all, the artist is a sad. pathetic tranny freak who pretends to be an artist. Maybe it pays better than being a gay hooker.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
So if someone says “F**k Black people, it’s also not hate speech. Good to know.
There is no way that this is not hate speech, given here own statement.
“The court found that the words “white” and “people” were not directed at all white people, but rather at a general system of oppression inherent in “white domination.”
***********************
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is”, said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
Judge must have channeled Lewis Carroll!
mespo, Humpty Dumpty is a great philosopher who undresses the left while they are stealing other people’s liberty. That is one of my favorite quotes. Why the left can’t understand the simple concept of those words is incomprehensible to me unless they are born fascists.
Love me some Lewis Carroll.
The place to start is not speech. It is the racism that began generations ago and continues. It is banks that discriminate against groups but not Whites in suburbs and high rent districts. (If Trump was Black, which financial institutions would have been as forgiving?) It is voters who disproportionately select White men for political office. It is employment practices that result in people other than White men, receiving lesser pay and fewer promotions. It is housing markets that uproot Black people from neighborhoods in favor of the rich White man’s’ development. It is White American oligarchs stealing the common good, which disproportionately harms those at the bottom rungs of wealth and income.
So many choose to ignore that powerlessness has one outlet, speech. Last year, the richest 1% shifted $4 tril. from the nation to themselves. No words of condemnation for them are severe enough and no penalty should be exacted for the utterances of the words of contempt.
Would you please explain how the richest 1% shifted 4 trillion $ from the nation to themselves? And who are these individuals? Thank-you.
Some examples- Donald Trump praises the efforts of those in his income bracket who shift the money that they owe to the government for services like defense, infrastructure, etc., into their own bank accounts. Warren Buffet has been quoted about the growth in wealth of his fellow rich, through legalized tax dodging like carried interest as contrasted with Buffet’s secretary who can’t afford to buy legislation to advantage people like her in lower income brackets.
In Ohio, the gerrymandered state government’s politicians receive campaign contributions from privatized public schools-contractor schools deceptively labeled charter schools (by both parties). There is a civil case in an Ohio court to get the return of $60,000,000 from the largest contractor school. A school truancy rate of 70% is alleged. (It surprised me to learn that the first for-profit school operated with tax money, was founded by convicted financier Michael Milkin)
Many people are writing about the causes of concentrated wealth. A couple of sources follow- Gordon Lafer’s, The One Percent Solution, quantifies labor’s monetary loss of their rewards for productivity gains, which enriched investors. Lafer has a graph that documents it as a relatively recent phenomenon in American history. Chuck Collins’ “What Happened to American Wealth”, June 30, 2017, at popular Resistance.
Linda, not everything is racism, even a lot of bank lending policies. Risk has more to do with lending money than race though there is no denying that racism is used for personal benefit by ALL races. Don’t forget that on our shores there were black slave owners that existed enslaving black people, and black people sold black people into the slave trade.
Cannot speak on black slave owners since I’m aware of them but few records exist of their treatment of slaves. I will however point out that slavery existed across races for thousands of years. Are you implying that kings and tribal leaders who had enslaved members of defeated tribes were aware in selling to slavers that this would be one of the most brutal implementations of slavery, done strictly by race, keeping not only the captured as slaves but their children and children’s children too for generations to come? If they knew this would be used to develop a sense of racial superiority at a time when the concepts white and black did not truly exist and weren’t defined as they are today I wonder if they would have sold them as such. The Barbary Slavery of Europeans of the time did not extend to offspring and one merely had to declare himself a Muslim to gain freedom. Slaves in the new world were forced to become christians and still kept as slaves along with any offspring.
ck07, not sure what you think I am implying.My point to Linda was that everything is not racism.Historically slavery, as I think you might be suggesting, wasn’t generally about race either. It involved conquest among other things. We are too sensitive with regard to the discussion of races and that by itself creates racism.
“Let’s not talk about it” Is convenient for you but, it lacks empathy and denies historical evidence.
Linda, there is a difference between uneducated hyperbole and rational thinking. I prefer the latter. No one has denied that racism exists and is bad, but everything is not racism.
The Barbary Slavery of Europeans of the time did not extend to offspring and one merely had to declare himself a Muslim to gain freedom. Slaves in the new world were forced to become christians and still kept as slaves along with any offspring.
You ever notice that the negroid population of North Africa is rather small? And that the same applies in the Arabian peninsula and the Fertile Crescent? You think it might have to do with the regular practice of castrating your slaves?
Read Richard Rothstein’s “The Color of the Law”.
How presceient. I say “Linda, not everything is racism” meaning that actions of individuals, though blamed on ‘racist’ individuals, is frequently due to things other than racism. Then you wonderfully suggest a book “The Color of the Law”.
What does that book say? Government (federal through local), the God of the left, created a lot of the segregation we both disdain. I don’t deny racism exists, but as you have pointed out government is one of the big perveyors of racism and leftists are big perveyors of government.
That’s purveyors.
A government of the people, by the people and for the people is all that stands between the vulnerable (the 99%) and the oligarchs like the Koch’s (father and sons), Walton heirs, and tech and Wall Street tyrants like Bloomberg, Gates, Z-berg, Thiel, who described as an oxymoron, women voting and capitalistic democracy, Hastings, who called for an elimination of democratically elected school boards, and Andreeson, who said India was better off under colonialism (the latter 3 are FB board members).
Linda, Ok we got it. You don’t like people that are successful and earned a lot of money. You probably prefer people like Bernie’s wife who might soon be under indictment.
Gates helped bring computers into your home so you could write this type of rubbish. I am thankful for all those very rich people that created wealth for our nation and things that we could all use.
A government of the people and by the people means less government, not more. What happened to your discussion of racism that suddenly turned into hate the rich?
Each of the world’s 5 richest men have wealth equivalent to 750,000,000 people. The men’s contributions don’t warrant the unprecedented accumulation of wealth, which was gained predominantly as a result of labor’s productivity.
Linda, without men like these labor would be out of work. Having said that, I am not terribly happy with so much money being passed down generation after generation.
Those that earned the money added tremendously to the economy. You might think they spend a lot on their personal needs, but that is just a drop in the bucket and while doing so they create employment. Where do you think the bulk of the Walton or Gates money goes? That money is invested into our economy stimulating jobs and creating more wealth.
The ability to have private ownership of one’s own property, whether it be tangible or intellectual, is the great stimulus that has made the US the wealthiest nation the world has ever seen. That wealth and the capitalist ideas brought into the marketplaces throughout the world have elevated millions upon millions of people out of dire poverty.
Look at those nations that believe as you do. Many of them are failed nations with miserably poor people. Those nations that are growing demonstrate significant economic freedom and one sees their poorer populations move upward on the economic ladder.
The Walton’s GenNext website shows their expanded agenda, which is indicative of the wealthy’s decision that democracy is irrelevant to U.S. governance. The site includes 3 goals, one of which relates to international security and the 2nd, elimination of a common good. The site featured Donald Rumsfeld and former homeland security advisor Janet Napolitano. As President of the University of California system, Napolitano has worked to privatize public pensions.
John Arnold (Enron and hedge funds) finances an anti-public pension “philanthropy”. Broadening its influence, the Arnold Foundation provided funding to the Baltimore police for aerial surveillance of the city (reporting from the Baltimore Sun). Community leaders reported they were unaware of the police surveillance program.
The Walton’s and Gates have spent $1 bil. each to privatize and corporatize public education. If you are willing to read information that refutes your existing opinions, a search of the topic “philanthro-capitalsm” will show you the unprecedented activities of the richest 0.1%. The self-anointed and self-titled, wealthy, ed reformers work towards digital delivery of education for the 90%. The same plan is rejected by the schools which their children attend. Z-berg and Bill Gates are investors in the largest, for-profit, seller of schools-in-a-box. A Gates-funded ed organization describes schools as “human capital pipelines”. Z-berg’s FB board has Marc Andreeson who said India was better under colonialism, Reed Hastings, who called for the elimination of democratically-elected school boards and Peter Thiel, who described, as an oxymoron, women voting and democratic capitalism.
I have no doubt that the very rich together have a lot of power and that the working class isn’t always as well represented as they should be. That is one reason Donald Trump won the presidency (…and Bernie Sanders should have at probably won the Democratic nomination). It is your theories that I find so terribly lacking along with your seemingly total lack of recongition of economic principles.
By the way, our Constitution attempted to provide protections to the individual from the federal government and all these protections have been dwindled away as the left and likely yourself constantly try and treat the Constitution like disposable toilet paper. Yours are the type of thoughts that make the federal government grow which is to the disadvantage of the individual and the advantage of those that can use power for themselves.
Report back on the freedoms under colonialism.
Linda, I may have missed it, but you didn’t mention George Soros and his wealth. Are you okay with his wealth, since he is using it to destroy America?
Soros’ influence is a gnat compared to the Koch/ALEC/Gates/Walton/Mercer/Adelson/Chamber of Commerce, …compact.
Linda, Report back on the freedoms under socialism and communism.
Your rhetoric sounds like one who prefers individual freedom, but your actions sounds like group think.
Turley teaches at a place called George Washington University. This should not be confused with Washington University which is in Saint Louis and would never hire the Turleydog.
” There is an alternative. It is called free speech where you let good speech drown out bad speech. That is why this is the right decision for the wrong reason.”
“good speech drowns out bad speech” is clear and concise. It should be the rule of the land.
One should not asterik * anyone.
To asterik someone twice is a double entendre.
It’s impossible to “asterik” anyone or anything.
*Louise Hudson*. We put the *asterik on the London Bridge when it fell down and moved to Arizona. Trump put an * on the White House. It will henceforth be called the Frigging White House. The Orange*Man cometh. All over place.
Jeeze, Louise.
You miss my point. The correct spelling is ASTERISK, and the second S should be pronounced.
The law as written is ridiculously overbroad. What is “hurtful” or “harmful” is entirely subjective and depends on whom is on the receiving end of the speech. Not a whole lot of “ball bustin'” going on in South Africa, and a comic roast would be especially criminal.
The President of South Africa said, as he walked into the DuPont Circle Hotel in Washington, DC:
“Where da White women at?”
Of course he was mimicking a movie he had just seen on tv called Blazing Saddles.
Talking trash will get you shot. More than 100 people were shot in Chicago over the 4th of July weekend.
Would that have been the same result is an Afrikaner printed works and tee-shirts with the same message about Black people?
Of course not. ‘Hate speech’ laws have nothing to to with containing sedition or obscenity and everything to do with incorporating into the penal code mandatory deference to progtrash mascot groups. South Africa’s long been a mess and (relative to the occident) hasn’t gotten appreciably worse in the last 20 years. However, the political elite is now made up of vulgar black nationalists, some of whom have law degrees, so you get this sort of chaff thrown into your face.
We have a similar phenomenon manifest in the public square here (though not much in daily life). Controversies like the Trayvon Martin case and the Black Lives Matter are indicators that a critical mass of the black rank-and-file (about 30%, it would appear) fancy themselves an aristocratic element that must not be ‘disrespected’ by the sort of white peasants employed as police officers and insurance underwriters. The difference is that in America, succoring this nonsense is a component of intramural status competition in the white population. It’s professional class whites abusing miscellanous whites (typically whites who speak in unadorned declarative sentences). That’s not all that important anymore in South Africa, where this sort of thing is merely an assertion of power by the black elite.
Disrespected? Hey I’m of the opinion that it is hate speech, but when we’re on pace for about 1000 people shot and killed by police this year (mostly armed white males), but about a quarter are black, a quarter are mentally ill, over a tenth are unarmed and I don’t remember a single officer being convicted since the Martin case made this all very public, and very few were even indicted, you come off as sounding very biased. Were Zimmerman, Wilson, and the officers involved in the Castile, Gray, Rice, Garner, bland etc deaths convicted is say you might have a point. Instead Zimmerman and Wilson raised more from the klans backing than the victims families. Blacks saying they want equal rights and that their lives should matter too isn’t some aristocratic elite bs you perceive it as through your rose tinted specs.
but when we’re on pace for about 1000 people shot and killed by police this year (mostly armed white males), b
The Bureau of Justice Statistics has been compiling figures on the phenomenon for decades. It’s bounced around a set point of 300-400 per year since 1975, even though population has increased 1/2 again since 1975. You’re recycling a meme which the Washington Post has been peddling, The smart money says they assigned the task to an inept intern who double-counted a mess of cases or they’ve been self-consciously deceitful.
but about a quarter are black,
Blacks account for north of 40% of the homicide offenders in this country and similar fractions for perpetration of forcible rape and aggravated assault. It’s not surprising that the population shot by cops is disproportionately black.
I don’t remember a single officer being convicted since the Martin case
Well, look at the cases the sorosphere elected to publicize, and you’ll get an idea of the properties of the cases most useful for their purposes. One was a man shot after he attacked a police officer and tried to take the man’s duty gun away from him. another was a child shot when he pointed a replica at a police officer (there was no ready way to tell it was not actually a loaded gun), one was a morbidly obese man who died of a heart attack after being tackled (it was an ordinary police tackle and the man was in a choke hold for all of 9 seconds), one was a man killed accidently by a bullet which ricocheted in a stairwell. There are some more dubious cases, two still working their way through the criminal justice system. One jury verdict does look rather dubious.
The Martin case is like these others only because the usual rabble rousers were out in force. George Zimmerman was a private citizen and he shot a man who had attacked him and was banging his head into the concrete. Nothing to do with police procedure.
Instead Zimmerman and Wilson raised more from the klans backing than the victims families.
Oh, your’re the accountant for all these people?
I might add that that’s an obscene libel contra people who contributed to their legal defense funds. Both men were innocent of any crime but being put through a legal mangle. The people who contributed to their defense funds were betting that was the case, and they were right.
Blacks saying they want equal rights and that their lives should matter too isn’t some aristocratic elite bs you perceive it as through your rose tinted specs.
You don’t actually have a legal right to assault police officers or private citizens. That wasn’t a matter of concern to Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin. Brown was apparently incensed that a police officer told him to use the sidewalk and not saunter down the middle of the street like he owned it and Martin was incensed that Zimmerman had looked at him sideways.
I had long discussions with Zimmerman detractors in fora like this (white leftists, for the most part). It was immediately apparent that the premise of their understanding was that Zimmerman must be guilty, and anything they could imagine consistent with that was the most plausible sequence of events, even if there was zero evidence for it. (One man told me that Zimmerman’s injuries must have come from falling off a retaining wall, not that there’s a retaining wall in that housing complex). In truth, there were some lacunae, but you could divine what happened by listening to the recorded calls to the police, examining a map of the complex, and remarking where Zimmerman dropped his keys, and reviewing the eyewitness testimony. It was amazing the degree to which this suburban everyman was turned into a depersonalized object of contempt by the progtrash mind. As they spilled their thoughts about the case in increments, it was apparent that latent in their thinking was the notion that blacks should have a franchise to physically assault people who annoy them. Of course, there was no evidence that Zimmerman had done one blessed thing that would have met the legal definition of fighting words, but, no mind, Zimmerman detractors will just make stuff up (contending that Zimmerman had ‘stalked’ Martin, which was utter nonsense).
Free speech advocate Garrett Johnson, shown here, made another attempt at expressing the sum of his philosophy and look what happened to him, escorted away by Officer, I mean Senator, Al Franken
Come on JT, hate speech is a one way street and you know it.
Nick, you got that right.
What Joseph Sobran said: behind every double standard is an unconfessed single standard.
Yup. This is true. And what is going on in RSA — with threats of confiscation of white-owned property — is not being covered well in the media.