We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in Europe. The move to criminalize speech has led to an insatiable appetite for new limitations and broader prosecutions. Norway is an example of this headlong plunge into speech controls and crimes in the West. This week the legislature adopted (without even a vote) a new criminal law that punishes people for saying anything deemed hate speech toward transgender people in their own home or private conversations.
Minister of Justice and Public Security Monica Maeland declared victory because speech regulation must be “adapted to the practical situations that arise.” The “practical situation” includes speaking to your own spouse or family.
Birna Rorslett, vice president of the Association of Transgender People in Norway added allowing people to speak out against transgender values or issues “has been an eyesore for trans people for many, many years.”
Such speech controls in Europe have led to a chilling effect on political and religious speech. In their homes, people will often share religious and political views that depart from majoritarian values or beliefs. This law would regulate those conversations and criminalize the expression of prohibited viewpoints.
As we recently discussed, a poll in Germany found only 18 percent of Germans feel free to express their views in public. Notably, over 31 percent of Germans did not even feel free expressing themselves in private among friends. Just 17 percent felt free to express themselves on the Internet and 35 percent said that freedom to speak is confined to the smallest of private circles.
The most chilling fact is that European-style speech controls have become a core value in the Democratic Party. Once a party that fought for free speech, it has become the party demanding Internet censorship and hate speech laws. President-Elect Joe Biden has called for speech controls and recently appointed a transition head for agency media issues that is one of the most pronounced anti-free speech figures in the United States. It is a trend that seems now to be find support in the media, which celebrated the speech of French President Emmanuel Macron before Congress where he called on the United States to follow the model of Europe on hate speech.
For free speech advocates, we need to educate the public on where this road leads in places like Norway. What is at stake is the very right that has long defined us as a nation. Once we cross the Rubicon into speech criminalization and controls, Europe has shown that it is rarely possible to work back to liberties lost. We are moving into potentially the most anti-free speech period of American history — and possibly the most anti-free speech Administration. Many politicians are already arguing for citizens to give up their free speech rights in forums like the Internet. With the media echoing many of these anti-free speech sentiments, it will require a greater effort of those who value the First Amendment and its core place in our constitutional system.
There is safety in numbers. Enough of us have to disobey these rules.
Will any jury convict?
What makes you think that fanatical liberals and their Marxist cronies will bother with trials……..arrests in the middle of the night and secret executions are so much simpler and faster?
In the land of Edvard Munsch, the insane painter of “The Scream”, and now Anders Behring Breivik, anti-hate measures outweigh any silliness about “free speech”, JT.
Norway is outside your domain of competence.
Norway is outside your domain of competence.
In re some of your remarks, no one can figure if audacity or senility is the driver.
There was a day that we could stand up for Free Speech and expect a response from our fellow Americans. But it might be more practical to use the same cheat sheet that that Soros focused on when he undertook to buy up District Attorney offices all over America. No prosecution, for what now passes for “law” can get past the gate keepers, who currently pick and choose like any tin-pot dictator, and feel no particular mandate from either the electorate or the legislature. It may be that we have made all the “stands” we are going to be allowed to make on any enlightenment standards, as we proceed into the dark, with Captain Biden.
I think the focus on hate speech is a waste of time. But, I favor drawing more visible red lines around the issuing of threats, especially done anonymously and against a specific person. Or, facilitating the process of directing threats toward a specific person (Doxing).
Threats already are quashing freedom of speech by way of intimidation/self-censorship.
We have not been serious enough about deterring threat making and facilitation. It goes on every day millions of times with impunity.
I think the focus on hate speech is a waste of time. But, I favor drawing more visible red lines around the issuing of threats, especially done anonymously and against a specific person. Or, facilitating the process of directing threats toward a specific person (Doxing).
Criminal solicitation, harassment, and menacing are already crimes. They’re not punished severely, at least in New York. Again, this mess about hate speech has nothing to do with anything resembling crime conventionally understood. It has to do with status-complaints. Namely, that ordinary people are tossing darts at a liberal mascot group and liberals haven’t given them permission to do that. The usual dyad between patron-and-mascot is more intense here because the client population is peculiarly damaged.
This started when we started increasing sentencing for crimes considered “hate crimes.” The moment that criminal sentencing was enhanced by thoughts in the head of the convicted, presumed or admitted to, was the moment that a major shovel of dirt steepened this slippery slope. Germany’s current Nazis prove that we can’t legislate away hate. Hate can only be mitigated with better stronger ideas. The fallacy, the lie, is that hate can be eliminated. It can only be diminished and that effort will be ongoing for generations to come.
Absolutely chilling. What’s next to ban in one’s own privacy? Farts?
That would be a good start. LOL!
Jonathan: What goes on in Norway will probably stay in Norway. It is highly improbable the Biden administration will criminalize “hate speech” toward transgender people any time soon. What you fail to acknowledge is that the real threats to free speech have gone on right under your nose for the past four years under the Trump administration. We all know Trump does not take criticism well. Since stepping into the White House Trump has attacked the press and his many critics. Trump has perfected the art of “hate speech” in personal attacks on Democrats and other critics. He sued the NY Times and Washington Post for articles he didn’t like. He has banished reporters from press conferences because of difficult questions he didn’t want to answer. At his Thanksgiving press conference on Thursday Trump shouted down a reporter who had the temerity to push back against Trump’s false claims about “election fraud”. “Don’t talk to me that way”, Trump shouted. “I’m the president of the United States. Don’t ever talk to the president that way”. So much for the free speech rights of reporters at the White House.
Trump has also used the state apparatus to impose speech codes on government agencies. He told the CDC not to use words like “fetus”, “transgender”, “diversity”, “evidence-based” and “science-based” in official documents. Trump also imposed similar restrictions on other agencies .Seventy-one years after the publication of his seminal work “1984” George Orwell would be rolling over in his grave to see that Trump has actually created a “Ministry of Truth”.
Truth has shown what he thinks of free speech in other ways. After Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered and his body dismembered in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul Trump defended Crown Prince bin Salman who was charged by intelligence agencies, including the CIA, of being the mastermind behind the assassination. Trump likes authoritarian leaders who really know how to deal with criticism!
In our country the ultimate form of “free speech” is the right to vote. In his over 40 unsuccessful lawsuits in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan Trump tried to take that right away from millions of African-American and other minority voters simply because they voted Democratic. Apparently, Trump thinks only white Republicans should have the right to vote. Trump crossed the “Rubicon”, to use your term, in his four years of attacks on free speech. Nothing that President-elect Biden may do can compare with the damage Trump has inflicted on the First Amendment!
Let’s take your claims one by one:
“Since stepping into the White House Trump has attacked the press and his many critics.” ALL PRESIDENTS ATTACK THE PRESS. BILL CLINTON SCAPEGOATED TALK RADIO FOR THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING. PRESIDENTS HAVE FREE SPEECH, TOO.
“Trump has perfected the art of ‘hate speech’ in personal attacks on Democrats and other critics.” SO WHAT? THEY ALL DO IT. OBAMA HATES ON BITTER CLINGERS AND SO-CALLED “RACISTS” WHO VOTED FOR TRUMP (WHO ARE NOT ACTUALLY RACISTS, BTW). HILLARY DESPISES HER DEPLORABLES. HATE SPEECH, INCLUDING BY PROMINENT DEMOCRATS, IS PROTECTED.
“He sued the NY Times and Washington Post for articles he didn’t like.” SO WHAT? THE CASES WILL BE DISMISSED ON FREEDOM OF THE PRESS GROUNDS. TRUMP IS JUST EMPHASIZING HIS DISLIKE FOR THEIR PROPAGANDA BY FECKLESSLY SUING THEM.
“He has banished reporters from press conferences because of difficult questions he didn’t want to answer.” FREEDOM OF THE PRESS DOES NOT INCLUDE DISORDERLY CONDUCT BY REPORTERS IN PRESS BRIEFINGS. CNN WAS FREE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT IT ON NATIONAL TV, ANYWAY. FREE SPEECH WAS IN NO REAL SENSE INTERFERED. YOU MIGHT ASK JERK DORSEY IF HE USED HIS TECH MONOPOLY TO INTERFERE WITH FREE SPEECH.
“At his Thanksgiving press conference on Thursday Trump shouted down a reporter who had the temerity to push back against Trump’s false claims about ‘election fraud.’ ‘Don’t talk to me that way’, Trump shouted. ‘I’m the president of the United States. Don’t ever talk to the president that way.’ So much for the free speech rights of reporters at the White House.” SO WHAT FOR PETE’S SAKE? HOW’S THAT ATTACKING FREE SPEECH IN ANY SENSE? IT’S TRUMP EXERCISING HIS FREE SPEECH BY COMPLAINING ABOUT THEIR BEHAVIOR. THEY STILL HAVE THE MEDIA TO FIRE BACK AND THEY USED IT.
“Trump has also used the state apparatus to impose speech codes on government agencies.” NO EMPLOYER, INCLUDING THE US GOVERNMENT, ALLOWS ITS EMPLOYEES TO OPENLY CONTRADICT COMPANY POLICY. IF A GOVERNMENT AGENCY WAS TAKEN OVER THE THE KLAN, WOULD YOU SUGGEST THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO USE THE AGENCY AS A PLATFORM FOR KLAN PROPAGANDA?
“After Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered and his body dismembered in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul Trump defended Crown Prince bin Salman who was charged by intelligence agencies, including the CIA, of being the mastermind behind the assassination. Trump likes authoritarian leaders who really know how to deal with criticism!” TRUMP DIDN’T KILL KHASHOGGI, BUT YOU’RE GUYS KILLED KHADAFFI. HOW ARE THOSE UNINTEDED CONSEQUENCES WORKING FOR YA? LET’S ASK ISIS.
“In his over 40 unsuccessful lawsuits in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan Trump tried to take that right away from millions of African-American and other minority voters simply because they voted Democratic.” THIS ONE IS MY FAVORITE. FREE SPEECH DOES NOT INCLUDE THE RIGHT TO DEFRAUD ELECTIONS ON BEHALF DEMOCRATS.
Protect free speech. Don’t blame the rest of us for your bad ideas.
It’s quite interesting you can, with great vehemence, cite all the horrible wrong-doings of evil Trump, but fail to notice the eight year assault on conservatives under war mongering, Nobel peace prize winning, Obama. But . . . conservatives don’t deserve any rights. They are simply deplorable. Your are the enlightened one.
The American Founders said that the rights, freedoms, privileges and immunities provided to Americans were natural and God-given; that they are universal, which includes every nation on Earth.
Someday all people will grasp the scope and breadth, the purpose, of the maximal freedom provided to individual Americans and the severe limitations and restrictions imposed on government/Congress by the American Founders and their Constitution.
Hopefully it won’t be too late to preclude enslavement by the communist “dictatorship of the proletariat” in the form of the burgeoning, impending global hegemon, megalomaniacal China.
These trolls are talking about silencing dissent, and they expect me to believe they didn’t steal an election?
What will those Wegians tell Saint Peter is at The Holy Gates when they get their interview?
Saint Peter will ask:. Are you a fag?
Some will go straight to hell in the handbasket.
There is a sign on the center of the door to the women’s so called “rest room” at our marina. It says” NO DONGS ALLOWED!
That means that a male who dresses u as a female but never had a surgery to remove his male genital cannot enter.
In Norway they have a sign on male and female restrooms which says:. No Friggin Russians.
Joe Biden went from stealing someone’s wife, to stealing speeches, to stealing money, to stealing an election.
He has really grown as a politician.
— Michael Moore (@mbracemoore) November 28, 2020