Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech:
A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values. The article's tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines and blogs in the United States do not say every day without fear of legal reprisal.
Things are different here. The magazine is on trial.
Two members of the Canadian Islamic Congress say the magazine, Maclean's, Canada's leading newsweekly, violated a provincial hate speech law by stirring up hatred against Muslims. They say the magazine should be forbidden from saying similar things, forced to publish a rebuttal and made to compensate Muslims for injuring their "dignity, feelings and self respect."
...
Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws or have signed international conventions banning hate speech. Israel and France forbid the sale of Nazi items like swastikas and flags. It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France.
I have to say fuck their dignity. When Muslims redact the Koran so as to satisfy the affront to my dignity as a non-Muslim at its ethno-centric and triumphalist narrative I'll be willing to pay attention to this sort of stuff from those who claim special access to transcendental truth and presume that others live in darkness and falsity. And no, Scienceblogs.com servers are not hosted in Canada.
(H/T Talk Islam)
Suing a magazine for being dickish? Have they no dignity? No self-respect?
i do find it interesting that canada has such humorless folk. do all those capable of lightening up emigrate to the USA?
Humourless.
While this type of thing seems unthinkable here, so did pre-emptive war, torture, warrantless wiretapping, suspension of habeus corpus, indefinite detentions, and extraordinary renditions etc etc.
Attempts to rein in free speech are often presented as attacks against racism, homophobia, Christian-bashing etc---but they all stem from the same idea---that free speech should not extend to insulting and offending people. Except that is exactly what free speech must allow. It is often impossible to criticize an idea or belief without insulting the people who hold that belief in high regard. How do you criticize a religion without criticizing its adherents. How do you criticize any group's beliefs--conservatives, liberals, homosexuals, nazis without insulting the people who hold those beliefs as truth. Yes, it is often ugly and contemptible---but living in a world where mullahs, priests, or politicans were above criticism would be even more so.
the standard response of course is that some speech creates an atmosphere of hatred and/or is simply masking the real hatred (i.e., hatred of islam is just a way of hating on muslims). the problem of course is who gets to decide these sorts of issues? why the government and pressure groups of course.
Tempest in a teapot, I suggest.
I'm in Canada, and I think that the reality is that our "human rights commissions" have about outlived their usefulness, and are now overreaching. Most (all?) were set up in the late 60's with pretty specific mandates related to undoubted discrimination in housing and employment.
I read and hear little that's in favour of the sort of commission action being discussed in this item. I don't expect the commissions to last much longer. To portray this sort of thing as somehow representative of views in Canada is well off the mark, in my view.
To portray this sort of thing as somehow representative of views in Canada is well off the mark, in my view.
i've heard about other ways your kind disrespect speech. but hey, it's all good, just as long as this sort of tory tendency doesn't bleed south of the great border.
Well, if you'll keep all sorts of other sludge from bleeding north of our border with the Excited States, I'll do what I can about the ways in which my kind "disrespect speech." :-)
Well, if you'll keep all sorts of other sludge from bleeding north of our border with the Excited States
hey man, you can turn the TV off. no one's forcing you guys to live as close to the greatest nation in the world as you can get ;-)
I thought it was "greatest nation in the known universe" ...
I thought it was "greatest nation in the known universe" ...
I thought it was the known universe.
At least over there.
The only thing keeping us from rubbing borders with Mexico is you, dammit!
Let us also not forget the shabby treatment of a U.K. citizen, Nick Gisburne by U.S. based YouTube (Google), Inc.
He put up a simple video slide show of quotations from the Quran and the idiot Muslim's got YouTube to not just take the 'offending' video down, but they also deleted Gisburne's account.
Religion in its many guises deserves all the scorn and derision we can heap upon it. Here in the U.S. my 1st Amendment rights allow me to do that.
*ahem*
Maher Arar
The law banning hate speech isn't as simple as you Americans would have it to be. For instance, hate speech on matters of religious doctrine are not banned. Personally, I think reasonable limits on otherwise broad freedoms to be a good thing, and I think the implementation of such in Canada to have a good track record. One can wiki the Oakes test or R. v. Keegstra to get a more solid background on Canadian jurisprudence.
Ah, but 'reasonable' is so often used to denote a quality defined in the eye of the beholder.
Banning controversial or offensive speech is not at all reasonable - it is grossly reactionary and imperils the basic concept of freedom of speech.
Re Dunbar, Canada's track record in implementation:
Are you serious ? The fedral and provincial Human Rights Tribunals where the MacLean's case are being tried are basically a sham (quasi-judicial bodies designed for mundane dispute resolution, are being used to censor speech!).
Ah, but 'reasonable' is so often used to denote a quality defined in the eye of the beholder.
oh please, dunbar is one of the sons of god who walk astride the earth and mark the evil and the good....
In the US, our censorship is self-imposed, not by the state. YouTube is a good example -- they're private. Our mainstream media, which are private, won't speak simple truths. Rachel Ray and Urban Outfitters had to junk wearing and selling keffiyehs because Jewish special interest groups complained.
Watson got Watsoned by special interest groups and his own, private lab, not the state.
Noam Chomsky pointed this out in Necessary Illusions: the freer the speech laws are, the more you will see self-imposed censorship to keep bad things from being said.
It's obviously better than censorship laws, but it's not like we're truly free to tell Muslims to go suck a dick, unless you want to lose your job and endanger future job prospects for lacking racial or religious sensitivity.
It's obviously better than censorship laws, but it's not like we're truly free to tell Muslims to go suck a dick, unless you want to lose your job and endanger future job prospects for lacking racial or religious sensitivity.
you can always be a shock jock. michael savage gets rich by telling muslims to suck dick. if you want a modest middle class income that's more attainable become an evangelical preacher and you can pepper your sermons with stuff about how muslims are the tools of satan (ergo, no doubt they suck dick). as you noted, private censorship and political correctness will always exist, and to some should exist. the key is when government fiat steps in.
Keith Henson was tried for picketing Scientology in California, and sentenced to six months in prison under a legal argument rather similar to the one laid out here.
In this case, the courts have not yet ruled.
(Oddly enough, Henson tried for several years to obtain refugee status in Canada on the grounds that the California prosecution was a violation of his human rights.)
This sort of thing is the norm up here, chances are the case will be dropped after a short media circus. Or at least I hope it will. Insulting the religious is not hate speech, say it with me, Insulting the religious is not hate speech...
Admittedly though, McLames does tend to be on the alarmist side, and if you were shown this article after being told that it promoted hatred, you might believe that.
I don't think there is enough political will to get them abolished. I think most people (including me) would be happy if they lose their censorship provisions removed. The most appalling part of the whole affair isn't the hate laws themselves, it the quasi-courts that they are held in.
"I have to say fuck their dignity."
And I say that the German constitution lists dignity as the highest value, period, and mandates that all efforts by the state are to keep it in mind and promote it. Don't you think it's a bit disingeneous to claim to promote free speech while at the same time promoting the notion that others should be un-free as to what hierarchy they give to human rights and which ones they consider the tie-breaker in cases of conflict? I see it as a bit of a paradox to promote free speech but dismiss democratic decision-making simply because one doesn't like the result.
"dignity, feelings and self respect."
I may indeed live in a perpetual state of "darkness and falsity" and I certainly wouldn't deny anyone the option of claiming such. I also wouldn't deny myself the option of feeling entirely above such accusations.
This option is largely based on my feeling and understanding that my "dignity, feelings and self respect" are, for the most part, an internal matter and a result of how I feel about myself.
My "dignity, feelings and self respect", because they are internal and not subject to external judgment to any great degree, cannot be harmed by insults.
Anyone who allows their "dignity, feelings and self respect" to be worn externally and decide by others is both a fool and a wimp. Why is it that so many loud voices within Islam are such insecure children. They can't absorb and laugh off any slight because their self-images are externally determined. Their feelings get hurt. They can't handle being around women, for fear her femininity might overwhelm their self control. All women must be completely covered by a set of drapes to protect the weak minded men.
They can't control themselves sexually and they far too easily get their feelings hurt. These are not men. They are children.
> Rachel Ray and Urban Outfitters had to junk wearing and selling
> keffiyehs because Jewish special interest groups complained.
Michelle Malkin is a conservative catholic, not a jew, and the thing Ray is wearing in the Dunkin Donuts commercial (nobody cares what she wears as a private person) is actualy a paisley scarf rather than a keffiyeh.
What is actually forbidden (in Austria at least) is "to make National Socialism appear harmless". The reasoning behind this is that, if you have gone to school in Austria, it is simply not possible that you haven't learned about what NS is and what it led to -- so, if you make it look harmless, it is considered proven that you are a liar who would, if in power, immediately abolish the very freedom of speech you are hypocritically claiming for yourself.
Making Stalinism appear harmless is not forbidden. That's because the number of communists in Austria has always been tiny, and the number of militant communists completely negligible. In 1950, the communist party tried to organize a general strike in the parts of the country that were under Soviet occupation and scored an epic fail.
It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France.
Point to the provision in the Criminal Code of Canada where it states that it is a crime to deny the Holocaust.
I'll give you a hint: There isn't one.
Nor is this particular "trial" (tribunal) a criminal proceeding. No matter how you feel about the HRCs, they were never criminal courts.
So I guess libel and slander laws don't exist in the USA ... land of unfettered speech. It's not illegal to insult someone here...you ignorant git ... if you incite hatred you can be found naughty in a Human Rights Tribunal hearing and have to say you're sorry. If you insult someone, you may have a complaint made about you, and there may be a newspaper story about you and some silly american will talk about you in his blog, but it'll probably be dismissed eventually.
Canada is a good, fair country.
@ Kevin | June 11, 2008 5:51 PM
As a homosexual myself I would like to say that in contrast to the other groups there is no set of beliefs we all share, but rather we span the whole spectrum.
Having said that, I do think it is absurd that any set of beliefs should be protected from criticism. That is not the same as encouraging or engaging in pogroms against the holders of those beliefs. I'm often offended by others, from their attitudes to their dress sense. I can live with that. As long as I'm not physically assaulted or treated as less than equal under the law.