I recently ran into a discussion with someone about whether or not the denial of the holocaust is an opinion and should be protected by the freedom of speech. Background were the recent events of the arrest warrant against Horst Mahler, a german former Red Army Fraction terrorist presently a neo-nazi, for incitement of the masses and holocaust denial. While one might argue it is everyones right to hold such opinion it is yet illegal in a lot of European countries.
Reasons
Now if you ask yourself why there are such laws in place you should look at the history of jewish prosecution, as well as other minorities. I think many people need to understand that the holocaust did not start with the internment of these groups, it really started with creating fear and xenophobia against them by german nationalists. Blaming them for economic depression after the first World War, for the loss of territory and so on. It began with denying them normal services or access to public goods and stores and continued with writing hateful messages on jewish stores and violent attacks on synagogues. The rest of the story should be well known but I want to emphasise what the early stages of this genocide looked like. It already began with hateful speech and excluding people from society and this can be seen in the early stages of other genocides as well.
Paradox of Tolerance
Freedom of speech is obviously a lot about tolerance, tolerating other opinions and ideas without censoring them in any way. The question is: Should you really tolerate intolerant people? What right does someone intolerant have to be tolerated, when your opinion is not just an opinion but even denying something that definitely happened and therefor hurting people that suffered the most from the consequences of intolerance.
Karl Popper defined the paradox in 1945:
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
The idea of having unlimited tolerance means also tolerating those who are intolerant and that is the real danger. If you start tolerating absurd and irrational intolerant ideas and opinions you might at the end be the victim of your own believe. That is why there have to be some sort of limits to the freedom of speech.
Consequences of Intolerance
You will find my examples for intolerant ideas and opinions these days and we should carefully think about how much attention we want to ascribe to them. Consider if we, even though we do not share their ideas at all, really have to defend the freedom of speech in such cases over the possible negative consequences for tolerance itself. I want to give three examples to make my case.
Birther Movement With the beginning of the Obama administration a conspiracy theory started to grow about Obama not being born in the U.S. having its peak most likely with Donald Trump questioning Obama about his birth certificate in 2011. While all evidence (even his birth certificates) showed he was born in the U.S. people would believe he was actually born in Kenya. How much of a free opinion is this whole idea?
In Germany for example there is a clear limitation when you attack the integrity of someone else with your speech. The law states that if there is some kind of malicious gossip and defamation, without any proven facts, simply based on your personal believe that it is true you can be prosecuted. Freedom of speech finds limits where you attack the integrity and freedom of someone else when you dismiss facts and take advantage of your apparent freedom to defame someone else. Obama tried to make it look more like a bad joke and did not take it very serious at that time. Yet imagine someone would have said the same thing about Donald Trump, we can be sure he would sue him the same minute. The ones trying to take advantage of tolerance are always the ones who will show the most intolerance if they are being attacked somehow.Sandy Hook Elementary Schoon Shooting Conspiracy Radio show host Alex Jones promoted the theory that the school shooting, in which 20 children and 6 school staff members died, never happened. That it was orchestrated by the government to be able to implement stricter gun laws. This has multiple consequences: Jones is someone with a not unimportant number of followers who will most likely agree on such dangerous ideas. An idea that defames the families that lost their children during this tragic event and everyone that was involved helping those families to get somehow back to their old lives. Should such an idea really be protected where facts clash with denial rather than opinion. Is an opinion an opinion or an idea an idea or is it simply denial? I think we really need to differentiate between those. One is dangerous as it only promotes intolerance and xenophobia and one can bring debate and progress.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Islam Hirsi Ali, a former dutch politician now living in the U.S., has quite a life story if you find the time to look read up on it. She has been a muslim for many years until she became an atheist in 2002 because of several pieces of literature she red in the Netherlands, where she requested political asylum 1992. She is now a vocal critic of Islam criticising many practices within the religion, especially the treatment of women. This is definitely something honorable and should always be protected as tolerant free speech. What is troublesome are some other things she has said, such as characterising islam as the "new fascism", calling it a cult of death, saying Islam must be defeated and that the problem are not a few "rotten apples" in the islamic community but it is "the entire basket". I do not want to understate that there are definitely problems within these communities and the religion that are a real threat to Human Rights but you have to look at the consequences of saying such things. If someone compares a religion, in which one quarter of our world population believes in, to fascism, do you create more hate and division between civilisations, or more harmony and peace? I do not want to say that it is all easy and I have all the solutions, but what I do know is that this kind of language only creates more divide.
Conclusion
Freedom of speech is one of the most, if not, the most important rights that many countries have. No one should legally change that quickly or without caution, limitations need to be as objective as they can. Maybe we simply need to reform our (legal) language to tackle these kind of problems. Making a clear difference between what tolerance, opinion, intolerance and denial is. If it can be or already was the initiation of violence and substantial harm in other forms.
Do we really have to credit everyones ideas, not matter how far from reality they are, the right of the freedom of speech? Can we advocate freedom of speech if we limit it ourself? It is necessary to consider for yourself if there are limits for freedom of speech and where they are. I also want to mention that I am not trying to say that hate speech and similar will always lead to a bloody conflicts, this is definitely not my intention. What we need to do is carefully choose our wording, do not disparage someone just because he has different ideals than you do. Yet acknowledging that there can only be tolerance if we do not take intolerance on board.
If you liked my blog post and want to add your opinions and ideas, I am happy to have a healthy debate on these issues with you!
You have to be careful about facts. Major medias should not be your source for facts. Remember, everything boils down to money and power. Do your own research from sources you trust. Freedom means just that. When you make the government the arbiter of truth and penalize someone with whom you disagree, you have made a huge mistake. Governments do not have your best interests at heart.
Speech doesn't hurt anybody and it equates to a disgusting thought-crime in my book to censor it.
If someone is racist, hateful, or just plain stupid and refuses to believe the facts then you should talk to them and try to convince them of them.
If they become hostile to you, or generally show their depravity, then there's nothing wrong with saying the truth about how you feel.
However, that changes when you use that speech to cause terror or you personalize it and try to attack who somebody is and truly cause problems for them.
Yesterday I was called out and attacked by some idiot who said I threatened to murder him after I pointed out the depravity in what he linked and shredded his argument.
He instead of having a discussion with me he insulted me relentlessly and mocked me, while I simply asked for his resources.
He then posted a guy that talked nothing of value and I asked him that, then towards the end of the video that speaker made comments on how the earth is overpopulated and we can't feed people in the way he wants in a sustainable way, answering someones question in the crowd, in which he behaved as such that he wants to kill off the majority of the human race so that his sick way of eating that he's justifying off no evidence at all can continue.
That's sick, demented, selfish, etc.
So I said the truth: In the future those people will probably be lined up and shot.
Again in the next reply to me he provides no evidence, says he's not going to be civil with me, wishes death on me, and generally spouts hatred. He says he muted me.
I reply, once again, honestly. He would likely be one of those people, and thus I informed him how he would probably be shot in the future because of the damage he's causing and his refusal to change.
Rather than muting me like he said, and rather than listening to what I said or proving me wrong this entire time, rather than saying it was a misunderstanding and that I was wrong, he continues to be belligerent and then he goes off to make the hit-post i linked above lying about what happened.
He earned over $10 from his post and comments against me as well as got a couple users I was friends with angry with me. Nobody seemed to listen to the other side or bother because of the sick politically correct hugboxes facebook and the like have brought into reality.
Sorry but any limitations on free speech that's not broad is just another excuse to abuse the populace.
If somebody is a vile sick piece of shit you have the right and should tell them how it is.
If someone is hurting somebody else, you have the right to hurt them to stop that crime and you should, and if you do you're a fucking hero regardless of what the law says.
What I said was not anti-free speech, nor a threat, it was a statement and a prediction.
As I said there, **if I say "you will probably get heart disease and die in the future if you don't change your lifestyle" is it a threat?
This is the stupidity and anti-free speech that exists in society today, and that's what needs to stop.
Not some idiot reactionary spouting his bullshit.
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I think this is an interesting topic for sure.... I think that we should be able to allow people to speak their minds whatever it may be.. if it ends up being things that hurt others then we should just correct them and not let it go.
Most definitely and we shouldn't limit it just someone hurts someone else's feelings. There should just be limits in the moment it promotes or provoke violence and can even lead to people loosing their lives. It is always the easiest to say that everyone should be allowed to say whatever he or she wants. What's hard is to look at & understand the implications of such a statement. If you take it like that, then Nazis had every right to blame jewish people and other minorities for the depressions and loss of land that occurred after WW1. Yet it was just this language that initiated the hate and willingness among the wider public to close their eyes or even participate in the exclusion of these minorities and even worse the Shoa.
Obviously everyone has an opinion on this, just something that I thought people kind of forget sometimes or don't really think about that much.
This was definitely a well-written blog. It was a good read!
For me, freedom is one of the most important things in this world.
However, I do believe that when unintelligent people get together and spread fake news about a topic, or simply, well, circlejerk about a topic. Like immigrants, for example.
In Denmark, we have a lot of people who are critical against immigrants, and if you ever visit their closed forums, you'll see how much they keep circlejerking about the same topic, blowing things out of proportions and making small issues look much worse than they really are.
The thing is, I'm very immigrant critical myself. I don't think immigrants contribute to our society because historically a lot of muslim immigrants in my country don't want to integrate. If they don't want to integrate, we get parallel societies where people follow different values and rules.
I do think that extremists are the issue. Both religious extremists who immigrate to countries like Denmark, but also Denmark's citizens who blow the issues out of proportions and generate hate. It will become a never-ending spiral of people disliking eachother.