This isn’t your college or work place break room. If people are saying something you disagree with you can just say it and you won’t be fired or ostracized for it. Yeah, people will probably get angry and say mean things to you but those are just words which can be ignored. Offence is taken, not given.
This is mostly for the lurkers who upvote unpopular opinions but don’t comment. You can speak up - you’re not alone.
Well your example is different. If a mob boss orders a hit on someone then yes it should be the same as if they did it themselves. Same with your concert guy directing people to attack someone. I actually do not see online as different than print or actual speech or whatnot. they are all speech to me. If a musician says we need to kill all the homos then folks should stop going to their concerts and if someone says what we should really do is kill that musician for his homophonbic beliefs, I think thats his right. If he says I want you to go and kill that muscician right now then that is not ok. I feel instructing people to do things goes into the action category.
I feel instructing people to do things goes into the action category.
exactly. that’s how US law works. in England, the state has much broader powers to arrest you depending on your speech. Like for example, the first statement I made
“i believe all [plural form of random ethnic slur] should be brutally murdered”
a very similar post on twitter got someone sentenced to 2 years in jail over in England just a few months ago. let search around and find the direct quote…
i found it
“Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care… If that makes me racist, so be it”
My interpretation is that this is a belief. He didn’t explicitly instruct anyone to do anything. He said, in other words - “if people set fire to all the muslim immigrants, i wouldn’t care” or basically “i would be happy with people setting fire to all muslim imimgrants”
in England, that’s a crime. in the US, you have to be much more explicit. You have to
a) specifically instruct people to do something “everyone, attack that person in the red hat”
b) hold the belief that your statement has a real chance to followed. so for example, if you right now say “hey kava, beat your wife” you almost certainly could not be charged in the US because a reasonable person would not immediately beat their wife because of a statement like that
c) it has to be immediate - so you have to say something and it happen in the very near future. so if you write “let’s stab all the [ethnic slurs]” and then someone reads that 3 months into the future- you can’t be held liable.
So I believe the US laws, in this case, are so much better than English laws.
The US does a lot of shit wrong. So many things. But on speech? I think best in the world.
edit: there’s more on this topic if you’re interested: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brandenburg_test
It used to be best. Since 9/11 they can tag anything as terrorism and all bets are off. America today is not the america of the nineties.