I think I fall more in the free speech absolutist camp on this one. Look at the UK and how they made saying “Support Palestine Action” a terrorism charge.
I get that it’s a group that does protests and sometimes vandalism but imagine in the US if saying “Support Antifa” got you terrorism charges
The key is you have a well-crafted law that actually makes specific things illegal. You don’t create a shitty law that makes it easy to abuse. The law that the UK government is using isn’t a well-crafted law that the government is abusing - the law was written to be deliberately vague to allow just this sort of abuse. The key is to write laws that can’t be so easily abused.
Yes, you can whine that any law can be abused. But that’s the same for ANY law. A particularly craven judge could rule that even a crime as straightforward as murder could apply to something completely nonviolent. But that doesn’t mean we don’t outlaw murder. There is no law that cannot be twisted by depraved individuals to apply to any situation whatsoever. But if you have a functioning court system, you prevent such abuses.
Or look at a crime like conspiracy to commit murder. That crime is mostly about speech - you’re punishing someone for using their speech to plot the death of someone else. And yet we don’t see governments vastly abusing prohibitions on conspiracy to commit murder to silence their political opposition. We don’t see that because those laws were well written.
One obvious solution is to make conspiracy to commit genocide a harshly enforced crime. Are you running a political movement that intends to seize power and kill a bunch of innocent people? That’s just conspiracy to commit murder on a massive scale. You’re just choosing to use the state as your murder weapon.
Remember, we literally hanged people at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity and incitement to genocide - mostly for the things they said. We hanged people for their words, when those words were just parts of a plot to commit mass murder.
Conspiracy to commit murder is not protected speech, and neither should be conspiracy to commit genocide.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. You can call for the genocide of a minority group all you want. Still a hate crime, and you should face charges because you are a threat to the peace of a healthy society.
What if you’re calling for group A to stop genociding group B and then your own government tries to spin that as you calling for the genocide of group A and then labels you a terrorist?
I think I fall more in the free speech absolutist camp on this one. Look at the UK and how they made saying “Support Palestine Action” a terrorism charge.
I get that it’s a group that does protests and sometimes vandalism but imagine in the US if saying “Support Antifa” got you terrorism charges
Haha, imagine that. Never gonna happen right?
The key is you have a well-crafted law that actually makes specific things illegal. You don’t create a shitty law that makes it easy to abuse. The law that the UK government is using isn’t a well-crafted law that the government is abusing - the law was written to be deliberately vague to allow just this sort of abuse. The key is to write laws that can’t be so easily abused.
Yes, you can whine that any law can be abused. But that’s the same for ANY law. A particularly craven judge could rule that even a crime as straightforward as murder could apply to something completely nonviolent. But that doesn’t mean we don’t outlaw murder. There is no law that cannot be twisted by depraved individuals to apply to any situation whatsoever. But if you have a functioning court system, you prevent such abuses.
Or look at a crime like conspiracy to commit murder. That crime is mostly about speech - you’re punishing someone for using their speech to plot the death of someone else. And yet we don’t see governments vastly abusing prohibitions on conspiracy to commit murder to silence their political opposition. We don’t see that because those laws were well written.
One obvious solution is to make conspiracy to commit genocide a harshly enforced crime. Are you running a political movement that intends to seize power and kill a bunch of innocent people? That’s just conspiracy to commit murder on a massive scale. You’re just choosing to use the state as your murder weapon.
Remember, we literally hanged people at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity and incitement to genocide - mostly for the things they said. We hanged people for their words, when those words were just parts of a plot to commit mass murder.
Conspiracy to commit murder is not protected speech, and neither should be conspiracy to commit genocide.
Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. You can call for the genocide of a minority group all you want. Still a hate crime, and you should face charges because you are a threat to the peace of a healthy society.
What if you’re calling for group A to stop genociding group B and then your own government tries to spin that as you calling for the genocide of group A and then labels you a terrorist?
What if the government decides tomorrow that you posting on lemmy makes you a terrorist? There’s no law that can’t be abused by bad-faith actors.
Exactly