French to Crack Down on Hate Speech

[pokerfan]

"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." -Voltaire

"To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker." -Frederick Douglass

"One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting." -Salman Rushdie

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/03/08/french-to-crack-down-on-hate-speech-including-the-anti-religious-kind-in-much-the-same-way-as-pedophilia/

Recently, French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira announced that she wants the power to quash speech as she and her government see fit, stripping judicial niceties from the process of shutting people up, says Paris-based news outlet France24.

Almost no one likes hate speech, but neither should the government of a modern, secular state be in the business of defining and targeting it… unless and until it rises to the level of incitement. It’s fairly easy to get people to agree (as do I) that racist and anti-Semitic invective should not be tolerated. For me, that means that sanctions should be social, from verbal pushback to full-throated rebuttals to ostracism.

Intemperate words and pictures are rarely, I think, a matter for the police or the courts.

Taubira’s well-intentioned but dangerous proposal has every likelihood of defining public discourse down to the comfort level of the most thin-skinned and vocal members of society. And I predict that this will please and benefit no group quite as much as French Muslims who believe that the Charlie Hebdo victims had it coming. The hate-speech crackdown will feel like vindication to them, and/or like a government-endorsed justification après la lettre.

[cbayer]

1. Very, very slippery slope.

I agree that using social pushback is the way to go. There are way too many potential unintended consequences here.

[okasha]

2. Some of the consequences may be intended.

Last edited Sun Mar 8, 2015, 11:31 PM - Edit history (1)

Looks like a fast trip down a mudslide to me.

[MisterP]

3. I think it was 30K euros for Dieduonne to say "I'm Charlie (Coulibaly)"

though I haven't seen if it was levied yet

but this is what "secularism" means in France and Quebec: everyone has the same right to be a Bon Francais