From your own article regarding the comments:Fixer wrote:The issue comes with who is determining what and what does not determine hate speech.Paul Walker wrote:Some of you were describing a hate crime as a thought crime. That's not really it, but as with everything, the judge will attempt to understand the motivation behind the incident. That involves character witnesses among other things. As with all publications, a lot more will have taken place in the trial than we are privy to as members of the public. I believe in freedom of speech. As stated, it comes with responsibilities - when lawmakers call out hate speech and similar offences they aren't attempting to restrict our freedoms, but are attempts to prevent the situation escalating to the point where someone in their 50's believes so strongly in their view that they pull out a gun to shoot someone.
For example, the argument could be speech lead contributed to Jo Cox's murder. Therefore it should be restricted so that does not happen.
The same could be said of the British man who pulled a gun on Donald Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... -president
He was adamant that he had to kill Donald Trump because he was racist. Did media reporting on Trump making those claims push him to attempt an assassination? Is the US media therefore guilty of hate speech? As such, any similar speech escalating violence should be prevented.
Like you said, this is why contribution factors and the nuance of the situation needs to taken into account. Legitimate grievance, criticism, mockery or simple opposition to current popularly accepted dogma can be considered hatespeech. This is why the American approach was to allow even that which can be determined hatespeech so that the government itself cannot restrict any legitimate criticism.
The Canadian system as it was described to me is quite interesting in finding a moderate approach since it defines part of hate speech as propaganda. This means it's not hate speech if you can prove your statement to be accurate and in in good faith.
The Count Dankula case was raised without complaint from the public and the judge determined that context did not matter. That's of real concern. You could easily convict Sacha Baron Cohen for his "throw the Jew down the well." song in Borat.
As an additional note though, both aforementioned cases show why political violence is detrimental to the cause it claims to be in support of in civilised western democracy. Although Jo Cox's murder did not change the outcome of the referendum it significantly shifted the polls towards remain. The attempt on Trump's life galvanised his supporters.
Speaking to Lynne, and watching her on film, I am struck by her quiet, matter-of-fact courage. She talks with an almost dispassionate honesty about Michael’s mental health. “He does suffer with seizures and he has autism,” she says. “Over the years, he’s had a lot of visual and auditory hallucinations that he kept secret; he was paranoid someone would perform brain surgery on him if we knew. He lived in fear for years. The psychiatrist who did an in-depth study of Michael in the States basically said he had worn himself out to the point where he couldn’t resist any more.”
Do you want to use someone who has autism at a level where they have seizures and hallucinates as your rebuttal?
As far as the Jo Cox thing (and the effect on the polls) I try to avoid discussing them. At the moment there's a whole series of reviews underway into possible tampering by Russia in the voting itself, and in the Leave campains illegal use of funding. (And I'm from Scotland, so I stand with the point that our country voted Remain, and if at all possible will be filing for a European passport).
