Literally everyone censors speech, and is fine with it. Everyone, with exceptions so scant that may as well not exist at all.
Laws that prohibit workplace harassment. Defamation. Laws that punish incitements to violence. Laws that punish fraud and confidence scams. Laws against insider trading. Even things like RICO. These are ALL, in varying forms, limits on speech that are basically uncontentious to most normal, well-balanced people. These are limits on speech so ubiquitous and accepted that people have actually somehow convinced themselves that somehow “free” speech is clearly categorically different than these other things even when it plainly isn’t.
The only people sincerely for (edit: total) free speech are honest-to-god anarchists. True “free speech absolutists” basically do not exist, and when someone claims to be one it really just means they want to be able to get away with using racial slurs in public.
I completely agree, I was just thrown off by OP’s statement that progressives censor hate speech since I am not aware of any legislation specifically passed that makes it illegal for the common person to make hate speech.
Not at all. I don’t need laws to be a respectful person. Do you need religion to be a good person?
I’m educated enough in political science to know that one of the most common ways to create a dictatorship is to leverage fear of the right to enact socially controlling legislation with the support of the left, then slowly begin to leverage that same legislation against the leader’s enemies. It’s prevalent throughout human history, and a proven system for inevitable authoritarian control.
Incidentally, the other most common way to create a dictatorship is by leveraging the military and police forces against the people, as Trump plans to do in Project 2025. Just food for thought.
In modern history, it’s typically the right wing dictators that got voted in through “legal” means, and it’s the right wing dictators that achieve power by slowly controlling what can and cannot be said by the media. The leftist dictatorships, if you want to call the soviet-style ones as such, do so through violence and the military. You have it exactly backwards which sins here come from which wing. It doesn’t pass a common sense test, so I think you may need to go back to school.
And let’s not get bogged down in utter bullshit. We’re talking about “progressive” censorship here, which almost certainly means hate speech laws. There have been exactly zero dictatorships that flowed out of political movements of intentional inclusivity. Neither the Nazis nor Soviets were concerned with “hate speech”. They both were all about it.
I didn’t say the dictators were left wing. You’re right, they’ve been almost exclusively right wing leaders. I said they begin by getting support from the left to enact social legislation against the right, then begin to leverage that newly created power against the enemies of the government, including media. It’s the most common first step onto the slippery slope.
You said it yourself. Media censorship leads to authoritarian control.
But literally all modern states have media censorship. Literally all of them. For example, prohibitions on libel or fraud. That’s censorship. Confidentiality of national secrets is a form of censorship. Hell, even copyright laws can be interpreted as a form of censorship.
Libel/slander is a civil suit, not a crime. Fraud is falsification yielding a gain. Private institutions can and should determine their own code of conduct.
The problem comes into play the day that SCOTUS puts an asterisk on the first amendment to determine an intangible. As soon as the government has the precedent to enact censorship legislation, the tool will be available to whatever corrupt leader decides to wield it.
I’m not deflecting. I don’t understand your question. Fraud involves a contract or gain. That’s not protected by free speech.
I think the problem stems from your lack of understanding of how the Constitution protects freedom of speech. I’m simply saying once we grant the government permission to silence our enemies, they can use that power to silence us.
What does “protected by ‘free speech’” even mean? Who is this free speech and how are they protecting or not protecting anything?
Fraud is a form of speech. It’s putting ideas out into the world – ideas that induce a false understanding in another, typically to reap some material benefit to the fraudster… but lots of the protected forms of speech do that.
The state punishes this speech by outlining a procedure for a harmed party to punish the fraudster, backed by the authority of the state (i.e., lawsuits).
Just because speech is part of a contract doesn’t magically transmogrify it into non-speech. Besides, what even constitutes a “contract” isn’t something we can say is fully and perfectly defined…
So here we have speech and punishment for it. That sums up to censorship. And how do we decide what is and isn’t “fraud” and so does or doesn’t qualify as protected speech? It’s complicated. Very complicated. We have a huge statutory framework. Legal tests. We’re still trying to specify the line. The target shifts through all of history. Cases get overturned and updated and our frameworks and tests evolve. Sometimes we go too far. Sometimes not far enough. Sometimes the shifting reality of how our society operates changes the balancing point. Sometimes we have simply been wrong and regretted it.
Now I think I know what you actually are trying to say. That political speech needs to be highly protected from government meddling. That’s hardly a radical idea. I don’t know any credible person who disagrees with it.
But there’s also a significant legal grey area between which, for example, it becomes hard to identify where political speech ends and direct calls to violence start. Surely it isn’t protected for a political leader standing in front of a riled mob to point across the street to his political enemy and shout “go kill him, now!” But where’s the exact point where the rhetoric shifted from “proper” political speech to a call to violence, exactly? How much subtext and implication are we going to accept? How riled does the crowd have to be? Either way, by outlining a point where speech can end you up punished, we’ve censored that speech. And censorship through civil action is still censorship, don’t be confused.
In its best form, the state exists to help balance rights in tension. When one person’s speech rights are out of balance with the harms that speech inflicts on another (such as in fraud or an incitement to violent), the state exists to mediate that. And we should want it to be just and fair when it does, and balance that tension in a way that creates the best possible environment. Join the reasonable people and discuss where you think things fall on that balance. Don’t pretend there’s some magical and inviolable difference between this censorship and other kinds that are acceptable, though. Have a reason.
Literally everyone censors speech, and is fine with it. Everyone, with exceptions so scant that may as well not exist at all.
Laws that prohibit workplace harassment. Defamation. Laws that punish incitements to violence. Laws that punish fraud and confidence scams. Laws against insider trading. Even things like RICO. These are ALL, in varying forms, limits on speech that are basically uncontentious to most normal, well-balanced people. These are limits on speech so ubiquitous and accepted that people have actually somehow convinced themselves that somehow “free” speech is clearly categorically different than these other things even when it plainly isn’t.
The only people sincerely for (edit: total) free speech are honest-to-god anarchists. True “free speech absolutists” basically do not exist, and when someone claims to be one it really just means they want to be able to get away with using racial slurs in public.
I completely agree, I was just thrown off by OP’s statement that progressives censor hate speech since I am not aware of any legislation specifically passed that makes it illegal for the common person to make hate speech.
I don’t think he’s being sincere.
I was. I’m learning now that I’ve been misinformed. I’m very happy to be wrong about this.
Not at all. I don’t need laws to be a respectful person. Do you need religion to be a good person?
I’m educated enough in political science to know that one of the most common ways to create a dictatorship is to leverage fear of the right to enact socially controlling legislation with the support of the left, then slowly begin to leverage that same legislation against the leader’s enemies. It’s prevalent throughout human history, and a proven system for inevitable authoritarian control.
Incidentally, the other most common way to create a dictatorship is by leveraging the military and police forces against the people, as Trump plans to do in Project 2025. Just food for thought.
In modern history, it’s typically the right wing dictators that got voted in through “legal” means, and it’s the right wing dictators that achieve power by slowly controlling what can and cannot be said by the media. The leftist dictatorships, if you want to call the soviet-style ones as such, do so through violence and the military. You have it exactly backwards which sins here come from which wing. It doesn’t pass a common sense test, so I think you may need to go back to school.
And let’s not get bogged down in utter bullshit. We’re talking about “progressive” censorship here, which almost certainly means hate speech laws. There have been exactly zero dictatorships that flowed out of political movements of intentional inclusivity. Neither the Nazis nor Soviets were concerned with “hate speech”. They both were all about it.
I didn’t say the dictators were left wing. You’re right, they’ve been almost exclusively right wing leaders. I said they begin by getting support from the left to enact social legislation against the right, then begin to leverage that newly created power against the enemies of the government, including media. It’s the most common first step onto the slippery slope.
You said it yourself. Media censorship leads to authoritarian control.
But literally all modern states have media censorship. Literally all of them. For example, prohibitions on libel or fraud. That’s censorship. Confidentiality of national secrets is a form of censorship. Hell, even copyright laws can be interpreted as a form of censorship.
Libel/slander is a civil suit, not a crime. Fraud is falsification yielding a gain. Private institutions can and should determine their own code of conduct.
The problem comes into play the day that SCOTUS puts an asterisk on the first amendment to determine an intangible. As soon as the government has the precedent to enact censorship legislation, the tool will be available to whatever corrupt leader decides to wield it.
You aren’t answering me. You’re deflecting.
Are we legalizing fraud or not?
I’m not deflecting. I don’t understand your question. Fraud involves a contract or gain. That’s not protected by free speech.
I think the problem stems from your lack of understanding of how the Constitution protects freedom of speech. I’m simply saying once we grant the government permission to silence our enemies, they can use that power to silence us.
What does “protected by ‘free speech’” even mean? Who is this free speech and how are they protecting or not protecting anything?
Fraud is a form of speech. It’s putting ideas out into the world – ideas that induce a false understanding in another, typically to reap some material benefit to the fraudster… but lots of the protected forms of speech do that.
The state punishes this speech by outlining a procedure for a harmed party to punish the fraudster, backed by the authority of the state (i.e., lawsuits).
Just because speech is part of a contract doesn’t magically transmogrify it into non-speech. Besides, what even constitutes a “contract” isn’t something we can say is fully and perfectly defined…
So here we have speech and punishment for it. That sums up to censorship. And how do we decide what is and isn’t “fraud” and so does or doesn’t qualify as protected speech? It’s complicated. Very complicated. We have a huge statutory framework. Legal tests. We’re still trying to specify the line. The target shifts through all of history. Cases get overturned and updated and our frameworks and tests evolve. Sometimes we go too far. Sometimes not far enough. Sometimes the shifting reality of how our society operates changes the balancing point. Sometimes we have simply been wrong and regretted it.
Now I think I know what you actually are trying to say. That political speech needs to be highly protected from government meddling. That’s hardly a radical idea. I don’t know any credible person who disagrees with it.
But there’s also a significant legal grey area between which, for example, it becomes hard to identify where political speech ends and direct calls to violence start. Surely it isn’t protected for a political leader standing in front of a riled mob to point across the street to his political enemy and shout “go kill him, now!” But where’s the exact point where the rhetoric shifted from “proper” political speech to a call to violence, exactly? How much subtext and implication are we going to accept? How riled does the crowd have to be? Either way, by outlining a point where speech can end you up punished, we’ve censored that speech. And censorship through civil action is still censorship, don’t be confused.
In its best form, the state exists to help balance rights in tension. When one person’s speech rights are out of balance with the harms that speech inflicts on another (such as in fraud or an incitement to violent), the state exists to mediate that. And we should want it to be just and fair when it does, and balance that tension in a way that creates the best possible environment. Join the reasonable people and discuss where you think things fall on that balance. Don’t pretend there’s some magical and inviolable difference between this censorship and other kinds that are acceptable, though. Have a reason.