Read the relevant literature. You should look into taking some gender studies classes at your local junior college.

All news is "propaganda" driven by someone's definition. 90 years ago, no less than HL Mencken scoffed at the concept of "objective" journalism. Unless you get 100% apolitical reporters, every story will have a slant towards the reporter's agenda.

US law has exceptions to free speech based on incitement to immediate harm. The "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater" argument.

Oh yeah - lol it's just trolling. Until some guy kills 50 some people in a mosque and shouts out to all the online racist troll friends while he's doing it.

Lol IRL trolling is the best amirite?

The whole point is these guys dance back and forth between "memeing" and being serious. They get to signal to each other all they want - then flip to say they were just joking when convenient. It's bull****.

No it isn't. Look at early American history, where many people were publishing pseudonymous political pamphlets that were widely read and influential.

Yeah and we had postcards too - which was just like Facebook.

Were pamphlet writers and readers able to interact with each other anonymously in real time across the entire globe?

Has it ever been this easy for like-minded psychopaths to find each other? Or weak-minded impressionable troubled young men to find soothsayers that tell them it wasn't their fault and amplify their rage against "other" groups?

Thomas Paine's Common Sense (originally published anonymously) had the largest sale and circulation as a proportion of American population of any book in American history. There were hundreds of responses to it in letters published in the local newspapers. There was just a lot of pamphlets being published at this time (later on the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers are another example of influential pseudonymous essays). I guess they didn't span the entire globe, but many of them did go international.

Probably not, but terrorism and white power movements of various kinds have existed throughout American history, often in even more horrific ways than they do now. New information technology will always lead to social disruption, but focusing only on the negative can be misleading. It has also never been this easy for like-minded activists to find each other in fighting against racism and terror.

Can you expand on your statement and provide examples?

Yes. What we need is government deciding what ideas are worthwhile that should be discussed and what ideas are not worthwhile, ideas that should be silenced subject to penalty under the law. How about a federal free speech “czar” to oversee what is appropriate and what is not.

Lots of free speech litigation centered around communist ideas/ actions/ meetings from 1900-1960. Should we have banned those ideas as propaganda or as "too dangerous"?

Imo people are afraid of ideas that are taking hold that are different than the status quo. People were afraid of more left leaning ideas expressed during the communist scare. Social security didn't end up hurting anybody. The same is true for today but swap the left leaning values with libertarian that are breaking through today. The people losing ground to those ideas today paint any challenge as "propaganda" or "dangerous". Facing reality about the anti-female perspective of Islam isnx't going to tear down the world anymore than interacial marriage or birth control.

Except nobody is going to jail for pointing out that religious fundamentalists are oppressive of women.

Neither were communists but that's because our Constitution grants a right to free speech. Take that right away and it is up to the whims of the mainstream.

Also, it's important to note that this is not a discussion that is given much credibility in the legal community on both sides. It would require a constitutional amendment, not going to happen, or it would require SCOTUS overturning 200 years of precedent. This is a bedrock legal principle in the United States.

I can't speak for the OP, but I would imagine no one is proposing completely removing first amendment rights or eliminating the concept of legally protected speech. The way I would think about the question is more along the lines of how there already exists some limits to free speech rights (i.e. some regulations on speech, cf. libel/slander), and whether or not some set of new regulations would make sense.

wrong

wrong

This reinforces my point that it is best to err on the side of allowing speech than banning it. History has a tendency to repeat itself. Would it be anymore just today to incriminate people based on a difference of opinion?

Mainstream political ideologies should not get to dictate what is acceptable speech. BTW that law would not be able to withstand a challenge in today's court. Brandenburg specifically mentions that people can talk about overthrowing the government provide they are not inciting people to imminent lawlessness. Precedent has moved in favor of allowing more speech precisely because of the government's experimentation with attempting to ban political speech during that era.

Except nobody is going to jail for pointing out that religious fundamentalists are oppressive of women.

Nor is anybody, afaik, even talking about sending people to jail for it.

I can't think of a better example of "gaslighting", a term which I see misused a lot, than this, incorrectly identified, free speech issue.


Conservatives are clutching their pearls when they are publicly criticized for their views or privately (by private companies) deplatformed. Neither of these implicate constitutional "free speech".

What does implicate constitutional free speech is the government jailing people for speech that it disagrees with, ie the communists.

If the private social media businesses decide that it's in their best interest to vet the content on their sites and decide to block certain content, that's fine. if they let it be a free for all, that's fine, too.

If any of us don't like what they're saying, we're free to post rebuttals, or start our own sites or blogs to counteract what we believe/discover to be incorrect.

The First Amendment (and really the entire Bill of Rights) only places restraints on government, not private entities.

This is arguably what this thread is about depending on how you define unacceptable speech. Determining what speech is acceptable would lead down the same path that the Smith Act did. Inevitably, a law banning speech for the purpose of "social morals" or "protecting society" is abusable and non-mainstream political ideologies typically receive that abuse.

I think we are talking past each other here unless you think communists should have been put in jail because they advocated against the government. If we aren't you should be putting the shoe on the other foot. Do you think it would be good policy for Trump to determine certain topics or areas of internet discussion were off-limits? Would it be a good idea to allow Trump to say prohibit planned parenthood's web presence because they "promoted infanticide"?

let's look at the example you posted:

I could (and softly, did) criticize this by pointing out that the anti-female perspective is not unique to Islam and that complaining of it solely wrt to Islam and not wrt Christianity smacks of Islamophobia.

Does your comment raise to the level of incitement? No, but it is a bad look.


You pose:

but nobody is talking about "banning" criticism of Islam akin to what happened with communism a century ago.

The Op was implying that anti-semitic and anti-islam posts/ articles/ etc., that are obviously tied to hate crime attacks, should be held to a higher level of judicial scrutiny (like the proscribable categories that are give more deference to the govt.) presumably so that there could be laws prohibiting that "dangerous" speech.

There are not laws banning discussion of islams anti-female doctrines. That isn't what I was arguing though. I was arguing that laws prohibiting this speech would be just as bad as laws that prohibited communism. I'm not going to beat a dead horse. You are trying to straw-man what I'm saying by saying, "but but no one is going to jail for it." My point is that no matter what type of speech the government tries to prohibit on this broad a scale it necessarily will include innocuous language and will be open to abuse by either political party.

It was bad when it included communism (moderately mainstream thought in the discussed era yet outside the status quo). It would be equally bad if it included similar contemporary ideas. I think what you disagree with me about is that criticism of islam is not as valid a political opinion as communism. That's fine but can we at least agree that prohibition of political speech is bad because it is abusable. Do you think Trump should be able to pick what language is or is not proscribed? I don't.

Will not post links to law firms that deal with Libel/Slander, even through their explanations are more concise and clear, (for obvious reasons) but will share links from Wiki as at least an adequate source:

United_States_defamation_law

/False_statements_of_fact


Additional links in the above to Free Speech, etc.


A perusal shows, IMO, that the current laws appear robust and within the limits of the US Constitution with a long history of adjudication to sort out details and definitions. Some instances of "open questions" still exist but that in itself is not either unusual or problematic, being the standard state for most legal and judicial interpretations of the constitution or of legislative action(s). Libel/Slander laws are different in Canada and the UK but I assume we are just discussing the U.S.

I fail to see your concern(s) in reference to free speech - if you can pry yourself away from all the Mod hoopla, perhaps you can give an outline of changes you think are needed and why.

I'm not sure any changes are needed, or desirable. I used to think that was clear cut. Now I'm somewhat less convinced. I linked to the old thread I created that probably outlines a lot of what I was thinking. You can look there if you don't want to wait for me, or else sure, at some point I'll try to summarize some of it.

No, you have more than enough to do - I'll search out the old thread and read it while sipping some whiskey. If I find something dazzling that I wish to discuss I'll make a post about it. Thanks.

From the defamation link:

Quote:

The 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, however, radically changed the nature of libel law in the United States by establishing that public officials could win a suit for libel only when they could prove the media outlet in question knew either that the information was wholly and patently false or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". Later Supreme Court cases barred strict liability for libel and forbid libel claims for statements that are so ridiculous as to be patently false. Recent cases have added precedent on defamation law and the Internet.

What about if it became a lot easier for politicians to win libel suits with TRUMP as POTUS? Folks like Ron Chernow and Olivier Knox would then have some legitimate fears.

Lol those crazy silly 8chan users - just memeing and trolling away.