Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 - Read OP

Sorry. Are you actually saying that your claim is that I, uniquely, have the power to prevent lies resulting in harm by simply ignoring them? That I can do this but nobody else can? And therefore the fact that lies told in the 1930s resulted in harm doesn't prove that I, who wasn't around in the 1930s, could not have averted that harm, if I had been there, by ignoring the lies?

Because, if your claim doesn't relate to a magical power possess by me, Peregrinus, alone, the fact that this incident occurred in the 1930s, as opposed to as some other time, seems to me a detail that has no significance whatsoever.

You, evidently, think it has some signficance, but you're not doing a great job of explaining what it is.

I've given you a contemporary example of lies causing harm which was not averted by me ignoring the lies. You are studiously ignoring that example. Maybe try explaining your point by reference to that example? And maybe without mentioning me specifically? (Because I presume you're not really claiming that I possess a unique superpower that can avert all harm resulting from lies.)

No, I’m saying you have the power to ignore lies, or anything you don’t like hearing for that matter. 

Of course I have the power to ignore lies. Nobody has ever disputed that.

But that was not your claim. Your claim was that, if I ignore lies, they will do no harm. That claim is refuted by abundant, easily-observed evidence.

You’ll hold onto the 1930’s for dear life now I imagine, as a means to try prove your point.

I have offered you a contemporary instance, and twice invited you to address it. You completely ignore it, and keep coming back to the 1930s. It's not me who's holding on to the 1930s, Frank. I don't have to; there are abundant examples from all periods of history and from the present day.

My point is simple, banning someone’s ability to say something that’s “offensive”, won’t do a thing. It won’t change their beliefs or assertions one bit.

Banning harmful statements may not change the beliefs of the people who want to make those statements, but it doesn't follow that it "won't do a thing". Remember, the object of the law is not to change the minds of those people; it's to prevent the expression of their views resulting in harm to other people. We know that the expression of harmful views can lead to serious harm — you keep banging on about the 1930s, so I think you accept that point at least in principle. If your claim is that the harm would have resulted anyway, even if the views had never been expressed — well, I await the arguments and evidence you will present in support of that claim.

You might be of the mind that it will do some good. Clearly it won’t, if we take your 1930’s example, why do we still see rightwing movements to this day?

This doesn't make a lot of sense. The expression of Nazi views did result in great harm. We still have right-wingers today. This proves that supressing harmful views would have acheived nothing? There are some logical gaps in that argument that you are going to have to fill before I can engage with it in any useful way.

Would you just prefer to ban them because you hold different beliefs?

Where's this coming from? Nothing I have said at any point in this thread could lead you to think that. Are you trying to have an argument about a different topic because you realise that, defending your own claim, you're on a hiding to nothing?

Your finger slipped, or something, and you accidentally edited what I said in a way that a less charitable person than myself might think was dishonest. What I actually wrote (emphasis supplied for the benefit of the slow-witted) was:

it's to prevent the expression of their views resulting in harm to other people.

Yes, we already have laws against assault, etc. But, gee, assaults still happen. So it is rational to consider whether there are steps we can take to avert violence, rather than waiting for it to happen and then punishing the perpetrators. We know that hateful speech is often a precursor to, and a contributor to, violence — I know it; you know it; we all know it. And those that wish to employ violence, and hope to profit by it, know it to; that is why they so freely engage in hateful speech. So please stop pretending that this is not the central issue here. The pretence does you no credit.

This is not about avoiding hurt feelings. It's about avoiding harm — the harm you say that I, and I alone, can single-handedly avert simply by ignoring statements that would cause harm if I paid any attention to them. I say that's rubbish, and your desperate attempts to reframe the arguments as being about suppressing disagreement with my views, or about avoiding hurt feelings, suggest that you know that it's rubbish.

We've had two examples in the thread already.

One is the role played by Nazi propaganda in bringing the Nazis to power, and subsequently in building and maintaining public acceptance of their antisemitic measures while in power.

The other is the lies told about the perpetator of the Southport massacre, which led to anti-immigrant and anti-asylum seeker violence in the UK, up to and including attempts to burn asylum-seekers in their accommodation.

And, you know, other examples of hateful speech leading to serious harm are not difficult to find. Think of the role that homophobic speech played in normalising homophobic attitudes, and so creating a climate in which homophobic violence was perpetrated, for example.

The key problem here is that, yeah, there's a genuine tension between (a) protecting society, and especially vulnerable members of society, from the things that harmful speech leads to, and (b) protecting free speech. These are both important values and, when they're in tension, you have to find some way of balancing them. Which is not easy.

But an entry-level qualification for participating usefully in this discussion is that you have to accept that this tension exists. If you approach this question on the bizarre basis that harmful speech ceases to be harmful if Peregrinus ignores it, or on the only fractionally less bizarre basis that restrictions on harmful speech are just about avoiding hurt feelings, you're refusing to acknowledge the issue that is actually being addressed here. You're posing as a free speech absolutist, but everyone else is aware that you're standing in the tradition of a lot of other self-professed free speech absolutists who turned out, once in power, not to be that keen on free speech at all.

[NB: I am not saying that Frank Bullitt himself is not in favour of free speech, but is cynically adopting the position he does because he wants to carve out a space for hate speech. I am sure that is not the case. But the position he adopts fails to acknowledge the tension that I have pointed to, and you can't really mount an effective argument against hate speech legislation if you are in denial about, or won't address, the reasons why it is promoted in the first place.]

Nowhere have I said I want to carve out a space for "hate speech", 

And I have also not said that; in fact I have expressly said the exact opposite; this is not what you are trying to do.

Anyone who uses the term "far-right" seriously in a country with our liberal laws, social equality, and general laid back attitude to pretty much EVERYTHING really shouldn't be taken seriously!

Too much Twitter and American media is the problem, as well as Millenial and younger "journalists" regurgitating it as "fact" to fill virtual column inches/advertising space.

There will always be a handful of outliers (on both "sides") but to listen to some corners of the media or even commentry online - including this very site - you'd think the Nazi party was about to win the next election which is absolute nonsense.

Instead, "far-right" is simply being used to try and silence/marginalise opinions that others don't like or agree with. Censorship is no better than actual extremism.

The problem is that every non-conforming opinion was at least termed far right . . . As for Mise Eire, information is at best sketchy as to what it entailed. If we don't know what it was about, then those that signed that letter didn't either. What we do know is that it was organised by and going to be attended by the same people that attend migration protests.

Well, yes, "far-right" and "woke" are deployed by people on opposite sides to demonise and marginalise views they don't like without having to actually examine and counter them. That doesn't mean that the terms themselves have no content and can't sometimes be meaningfully applied.

Just because we don't know how much substance there is to the "far right" characterisation in this case doesn't mean that nobody knows. The people who signed the petition will have had their reasons for doing so and the only way to find out what those reasons were is to ask them or, failing that, to look at the material associated with the petition and its promotion. I haven't done that. Have you?

To be fair, who is likely to attend a gathering is not an unreasonable foundation on which to base a characterisation of the gathering. There's a sporting chance that a gathering which featured Dolores Cahill, Gemma O'Doherty, Mattie McGrath and Ben Gilroy would be likely to be an anti-vax or Covid-sceptical gathering, for example.