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New laws against hate speech and hate crime

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    #32
    Chips Lovell
    Moderators, Politics Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 24,267 Mod ✭✭✭✭Chips Lovell


    smellyoldboot wrote: »
    "I do not agree with what you say, and I will chase you through the courts to silence and discredit you" - Definitely not Voltaire.

    I'll put my pedantry hat on for a second and say that the original remark - "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - wasn't Voltaire either, although it's been widely attributed to him. It was actually written by an early 20th century biographer, who formulated it as her summation of Voltaire's attitudes.

    What she was writing about was Voltaire's reaction to a book burning. I'm not entirely convinced that Voltaire would have had the same attitude towards someone shouting racial epithets at their victim while they stab them with a broken bottle.

    That's one of the issues that the proposed legislation hopes to address. At the moment, someone cannot really be prosecuted for hate-based aggravating factors. It may be considered at sentencing, but there's no way of ensuring that happens or even knowing that it has.
    Ireland does not currently have any specific legislation to deal with hate crime. While at present, in sentencing for any offence, a judge may consider a hate motive to be an aggravating factor and may reflect this in the sentence handed down, even where this occurs (and there are few records available) it will not be reflected anywhere in the formal record of the conviction or sentence.

    This means, for example, that a hate element will not be reflected in the charge against the accused, meaning that it may never be raised in front of the jury, and cannot be defended in the way that other parts of the offence can be, i.e. challenged by the defence in court. It also means that a pattern of such offences may not be apparent, even to those responsible for an offender’s sentence management or probation.


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    #33
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users Posts: 26,056 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    AbusesToilets wrote: »
    There are differences between restrictions on speech that would carry a criminal penalty, the aforementioned crying fire in a theatre. Actions that could cause an immediate to others.

    That's quite different from a situation whereby disagreeing with someone's world view or personal philosophy could be construed as a Hate crime.
    I think you're arguing against a straw majn of your own devising here. There is no proposal that " disagreeing with someone's world view or personal philosophy" could or should constitute a hate crime in Ireland.
    AbusesToilets wrote: »
    It's also rather discriminatory in it's own right, as it generally reinforces the notion that racism and bigotry only apply when certain demographics are guilty.
    I'm not following this at all. Can you explain what you're talking about here?


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    #34
    AbusesToilets
    Registered Users Posts: 9,959 ✭✭✭AbusesToilets


    Peregrinus wrote: »
    I think you're arguing against a straw majn of your own devising here. There is no proposal that " disagreeing with someone's world view or personal philosophy" could or should constitute a hate crime in Ireland.


    I'm not following this at all. Can you explain what you're talking about here?

    There's laws on the books in Canada with respect to misgendering under the context of harrassment. These could run afoul of situations where someone doesn't want to recognise someone's claim to a gender and is called up as a Hate crime. That's a legitimate concern, given the well documented cases of trolling lately.

    To your second point, racial based claims of hate crimes only seem to ever go against white people. I've yet to read of a case where a non-white individual is convicted of such a crime. It's an inherently discriminatory concept.


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    #35
    Manach
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 9,664 Mod ✭✭✭✭Manach


    From a general perspective, to term political speech as hate speech is simple shortcut to penalise speech one does not agree with. This is now wide spread trend in Europe in spite of the ECHR and ironically seems to cement progressive ideology as the new orthodoxy in place of that removed from the blasphemy section of constitution.
    Drilling down further from a legal persepecive in the best example of functional free speech, the US’s, the oft quoted check, that of “fire in a threatre” as it relates to the 1st ammendment. That was a case both dealing with the state attempting to quash dissent as well as only being relevant when, as per a fire, there was a clear and present danger. The only danger in hate speech speech is the threat to the free expression of ideas that is required for democracy.


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    #36
    Imreoir2
    Registered Users Posts: 2,435 ✭✭✭Imreoir2


    GarIT wrote: »
    You put those better than I could. I thinik under the proposed wording of things it still could be argued as hate speech. Agree with the last paragraph.

    Anything "could be argued as hate speach".

    The important question is, could it be convicted of hate speach by a court. I am highly dubious that robust but respectful debate will be criminalised.


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    #37
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users Posts: 26,056 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    AbusesToilets wrote: »
    There's laws on the books in Canada with respect to misgendering under the context of harrassment. These could run afoul of situations where someone doesn't want to recognise someone's claim to a gender and is called up as a Hate crime. That's a legitimate concern, given the well documented cases of trolling lately.
    Can you link to the Canadian law? Not that I'm doubting you but I am a bit, um, sceptical.
    AbusesToilets wrote: »
    To your second point, racial based claims of hate crimes only seem to ever go against white people. I've yet to read of a case where a non-white individual is convicted of such a crime. It's an inherently discriminatory concept.
    What you are describing is not an inherently discriminatory concept; it's an inerently non-discriminatory concept which is — allegedly — being applied in a discriminatory fashion (like, say, the death penalty in the US).

    I emphasise "allegedly" because the fact that you have "yet to read of a case where a non-white individual is convicted of such a crime" may not be evidence of discriminatory application so much as evidence of the, um, biased or selective news sources or social media outlets from which you gett your information. In the US in 2019, 52.5% of hate crime offenders were white, 23.9% were black, 14.9% were not recorded and the remainder were of other or mixed ethnic categories. That suggests that black people are substantially over-represented in hate crime convictions and, if there's a bias at work there, it's a bias which is the opposite of the one you believe to exist. You probably should be asking yourself why the news sources/social media outlets that shape your worldview are giving you such a distorted picture, and whether there is anything you can do to correct this.


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    #38
    ancapailldorcha
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 37,174 CMod ✭✭✭✭ancapailldorcha


    Mod: Please don't just paste videos here. A post has been removed. Thanks.

    We sat again for an hour and a half discussing maps and figures and always getting back to that most damnable creation of the perverted ingenuity of man - the County of Tyrone.

    H. H. Asquith



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