The Irish government wants to pass a law that could see you or your loved ones jailed for possession of memes, cartoons or any content that could be deemed "hateful".
The Irish government wants to pass a law that could see you or your loved ones jailed for possession of memes, cartoons or any content that could be deemed "hateful".
The Bill includes no definition of hate and is wide open to abuse by bad actors. Defend free speech – say no to this legislation, and any legislation of is kind... Anywhere!
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Does the bill need some amendments to clear up some ambiguity? Maybe, idk, I'm not Irish nor am I a legal expert; I know virtually nothing about the Irish legal system.
But based on the BBC article, it sounds like the intention of the bill is to get some hate crime laws on the books for Ireland, which they apparently have none so far.
I am very much in favor of punishing hate crimes/hate speech. Free Speech absolutism is braindead, and those who preach it are often hypocrites. Take Musk for example, self proclaimed free speech absolutist. Sure he allows people to hurl a variety of slurs on his platform but then goes and bans a bunch of left-wing accounts. Advocating for white supremacy is covered by free speech but advocating for socialism is not? That really ought to make you question if free speech is really Musk's goal.
I declare the use of the word "punish" to be hate speech.
Sorry, the moment you say you agree with this idea, you're starting down a road that goes nowhere good.
Call me names. Call my family names. Use any language you want. I don't care.
The line is when you're calling for a crime to be committed.
"Hate speech" is a convenient tool to target whoever is in power wants to at the moment.
Is calling Epstein island visitors pedos hate speech?
Seriously, these NPCs give absolutely 0 thought to the negative things brain dead laws like this enable
…is calling trump supporters Nazis hate speech? That law is gonna have quite a lot of targets if so
Slippery slope fallacy. Hate crime laws have been on the books in America since 1968 and I'm not aware of them leading to the end of free speech in America.
The US has hate crime laws. It does not have hate speech laws. A hate crime requires an existing crime. You can legally shout the n-word from the rooftops. If you beat someone while shouting the n-word, your assault is upgraded to a hate crime.
Watch yourself, don't want to fall down that slippery slope.
You’re right, I haven’t given you enough time to move away down there at the bottom
Also, to reiterate another posters point: hate crime laws and hate speech laws are very different things.
The first one increases penalties for things already considered crimes, the second one criminalizes previously legal actions.
You’d have to be pretty brain dead to use those two concepts interchangeably, or to justify each other (which they often are)
This is more of an argument against EM than free speech absolutism, since your point is that he doesn't actually believe in it. But anyway it seems like there should be some possible middle ground between a truly absolutist position on free speech, and the overt disdain for free speech implied by a vague prohibition like the OP law. Isn't it valuable for people to generally be able to speak their minds? That can be the case even if the loudest people hiding behind the idea are disingenuous, or if the furthest interpretations of it go too far.
Law system here is basically common law. Legislation directs it but ultimately the judiciary are the final arbiters. Laws may be referred before signing for constitutionality but that's quite rare.
I'm skipping a lot but that's my "not a lawyer" ten second summary.
Sounds not unlike America. We've had hate crime laws since 1968, I don't know why everyone's acting like it's the end of the world.
Yeah I've no issue with hate laws as a general exception to freedom of speech but there are some weird laws here. This does sound open to abuse from what I'm reading in OP but honestly this is the first I've heard of it and there's not much to go on so I'll have to reserve judgement until I've had a chance to read more.
In general I would prefer more free speech here, not less. Like I don't want someone getting arrested for calling me a filthy paddy for example or having a meme of similar. It would make them a dickhead but I don't think it's worth jail time over. Again though I'll have to read more.
We had a weird provision where blasphemy was illegal until recently but that was honestly largely because it required a public constitutional vote to remove (as all changes to our constitution do).
While writing this I've taken time to do some reading on current obscenity law status. The laws do sound quite archaic but have been reasonably implemented by the judiciary. Some examples below: (DPP is the department of public prosecution)
DPP v. DPP (2010): The Supreme Court of Ireland ruled that a website that depicted child pornography was an obscene publication.
DPP v. Walsh (2014): The Court of Appeal of Ireland ruled that a magazine that featured explicit photographs of adult women was not an obscene publication.
DPP v. McGivern (2018): The High Court of Ireland ruled that a book that contained graphic descriptions of sexual violence was not an obscene publication
Edit: If you make it this far you mention hate crime but not hate speech in the US. Freedom of speech there is reasonably close to absolute, right? Barring things like defamation etc.
I've seen that awful church protesting with what is absolutely hate speech "God hates fags" etc.
True, but another commonly cited exception is that it's illegal to yell fire in a crowded theater where there is no fire. My assumption is the rationale being, if your speech is likely to present a danger to people it shouldn't be legal.
But you're correct, America is pretty tolerant of hate speech, and it does lead to some pretty negative consequences imo.
Probably a better comparison would be countries like Canada or Germany.
EDIT:
I do applaud you for taking the time to research it rather than getting caught up in the sensationalism of a Twitter post like so many others replying to me.