Tag: hate speech

Ireland drops controversial “hate speech” legislation to criminalise online speech deemed as “incitement to hatred”

On Saturday, The Irish Times reported that the Irish government will drop the incitement to hatred section of the bill, focusing instead on hate crime legislation that provides for tougher sentences when hate is proven as a motivation for an offence.

Justice Minister Helen McEntee said that the “incitement to hatred” element of the bill does “not have a consensus” and will be dealt with at a later time.  She is “adamant” that hate crime legislation would be enacted.  In the meantime, she plans to include committee stage amendments to the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 in the Seanad.

The decision comes after increased opposition from within the government, opposition parties and free speech groups, including tech billionaire Elon Musk, who vowed to fund legal challenges against the proposed legislation.

The controversy surrounding the bill highlighted concerns about the potential for vague definitions and overreach, with critics arguing that it could criminalise memes, books or videos deemed politically offensive.

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The Folly of Criminalizing “Hate”

Many people were shocked when over 1,000 protesters were arrested in the UK and jailed for various offenses including “violent disorder” and stirring up racial hatred. Most shocking were the cases of those arrested for posting social media comments on the riots, despite not being present at the scene and there being no evidence that anybody who joined in the riots had read any of their comments.

In societies which uphold the value of individual liberty, the only purpose of the criminal law should be to restrain and punish those who commit acts of aggression against other people or their property. The criminal law should not be used to prevent people from “hating” others or to force them to “love” each other. In announcing yet another raft of laws “to expand the list of charges eligible to be prosecuted as hate crimes,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that “During these challenging times, we will continue to show up for each other. We are making it clear: love will always have the last word in New York.” To that end, she introduced “legislation to significantly expand eligibility for hate crime prosecution.”

Attempts to promote love between different racial or religious groups in society, for example, by charging people with stirring up “hate” when they protest against immigration, misunderstands the role of the criminal law. Threats to public order entail violating the person or property of others—as happens in a violent riot—not merely the exhibition of “hate” towards others. Yet increasingly, public order offenses are linked to hate speech or hate crimes.

Laws prohibiting hate speech and hate crimes typically define “hate” as hostility based on race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. Often, hostility is understood simply as words that offend others. For example, in the UK, the Communications Act 2003 prohibits sending “a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.” The Online Safety Act 2023 targets illegal content online including both “inciting violence” and the publication of “racially or religiously aggravated public order offenses.” Conduct online includes writing posts or publishing blogs or articles on websites.

Given that inciting violence is already a crime—“conduct, words, or other means that urge or naturally lead others to riot, violence, or insurrection”—there seems to be no discernible purpose in adding the concept of “hate” to such crimes. To give an example, writing “burn down the store” on social media might be seen as inciting violence, but writing “burn down the Muslim store” in the same circumstances would be categorized as a hate crime. Arson (actually burning down the store) is a crime, but based on the racial or religious identity of the store owner arson is deemed to be a “worse” crime—a hate crime—even though the harm in both cases and the loss suffered by store owners who are victims of arson does not vary based purely on their race or religion.

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Free Speech at Risk: UN Pushes for Global “Hate Speech” Eradication

In a statement issued on the occasion of the “International Day for Countering Hate Speech,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the global eradication of so-called “hate speech,” which he described as inherently toxic and entirely intolerable.

The issue of censoring “hate speech” stirs significant controversy, primarily due to the nebulous and subjective nature of its definition. At the heart of the debate is a profound concern: whoever defines what constitutes hate speech essentially holds the power to determine the limits of free expression.

This power, wielded without stringent checks and balances, leads to excessive censorship and suppression of dissenting voices, which is antithetical to the principles of a democratic society.

Guterres highlighted the historic and ongoing damage caused by hate speech, citing devastating examples such as Nazi Germany, Rwanda, and Bosnia to suggest that speech leads to violence and even crimes against humanity.

“Hate speech is a marker of discrimination, abuse, violence, conflict, and even crimes against humanity. We have time and again seen this play out from Nazi Germany to Rwanda, Bosnia and beyond. There is no acceptable level of hate speech; we must all work to eradicate it completely,” Guterres said.

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The EU is on the Brink off Making “Hate Speech” a Serious Crime

The EU’s European Commission (EC) appears to be preparing to include “hate speech” among the list of most serious criminal offenses and regulate its investigation and prosecution across the bloc.

Whether this type of proposal is cropping up now because of the upcoming EU elections or if the initiative has legs will become obvious in time, but for now, the plans are supported by several EC commissioners.

The idea stems from the European Citizens’ Panel on Tackling Hatred in Society, one of several panels (ECPs) established to help EC President Ursula von der Leyen with her (campaign?) promise of ushering in a democracy in the EU that is “fit for the future.”

That could mean anything, and the vagueness by no means stops there: the very “hate speech,” despite the gravity of the proposals to classify it as a serious crime, is not even well defined, observers are warning.

Despite that, the recommendations contained in a report produced by the panel have been backed by EC’s Vice-President for Values and Transparency Vera Jourova as well as Vice President for Democracy and Demography Dubravka Suica.

According to Jourova, the panel’s recommendations on how to deal with “hate speech” are “clear and ambitious” – although, as noted, a clear definition of that type of speech is still be lacking.

This is the wording the report went for: any speech that is “incompatible with the values of human dignity, freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and respect of human rights” should be considered as “hate speech.”

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Canada Introduces Horrifying Retroactive Hate Speech Law

Canada is veering dangerously close to the type of complete control over people’s thoughts and speech seen in places like North Korea with a new bill that aims to censor people on the pretense of protecting others from “hate speech” – and that’s not even the most daunting part of it. What’s even more horrifying is the fact that it is retroactive, which means that the things that people have said in the past can now be weaponized against them.

The bill, known as the Online Harms Bill C-63, aims to combat online abuse, but it hides its most concerning components behind more reasonable measures, such as requiring social media platforms to take down posts that sexualize children within 24 hours.

It contains seven categories of content deemed harmful that providers must remove from their websites, including bullying children and encouraging people to harm themselves. It will also ban deep fakes. However, it is the hate speech aspects of it that are causing the most concern.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said that his party is opposed to Prime Minister “Justin Trudeau’s woke authoritarian agenda” that will likely be used for censoring political speech.

He said: “What does Justin Trudeau mean when he says the words ‘hate speech’? He means the speech he hates. You can assume he will ban all of that.”

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Not in Our Name

Free speech is not a divisible concept. Either everyone is free to say what they want, no matter how noxious others find it, in order to create and sustain the free market of ideas—or else speech isn’t free.

Institutions that curtail speech—that make people’s social media postings grounds for expulsion, that ban or suppress speakers they disagree with, that penalize dissenting opinions in classrooms and workplaces with bad grades and HR reports—should not be allowed to then turn around and invoke the principles of free speech to defend problematic speech with which they happen to agree, let alone disruptive or illegal behavior.

And yet, recent years have seen the emergence of two different speech regimes, one for alleged oppressors and one for the allegedly oppressed. Huge swaths of often innocent speech by the former is deemed out of bounds, even criminal, whereas any speech coming out of the mouth of someone with a claim to victim status—including speech that actively incites violence—is considered sacrosanct.

As a result, there is now a great deal of confusion about freedom of speech, which is a very basic—and very central—principle of American history and society. For those interested in being de-confused, which we humbly submit should be all thinking American citizens, herewith: a primer.

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Hate Crime Reports in Scotland Set to Outnumber All Other Crimes Combined

Hate crime reports in Scotland are on course to outnumber the total of all other offences combined as a result of the disastrous new law that has been weaponized by political activists.

Under the new legislation, anyone deemed to have been verbally ‘abusive’, in person or online, to a transgender person, including “insulting” them could be hit with a prison sentence of up to seven years.

After conservatives made a mockery of the legislation and deranged left-wing activists exploited it to target their political adversaries, officers have been deluged with vexatious reports, with one top official complaining “we cannot cope.”

The sheer number of bad faith complaints coming in is ludicrous.

“Around 8,000 hate crime reports have been made in the first week of the new Scottish legislation coming into force, which, if replicated through the year, would surpass the entire annual total of 416,000 crimes reported to police, according to an analysis of official data by The Telegraph.”

“This would mean that hate crime reports would overtake overall crime within 36 weeks, or at least by the autumn, and dwarf the annual 58,000 reported assaults, the most common offence in Scotland, by a factor of 10.”

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“We Cannot Cope”: Police Scotland Deluged With Politicized Hate Crime Reports

Entirely as predicted, Police Scotland has been deluged with vexatious and politically-driven ‘hate crime’ reports, with one top official complaining “we cannot cope.”

Didn’t see this one coming.

Under the new legislation, anyone deemed to have been verbally ‘abusive’, in person or online, to a transgender person, including “insulting” them could be hit with a prison sentence of up to seven years.

That instantly led to a flood of bad faith reports, including from conservatives making a mockery of the system and from deranged left-wing activists trying to punish their ideological adversaries.

David Threadgold, Chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, said that the new legislation was being exploited to pursue personal and political vendettas.

“Police Scotland have gone public and said that on every occasion, reports of hate crime will be investigated,” Mr. Threadgold told the BBC. “That creates a situation where we simply cannot cope at the moment.”

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Combating “Hate”: The Trojan Horse For Precrime

Philip K. Dick’s 1956 novella The Minority Report created “precrime,” the clairvoyant foreknowledge of criminal activity as forecast by mutant “precogs.” The book was a dystopian nightmare, but a 2015 Fox television series transforms the story into one in which a precog works with a cop and shows that data is actually effective at predicting future crime.

Canada is trying to enact a precrime law along the lines of the 2015 show, but it is being panned about as much as the television series. Ottawa’s online harms bill includes a provision to impose house arrest on someone who is feared to commit a hate crime in the future. From The Globe and Mail:

The person could be made to wear an electronic tag, if the attorney-general requests it, or ordered by a judge to remain at home, the bill says. Mr. Virani, who is Attorney-General as well as Justice Minister, said it is important that any peace bond be “calibrated carefully,” saying it would have to meet a high threshold to apply.

But he said the new power, which would require the attorney-general’s approval as well as a judge’s, could prove “very, very important” to restrain the behaviour of someone with a track record of hateful behaviour who may be targeting certain people or groups…

People found guilty of posting hate speech could have to pay victims up to $20,000 in compensation. But experts including internet law professor Michael Geist have said even a threat of a civil complaint – with a lower burden of proof than a court of law – and a fine could have a chilling effect on freedom of expression.

While this is a dangerous step in Canada, I also wonder if this is where burgeoning “anti-hate” programs across the US are headed. The Canadian bill would also allow “people to file complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission over what they perceive as hate speech online – including, for example, off-colour jokes by comedians.”

There are now programs in multiple US states to do just that –  encourage people to snitch on anyone doing anything perceived as “hateful.”

The 2021 federal COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act began to dole out money to states to help them respond to hate incidents. Oregon now has its Bias Response Hotline to track “bias incidents.”

In December of 2022, New York launched its Hate and Bias Prevention Unit. Maryland, too, has its system – its hate incidents examples include “offensive jokes” and “malicious complaints of smell or noise.”

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Police Scotland Paying Officers Overtime To Deal With Slew Of ‘Hate Crime’ Reports

Following the passage of what is probably the most stupid law in history, Police Scotland are having to pay officers in their control room “hundreds of thousands” in overtime to deal with a deluge of ‘hate crime’ reports.

The Telegraph reports that David Kennedy, the general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, commented that the excess costs are already piling up as police try to deal with the influx of more than 6,000 complaints of “stirring up hatred”.

“Although there are lots of complaints coming in, a tiny percentage of that are turning into actual investigations. It will all be done within the control room, the control room will be paying extra overtime and using officers from the control room area to do it,” Kennedy stated.

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