When Vance chided the Europeans for censorship, he neglected to highlight the US’s own culpability on this with the book bannings, and complicitness to control the media in the US through threats etc. Hypocrisy indeed!
Absolutely on point, Mr. Chilton. Vance’s claims are as callow and hypocritical as he is. The US is in a mania of free-speech suppression egged on by his fellow travelers and “Vlad’s Man in Washington” even while he lies to himself and others about American exceptionalism.
Well, Vance was doing a victory dance, having been part of the ticket that defeated the censorship-industrial complex that the American lefties had been building for a couple of generations.
I think any American on the international stage could be subjected to some tu quoque, given recent events. But as often is the case, 2 things can be true at once.
As acknowledged in the OP, Vance did make some reasonable points on the state of European speech, examples of hypocrisy notwithstanding. That hypocrisy shouldn’t totally detract from the legitimacy of some of those points.
So, anti holocaust denial laws in Germany or France? Totally makes sense. But some of the internet speech policing around “woke” issues? (In the UK, especially). That does seem excessive.
I think a reasonable person could parse what does and doesn’t make sense, and come to a conclusion that Europe is not heading in the right direction on speech.
Thanks once again for a timely and insightful discussion of this issue. Agree with others that there is a healthy degree of hypocrisy in such statements by Mr. Vance considering book bans and the effort to prevent private companies from adopting or maintaining diversity initiatives.
As to the history, one might also want to consider the discussions leading to the drafting of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially given US lead on its development. Issues you highlight were also part of these debates such as: balancing the right to freedom of expression with the potential for harm or disorder; governments using "national security" or "public morality" as excuses to restrict free expression; scope of expression; how international standards on freedom of expression should apply across different legal, cultural, and political contexts; and, sensitivity to the dangers of propaganda, misinformation, and the suppression of dissent.
Rene, the Trump administration is NOT trying to "prevent private companies from adopting or maintaining diversity initiatives." They are simply ending government engagement in and funding for those initiatives. Private organizations are still perfectly free to do DEI on their own dime.
One of the Executive Orders precludes companies seeking government business from, in essence, having DEI programs. So, perhaps ‘prevent’ is the wrong verb but the Trump administration certainly is looking to influence private companies in this regard, and using tools at is disposal to do so.
That's no different than previous governments which mandated those programs for companies seeking to do business with the government. Were you opposed to the government telling private businesses they MUST do DEI, too?
There's a bit of a problem there with the phrase "no different". Simplified:
Case 1: Government says to companies "You may NOT only hire white men"
Case 2: Government says to companies "You may ONLY hire white men"
Are these two cases "no different"? From a certain Libertarian perspective, perhaps that's so. But do you see where someone might not consider them morally equivalent?
Also, I think you're missing that one EO is general application, not just "business with the government".
The Trump administration’s intention to end “illegal DEI” practices extends beyond federal contractors to all private sector employers. The new EO directs the Attorney General to compile a report within 120 days recommending actions to enforce “Federal civil-rights laws” and “encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI.”
What I said is: An executive order that says private companies that do business with the government MUST employ DEI hiring practices is "no different" - in terms of interfering with the hiring decisions of private companies - than an executive order that says private companies that do business with the government MAY NOT employ DEI hiring practices. If it is interference with the hiring decisions of private companies that bothers you, then you should have been equally bothered by BOTH types of executive order. Apparently you are not bothered by the Obama-"Biden" executive orders, which is the problem of consistency for you that I meant to expose.
As a libertarian, I don't agree with civil rights laws that PROHIBIT discrimination in employment by private businesses. Like Thomas Sowell, I think they are unnecessary and counter-productive. Nevertheless, such laws are more benign than laws that REQUIRE discrimination in employment by private businesses, such as DEI mandates do. If it were up to me, I would get rid of all of these laws, mandates, executive orders - and let the free market sort things out. But if I can't have the optimal solution, I'll certainly take a step in the right direction. Trump's executive orders against DEI are very much that.
I'm not a Libertarian. Therefore, claims of not being "consistent" according to Libertarianism, don't bother me, because I don't believe in their ideological framework in the first place. But I like to have Libertarians make absolutely clear e.g. that per above they strongly believe businesses should be able to hire white men only, and advocate repealing all related Civil Rights law. It's such an unusual political view in general nowadays that many people don't think it's real.
I'm intrigued by your proclaimed inconsistency that you want government power applied here, that suddenly, the government can indeed pass laws to interfere with private actions, for anti-discrimination purposes - as you defined them. I think it's strong evidence that's it's not about government but rather, well, the jargon is white supremacy, but that does seem to be right.
Dan, I'm sure Vance is more aware than you are that freedom of speech is an unfinished business in America, and is always at risk. He is undoubtedly familiar with the "twitter files" made available to Schellenberger, Taibbi, et al by his friend Elon Musk - which exposed the extensive deep state involvement in shaping the political narratives in America. He's quite aware of the censorship of science that took place in the time of covid. He probably even appreciates the dangers posed by state-sponsored propaganda on climate that is rampant from previous Democrat administrations. His speech in Germany was as much a commitment to defeating the forces of censorship on the American left as it was a warning about censorship on the European left (which is even more entrenched than the American left is).
The censorship in Europe that Vance was referring to doesn't require any nuanced exposition. As Konstantin Kissin (among others) has been pointing out for years now, there are ten times as many people in jail in the UK for speech crimes than in Putin's Russia. (And the UK has half the population of Russia.) You can hardy scroll through twitter for a day without seeing yet another appalling arrest by British authorities of an elderly person for reposting a meme - on the ground that some blue-haired neurotic on the internet claimed to have experienced "anxiety" from seeing the meme. The alleged "anxiety" is always aligned with the politics of the left: Islamophobia, transphobia, racism, etc. This trend is expanding throughout Europe, at a frightening pace.
If you aren't aware of what Vance was complaining about, its time to pull your nose out of the history books and start looking at the present-day reality, Dan. You remind me of so many judges I had to deal with as a lawyer in family court: they could cite the case law - i.e. rulings on other historical cases - until the cows came home, but they didn't care to inform themselves about the facts of the actual case in front of them.
I shouldn't do this, but - do you really believe this is true in substance: "... there are ten times as many people in jail in the UK for speech crimes than in Putin's Russia."? I mean, again, really? Not that you couldn't torture it into technical accuracy if the Russia category was something like "subversion". But in the ordinary meaning one would take from it, that the UK is ten times worse than Russia here.
As I said, KK has been saying this publicly for years. To my knowledge, he has never been fact-checked on the claim. He's a popular commentator, so I'll take it as accurate until proven otherwise.
I think the number of speech-related jailings reached 36,000 in Britain some time ago. I have heard that they even released violent criminals early so make room in prisons for speech offenders. I'm not an eye witness to any of this; it's just what I see reported in various places.
There's an aphorism that the beauty and the tragedy of free speech is that anyone can say any fool thing. But it's generally not a good reason to believe something, based only on somebody said it somewhere (e.g. "In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats."). But my question to you is more along the lines of, why do you personally not laugh at such a "ten times" claim, which seems to me so absurd I can't even figure out where to begin to refute it. You're literally claiming a brutal dictatorship, run by an ex-(?) KGB man, is an order of magnitude better on free speech than the UK. Doesn't that seem unlikely to be true? (in substance, again not if one slices in some hypertechnical way). It seems to fail sanity-checking. What would convince you that in fact it isn't true?
I see videos and news reports every day of UK police arresting people for posting memes on the internet. On these videos and in these reports, the cops themselves state the reason for the arrest is that the meme "might have caused someone anxiety." There are entire units of police that do nothing but police internet posts. It must be a real phenomenon, Seth.
I'm not really fussed about the precise numbers - whether it is 10x more or only 5x more - it's the fact it is being done at all in a western democracy that should shock the conscience of a nation. If what these cases reveal is the way the laws are actually written, then half the population would be guilty of posting memes that some might find anxiety-inducing. So it would be entirely unsurprising if only a few tens of thousands are in jail for this reason - as Konstanin Kissin has stated publicly on numerous occasions in recent years.
But of course the law isn't enforced consistently and across the board. The cops only pick on the most vulnerable, from the "right" demographics. You know, the old-stock Brits. The genocidal hatred by Muslims in real life, in the streets and in the mosques, goes unpunished, even protected by the same police forces.
Canada also ranks higher on the Democracy Index than the US, despite having a specific law against hate speech. JD Vance should save his lectures about the decay of democracy/free speech for dj trump, who green lights the use of violence on dissenters at his rallies.
Fun fact! The USA doesn't actually qualify as a democracy - if you take the EU rules for it. They had to come up with criteria for who could join the EU, not let in fake democracies like the "Democratic" Republic of Korea.
And the USA actually wouldn't qualify - it's that Senate that gives 4 Senate votes to the 80 million people of NY and CA, but 8 Senate votes to the 3 million people of WY,MO,ND, SD. And zero Senate votes to the 3 million Americans on Puerto Rico.
That's the core of my appeal to P.R. to become our eleventh province: they currently suffer taxation without representation.
The biggest threats to freedom of speech in the developed world these days come from the political left. The more entrenched the lefties are in a country, the more freedom is speech is in danger. It was a huge problem in the USA under the Obama and "Biden" administrations, and is an even bigger problem in the more left-leaning Canadian and European context. This is what Vance was rightly casting a light on.
US Court decisions have shaped how free speech is defined and that has certainly depended on current politics. But even at their broadest, the US limited certain kinds of individual speech that could be considered the equivalent of hate speech. Before 1969, Schenck V. United States imposed limits on speech that incited crime or violence and which posed a "clear and present danger of bringing about the substantial evils that Congress may prohibit " Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting ‘fire’ in a theatre and causing a panic.”
Schenck was modified in 1969, by Brandenburg v. Ohio. In Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan member was convicted under a state law which made a crime to teach or advocate violence as a means to achieve industrial or political reforms. The Supreme Court overturned Brandenburg's conviction and required that there be a close correspondence between the inflammatory speech and the incited lawless conduct. The Court wrote " Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
One final caveat, pre Trump/Musk the US imposed further restrictions on commercial speech, which was not deemed to be entitled to the same first amendment protections as individual free speech.
Musk's comments to the AfD arguably would not have been entitled to protection under US law and could easily be construed as commercial speech ( and not entitled to as much deference).
Vance is also tone deaf and wrong in his criticism of Europe's decision to ban hate speech, especially in a digital age, where the intent is for such speech to be amplified by algorithms with the intent to incite imminent lawless action. There is a world of difference between someone saying something unpopular to a small audience of listeners where the speaker has a sense of the crowd and can make a colorable claim that the speech is not inciting imminent lawless action. Spewing hate speech on social media platforms is clearly incendiary.
US Court decisions have shaped how free speech is defined and that has certainly depended on current politics. But even at their broadest, the US limited certain kinds of individual speech that could be considered the equivalent of hate speech. Before 1969, Schenck V. United States imposed limits on speech that incited crime or violence and which posed a "clear and present danger of bringing about the substantial evils that Congress may prohibit " Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting ‘fire’ in a theatre and causing a panic.”
Schenck was modified in 1969, by Brandenburg v. Ohio. In Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan member was convicted under a state law which made a crime to teach or advocate violence as a means to achieve industrial or political reforms. The Supreme Court overturned Brandenburg's conviction and required that there be a close correspondence between the inflammatory speech and the incited lawless conduct. The Court wrote " Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
One final caveat, pre Trump/Musk the US imposed further restrictions on commercial speech, which was not deemed to be entitled to the same first amendment protections as individual free speech.
Musk's comments to the AfD arguably would not have been entitled to protection under US law and could easily be construed as commercial speech ( and not entitled to as much deference).
Vance is also tone deaf and wrong in his criticism of Europe's decision to ban hate speech, especially in a digital age, where the intent is for such speech to be amplified by algorithms with the intent to incite imminent lawless action. There is a world of difference between someone saying something unpopular to a small audience of listeners where the speaker has a sense of the crowd and can make a colorable claim that the speech is not inciting imminent lawless action. Spewing hate speech on social media platforms is clearly incendiary.
“My point is this, or at least you can think of it this way: Trumpism is an American iteration of the TruAnon phenomenon that has taken up so much of my damn time in recent years. It’s functionally indistinguishable.”
Well said, Terry. How anyone can be scandalized by Trudeau but fine with Trump is beyond me. They’re both institutional arsonists who demand that no one notice the emperor wears no clothes.
Many thanks for that. I knew some of that in general, but was educated.
I was very glad to see daylight between the concern that "anti-hate" backfires, and the concern for Germany keeping a lid on fascist comeback.
My biggest concern for the future is whether UK and/or France will "fall" to fascist parties that are doing disturbingly well in their elections. The main reason I've taken the painful position that we must get our own nukes - because they could flip the way the US just did,and we lose our last nuclear NATO protectors.
The alt-right movement, with nation-state support - now with American support, count on the CIA/NSA being "cleaned out" of all but toadies - will knock off one nation after another unless we stand together against them.
When Vance chided the Europeans for censorship, he neglected to highlight the US’s own culpability on this with the book bannings, and complicitness to control the media in the US through threats etc. Hypocrisy indeed!
Absolutely on point, Mr. Chilton. Vance’s claims are as callow and hypocritical as he is. The US is in a mania of free-speech suppression egged on by his fellow travelers and “Vlad’s Man in Washington” even while he lies to himself and others about American exceptionalism.
Well, Vance was doing a victory dance, having been part of the ticket that defeated the censorship-industrial complex that the American lefties had been building for a couple of generations.
You sound like a book burner from Florida.
You are sounding like part of the problem
I think any American on the international stage could be subjected to some tu quoque, given recent events. But as often is the case, 2 things can be true at once.
As acknowledged in the OP, Vance did make some reasonable points on the state of European speech, examples of hypocrisy notwithstanding. That hypocrisy shouldn’t totally detract from the legitimacy of some of those points.
So, anti holocaust denial laws in Germany or France? Totally makes sense. But some of the internet speech policing around “woke” issues? (In the UK, especially). That does seem excessive.
I think a reasonable person could parse what does and doesn’t make sense, and come to a conclusion that Europe is not heading in the right direction on speech.
Please don't.
Pick any other forum than one I'm paying for; there are so many, and it's been hashed over so many times.
Please tell us what you mean by “woke”.
As Mr. Brander suggested, just applying the SCOTUS definition for “pornography” will get you there.
You used the term...tell me what it means.
Figure it out bud. And if you can’t, you probably are.
Ah…so you’re too afraid to stick your neck and and show us how deplorable you are.
My definition is simple...it means "not being a dick". I can see why you are against that.
Stay woke bud. Like I said, if ur too stupid in 2025 to know what “woke” is, it cuz you are.
And stupid is the type that doesn’t have 2 brain cells to rub together to actually address the content of a comment. Which also describes you to a T.
Thanks once again for a timely and insightful discussion of this issue. Agree with others that there is a healthy degree of hypocrisy in such statements by Mr. Vance considering book bans and the effort to prevent private companies from adopting or maintaining diversity initiatives.
As to the history, one might also want to consider the discussions leading to the drafting of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially given US lead on its development. Issues you highlight were also part of these debates such as: balancing the right to freedom of expression with the potential for harm or disorder; governments using "national security" or "public morality" as excuses to restrict free expression; scope of expression; how international standards on freedom of expression should apply across different legal, cultural, and political contexts; and, sensitivity to the dangers of propaganda, misinformation, and the suppression of dissent.
Rene, the Trump administration is NOT trying to "prevent private companies from adopting or maintaining diversity initiatives." They are simply ending government engagement in and funding for those initiatives. Private organizations are still perfectly free to do DEI on their own dime.
One of the Executive Orders precludes companies seeking government business from, in essence, having DEI programs. So, perhaps ‘prevent’ is the wrong verb but the Trump administration certainly is looking to influence private companies in this regard, and using tools at is disposal to do so.
That's no different than previous governments which mandated those programs for companies seeking to do business with the government. Were you opposed to the government telling private businesses they MUST do DEI, too?
There's a bit of a problem there with the phrase "no different". Simplified:
Case 1: Government says to companies "You may NOT only hire white men"
Case 2: Government says to companies "You may ONLY hire white men"
Are these two cases "no different"? From a certain Libertarian perspective, perhaps that's so. But do you see where someone might not consider them morally equivalent?
Also, I think you're missing that one EO is general application, not just "business with the government".
https://www.woodsrogers.com/insights/publications/dei-is-d-o-a-what-president-trumps-executive-order-means-for-all-employers
The Trump administration’s intention to end “illegal DEI” practices extends beyond federal contractors to all private sector employers. The new EO directs the Attorney General to compile a report within 120 days recommending actions to enforce “Federal civil-rights laws” and “encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI.”
What I said is: An executive order that says private companies that do business with the government MUST employ DEI hiring practices is "no different" - in terms of interfering with the hiring decisions of private companies - than an executive order that says private companies that do business with the government MAY NOT employ DEI hiring practices. If it is interference with the hiring decisions of private companies that bothers you, then you should have been equally bothered by BOTH types of executive order. Apparently you are not bothered by the Obama-"Biden" executive orders, which is the problem of consistency for you that I meant to expose.
As a libertarian, I don't agree with civil rights laws that PROHIBIT discrimination in employment by private businesses. Like Thomas Sowell, I think they are unnecessary and counter-productive. Nevertheless, such laws are more benign than laws that REQUIRE discrimination in employment by private businesses, such as DEI mandates do. If it were up to me, I would get rid of all of these laws, mandates, executive orders - and let the free market sort things out. But if I can't have the optimal solution, I'll certainly take a step in the right direction. Trump's executive orders against DEI are very much that.
I'm not a Libertarian. Therefore, claims of not being "consistent" according to Libertarianism, don't bother me, because I don't believe in their ideological framework in the first place. But I like to have Libertarians make absolutely clear e.g. that per above they strongly believe businesses should be able to hire white men only, and advocate repealing all related Civil Rights law. It's such an unusual political view in general nowadays that many people don't think it's real.
I'm intrigued by your proclaimed inconsistency that you want government power applied here, that suddenly, the government can indeed pass laws to interfere with private actions, for anti-discrimination purposes - as you defined them. I think it's strong evidence that's it's not about government but rather, well, the jargon is white supremacy, but that does seem to be right.
"John Adams would have had J.D. Vance arrested." That says it all!
Dan, I'm sure Vance is more aware than you are that freedom of speech is an unfinished business in America, and is always at risk. He is undoubtedly familiar with the "twitter files" made available to Schellenberger, Taibbi, et al by his friend Elon Musk - which exposed the extensive deep state involvement in shaping the political narratives in America. He's quite aware of the censorship of science that took place in the time of covid. He probably even appreciates the dangers posed by state-sponsored propaganda on climate that is rampant from previous Democrat administrations. His speech in Germany was as much a commitment to defeating the forces of censorship on the American left as it was a warning about censorship on the European left (which is even more entrenched than the American left is).
The censorship in Europe that Vance was referring to doesn't require any nuanced exposition. As Konstantin Kissin (among others) has been pointing out for years now, there are ten times as many people in jail in the UK for speech crimes than in Putin's Russia. (And the UK has half the population of Russia.) You can hardy scroll through twitter for a day without seeing yet another appalling arrest by British authorities of an elderly person for reposting a meme - on the ground that some blue-haired neurotic on the internet claimed to have experienced "anxiety" from seeing the meme. The alleged "anxiety" is always aligned with the politics of the left: Islamophobia, transphobia, racism, etc. This trend is expanding throughout Europe, at a frightening pace.
If you aren't aware of what Vance was complaining about, its time to pull your nose out of the history books and start looking at the present-day reality, Dan. You remind me of so many judges I had to deal with as a lawyer in family court: they could cite the case law - i.e. rulings on other historical cases - until the cows came home, but they didn't care to inform themselves about the facts of the actual case in front of them.
I shouldn't do this, but - do you really believe this is true in substance: "... there are ten times as many people in jail in the UK for speech crimes than in Putin's Russia."? I mean, again, really? Not that you couldn't torture it into technical accuracy if the Russia category was something like "subversion". But in the ordinary meaning one would take from it, that the UK is ten times worse than Russia here.
As I said, KK has been saying this publicly for years. To my knowledge, he has never been fact-checked on the claim. He's a popular commentator, so I'll take it as accurate until proven otherwise.
I think the number of speech-related jailings reached 36,000 in Britain some time ago. I have heard that they even released violent criminals early so make room in prisons for speech offenders. I'm not an eye witness to any of this; it's just what I see reported in various places.
There's an aphorism that the beauty and the tragedy of free speech is that anyone can say any fool thing. But it's generally not a good reason to believe something, based only on somebody said it somewhere (e.g. "In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats."). But my question to you is more along the lines of, why do you personally not laugh at such a "ten times" claim, which seems to me so absurd I can't even figure out where to begin to refute it. You're literally claiming a brutal dictatorship, run by an ex-(?) KGB man, is an order of magnitude better on free speech than the UK. Doesn't that seem unlikely to be true? (in substance, again not if one slices in some hypertechnical way). It seems to fail sanity-checking. What would convince you that in fact it isn't true?
I see videos and news reports every day of UK police arresting people for posting memes on the internet. On these videos and in these reports, the cops themselves state the reason for the arrest is that the meme "might have caused someone anxiety." There are entire units of police that do nothing but police internet posts. It must be a real phenomenon, Seth.
I'm not really fussed about the precise numbers - whether it is 10x more or only 5x more - it's the fact it is being done at all in a western democracy that should shock the conscience of a nation. If what these cases reveal is the way the laws are actually written, then half the population would be guilty of posting memes that some might find anxiety-inducing. So it would be entirely unsurprising if only a few tens of thousands are in jail for this reason - as Konstanin Kissin has stated publicly on numerous occasions in recent years.
But of course the law isn't enforced consistently and across the board. The cops only pick on the most vulnerable, from the "right" demographics. You know, the old-stock Brits. The genocidal hatred by Muslims in real life, in the streets and in the mosques, goes unpunished, even protected by the same police forces.
Canada also ranks higher on the Democracy Index than the US, despite having a specific law against hate speech. JD Vance should save his lectures about the decay of democracy/free speech for dj trump, who green lights the use of violence on dissenters at his rallies.
Fun fact! The USA doesn't actually qualify as a democracy - if you take the EU rules for it. They had to come up with criteria for who could join the EU, not let in fake democracies like the "Democratic" Republic of Korea.
And the USA actually wouldn't qualify - it's that Senate that gives 4 Senate votes to the 80 million people of NY and CA, but 8 Senate votes to the 3 million people of WY,MO,ND, SD. And zero Senate votes to the 3 million Americans on Puerto Rico.
That's the core of my appeal to P.R. to become our eleventh province: they currently suffer taxation without representation.
And was the Electoral College designed to actually stymie the intentions of voters? It sure seems like it.
The biggest threats to freedom of speech in the developed world these days come from the political left. The more entrenched the lefties are in a country, the more freedom is speech is in danger. It was a huge problem in the USA under the Obama and "Biden" administrations, and is an even bigger problem in the more left-leaning Canadian and European context. This is what Vance was rightly casting a light on.
It's the Republican Party in the US that wants to ban books and Conservatives in Canada that seek to hush peoples' voices.
Nonsense. You are utterly delusional. Cancel culture is a woke leftie thing, and has been for decades.
I will continue on in my reality-based universe while your little world gets stranger and stranger as you delude yourself with tired notions.
Well, bless your heart.
US Court decisions have shaped how free speech is defined and that has certainly depended on current politics. But even at their broadest, the US limited certain kinds of individual speech that could be considered the equivalent of hate speech. Before 1969, Schenck V. United States imposed limits on speech that incited crime or violence and which posed a "clear and present danger of bringing about the substantial evils that Congress may prohibit " Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting ‘fire’ in a theatre and causing a panic.”
Schenck was modified in 1969, by Brandenburg v. Ohio. In Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan member was convicted under a state law which made a crime to teach or advocate violence as a means to achieve industrial or political reforms. The Supreme Court overturned Brandenburg's conviction and required that there be a close correspondence between the inflammatory speech and the incited lawless conduct. The Court wrote " Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
One final caveat, pre Trump/Musk the US imposed further restrictions on commercial speech, which was not deemed to be entitled to the same first amendment protections as individual free speech.
Musk's comments to the AfD arguably would not have been entitled to protection under US law and could easily be construed as commercial speech ( and not entitled to as much deference).
Vance is also tone deaf and wrong in his criticism of Europe's decision to ban hate speech, especially in a digital age, where the intent is for such speech to be amplified by algorithms with the intent to incite imminent lawless action. There is a world of difference between someone saying something unpopular to a small audience of listeners where the speaker has a sense of the crowd and can make a colorable claim that the speech is not inciting imminent lawless action. Spewing hate speech on social media platforms is clearly incendiary.
US Court decisions have shaped how free speech is defined and that has certainly depended on current politics. But even at their broadest, the US limited certain kinds of individual speech that could be considered the equivalent of hate speech. Before 1969, Schenck V. United States imposed limits on speech that incited crime or violence and which posed a "clear and present danger of bringing about the substantial evils that Congress may prohibit " Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting ‘fire’ in a theatre and causing a panic.”
Schenck was modified in 1969, by Brandenburg v. Ohio. In Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan member was convicted under a state law which made a crime to teach or advocate violence as a means to achieve industrial or political reforms. The Supreme Court overturned Brandenburg's conviction and required that there be a close correspondence between the inflammatory speech and the incited lawless conduct. The Court wrote " Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
One final caveat, pre Trump/Musk the US imposed further restrictions on commercial speech, which was not deemed to be entitled to the same first amendment protections as individual free speech.
Musk's comments to the AfD arguably would not have been entitled to protection under US law and could easily be construed as commercial speech ( and not entitled to as much deference).
Vance is also tone deaf and wrong in his criticism of Europe's decision to ban hate speech, especially in a digital age, where the intent is for such speech to be amplified by algorithms with the intent to incite imminent lawless action. There is a world of difference between someone saying something unpopular to a small audience of listeners where the speaker has a sense of the crowd and can make a colorable claim that the speech is not inciting imminent lawless action. Spewing hate speech on social media platforms is clearly incendiary.
“My point is this, or at least you can think of it this way: Trumpism is an American iteration of the TruAnon phenomenon that has taken up so much of my damn time in recent years. It’s functionally indistinguishable.”
Well said, Terry. How anyone can be scandalized by Trudeau but fine with Trump is beyond me. They’re both institutional arsonists who demand that no one notice the emperor wears no clothes.
Many thanks for that. I knew some of that in general, but was educated.
I was very glad to see daylight between the concern that "anti-hate" backfires, and the concern for Germany keeping a lid on fascist comeback.
My biggest concern for the future is whether UK and/or France will "fall" to fascist parties that are doing disturbingly well in their elections. The main reason I've taken the painful position that we must get our own nukes - because they could flip the way the US just did,and we lose our last nuclear NATO protectors.
The alt-right movement, with nation-state support - now with American support, count on the CIA/NSA being "cleaned out" of all but toadies - will knock off one nation after another unless we stand together against them.