My opinion is that free-speech absolutism is a policy position that causes much more harm than good, and which erodes social cohesion. There should be perpetual debate about where we as a society accept where the line is between speech which is allowed and that which is disallowed.
And to wit, on the tea party analogy: how's that working for the US now?
Imagine if we jailed every gay person the moment they had a gay thought. How legal do you think being gay would be now?
You gotta stay on-topic. You keep coming up with random things to compare to that make no sense to anybody but you. Who said it was legal to say "kill the king"?
But I dislike even more that we decide that the solution to it is to pass laws prohibiting speech, and even more that the ones in charge of passing those laws are very incentivised to prohibiting criticism to themselves or their policies or their ideologies.
It’s why the US has such a problem with gun control and laws.
I could argue everyone should have guns, and it’s just bad people, right?
Let me give it a go; Switzerland has higher gun homicides than the UK.
Citation please.
(EDIT: Citation of an arrest just for saying that, not an arrest for incitement.)
If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space,
he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene,
call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the
balls.
I'll take that as confirmation that it happens all the time though - since this was evidently not an isolated case, as you have pointed out.
That includes your right to support Hamas or Israel, your right to support abortion, your right to support defensive gun use, your right... well actually your right to support a lot of things given how readily innocuous things are described by opponents as "violence" or "assault".
Fortunately in the U.S. this is recognized under Brandenburg v. Ohio.
Can we please stop using a country you clearly have limited understanding of, as a prop in your morality play for your own activism?
Bear in mind that these "takes" are often sensationalised with useful context removed in order to better sell the message to yank markets.
If you're gonna chat shit about my nation, please afford it some level of respect in doing some research of conflicting views instead of parroting whatever twaddle the demagogue du jour is bleating.
> please afford it some level of respect in doing some research of conflicting views
There are no "conflicting views" to research. You're just upset that reality doesn't align with your dogma.
> Considering they arrest people for saying "there are only two genders"
I invite you to come try that out. You'll be fine unless you're a complete penis about it. What you should probably clock is that Graham Linehan doxxes and harasses people online with his followers brigading. If you recall the bail conditions when he got arrested was that he had to stop posting on twitter for its duration. THAT'S the headline issue, he's a publisher with a big audience. He's not just saying it at the back of a pub, and he's one of those obsessives that posts about it all the time.
Do you see the difference between what you said and what he gets in trouble for? Reducing it to just saying "there are only two genders" is taking harassment, brigading and doxxing and putting it in a nice frock so you can pretend its a victim.
I've lived in my country for decades and have added nuance to this subject. What gives you the confidence that makes you think you're better informed about my nation that I am?
https://www.foxnews.com/world/blogger-arrested-sharing-anti-...
Do you think someone should be arrested for sharing a meme that says f** Hamas? Or did you not know about this?
It's common knowledge that the UK is arresting people on the daily for harmless things that no one actually cares about. Should someone go to jail for saying "fuck serial killers"? Is that a hate crime too?
If you had an idea about our laws you'd realise that's not the problematic part. The issue is under the Equalities Act 2010 religion and ethnicity are protected characteristics. So its the "fuck Islam" and "fuck off to a Muslim country..." that is problematic here.
FYI using Fox News to try to understand the UK is like trying to run air traffic control with a Fischer-Price chatter telephone. Stating that I am ill-informed or blinded by bias when citing a yank source (who by their own definition are "entertainment news") as opposed to a serious broadcaster from the UK is quite the look.
Do you not know how media works in the 21st century? They're republishing from UK sources. It was just the first hit on the SERPs because they have better SEO. Go find the original sources if you really want to. The point is that your country is putting people in prison for the dumbest reasons, and you apparently see no issue with it.
Maybe don't use a source from the 1960s then. Victim cosplay is gross, so its no surprise I don't respond to it. Find me a contemporary source if you want to compare apples to apples. You want me to respond with some mostly irrelevant reference to ancient Greece or something? Cleon probably has a couple of tangential quotes we could explore.
Yeah I know the source. Its the Torygraph. Once a mighty broadsheet but these days they print any old shit to get those boomer clicks and make them all upset. Tell them the world is falling apart to soften the blow of impending death. You're treating hospice fare as actual news you spanner.
Anybody that is worth listening to doesn't focus on the Hamas part like that source does. They focus on the parts that violate the Equalities Act 2010 because they know what they're talking about.
They're dragging grannies off to prison just for holding up signs, and literally accusing them of supporting terrorism.
For example, the USA maintains a list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and penalities for providing support to those organisations are rather more severe than the in the UK.
Whether or not Palestine Action should be proscribed is a different matter - their most serious action to date has been simply damaging military aircraft. Personally, I'd tend to say that proscription is too harsh a response for property damage with no violence against a person.
I guess in the US that anyone doing something similar would simply have been killed, rather than their organisation being banned. That's not exactly great either!