On the Hate Speech question

Ok ok I understood that the first amendment in the US Constitution state the right of free speech.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

this is an interesting text, since state clearly that the congress should not try to regulate in any way religion and freedom of speech. so apparently this means that any kind of speech should be allowed no matter the content.

The question comes to an extreme when we’re considering two extreme kinds of speech as hate speech and Holocaust denial

Can be any limit to freedom of speech? The limit itself can be associated to any form of censorship?

This is a very hard point to discuss, and funny enough the ones that claim for a stronger respect of the first amendment are usually groups that have a strong love relationship with censorship and truth misrepresentation.

The ones that mostly claims for the right expressed in the 1st amendment are usually strongly seated at the extreme side of a political party or religion.

Is a funny thing that has always happened during history, hate speech people claim their right from the freedom of speech, and when they reach the power are usually the first to limit this right.

At the same time the same groups claim the right to ask for censorship whenever they think a speech can be dangerous for their ideas, so basically we are in presence of the most classical double standard.

The first question we should ask ourselves is if Hate Speech should be allowed.

I’m not a fan of Hate Speech, mostly because I’m not a fan of any extremism of any kind. What I do not like in Hate Speech is that the aim is not to “talk” but to rise rage and hate and deny, at the same time, some other right. In every Hate speech are present those points:

1) we are in presence of a speaker or a group that hold the “truth” and so deny any other position.

2) there is not an open dialogue but just a message to justify actions denying the other part reasons

3) there is always a “moral” prevalence that justify the Hater over the other

4) there is an explicit expression of hate against a part, denying the same “moral”level at the counterparts

If the first 3 point can be questionable from an Agnostic” point of view as mine, the 4th point is questionable also under the declaration of human rights’ terms that states all mankind should have the same rights.

This is obviously a personal point of view, if I would be a Muslim extremist or a far right christian extremist I would probably think that Hate Speech (mine) are right and tells the truth that is not questionable because comes directly from God. So trying to stop my right to tell the truth would be a violation of the 1st amendment and a nasty form of central-state censorship.

Just wondering if they would fight the same battle for the other side’s rights.

But if not allowing Hate Speech is a form of censorship then I would say we have to allow Hate Speech People to make their claims. This does not means we should be happy about it, this means that we should be able to judge speech for what they’re. If you do not like a position you can express our point of view, possibly in a polite way, and we have to consider that the other side will not listen to anything we say.

So if the position should be allowing Hate Speech what should we say about Holocaust Denial? Holocaust have been of of the biggest atrocities in our history. A tragedy that deleted so many human lives is simply horrible. It is estimated that 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust. Six million of these were Jews the other were Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political opponent and the disabled for persecution.

So why Denial? well according to some people there are no evidence other than the ones provided by the winners that would have crafted things to put Nazi in bad light.

We should really stop those people from telling this? is, in this case, a censorship justified?

The objection is that the Holocaust denial is a history hoax and it is used to feed the hate against Jews. that is probably the truth. But where is the difference between this position and a General Hate Speech? Both seems to serve the same agenda, propagate Hate and Rage while claiming to serve the truth.

Both would serve and feed the Hate chain that need this kind of approach to survive.

So the question would be clear, form a freedom point of view we should deny any kind of censorship even if this could allow people to say questionable things.

But is this the complete truth? We know that we can sue someone if is making false statement that are related to us. In any legislation there is the possibility to sue someone who is doing false accusation or claim that could put in bad light or somehow damage our activity or personal life.

The key may be is the truthfulness of the statements? Hard to say so, if this could be the reference the 99.9% of world politicians would see restrict his\her right to speak.

So a question apparently simple is not so simple, and we cannot even refer to common sense, common sense is something that differ from place to place even in the same country.

As I state before I’m a fierce opponent to censorship and so I’m deeply concerned about the Hate Speech role in our culture but as Benjamin Franklin stated ones: