TRIGGERnometry - April 12, 2024


Why We Should Abolish Hate Speech Laws - Andrew Doyle


Episode Stats

Length

9 minutes

Words per Minute

173.37634

Word Count

1,648

Sentence Count

83

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Since when did it become the business of the state to audit our emotions? In effect, this is precisely what is happening, by means of the various hate speech laws that have been implemented throughout Europe in recent years. In Ireland, the imminent criminal justice bill would represent one of the most draconian forms of hate speech legislation yet produced, and how is hatred defined in the bill?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:30.000 Since when did it become the business of the state to audit our emotions?
00:00:35.780 In effect, this is precisely what's happening, by means of the various hate speech laws that have been implemented throughout Europe in recent years.
00:00:42.840 In Ireland, the imminent criminal justice bill would represent one of the most draconian forms of hate speech legislation yet produced.
00:00:50.880 And how is hatred defined in the bill?
00:00:52.900 Well, the following is a direct quotation.
00:00:54.920 Hatred means hatred against a person or a group of persons in the state or elsewhere on account of their protected characteristics or any one of those characteristics.
00:01:05.780 So, hatred means hatred.
00:01:07.800 Glad we cleared that up.
00:01:09.180 This kind of circular definition is what we've come to expect from legislators when it comes to this most nebulous of concepts.
00:01:14.760 In his book, Censored, Paul Coleman helpfully includes all of the existing legislation on hatred from across Europe.
00:01:22.300 And in doing so, he reveals that no two governments are able to agree on its meaning.
00:01:26.420 In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights concluded that there is no universally accepted definition of the expression hate speech.
00:01:34.380 And a manual published by UNESCO in 2015 accepted that the possibility of reaching a universally shared definition seems unlikely.
00:01:42.900 When it comes to the statute books, one would have thought that precision and detail would be of paramount importance.
00:01:48.960 After all, we've seen how vaguely worded legislation is wide open to exploitation.
00:01:53.620 Consider, for instance, how trans rights activists are now claiming that the reference to sex in the Equality Act 2010
00:02:00.480 connotes a sense of gender identity rather than, you know, the biological designations of male and female.
00:02:07.560 If the state is empowered to imprison its citizens on the basis of hatred, surely we need to know what that means.
00:02:15.040 Hatred, like any other emotion, cannot be legislated out of existence.
00:02:18.820 Will we be seeing laws against envious speech on the statute books?
00:02:23.240 And what about codes against wrath or pride?
00:02:26.120 If the government were to prohibit narcissistic speech,
00:02:28.600 most of the flag-waving, pronoun-declaring gender ideologues would have to be incarcerated.
00:02:33.600 And while this would doubtless create a much more sane and serene society,
00:02:36.940 it would also involve the obliteration of our fundamental values.
00:02:40.460 As for hate crimes, there is no need for mind-reading in order to determine the appropriate punishment.
00:02:46.200 If I am physically assaulted,
00:02:47.800 it makes little difference to me if the assailant was motivated by homophobia.
00:02:51.680 I would prefer the sentence to reflect the crime itself,
00:02:54.120 not to be moderated according to speculations about the perpetrator's private thoughts.
00:02:59.960 The state should have absolutely no license to probe inside our heads
00:03:03.920 any more than employers should insist on compulsory unconscious bias training.
00:03:09.080 In a free society, we are entitled to think and feel as we see fit.
00:03:13.280 And so long as that does not interfere with the liberties of others,
00:03:15.860 that includes the right to hate.
00:03:18.020 But even if one were to accept the premise that the state must crack down on hateful thoughts,
00:03:23.160 which I most assuredly do not,
00:03:25.640 hate speech legislation is wholly ineffective.
00:03:28.780 Censorship of hateful ideas does not cause them to disappear.
00:03:32.100 It drives them underground, where they confess to unchallenged.
00:03:36.180 Moreover, hate speech laws are easily weaponised by activists
00:03:39.280 seeking to silence their political opponents.
00:03:42.120 For example, in the UK, we have seen people arrested for misgendering,
00:03:46.220 that is to say, for accurately identifying the sex of another person.
00:03:50.380 The journalist Caroline Farrow was investigated by police for six months
00:03:53.600 after an appearance on Good Morning Britain.
00:03:56.140 According to a complainant,
00:03:57.700 Farrow had referred to another contributor's female identifying child
00:04:00.760 with a male pronoun during a conversation that took place off air.
00:04:05.300 And although such instances have not led to convictions,
00:04:08.460 we all know that the process is the punishment.
00:04:11.840 As one who has received my fair share of abuse online,
00:04:14.260 I understand that free speech has its downsides.
00:04:17.580 But I choose to ignore those of the obnoxious and hateful ilk,
00:04:21.040 rather than call for them to be censored.
00:04:23.380 The price we pay for living in a free society
00:04:25.580 is that unpleasant people are going to say unpleasant things.
00:04:29.540 But their right to do so is precisely the same right
00:04:32.860 that allows us to counter them.
00:04:35.660 If we attempt to silence even our most abusive critics,
00:04:39.240 we are essentially surrendering our principles at their behest.
00:04:42.240 No doubt the trans-identifying individual
00:04:44.620 who was described as a faggot with tits in a recent case in Spain
00:04:48.360 didn't relish the experience.
00:04:50.840 But it should concern us all that the state has intervened
00:04:53.080 and sentenced the woman who posted the offending words
00:04:55.580 to six months in prison,
00:04:58.000 suspended on condition of the payment of a €3,850 fine.
00:05:03.080 In addition, she's been banned from employment in teaching and sports
00:05:05.780 for three and a half years.
00:05:07.520 This is the very definition of authoritarian overreach.
00:05:10.180 Those who are sceptical of gender identity ideology
00:05:12.980 are particularly susceptible to the misapplication of hate speech laws
00:05:15.820 and there is no way of knowing
00:05:17.640 which other beliefs will eventually be criminalised.
00:05:20.280 Once a state has outlawed hatred and failed to define it,
00:05:24.740 the law becomes a cudgel to beat anyone
00:05:27.380 who holds heterodox points of view.
00:05:29.760 Who is to say that a future government
00:05:31.100 might not deem it hateful to criticise its policies?
00:05:34.120 What starts with the chilling of free speech
00:05:36.700 ends with the criminalisation of dissent.
00:05:39.920 A new law in Canada, for instance, Bill C-63,
00:05:43.320 empowers the state to imprison a citizen for life
00:05:46.480 for advocating genocide.
00:05:49.440 But of course, activists and even politicians have insisted
00:05:52.140 that claiming biological sex is real and immutable
00:05:55.340 is a form of transgenocide.
00:05:58.060 In the hands of authoritarians,
00:05:59.480 these words are very slippery.
00:06:01.860 They can mean whatever they want them to mean.
00:06:04.240 And that's why we should be so worried
00:06:05.660 about free speech in Ireland.
00:06:07.360 Last year, the Irish Green Party Senator Pauline O'Reilly
00:06:09.880 made no effort to disguise
00:06:11.880 the authoritarian nature of the new bill.
00:06:14.360 That's exactly what we're doing here,
00:06:16.060 is we are restricting freedom,
00:06:17.800 but we're doing it for the common good.
00:06:20.160 Hasn't every tyrant in history made an identical claim?
00:06:23.840 In her speech, O'Reilly invoked the notion of safety
00:06:26.700 to justify state censorship.
00:06:29.380 If your views on other people's identities
00:06:31.100 go to make their lives unsafe, insecure,
00:06:33.480 and cause them such deep discomfort
00:06:35.160 that they cannot live in peace, she said,
00:06:37.660 then I believe it is our job as legislators
00:06:39.780 to restrict those freedoms.
00:06:42.540 Well, it's a common tactic of activists
00:06:44.360 to claim that certain opinions make them feel unsafe
00:06:47.460 as a means to provoke a sensorial response,
00:06:50.540 either from employers or from the state.
00:06:53.020 But this is linguistic sleight of hand,
00:06:55.100 and the strategy has been remarkably effective.
00:06:58.120 The Irish hate speech bill goes further
00:07:00.760 than most of its equivalents in European countries.
00:07:03.540 It will give the state the right
00:07:04.900 to prosecute those who cause offence
00:07:07.300 under the catch-all of inciting hatred,
00:07:11.000 and those found guilty
00:07:11.840 could face up to five years in prison.
00:07:14.620 Even more worryingly,
00:07:15.980 a citizen can be jailed for two years
00:07:17.580 simply if they prepare or possess material
00:07:21.140 that could potentially incite hatred.
00:07:24.120 So if you have a gender-critical meme on your iPhone,
00:07:28.100 that could be sufficient to see you in jail.
00:07:30.380 In the UK, hate speech laws exist
00:07:32.140 in the form of the Public Order Act 1986
00:07:34.180 and the Communications Act 2003.
00:07:37.440 3,000 people are arrested each year in the UK
00:07:39.600 for comments posted online
00:07:40.960 that have been deemed offensive,
00:07:42.860 and in some cases,
00:07:44.060 have even been imprisoned for jokes.
00:07:46.280 If we're going to tackle this problem,
00:07:48.400 we might start by repealing section 127
00:07:50.820 of the Communications Act,
00:07:52.380 which criminalises online speech
00:07:54.040 that can be deemed grossly offensive.
00:07:56.660 Of course, no attempt is ever made
00:07:58.140 to define grossly offensive in the legislation,
00:08:01.340 so anyone can be vulnerable.
00:08:03.620 In Scotland, the situation is even graver.
00:08:06.220 When First Minister Hamza Youssef was Justice Secretary,
00:08:09.300 he was instrumental in the passing
00:08:10.620 of the Hate Crime and Public Order Act,
00:08:12.800 and disturbingly, these new laws
00:08:14.500 can see citizens prosecuted for words
00:08:17.020 that they have uttered in the privacy
00:08:18.660 of their own homes.
00:08:20.380 I'm reminded of a speech by William Pitt,
00:08:22.200 the elder delivered in the House of Commons
00:08:24.160 in March 1763.
00:08:26.200 The poorest man may in his cottage
00:08:28.400 bid defiance to all the forces of the crown.
00:08:31.700 It may be frail, its roof may shake,
00:08:33.900 the wind may blow through it,
00:08:35.320 the storm may enter, the rain may enter,
00:08:38.080 but the King of England cannot enter.
00:08:40.620 All his force dares not cross the threshold
00:08:43.400 of the ruined tenement.
00:08:45.000 Evidently, these sentiments would not be echoed
00:08:47.940 by the SNP.
00:08:49.520 Given that hatred and offence
00:08:51.200 are entirely subjective concepts,
00:08:53.340 we should be resisting any attempt
00:08:54.700 to codify in law restrictions against them.
00:08:57.420 No two figures of authority
00:08:58.660 will interpret these terms in the same way.
00:09:01.160 And as human beings with frailties and biases,
00:09:04.500 they will doubtless be tempted to wield
00:09:06.260 such laws against their detractors.
00:09:08.800 If the state is willing to dispense
00:09:10.740 with our right to free expression,
00:09:12.480 there can be no guarantees for any of us.
00:09:14.300 Hate speech laws are an affront to human liberty.
00:09:18.720 It's time to ditch them for good.
00:09:21.460 This video is available as an article on my substack,
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