• flannel jesus
    2.9k
    I'm American, but I moved to the UK about 13 years ago. Been living and working here since then.

    Over the last few years, there's been a significant increase in a feeling by a large part of the UK citizenry that the government is overbearing in what kinds of speech it's willing to punish. I frequently hear, "You can go to prison for a politically incorrect tweet these days!"

    Now if that's true, this is definitely an issue worth being concerned about. It's my belief that you shouldn't be punished by the government for just saying something other people don't like. That's not to say you can just say ANYTHING, but if you say something like, I don't know, "I think women are stupid" or "I think asians aren't very good at driving", there shouldn't be any legal action at all for something like that.

    So I did some looking yesterday, googled around, and almost all cases of someone going to prison for a tweet, it wasn't things as harmless as that, it was usually people who could be said to be inciting some kind of actual violence. One of the most prominent examples, someone made a racist tweet about immigrants and included the line "Set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care."

    I couldn't find an example of someone going to prison for a tweet that didn't include some kind of actually violent rhetoric.

    So... is this concern about free speech in the UK legitimate? Is the UK government genuinely overstepping its bounds and not allowing speech that we absolutely should allow? Can you give some examples?
  • NOS4A2
    10.1k


    It is a legitimate concern for anyone who cares about freedom. People are being arrested over tweets, one of which you just quoted and published on a public forum.

    As you know, it does not meet the threshold for incitement in American law, as there is zero evidence it incited anyone to anything, and because the violence was never immanent. The charge of “inciting racial hatred” is even more ridiculous because racial hatred does not come about by reading someone’s angry words.

    But when people pooh-pooh such concerns it makes me curious. Was there any time in your entire life that you read something and it incited you to violence or hatred or anything that can be construed as a crime? When you read the above tweet, did you feel yourself reaching for the pitchfork?
  • bert1
    2.2k
    Was there any time in your entire life that you read something and it incited you to violence or hatred or anything that can be construed as a crime? When you read the above tweet, did you feel yourself reaching for the pitchfork?NOS4A2

    Not in that particular case, but at other times, yes. Words are not movement, but they can unlock the door to it, or influence its direction.
  • Astorre
    357


    I'm not a UK resident and have no emotional connection to writing this post, but I do have a question for the author.

    Do you think it's necessary to distinguish between freedom of private speech and freedom of public speech?

    I'll give you my thoughts. Freedom of speech is a social construct. It didn't just fall from grace, but is a perfectly reasonable human choice. The idea itself was invented long before radio or Twitter. Freedom of speech in that era meant the ability to speak loudly. But even when the idea was invented, and not during its existence, was this freedom ever fully realized. Restrictions of one kind or another have always existed. Our modern world is even more sensitive to freedom of speech, because any thought, even a bad one, can instantly acquire high intersubjective weight, which can easily lead to dire consequences. While in the 18th, 19th, and even 20th centuries, freedom of speech was subject to mild religious or social restrictions (which prevented people from speaking nonsense), today this restriction is gone, meaning greater government intervention is only a matter of time.

    Furthermore, if we take a sober (and not idealistic) look at today's world, we can conclude that freedom of speech will be further restricted.
  • DingoJones
    2.9k
    Was my comment removed? What did I say?
    Is it because I said “fucked”?
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