It’s been more than a week since MPP Sarah Jama was booted from the Ontario NDP caucus and censured by the Ontario government for daring to name Israel as an Apartheid state. It’s been more than a week since CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahn agreed to
Even in the context of the US First Amendment, which makes it so that the government cannot abridge your right to free speech, it’s not unlimited. Think “Yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, when there’s no fire,” or libel/slander, or terroristic threats, or, I dunno, witness tampering.
There’s lots of speech which must yield to other rights and protections.
This is exactly why we need to have open and censorship resistant platforms.
We should never celebrate deplatforming people for unpopular or evil opinions, not because we agree with those opinions, but because those tools can and will be used against good causes / us eventually.
The cancelling culture, and rage framework that has existed in the west media is now being turned against “worthy” causes.
I’ve gotten into many deplatforming is evil, and shouldn’t be encouraged/allowed arguments on lemmy - this is exactly why I engage. Do I care about kiwifarms, communists, racists, no… I do not, but when its time for my voice to be heard above the whargarble of public opinion i need those very same platforms to exist.
The next step would be to legistate that protected free speech should also protect people from employment discrimination and reprisals, but that is probably a discussion for another day.
Today I think the big fight is over saying : Killing civilians is bad, ethnic cleansing is bad, genocide is bad…
We should never celebrate deplatforming people for unpopular or evil opinions
Bullshit, people with evil opinions keep others from expressing themselves, tolerating them means deplatforming others and means they have more space to recruit.
Agreed. The central example is a NDP member being censured by the party for her views. THAT IS WHAT A POLITICAL PARTY IS. She would have also been removed if she started arguing for tax cuts to the wealthy and restrictions on union activity. Even perfectly legitimate political opinions can make you totally unfit to be a representative of a political party. Words have consequences and political parties are social structures with social rules. Cry me a river, this isn’t a free-speech issue.
I’m very consistent in my views, I do not tolerate anyone being de-platformed. I am intolerant of de-platforming. I do not tolerate anyone trying to remove the voice of anyone else.
I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. - Poppel The Open Society and It’s Enemies
De-platforming is a form of rhetorical suppression, as OPs article points out.
as long as we can counter them by rational argument
The saying goes that you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
De-platforming is a means to show that the platform doesn’t want to be associated with specific content. Being against de-platforming means you are on the side of forced speech.
As an aside, the number of times, this week!, I’ve had a argument about the dictionary being wrong, and that the definitions are inaccurate, sensational, antisemitic… is laughably high.
Arguing that the dictionary is correct and should be cited as the arbiture of language ignores that language is a fluid, evolving structure. Dictionaries are guides to help seek understanding and seeking to be understood. They’re not law by which we must abide.
The article points out that those that have been bitching about free speech being suppressed when it’s about some bigot spewing fash crap, are uniquely silent when it comes to racialized people speaking out about genocide and apartheid. The “free speech debate”, “anti-wokism”, “anti-cancelling” etc has never been about lifting the voices of those who are structurally silenced at every turn in this country. It has always been about people that already have privilege being able to punch down with impunity. So fuck that.
Edit: it was a genuine follow-up question to a statement that I feel could have been interpreted in a couple of ways, and his answer did give some precisions on his position, which is why I wanted to ask, rather than assume. No idea why refusing to judge hastily warrants downvotes lol
so in your opinion when charlie hebdo shooting has happened the artists and writers have maintained their freedom of expression well into their deaths? after all they were free to make any kind of comic and they didnt receive any government backlash.
Yeah, actually. They did. Consequences don’t always come from those in the right. Sometimes they come from fanatics and deviants. Consequences and justice are not synonyms.
You can provide protections from certain unsavory consequences, but those protections will never be perfect. Sometimes terrible things happen to people for expressing themselves. That doesn’t mean they didn’t have the inalienable right to express themselves in the first place.
B) I don’t actually think it’s unreasonable to think that a headline should clearly indicate the subject of the article - why have headlines otherwise?
So where did they highlight people being put in court over comments and where did they explain that they are aware we don’t have free speech so even someone being in court isn’t a problem?
Freedom of speech or freedom of expression isn’t freedom from consequences. Words matter, and they have consequences, and people should consider the consequences of their speech in public.
Indeed. And if the NDP won’t allow its members to recognize that Israel is an apartheid state, then members who see it as such should abandon the party. Both those serving as public representatives, and regular members and donors.
Asking a genuine question regarding the apartheid terminology here. When someone refers to Israel as a apartheid state with regards to Palestinian civilians it always doesn’t make sense to me. Because for that to be true, one needs to consider Gaza and Westbank to be Israeli territory, which I don’t think is a concept that anyone who makes this claim agrees with. To me, that’s like saying North America is an apartheid continent because Canadians and Mexicans don’t get the same rights as Americans in America.
During the Apartheid era in South Africa there were also nominal “independent” countries, known as Bantustans. Israel occupies the West Bank, effectively controlling it the way a Bantustan were controlled. The blockade of Gaza has a similar effect. Finally, there are discriminatory laws in Israel proper. For more information, read this as a starter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_apartheid
Thank you for the explanation. To me it still seems to be a case of expanding the terminology beyond it’s original meaning given the context. The situation today is more of a country occupying part of another country while laying siege on another part of the said country. If this can be referred to as apartheid I don’t see why it can’t be used on most invasions and occupational wars in human history. Furthermore, I’m too young know what people thinks of South Africa back then, but as far as I can remember South Africa has been seen as a single unit in my lifetime. Hence, referring to Israel as an apartheid state in my mind has the implication of Israel somehow has the right and responsibility of ruling over Palestinian territory. Treating the citizens of an occupied country poorly is bad but shouldn’t automatically qualify as apartheid, even though I agree there are some resemblance in practice.
The case with Israel proper is more interesting because you can make the case that there are some apartheid elements such as the fact only Jews enjoys the right to automatically become Israeli citizens which isn’t available to other ethnic groups that currently resides in Israel. However to my knowledge Israel proper isn’t what most people think of when they make the case that Israel is an apartheid state, even tho imo it makes a more compelling case per definition.
Don’t be dense, read the article. The story is not about legality or free speech absolutism. It is about how the window of acceptable political speech in what is considered mainstream has narrowed to a stifling degree to exclude very reasonable milquetoast peacenik sentiments.
Ok, and? Regular parlance can be about legal implications too, I’ve never heard the words “free speech” used in a context with no connection to their legal meaning. Do you have a counter example?
Agreed. Fuck off with this “we have no free speech” bullshit, substack (and it’s freedom of conscience in Canada in the first place, not free speech). All of the things listed are social consequences, not criminal prosecution or some other government persecution. Sarah was booted by her party, not the government, and the rest are employers and universities. If there is fault, it lies with those organizations.
It’s also not protected speech, so if there is fault, those organizations will have to suffer social consequences themselves, as it doesn’t seem that they broke any laws.
There’s a bit of a blurred line when they’re members of government or government organizations versus private employers.
A political party IS part of government, even if it’s not the political party leading the country. However, a party shouldn’t be forced to keep somebody who goes off the rails and is causing them damage. At the same time, those same parties seem to be very pick-and-choose about which “rebellious” members they decide to expel and over what issues
The Doug Ford government has put forward a motion that would censure an Ontario NDP MPP over her comments on the Israel-Gaza war and ask they not be recognized in the legislature until a formal apology is made and a statement on social media is deleted.
The motion calls comments made by Hamilton Centre MPP Sarah Jama last week “antisemitic” and “discriminatory.” If passed, it would call on the Speaker not to recognize Jama in the House “until the Member retracts and deletes her statement on social media and makes an apology in her place in the House.”
So they’re trying to completely take away her ability to govern because of her speech. So yes, the government is trying to silence her.
I’m not familiar with how censure works in the Ontario Provincial Parliament legal framework. Do you have any examples of precedent where a censure motion has been struck down in court? Because my understanding is that the majority was within their legal powers to do this.
Like most people, I avoid companies that platform hate, and am perfectly contented being banned from them if they go that far. That’s not a power they ever didn’t have.
Like I said, clock is ticking. You won’t be so happy go lucky when it’s your job getting a new CEO or a big platform like YouTube denying you access to a platform.
My job getting a new CEO? Getting a new useless figurehead is supposed to scare me? Why? Youtube is going to block me? Why should I care? They either moderate hateful content, or they lose me and a great many others -voluntarily.
It’s complicated. Legally we don’t have “freedom of speech”.
For clarification:
Do I believe that’s a core human value? Absolutely.
Do I believe that tolerance is a social contact we should all abide by? Very much so!
Do I trust society to regulate itself? Heck no, from a sociological point of view that’s a mess for lots of reasons. In smaller communities it may be ideal, but anything anyone says now is considered on a global scale.
So, from where I stand, it makes sense for a governing body to place limited restrictions on what a person should be allowed to say in the public sphere. This specific issue is debatable and relies on a certain amount of faith in the institution. Is it right that these people were punished for saying their beliefs? That’s another complicated view that depends on a case by case basis. Is it legally allowable that a politician be censured for what they say? That depends on what they said. Is it morally allowable? From a moral absolutionist point of view, probably not, but our charters were made to prevent people from calling for violence in the public sphere. Is it morally acceptable to allow for someone to call for violence in a very real way as a political representative? What constitutes violence? How far can we deconstruct the rhetorical arguments our society is based on?
It’s complicated. We don’t have freedom of speech and we don’t have freedom from consequences. If you give people you agree with freedom from consequences you also have to give it to the people you don’t agree with.
unless i am failing to understand what is being said the article is saying otherwise.
For them, free speech is freedom for them to collect a paycheque while saying the most boring, obvious, cliché, bootlicking shit they can come up with. That is free speech — the right to do these things with minimal government involvement.
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I agree with many points from the article but I don’t think the title choice was good
No, we have freedom of expression, not freedom of speech and it’s not unlimited contrary to the USA.
It’s not unlimited in the US, either, despite what the fascists think.
Ya, “Free Speech” as written in the constitution only covers congressional laws.
Even in the context of the US First Amendment, which makes it so that the government cannot abridge your right to free speech, it’s not unlimited. Think “Yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, when there’s no fire,” or libel/slander, or terroristic threats, or, I dunno, witness tampering.
There’s lots of speech which must yield to other rights and protections.
This is exactly why we need to have open and censorship resistant platforms.
We should never celebrate deplatforming people for unpopular or evil opinions, not because we agree with those opinions, but because those tools can and will be used against good causes / us eventually.
The cancelling culture, and rage framework that has existed in the west media is now being turned against “worthy” causes.
I’ve gotten into many deplatforming is evil, and shouldn’t be encouraged/allowed arguments on lemmy - this is exactly why I engage. Do I care about kiwifarms, communists, racists, no… I do not, but when its time for my voice to be heard above the whargarble of public opinion i need those very same platforms to exist.
The next step would be to legistate that protected free speech should also protect people from employment discrimination and reprisals, but that is probably a discussion for another day.
Today I think the big fight is over saying : Killing civilians is bad, ethnic cleansing is bad, genocide is bad…
We should never celebrate deplatforming people for unpopular or evil opinionsBullshit, people with evil opinions keep others from expressing themselves, tolerating them means deplatforming others and means they have more space to recruit.
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Agreed. The central example is a NDP member being censured by the party for her views. THAT IS WHAT A POLITICAL PARTY IS. She would have also been removed if she started arguing for tax cuts to the wealthy and restrictions on union activity. Even perfectly legitimate political opinions can make you totally unfit to be a representative of a political party. Words have consequences and political parties are social structures with social rules. Cry me a river, this isn’t a free-speech issue.
Then you get this situation the article speaks of, people being de-platformed for speaking against evil in the world.
Sure, it doesn’t make your message right.
Clearly we have a philosophical divide. We value different things in this world. We are both “right” to our own philosophies.
If one group can make another voiceless i think that is a larger risk to the human condition, but I see where your coming from.
It’s just another variant of the paradox of tolerance.
I’m very consistent in my views, I do not tolerate anyone being de-platformed. I am intolerant of de-platforming. I do not tolerate anyone trying to remove the voice of anyone else.
I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. - Poppel The Open Society and It’s Enemies
De-platforming is a form of rhetorical suppression, as OPs article points out.
Finna deplatform you right now with the block button, babes 💞
Which means that you tolerate intolerance.
The saying goes that you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.
De-platforming is a means to show that the platform doesn’t want to be associated with specific content. Being against de-platforming means you are on the side of forced speech.
As an aside, the number of times, this week!, I’ve had a argument about the dictionary being wrong, and that the definitions are inaccurate, sensational, antisemitic… is laughably high.
Arguing that the dictionary is correct and should be cited as the arbiture of language ignores that language is a fluid, evolving structure. Dictionaries are guides to help seek understanding and seeking to be understood. They’re not law by which we must abide.
The article points out that those that have been bitching about free speech being suppressed when it’s about some bigot spewing fash crap, are uniquely silent when it comes to racialized people speaking out about genocide and apartheid. The “free speech debate”, “anti-wokism”, “anti-cancelling” etc has never been about lifting the voices of those who are structurally silenced at every turn in this country. It has always been about people that already have privilege being able to punch down with impunity. So fuck that.
I’m here making noise about the silencing of genocide and apartheid.
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Archive link
We don’t. This isn’t the U.S. with their freedom of speech, where you can say literally anything. We have something called freedom of expression, which does not cover hate speech, and a few other things.
well you should use your freedom of expression to express your concern for israel’s actions on mainstream tv channels
“You” being who?
Edit: it was a genuine follow-up question to a statement that I feel could have been interpreted in a couple of ways, and his answer did give some precisions on his position, which is why I wanted to ask, rather than assume. No idea why refusing to judge hastily warrants downvotes lol
the article opens with stories of people losing their positions over comments on gaza conflict
Freedom of expression doesn’t mean free from consequences.
It only means you can’t be arrested for what you say.
so in your opinion when charlie hebdo shooting has happened the artists and writers have maintained their freedom of expression well into their deaths? after all they were free to make any kind of comic and they didnt receive any government backlash.
Yeah, actually. They did. Consequences don’t always come from those in the right. Sometimes they come from fanatics and deviants. Consequences and justice are not synonyms.
You can provide protections from certain unsavory consequences, but those protections will never be perfect. Sometimes terrible things happen to people for expressing themselves. That doesn’t mean they didn’t have the inalienable right to express themselves in the first place.
well thank god they werent fined i guess
I just want the word “literally” to be misused less. Learn new adverbs, please.
You missed that bus 15 years ago, bud
The US doesn’t have freedom of speech either… Source: American.
I mean, you do have it codified in your Constitution as its very first amendment. Now, how much is it really protected, in practice…
The article is not about free speech absolutism. It is about journalism. Hate speech has nothing to do with it.
Perhaps the headline should have reflected the actual topic more accurately.
Take it up with Nora.
Or maybe people should’ve read the article instead of commenting based on the title
A) Welcome to the internet.
B) I don’t actually think it’s unreasonable to think that a headline should clearly indicate the subject of the article - why have headlines otherwise?
A) Take the L and don’t do it again.
B) Welcome to the internet.
I’m pretty sure only Cons try to say we have free speech because they don’t know our laws
Of note though; freedom of speech means freedom from persecution not freedom from consequence
Tell me you didn’t read the article without telling me you didn’t read the article.
So where did they highlight people being put in court over comments and where did they explain that they are aware we don’t have free speech so even someone being in court isn’t a problem?
Therer are people who could be discussing this credibly but a troll like Loreto isn’t one of them.
Freedom of speech or freedom of expression isn’t freedom from consequences. Words matter, and they have consequences, and people should consider the consequences of their speech in public.
Indeed. And if the NDP won’t allow its members to recognize that Israel is an apartheid state, then members who see it as such should abandon the party. Both those serving as public representatives, and regular members and donors.
Asking a genuine question regarding the apartheid terminology here. When someone refers to Israel as a apartheid state with regards to Palestinian civilians it always doesn’t make sense to me. Because for that to be true, one needs to consider Gaza and Westbank to be Israeli territory, which I don’t think is a concept that anyone who makes this claim agrees with. To me, that’s like saying North America is an apartheid continent because Canadians and Mexicans don’t get the same rights as Americans in America.
During the Apartheid era in South Africa there were also nominal “independent” countries, known as Bantustans. Israel occupies the West Bank, effectively controlling it the way a Bantustan were controlled. The blockade of Gaza has a similar effect. Finally, there are discriminatory laws in Israel proper. For more information, read this as a starter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_apartheid
Thank you for the explanation. To me it still seems to be a case of expanding the terminology beyond it’s original meaning given the context. The situation today is more of a country occupying part of another country while laying siege on another part of the said country. If this can be referred to as apartheid I don’t see why it can’t be used on most invasions and occupational wars in human history. Furthermore, I’m too young know what people thinks of South Africa back then, but as far as I can remember South Africa has been seen as a single unit in my lifetime. Hence, referring to Israel as an apartheid state in my mind has the implication of Israel somehow has the right and responsibility of ruling over Palestinian territory. Treating the citizens of an occupied country poorly is bad but shouldn’t automatically qualify as apartheid, even though I agree there are some resemblance in practice.
The case with Israel proper is more interesting because you can make the case that there are some apartheid elements such as the fact only Jews enjoys the right to automatically become Israeli citizens which isn’t available to other ethnic groups that currently resides in Israel. However to my knowledge Israel proper isn’t what most people think of when they make the case that Israel is an apartheid state, even tho imo it makes a more compelling case per definition.
Don’t be dense, read the article. The story is not about legality or free speech absolutism. It is about how the window of acceptable political speech in what is considered mainstream has narrowed to a stifling degree to exclude very reasonable milquetoast peacenik sentiments.
Then it shouldn’t use the words “free speech” in the headline. Free speech is very much a legal term.
So is theft and murder and inheritance. We use legal terms in regular parlance all the time.
Ok, and? Regular parlance can be about legal implications too, I’ve never heard the words “free speech” used in a context with no connection to their legal meaning. Do you have a counter example?
Yes. The very article in this post.
You ever heard of a circular argument?
Agreed. Fuck off with this “we have no free speech” bullshit, substack (and it’s freedom of conscience in Canada in the first place, not free speech). All of the things listed are social consequences, not criminal prosecution or some other government persecution. Sarah was booted by her party, not the government, and the rest are employers and universities. If there is fault, it lies with those organizations.
It’s also not protected speech, so if there is fault, those organizations will have to suffer social consequences themselves, as it doesn’t seem that they broke any laws.
There’s a bit of a blurred line when they’re members of government or government organizations versus private employers.
A political party IS part of government, even if it’s not the political party leading the country. However, a party shouldn’t be forced to keep somebody who goes off the rails and is causing them damage. At the same time, those same parties seem to be very pick-and-choose about which “rebellious” members they decide to expel and over what issues
Also, one of the examples cited was York University, and universities are provincially regulated and funded.
The censured her:
So they’re trying to completely take away her ability to govern because of her speech. So yes, the government is trying to silence her.
And like several things Douggie has put through, it will ultimately be deemed illegal. That bill is a clear violation of charter rights.
I’m not familiar with how censure works in the Ontario Provincial Parliament legal framework. Do you have any examples of precedent where a censure motion has been struck down in court? Because my understanding is that the majority was within their legal powers to do this.
You mean the government that was handed a 66% majority by 17% of eligible voters?
You get the government you deserve when you don’t fucking show up to vote.
Clock is ticking. Just wait until the companies start fucking you over with this power you’ve given them.
Like most people, I avoid companies that platform hate, and am perfectly contented being banned from them if they go that far. That’s not a power they ever didn’t have.
Like I said, clock is ticking. You won’t be so happy go lucky when it’s your job getting a new CEO or a big platform like YouTube denying you access to a platform.
My job getting a new CEO? Getting a new useless figurehead is supposed to scare me? Why? Youtube is going to block me? Why should I care? They either moderate hateful content, or they lose me and a great many others -voluntarily.
i cant believe how popular this view is on social media.
It’s complicated. Legally we don’t have “freedom of speech”.
For clarification: Do I believe that’s a core human value? Absolutely.
Do I believe that tolerance is a social contact we should all abide by? Very much so!
Do I trust society to regulate itself? Heck no, from a sociological point of view that’s a mess for lots of reasons. In smaller communities it may be ideal, but anything anyone says now is considered on a global scale.
So, from where I stand, it makes sense for a governing body to place limited restrictions on what a person should be allowed to say in the public sphere. This specific issue is debatable and relies on a certain amount of faith in the institution. Is it right that these people were punished for saying their beliefs? That’s another complicated view that depends on a case by case basis. Is it legally allowable that a politician be censured for what they say? That depends on what they said. Is it morally allowable? From a moral absolutionist point of view, probably not, but our charters were made to prevent people from calling for violence in the public sphere. Is it morally acceptable to allow for someone to call for violence in a very real way as a political representative? What constitutes violence? How far can we deconstruct the rhetorical arguments our society is based on?
It’s complicated. We don’t have freedom of speech and we don’t have freedom from consequences. If you give people you agree with freedom from consequences you also have to give it to the people you don’t agree with.
It’s not a view. It’s written into our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and empowered by our constitution.
freedom of speech is not an exclusively legal term
Both the article in the OP, and the comment you’re responding to are using it in the legal sense.
unless i am failing to understand what is being said the article is saying otherwise.
You’re misunderstanding something then.