[lbo-talk] Freedom of (racist) speech

Bill Bartlett billbartlett at aapt.net.au
Wed Sep 28 15:23:33 PDT 2011


At 7:30 PM +0100 28/9/11, James Heartfield wrote:


>ech - whether you agree with it or not - is not only (or even
>wholly) based on the rights of the speaker, but on the rights of all
>of us to judge for ourselves, not have the matter decided by a
>'higher authority'. If you take the view that the people are too
>daft to resist the appeal of foolish arguments, then clearly you
>should not be in favour of free speech. If, on the other hand, you
>are confident that foolish ideas can be combated by rational
>argument, then you should support it.

Yeah, Bolt is playing the "free speech" card, what a joke. This bloke has his own prime time TV show, newspaper column etc. And he bleats about "free speech" because the law requires that if he wants to use those privileges to pillory aboriginal people on behalf of his wealthy masters, he can't deliberately ignore the facts and spread lies and misinformation about them.

Oh = poor fella Bolt, so oppressed. We should start a new charity for him.

"Free speech" is not the right to deliberately tell lies about people, or classes of people. And if "free speech" is defined as the right to incite hatred against people because of the colour of their skin or their religion or the like, then I'm firmly opposed to "free speech". As it happens, that is very much the law these days in places like Europe, Australia in fact every civilised jurisdiction. (Excepting the USA of course, where they reserve the right to define "free speech" as the freedom of the owners of the media to defame and incite hatred against anyone they don't like.)

As for our "rights" as an audience to hear his lies and judge for ourselves, what would be the point of such a right? Why would I want the right to be told deliberate lies by self-serving whores? That's a complete waste of time.

Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas



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