On 12/05/2015, at 1:00 AM, Joseph Catron <jncatron at gmail.com> wrote:
> This probably won't mean much, other than political grandstanding, but
> Glenn Greenwald has the best word on it:
>
> "... As I've argued many times ... all applications of hate speech
> laws are inherently tyrannical, dangerous and wrong, and it's truly
> mystifying (and scary) that people convince themselves that their
> judgment is so unerring and their beliefs so sacrosanct that it should
> be illegal to question or dissent from them. But independent of that,
> what we see here again is the utter foolishness of endorsing such laws
> on pragmatic grounds: they will inevitably be used against not just
> the ideas you hate but the ones you like, and when that happens, if
> you cheered when such laws were used to suppress the ideas you hate,
> then you will have no valid ground to object."
>
> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/11/canadian-covernment-exploiting-charlie-hebdo-attack-threatens-prosecute-advocates-israel-boycott
Glen Greenwald is of course talking crap there. There is a clear distinction to be made between proscribing "... ideas you hate" and proscribing ideas that advocate hate, or worse. The youtube link you posted of the Al-Jazeera interview is an extreme example of the kind speech which should be proscribed. In any civilised country, people who engage in such outrageous incitement to genocide would be imprisoned. And ideally corporations which publish such incitement would be broken up and their executives imprisoned also (I can dream).
Fuck free speech, what about the freedom from fear and intimidation of the people who are victims of such outrageous campaigns designed to incite hate? You think there are no consequences of that to members of the racial or religious groups? Of course there are - and the blame doesn't start and end with the thugs who beat them up on the streets, the blame lies more with the scum exercising what Glen Greenwald calls "freedom of speech" than with the morons who get carried away with the apparent approval they perceive for their violence.
As I say, Glen Greenwald is talking total crap. Not that he is guilty of hate speech himself, he's just a despicable moron for spouting such drivel.
This plan to use hate crime laws against groups that encourage boycotts of Israel is obviously a perversion of such laws, so much so that I can't help being curious how exactly such an end would be achieved. Is the Canadian government planning to parachute into the hate crime laws the proscribing of particular boycotts?
The problem is that a boycott is so different from an act of hate that it is almost the opposite -
On 19 September 1880, Parnell gave a speech in Ennis, County Clare to a crowd of Land League members.[15] During his speech, he asked the crowd: "What do you do with a tenant who bids for a farm from which his neighbour has been evicted?".[15] The response from the crowd was: "kill him", "shoot him".[15] Parnell replied:[16]
I wish to point out to you a very much better way – a more Christian and charitable way, which will give the lost man an opportunity of repenting. When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him – you must shun him in the streets of the town – you must shun him in the shop – you must shun him on the fair green and in the market place, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone, by putting him in moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of the country, as if he were the leper of old – you must show him your detestation of the crime he committed.
This speech set out the Land League's powerful weapon of social ostracism, which was first used against Charles Boycott.[15]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Boycott
This illustrates the clear distinction between a boycott and a hate campaign. It seems to me that this might be a big problem for anyone who attempts to legislate the removal of such a distinction. The courts may not go along with it? But I don't know much about the Canadian judicial system, is it corrupted beyond hope, or will it throw out such a ridiculous device?
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas