Gutentag from Nuremburg, Germany! We decided on an impulse to get out of town while I’m waiting for a surgery that is in a month, and so we decided to use some miles to do a driving trip around rainy springtime southern Germany, Bavaria, Leichtenstein, and Austria. Since Nuremburg was our first stop, and Dachau will be one of our last, I listened to a BBC podcast about the Nuremburg Trials that was really interesting, and I also stumbled across an excellent YouTube video from a German who now lives in the US who explains how the school system deals with WW2 education.
Did you know that denying the Holocaust is illegal in Germany and many other European countries, and people have been jailed for this hate crime? There are dissenting opinions about whether or not speech should be criminalized, even when that speech is spreading lies about genocide. The US does not criminalize hate speech, but there is an alarming rise in interest (on the right) about legitimizing educational materials like Praeger U that minimize the harms of slavery, America’s deep sin. I have also had the unpleasant and bewildering experience of being asked (at a boutique hotel in South Carolina) if I wanted to know the real cause of the Civil War (pssst…they were claiming it wasn’t slavery which was actually OK according to their alt-narrative).
Psychiatrists during the Nuremburg trials identified 4 strategies the criminals used in their defense of their genocidal actions:
- Denial. Some of them denied the evidence right in front of their eyes, claiming it was a forgery or not real.
- Confusion or Mental Incompetence. At least one defendant went full on Hector Salamanca, feigning mental incompetence and loss of memory. Others employed this strategy to a lesser degree.
- Penitence. A few, perhaps knowing their fate was sealed, gave tearful confessions and agreed that Germany would never atone for its crimes.
- Possible Guiltlessness. Two of the defendants were found not guilty through the international trial and did not seem to be true insiders to Nazi leadership. However, they still bore consequences in national trials after the international trial exonerated them.
Only one defendant went a different route; Hermann Göring proudly claimed his actions and said they were necessary to preserve and protect Germany which was overrun with too many people and was in an economic death spiral. He defended the inhumane murder of millions of Jews, harvesting their hair, clothing, and dental-ware for the state’s coffers. He also defended the enslavement of conquered people from neighboring countries like Denmark, France, and Poland. He defended the practice of sending vans (aka “murder boxes”) to round up those with disabilities under the fiction that they would be taken to an institution for their care. The reality was that the vans were miniature gas chambers. After his defiant, proud testimony, several other defendants who had denied their involvement congratulated him on his leadership and honesty, and that it reminded them of their glory days before the war was lost. Unlike his fellow criminals, Göring evaded his hanging sentence by taking a cyanide pill he had hidden under the rim of his toilet.
The podcast also shared some of the testimony of regular German people who were not directly involved in perpetrating these crimes, but they benefited from not knowing what was happening. They were eager to believe the pleasant fictions they were told. One of them claimed that the Danish gardener assigned to their household “wanted” to be there. It sounded a lot like the idea DeSantis promoted recently that slaves benefited from the institution because they learned a trade and were taken care of by their owners. Another claimed that they had no way of knowing that the vans that took away disabled people were killing them, but they knew the children teased each other about being taken away in the “murder box,” and they knew the disabled were called “useless eaters” by their leaders. Education in Germany really only changed to acknowledge the truth of the horrors Germany engaged in (or looked the other way about) when the children of these bystanders forced the issue in the 1960s.
When I was a student at BYU, I participated in the anti-Aryan Nations protest when they talked about opening a headquarters in Ogden, believing (with some reason) that Utah would welcome their racist views. They ultimately opted not to relocate to Utah, and have remained in Coeur d’Alene Idaho ever since. The influence of these hate groups seems to be growing, or at least they appear to be emboldened.
There are many unsavory aspects of Mormon history that are either minimized or denied. Just off the top of my head: polygamy, blood atonement, Mountain Meadows Massacre, and the treatment of homosexual BYU students with shock therapy and other harmful conversion tactics. More recently, the efforts of Kirton-McConkie to ensure abuse victims are silenced and that the Church isn’t held responsible, as well as the SEC violations that are ongoing in an effort to hide the extent of the Church’s assets. The Church did at least make some reparative efforts to acknowledge Mountain Meadows Massacre, while also trying their best to keep the “real” church (the leaders) clear from blame. When something bad is done, it’s always a bad apple among fine people.
I also recently finished a second watching of Killers of the Flower Moon, about the murders of the Osage people after oil was found on the land they had been relocated to in Oklahoma. During the same time frame, in the early 1920s, nearby Tulsa residents massacred 300 wealthy freed black people. Neither of these episodes in history are things I learned about in school. Hollywood seems to be filling a gap that our education system is unwilling or unable to fill: telling the hard truths. If we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. Minimizing the harms we’ve done as a society only perpetuates more harms.
Since I’m traveling, I’m not going to spend too much more time opining on this, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.
- Do you think it’s right to outlaw free speech when that speech is a lie, covers up crimes (and insurrections), or is motivated by hatred?
- When does education become indoctrination? When does telling a watered down narrative with a positive spin become a lie?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
The problem with outlawIng free speech when that speech is a lie, covers up crimes (and insurrections), or is motivated by hatred is who gets to decide what is a lie. Who draws the line? For example, should we put people in jail who say covid came from a lab in Wuhan, or who question the efficacy of masks while wearing one? or who denies climate change, or who says biological men should not compete in women’s sports? or who say an election was stolen, or who say the Bible is holy, or who say they hate America? What about comedians who tell jokes about sensitive topics? I am not in favor of criminalizing speech. Falsely yelling “Fire” in a crowded theater might be an exception because it can directly lead to people being killed by mob trampling, but I do not want us burning people at the stake because they deny transubstantiation or claim (or deny) that Allah is a prophet. I do not want a truth police or truth trials, nor approved or disapproved targets of hate.
i appreciate our American approach to free speech, but the German situation is different — I understand the need for their laws against Holocaust denial and against public display of Nazi symbols.
A “Heil Hitler” might be legally permissible in the U.S., even though gauche, and I support the legality here. The same “Heil Hitler” is illegal in Germany, and rightly so because of their own circumstances, and I support the illegality there.
Maybe I’m wishy-washy.
All that said, I regret all the outright lies that are current in our U.S. political discourse. I wish for some magical combination of honesty and humility, of candor and concern, of responsibility and restraint.
When we pass laws it’s important to consider the actual effects of a law at a local level. For instance, in my childhood in Wyoming on those long empty roads people drove really fast. When a national law was passed requiring cars to only drive 55 miles per hour the death rate on Wyoming freeways actually went up, because more people fell asleep while driving. Since Wyoming highway troopers were required to enforce the law, they set the penalty for speeding at $15 to be paid in cash to the trooper, and no other record made. Typically, the speed law wasn’t enforced at all and no locals worried about it. The signs that said 55 meant nothing. When we traveled to other states we immediately slowed down because the laws were actually enforced in other states.
So question for you is who enforced the laws you are proposing? Honestly laws are only enforceable when most locals agree with them. Here’s another example:
During the pandemic the Dems were in charge of the state legislature in Nevada. So they passed laws requiring businesses to make a variety of COVID precautions. There were OSHA enforcement agents who would fine businesses thousands of dollars if they didn’t comply. In northern Nevada my county commissioners passed a law that the OSHA inspectors had to be in quarantine for 2 weeks before entering the county. They also encouraged businesses to stay open and break any COVID rules by assuring them the county would reimburse them for any fines that were assessed.
So I ask you from Red country, who is enforcing the law you proposed? What happens if someone like Trump or his cronies is in power? Maybe it legally becomes hate speech for you to say the things you know are accurate about January 6th, or to say Biden won the 2020 election?
The laws in Germany work because most people in Germany agree with them. Do we have enough people in power in Red country that agree with your idea of the truth to enforce the law you propose? From where I sit there’s lots of questions about that. Your law could backfire.
This is a crucial topic for this day and age. However, I would caution Ms. Hawk about obtaining her information from the modern entertainment industry. Leonardo DiCaprio is hardly the best source of educational enlightenment.
The problem with outlawing certain speech is that those who do the outlawing open the door for their own speech to be outlawed next. Eventually, no speech is legal at all, other than praising the Emperor for his new clothing
The dumbing down of the American public has largely resulted from the great hordes refusing to listen to sound, thoughtful speech. We cannot allow this problem to become worse by allowing speech to be outlawed. We need more critical thinkers, not more viewers of hot dog eating contests.
There is a simple and ethical answer for those who oppose certain speech—come up with better ideas and sounder, more ethical principles. Let all speech be heard, and let the better ideas prevail.
These are complicated questions. It’s not as simple as denying free speech or teaching indoctrination. What makes it complicated is the amount of money involved in either spreading lies under the guise of free speech or money spent creating indoctrination. It’s easy to ignore the “crazy” uncle or the teacher that seems to be pushing their own agenda. What happens when a TV network makes millions of dollars pushing a lie or book companies create text books and then lobby states to adopt them making sure others can’t be used. History seems to be branded to your partisan or religious outlook and it has nothing to do with “truth.”
In the United States it’s hard to outlaw even the kind of free speech that is so controlled. The real problem comes when those that promote lies begin to limit people in speaking or teaching the truth. Just look at the effort by the GOP to make sure that Critical Race Theory or Diversity and Equity are not taught.
My daughter just graduated from NYU Law School so as you can imagine we had many interesting discussions about free speech at NYU given the events of Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza. My conclusion: let people say what they want to say. But don’t hide behind a mask. I want you to be able to say virtually anything you want in the US but I want to know who you are.
Walter Lippmann wrote a brilliant article in the Atlantic monthly in 1939 titled “The indispensable opposition” arguing that the preservation of free speech as a write is insufficient. Free speech, as he suggests, is not merely a right, it’s an absolute necessity. He begins by saying;
“Were they pressed hard enough, most men would probably confess that political freedom—that is to say, the right to speak freely and to act in opposition—is a noble ideal rather than a practical necessity. As the case for freedom is generally put today, the argument lends itself to this feeling. It is made to appear that, whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration. Thus, the defense of freedom of opinion tends to rest not on its substantial, beneficial, and indispensable consequences, but on a somewhat eccentric, a rather vaguely benevolent, attachment to an abstraction.
It is all very well to say with Voltaire, “I wholly disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it,” but as a matter of fact most men will not defend to the death the rights of other men: if they disapprove sufficiently what other men say, they will somehow suppress those men if they can.”
This brings up an episode found in the Book of Mormon I find intriguing, if not disturbing about the human tendency to censor and silence the voices we don’t like. The story of Korihor could be looked at in dozens of ways, but it’s presence from a 19th century viewpoint seems to support the use of power to censor the dissenting words of the resident Atheist. The chapter begins by making clear that a man cannot be punished for his beliefs, and it restates this point a couple of times. The reader is introduced to a system that appears to value free speech and thought. However, what follows is in direct contradiction to the authors emphasis on allowing one to believe however they pleased. Many have argued that he was not punished for the expression of his alternative beliefs, but for other crimes that were forbidden in their legal and religious code. It’s possible to infer possible crimes, but if this is so, it would have been quite easy for the author, be it an ancient writer or Joseph Smith to explicitly state what the crime was, but they never do. This seems like a novice error by the author in conjunction with the emphasis placed on free speech and belief mentioned at the beginning of chapter 30.
This story in orthodox Sunday school discussions leans towards supporting the destruction of people who challenge the powers that be. This sadly has become the reality for members who speak up and ask the difficult questions. We, in the LDS church as well as the human race, have almost zero tolerance for overt expression that challenges our point of view. When our way of life is threatened, we immediately resort to our reptilian defense mechanisms that may create short term solutions but only grow long term internal and societal tension.
The question of banning some forms of speech is I think a subset of a bigger question: how to address the spread of bad ideas. Banning some ideas from public discourse is appealing, but I think it causes as many problems as it solves, and poses a lot of implementation questions that others have already brought up. I could be persuaded that there may be some situations where it is justifiable on a temporary basis (such as in Germany after the war), but I think in the long term I favor the American approach to free speech.
I think the best answer (to the extent that there is one at all) to countering bad ideas is teaching critical thinking skills. I once heard that one of the Baltic countries (Estonia, I think) has developed a comprehensive program to promote critical thinking in their schools and in their media because their neighbor Russia broadcasts state propaganda TV channels in their country and that has been the most effective way to counter it.
This approach is relevant to anyone who chooses to participate in the LDS church despite having disagreements with doctrine or policies. I’ve heard a lot of people in this situation worry about what their kids will learn. I think if we accept they are going to learn things we disagree with, and that they will encounter many bad ideas outside of church as well, the best thing we can do is to empower them to think for themselves and model it ourselves.
I am going to put down my thoughts before I read other comments. I lived in Berlin in 1973, our base Commander was Gail Halverson. For those who don’t recognize the name, he was the candy bomber during the airlift. We had German friends who had lived through the war. Some experienced the rise of Hitler. There is SO much we did not learn in school. Some of the older Germans would talk to us about their experiences. So, I learned from real people some of the things Hawkgirl learned from that podcast.
Some of the old Germans were so anxious for Americans to understand the reality of how Hitler came to power. They told us that the way to stop the holocaust from ever happening again is not to understand the horror of it as much as it is to understand the beginnings of it. How did a monster gain the power to take over a nation and act on his monstrous impulses? That was what they wanted to tell us, because that is what has been lost in the horror of *what.* They wanted us to understand *how* so we would know to stop the *what* before it became impossible. Because by the time they knew about what was really going on, it was too late for the average German to do anything without going off to the gas chambers themselves.
So, I don’t want to look at the denial in the church as much as I want to look at the denial America, well it is the church too, because Utah voted for the man who wants to be a dictator. How did Hitler come to power? Well he promised to Make Germany Great Again. Sound familiar?
The difference between Hitler and Trump is Trump is too stupid to really make America great again. So, we won’t suddenly have the prosperity and wealth that Germany found under Hitler. What is not taught in American schools is the *good* Hitler did. He started factories and got people jobs and he got them out of the horrible poverty after WWI. He started out making Germany great again. So, Trump’s very motto scares me. Hitler was effective in fulfilling his promises and at first his followers thought he was great. They didn’t knowingly vote for a monster. They voted to make Germany great again.
So, Americans need to look beyond the campaign promises to see the monster. Trump wants to be a dictator and he has said he plans on imprisoning his political enemies. Wake up people and see how the holocaust happened, how it started, how a monster came to power or we are going to repeat the process of electing a monster. If you want a dictator, then vote for the man who wants to be a dictator, but if you want to keep your freedom, you have to vote for Biden. Not even third party or skip voting because you don’t like either Trump or Biden. I don’t like Biden either. But I want to keep America from losing its freedom. And we will if we elect a man who wants to be dictator. Look at how all dictators came to power, and it is *exactly* what Trump is doing.
Hawkgirl, I like how you are learning instead of just touristing. I won’t say “enjoy” Dachau, but learn and brace yourself, because no matter how prepared you feel, it is still horrifying.
Anna,
I completely agree with you. In 2016 I was a full conservative Republican voter. Every one I knew voted for Trump. I hated the example he set for my teenage boys and I voted for the libertarian.
However, as a mother of a child with serious medical needs, the pandemic opened my eyes. The day Trump suggested people inject themselves with bleach was the day I knew I had to oppose him even if it meant voting against my political ideals by voting Democrat.
Since that time I have studied many issues and changed many of my ideas. But my conviction about Trump remains. People hate to hear him compared to Hitler and think that’s stupid. But I agree with you. He is terrifying. Republicans particularly have had to give up any independent thought or speech in order to be seen as loyal and maintain any position in the political structure of the party. Those that oppose him lose all power and so they go along.
He could win, and he and his cronies are getting smarter to how to get their way. Oppose him with whatever you have if you want any right for anyone in any party.
I’m no fan of Trump (well documented on W&T) but as a general rule I ignore any material that compares Trump to Hitler. Come on.
Denial is truly one of the toughest nuts to crack. It doesn’t matter the evidence you have, convincing a person in denial is beyond evidence. You have to gently ease those in denial in indirectly and find common ground in the margins. It is an emotional game, not a common sense one. I think I’m the case of Germany, it was only after two extremely painful losses and resulting millions of deaths, as well as decades of political separation, that Germany changed its mind about nationalism and minorities. There really is nothing remotely comparable to Germany and what it experienced.
In the case of the South, bear in mind that the post-Civil War Reconstruction failed after 10 years. The South couldn’t bring back slavery, but it retained the power to maintain good-ol’-boys politics, which still remains in many ways to this day. Lost Cause denialism is still a problem. Nikki Haley couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge the basic fact that slavery was behind the Civil War.
Mormonism is in denial about so many things. A number of years ago, the church published a number of essays to difficult questions which it buried on its website and has never featured in church lessons. The result: nothing. Members are still in denial about polygamy, race, Book of Mormon historicity, and the list goes on.
Lastly, on free speech. Social media has expanded the ability of an increasingly large number of individuals to reach wider and wider audiences. Consequently, free speech has expanded drastically to an unprecedented level, beyond what anyone could have imagined. That being the case, conspiracy theories have also reached larger and larger audiences. Many theories are innocent and do no harm, such as Bigfoot theories. But many are extremely harmful, lead to violence, and keep us from the progress we need to make to prevent environmental and political catastrophes. I would favor a strong crackdown on disinformation by expanding anti-defamation laws and penalties against people and organizations for violations. Social media should be under stronger government regulation. Absolute free speech has never been, nor should it ever be, and I think at this point in the US there’s simply too much free speech and it needs to be hedged for the purpose of providing people with better, trustworthy information. Many free speech advocates today mistake the end for the means. They see free speech as the end itself. However, free speech is but a means to the end of truth and good information. Why should we want to protect lies and liars who defame, corrupt, and harm? If we can’t falsely yell fire in a crowded theater, why should we be allowed to falsely claim all sorts of conspiracy theories that cause harmful panic?
toddsmithson: I completely agree about the Korihor story. I always found it disingenuous that the narrative is that nobody is persecuted for religion (or lack thereof), but then he’s killed with no good reason given. Riiight. As we like to say (but not do) in the US, freedom of religion also must protect freedom FROM religion. But in privileging religion, it usually doesn’t. One reason we’ve never had an atheist president.
lws329: I totally agree that there’s a big difference between Germany agreeing to change Nuremburg from Hitler’s headquarters to the City of Human Rights and if instead the Germans had mixed feelings about his legacy and half the population forced the other half to comply by outlawing their speech and political party. Your point about red states not agreeing to “blue” state speech norms is an excellent one, but I also question the manner in which slavery and racism are downplayed in the South, and the way some of the southern states still cling to a lost cause narrative, despite the fact that it relies on the ongoing marginalization of their own black citizens, and romanticizing the plantations as a picture of gentility and harmony. These are states that until embarrassingly recently still lionized the Confederate flag on their Capitol building (look at South Carolina), despite what it said about how the large population of black people in the state were regarded.
Today we stood in the market square, and then our tour guide showed us a picture of Hitler standing exactly where we were. And THEN, he explained that in the 1300s, that same square was a Jewish ghetto, housing 1000 people, who were massacred in a pogrom to make space for that open market. This was partly motivated by the fact that the Germans were dying from the black plague, but the Jewish people were not because of their hygienic practices that prevented the spread of the disease. Rather than adopting monthly bathing like the Jewish people did, the Germans concluded they must be in league with the devil and causing the plague to kill only Germans. So they killed them. It seems that attitudes don’t change easily. Blaming others (immigrants, religious minorities, red states / blue states) is always in fashion.
josh h: I think Anna’s point is not that Trump = Hitler, but that if you want to avoid future dictators (Hitler’s not the only one–consider Ceaucescu, Franco, Putin, Orban, Mussolini), look at how and why they gained power. There are different stories for each of them. History is full of cautionary tales that we don’t seem to be very good at learning from. Ceaucescu is one I’ve thought about a lot since the Dobbs decision. Utah proposed that church policy be made law in the state, requiring women to have a police report to get an abortion for rape or incest. Some red states want access to women’s health information to prevent them from getting an abortion. What’s interesting is that when Ceaucescu outlawed abortion, women’s health exams were attended by the police. Guess how that went. (Bear in mind that even in the US, 40% of police officers have a domestic violence complaint). Women were often sexually assaulted in these exams, in addition to other abuses, and of course, the children they didn’t want to bear eventually overthrew Ceaucescu’s government.
I tend to think that Hitler, as an idealogue, posed a certain type of danger. Trump, by contrast, is not an idealogue. He uses his power transactionally. He will do the bidding of his followers, not the other way around. Will that change if he gets power again? I doubt it. He seems pathologically needful of praise, no matter the source. He’s willing to sell out any principle and any American to get what he craves. I have no interest in putting the country in the hands of his terrible voters, and that includes the religious right. I’m also not crazy about Biden, but I’m not willing to sell out the country over it.
This may be incredibly naïve, but I still believe that, on a macro scale, the court of public opinion can manage shutting down dangerous free speech without formal laws being enacted. The past decade has unfortunately illustrated that some local courts of public opinion are either inept or corrupt. With regards to the church, due to the volume of members that have outsourced their morality, this approach doesn’t yield great results either. But I’m still optimistic.
josh h,
Unfortunately, the more you know about the rise of the Nazis, the more you know that a careful analysis of 1920’s Germany is the ultimate civics lesson for a citizen in any modern democracy. The Nazis provided a road map on how to destroy your own country (and possibly the world) and feel good about it in the process. The Germans were just as human, just as patriotic, just as technologically advanced as any other people at that time or this. In fact, it takes a patriotic, technologically advanced people to build something like the Third Reich. It takes the collaboration of vocal supporters, experts, artists, media and politicians. That lesson should continually scare the hell out of us all. And never let that fear escape your consideration. Yes, it takes a warped leader capable of moving large numbers of people. But it takes enough people supporting that leader (even thinking they can control that leader) to make a new Reich possible. Trump does not scare me. Demagogues come and go. His enablers terrify me.
A few salient words from Robert Jackson, the US prosecutor in the International Criminal Court at Nuremburg which set the tone for future international criminal trials: “We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well … If these men are the first war leaders of a defeated nation to be prosecuted in the name of the law, they are also the first to be given a chance to plead for their lives in the name of the law. Realistically, the Charter of this Tribunal, which gives them a hearing, is also the source of their only hope. It may be that these men of troubled conscience, whose only wish is that the world forget them, do not regard a trial as a favor. But they do have a fair opportunity to defend themselves-a favor which these men, when in power, rarely extended to their fellow countrymen. Despite the fact that public opinion already condemns their acts, we agree that here they must be given a presumption of innocence, and we accept the burden of proving criminal acts and the responsibility of these defendants for their commission.”
While the Russian prosecutor was eager for a show trial that could be used as propaganda that would paint Russia as hero and allow them to pin their own misdeeds on Germany, the American prosecutor reminded the world that these accusing nations were agreeing that their own future acts would be subject to the same scrutiny. In fact, the current exhibit mentions the invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing Israeli-Palestine conflicts as evidence that the world still needs to be reminded of what we learned in the Nuremburg trials.
Josh H, hmmmmm, we are talking about denial and it just struck me that denying that any argument at all concerning the H person can just be ignored because it is a bad argument is a form of denial. So, welcome to your version of denial. Yeah. Let’s just ignore any similarities and let history repeat itself. Real smart [ end sarcasm] Yes, the H person is pulled up as the ultimate boogeyman too often, but that does not mean there can be no similarities to a current situation.
#1 I used Hitler because people are more aware of him as a dictator and how he operated than they are other dictators.
a. Any dictator would have worked
b. Dictators all have certain things in common
c. He is the dictator that I have the experience of
being in his country while people personally
remembered how he came to power
#2 history never repeats perfectly so any dictator that I used, you could come along and point out differences. Yes, there are a LOT of differences between Hitler and Trump, there are ALSO some very valid similarities.
#3 if you can’t compare a wanna be dictator to the world’s worst dictator, you lose out on lots of lessons from history.
#4 unlike some dictators, Hitler was VOTED into power by popular vote, which is closer to the tactic Trump is using, rather than taking over the military and overthrowing the democratic government.
#5 I am pretty sure that Mr Trump is doing some studying up on Hitler as well as other dictators to learn how they did it. Yet he claims not to have read Mein Kampf, but then quotes it?
So, get over your superiority complex that any argument that uses Hitler is a bad argument and look honestly at the real history behind how all dictators come to power when they get elected instead of take over by military force. Most seem to not like the work of getting elected. Off hand, I can’t remember another dictator who got voted into a democracy. Look at the rise of Hitler, just like I said, instead of what he did once he had power. It really is not being superior at all just stubborn and maybe stupid.
Chadwick, on a macro scale, most governments in the world crack down much, much more heavily on speech they don’t like in order to maintain order. Anti-government conspiracy theories, as well as true damning information against a host government are censored in much of the world. China, India, and Russia have low tolerance levels for criticisms against their regimes and have large numbers of political prisoners. Unfortunately, I don’t often hear many free speech advocates in the US talk about the obvious violations of free speech around the world. Mostly, they harp incessantly about cancel culture and the freedom of conspiracy theorists to spread defamatory lies. The US can afford to place more boundaries on speech and still say it is a free country.
Thank you, Hawkgrrl, for starting such a powerful discussion. Coincidentally, just two weeks ago I watched a classic movie “Judgment At Nuremburg.” Brilliant! I recommend it as an addition to this topic.
Brad D, he who “would favor a strong crackdown on disinformation by expanding anti-defamation laws and penalties against people and organizations for violations,” does this not describe those who persecuted Galileo? Because Galileo was wrong, was he not, according to those who defined what was and what was not disinformation? The Nazi’s eugenics all came from people with PhDs and other doctorates from esteemed universities, and in Germany it was not considered disinformation: the disinformation would have been to speak against it. Is not disinformation in the eye of the beholder? I would not “favor a strong crackdown on disinformation” but jailing, fining, branding, or defenestrating people who think differently than I. Were I in charge, you could sleep well in your bad at night, but if you were in charge, might secret police pull me from my bed and ship me of somewhere for reeducation? I say let people say their piece, and I can then decide for myself whether they are kook or no. But I would not criminalize disinformation. I believe in free speech, even if I have to hear disagreeable things. I would not burn the Anabaptist at the stake because he preached what I considered to be disinformation. I would not put someone who preferred a gas car to an electric one in a pillory. I would not stone someone who said that a vaccine might be dangerous. Out here.
Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?
Speech has consequences. Now that we live in an enlightened age, where money=speech, the richer you are…? There is a power dynamic that needs to be considered. There is a difference between the King saying to the peasant “Off with your head” and the peasant saying to the king, “Off with your head.”. What king gets beheaded? (There’s Charles , but he wasn’t done in by peasants. But by puritans, mercantile interests, the power of the printing press and the inability to follow parliamentary law.)
I was under the illusion that the Bill of Rights applied to all people. But now I realize, It’s a cherished right of those with speech, to not only yell fire in a fireless theater, but to also yell,”there’s no fire”, as the flames engulf and trap. And then, for those with speech, to find a targeted scapegoat.
I find it so amusing, that legitimate organizations working against sex trafficking, are falsely labeled pedophiles, by those who are actually engaging in trafficking. Oh yes, “free” speech. Librarians could make a case for free speech, but they don’t control the purse strings
It’s not just stochastic terrorism. Most individuals have little power, it’s why they band together in mutual protection. The Bill of Rights is suppose to have the State protect the powerless. But nowadays, the Rights are for those with Speech to control the State by marginalizing the “undeserving”.
I wish there was more consideration of those hiding in fear from those hunting them, then in protecting the right to declare, “Open Season”
Georgis, “Is not disinformation in the eye of the beholder?”
No. You’re assuming that conspiracy theories exist simply out of good-faith disagreements and different points of view. Now the people who believe the conspiracy theories may be acting in good faith. But the sources of many conspiracy theories are not in the least. Consider how President Reagan took action against the USSR’s Aktivnie Meropriyatie (active measures) program through which it sought to disseminate lies to stir confusion among the American public. Even esteemed journalist Dan Rather once fell for the Soviet-originated lie that AIDS was created by the US government. You don’t want the government to have power against the media weaponry of foreign governments to sow disinformation to undermine US elections and to cause panic? The sources of QAnon were similarly acting in bad faith. The person(s) posing as QAnon were inciting violence against political figures. That’s not free speech. That’s criminality. Also consider stochastic terrorism. Acts of violence committed where the perpetrator had clear motive and influence from a media figure. Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson have had overwhelming influence on a number of acts of violence where the perpetrator told authorities that he was inspired by something they had said. I believe that Carlson and Beck should have been investigated along side the alleged perpetrators of violence and that stronger anti-defamation laws. Marjorie Taylor Greene is videotaped before an angry crowd saying, “Nancy Pelosi is guilty of treason and the punishment for treason is death.” She should have been investigated. She clearly overstepped a line. Free speech does not and should not protect incitements to violence. Fox News maligned Dominion Voting Systems and there is incontrovertible proof that they knowingly lied about this. They reached a settlement with Dominion, but should have been fully investigated and have lost publishing licenses. With COVID, many liars acting in bad faith spread all sorts of disinformation about the disease and so-called treatments for it, many of which played a direct role in fatally harming people. The government had a responsibility to intervene and disable access to these lies. It isn’t free speech for doctors or pharmacists to knowingly tell patients to take substances that will physically harm or kill them. That’s criminality. Not free speech. It isn’t free speech to intimidate witnesses. And Trump and many Trump-supporting media figures clearly have. They should be investigated. What we need is for laws to make it easier to investigate these alleged crimes and to expand the criminal code to reach those on the sidelines who more indirectly incite violence, threats to public figures, cause panic on no evidence, and facilitate physical suffering on bad information. Make their culpability less iffy and easier for prosecutors to nail down. There are lies out there. Lots of them. Some lies are simply criminal. And you know this.
You speak from a position of hyperbole and exaggeration. And naivete with regard to speech-related matters. I think there are many areas you are completely ignorant of or are choosing to ignore.
Lately I’ve been listening to a podcast by two British historians called “The Rest is History.” Highly recommend not only because it’s well done but also because it’s fascinating to learn about US history from credible sources outside this country. They frequently state that history depends on your point of view, the context, and who is writing history. For example they point out that the US Army and US Govt murdered thousands of American Indians throughout the years but I certainly didn’t learn about that in school.
There’s a good chance that teachers with that viewpoint would be canceled and fired here in the US, even though we enjoy free speech. The Chinese constitution explicitly allows for free speech but we all know free speech there is a fantasy.
I suspect that the German, American, and Chinese would all point to the others and say their version of free speech is best and protects certain classes of people and certain ideas. I like the idea of outlawing speech based on hatred or lies but I would not want politicians or Christian church leaders defining hate and truth for me.
Sorry I’m late to the party. Interesting post and comments. It’s tempting, I think, to want to outlaw or restrict speech that is what we could call hate speech, or speech that incites to violence. But I tend to err on the side of allowing as much speech as possible. As frustrating as it is to hear lies that are demonstrably, provably false told over and over, especially by those in power, I think continuing to report, speak and illuminate the truth is a more ethical (though sadly, perhaps less effective) way to go.
One thing that no one has mentioned yet is the way in which social media and the internet have changed things. I’m not one of those who blames technology/social media for all of the world’s problems, but the fact is, the internet, despite the supposedly noble intents of its inventors and champions, has democratized ignorance. I understand that people still told and clung to lies/false narratives back in the “old days”, but I do think that the internet has made it possible to continue to be deluded in ways that are more intensified and insidious, and I don’t just mean the unfairly stereotyped MAGA folks; I mean people from across the political spectrum. It’s much more difficult to change someone’s mind, even with irrefutable facts, when they’re easily able to find other deluded voices online who also believe the same false narratives, conspiracies, etc., and commiserate with each other. And this phenomenon, I think, is in part what has led to various political figures and factions simply doubling down on lies; those figures and factions know that there are enough people out there who are willing to believe those lies, which means that lying doesn’t carry the consequences with it that it used to.
Of course people, even (especially?) public figures, for example, lied, twisted the truth, spun narratives, etc. all of the time in the past, but there used to at least be some sense of public shame. It was still possible, for example, in the 1970s, to convince someone as deluded as Nixon that it was better to resign than to keep fighting. One devastating consequence of all of this lying, spinning, etc. that the internet has made much more prevalent is that most public figures have simply lost their sense of shame. And that sense of shame used to be prominent enough, at least in some cases, for people to be able to be convinced to do the right thing when confronted with enough substantiated evidence of their misdeeds. That’s simply not the case anymore. I don’t consider Facebook, Twitter, etc. as morally pure entities who operate only with the public good in mind, but while I am sympathetic to parts of Brad D’s argument, I think the regulation of false content and the limiting of false information is perhaps more likely to curb some of what the OP and commenters have noted more than criminalizing lying or narrowing the parameters of free speech. YMMV.
Brad D, thanks for your gracious words (“You speak from a position of hyperbole and exaggeration. And naivete with regard to speech-related matters. I think there are many areas you are completely ignorant of or are choosing to ignore.). It is good to offer positions and not attack ad hominem.
No one here has suggested that free speech trumps laws on slander, libel, intimidating witnesses, or inciting violence (I mentioned crying fire in a crowded theater was not covered under free speech in my first post). Who decides what is disinformation? He who imprisons me today for my speech might imprison you tomorrow for yours. I don’t want an all-powerful and unchecked government that can garrote those who speak out of turn. I am not naïve about free speech. I am glad our founding fathers put the first amendment in the Constitution. I don’t like Trump and am vaccinated and boosted, and I wore masks back when that was de rigueur. I regularly split tickets. And I have never watched a single episode of Glenn Beck or Tucker Carlson, nor do I intend to.
I’m all for a broad definition of free speech. I do, however, think there are good ideas that should be encouraged or promoted, and bad ideas that should be discouraged, both of which should have as little government support as possible or needed. I think the best way to promote or discourage these ideas as impartially as possible is again to allow a broad definition of free speech.
We are indeed an enlightened society overall, but next to an ignorant society, I think a near equally dangerous society is an enlightened one that thinks it’s more enlightened than it actually is. In many ways I think we’re there.
Looking at sources and perspectives is important. I got behind on my reading quota during the pandemic (opposite of most people, I know), but I’m looking to try to judge history more based on the writings of people who were there, rather than those who make conclusions from afar, but I realize it doesn’t hurt to have both perspectives.
Admittedly, taking all that into account allows for any number of answers to your questions.
As a side note, I’ve suspected for months that it’s really no coincidence that John W ceased commenting here regularly at nearly the exact time Brad D began, but I could be wrong. Maybe it’s just a personality type that stands out.
Count me among the people who don’t want to limit free speech. However, there is something to be said for Brad D’s point that people should somehow be held accountable for their false speech that causes harm. How? That’s a good question. You’d need a flexible penalty that can be adapted to different situations, with the goal of deterring future lies and acknowledging the harm done.
Example: Fox News knew that Trump lost the 2020 election, even while they let Tucker Carlson spew lies about widespread voter fraud. Fox News so obviously was lying that they lost that point on summary judgment, meaning there wasn’t any evidence that would have said that Fox News just didn’t know. Then Fox News paid Dominion Voting Systems almost a billion dollars, $787 million, in damages and fired Tucker Carlson. That wasn’t a news story long enough. The judgment should also have imposed speech — like Fox News should have been compelled to run a ticker during the news programs for the next three months saying “there was no widespread voter fraud in 2020, Biden legitimately won the election, and anything we said to the contrary was a lie.”
Free speech has been weaponized and twisted by people who create lies for clicks, and then say it’s news. I don’t know how to limit that. It does harm, but I don’t know how to limit that. I believe professional journalists should be held to higher standards than someone with a camera and a tiktok account.
My high school sons are learning media evaluation skills, and critical thinking skills, and yet as long as something is funny, they laugh even if they know it’s wrong or isn’t true. I hear them repeating racist stuff they heard on YouTube, and when I ask them if they really believe it, they say “no but it’s funny.” And the ideas spread.
Georgis, I never attacked you ad hominem. I criticized your position, that is quite clear. And yes it was hyperbolic. I say we should expand anti-defamation laws, and you go Godwin’s Law on me? Please. Modifications to prevent disinformation and its negative effects do not make one a Nazi. Saying “Who decides what is disinformation? He who imprisons me today for my speech might imprison you tomorrow for yours” is extremely relativistic and exaggerative. Suffice it to say your comment was not incredibly gracious. January 6th shouldn’t have happened. And it happened because of lies and disinformation that should be prevented. QAnon theories before Jan. 6th were deemed a terrorist threat by the FBI. That sort of stuff should have been nipped in the bud by anti-disinformation laws that stem lies. What if Biden loses and Democrats pull a Jan. 6th stunt on Congress because of disinformation? How would you react?
Free speech is obviously important. But we’re navigating different waters in the digital age. New and better laws and accompanying enforcement are a must. That doesn’t make us Nazi Germany.
Brad D,
I actually support what you are saying. However I just don’t know who gets to decide what is misinformation and what’s not and who gets to enforce that, and how that would work out in the end. I thought it was dandy FOX got sued for so much money for defamation of Dominion. So some judicial enforcement is in place.
Brad D
Preach!
I am not a lawyer, though I watched Perry Mason as a kid ( and later the Anita Hill hearings). So I can’t really say I understand anti-defamation laws. I read somewhere that in some countries you can’t say anything really negative even if it’s true. Other countries, you can say negative things if you can prove them factual accurate. And still others, you get say what you want and others have to prove you deliberately lied to make you look bad–so yeah free speech.
But this is all civil law. So it’s seems that those who can afford lawyers are free to speechify against those who cannot. When I was much, much younger I went to court(on my own) and got a restraining order against a coworker. It was a joyous day when I went into HR and said– now you have to deal with this. The coworker came to me(hello restraining order) and told me, he saw a lawyer who told him to sue me. I looked him in the eye and said go ahead. Work, who now was afraid of being sued(but not by him), told me they would provide if necessary. He ended up going away. But for years at work, I heard scuttlebutt about what I did to that poor man. I realized I was up the creek without a lawyer paddle.
So I don’t know about anti-defamation laws. But I would like the state to provide better protections for the lawyerless against harassment, bullying, and yes–Hate Speech. (especially from institutions who hold so much power over members or employees)
lws329, “I just don’t know who gets to decide what is misinformation and what’s not and who gets to enforce that”
Georgis brings up the same concern. I think it is common to look at the question of free speech as the right to write opinions in comments or social media or online publications and have it stand. But speech is much more complex than that. When we look at disinformation and conspiracy theories, many tend to view them as whacky things that common people believe. I come in and say that some conspiracy theories should be considered defamatory and some seem to think that I’m saying that common people should be criminalized for believing or spreading the theories. No. I’m not saying that at all. What I’m interested in is the origin of the conspiracy theory. The original source. The first promoter of the theory. What we’re likely to find in many cases is a deliberate fabricator whose motives are to disturb the peace (a misdemeanor offense), make an individual or organization a target for harassment and threats (crimes), spread false information without regard to the safety of human life (crime), cover up other crimes by obfuscation, and other nefarious aims. One of the QAnon theories was that Hillary Clinton drank the blood of children and they actually went out of their way to doctor a video showing as much. Another theory was that there was a voice recording of John Podesta (aide to Hillary) physically abusing kids. Clearly a doctored recording. These are false accusations against public officials. Making false accusations is a crime. Fabricating evidence is a crime. These are not forms of protected speech. We can’t allow social media or news organizations to feature fabricated evidence. To the conservatives, libertarians, and Republicans reading this, imagine if someone were to fabricate a very convincing video of one of your favored politicians or public figures doing something criminal. Would you be calling that free speech? Wouldn’t you be banging on the doors of news organizations broadcasting the video telling them to stop? Wouldn’t you be frantically calling social media companies to stop spreading that information? We live in the age of AI. And AI is only getting better. We need laws and investigation that deal with deepfakes and better sophistication to stop AI-produced disinformation on social media and throughout news organizations. Innocent dupes relaying conspiracy theories is one thing. Fabricators and false accusers are another.
As to who decides what is disinformation, that’s where investigation comes in. We can and should investigate on probable cause. Once a prosecution can establish that the suspect spread false rumors and information knowingly, then game over. It’s not free speech, it’s criminal/civil liability. Such was the case in the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News. Investigation overturned a treasure trove of text messages revealing that Fox News hosts knew that they were lying about the results of the election.
Lastly, I think we should reflect on the information wars of the Cold War. The idea that AIDS was a US government creation was a Soviet-produced lie and there was clear evidence of such. And that wasn’t the only lie that the Soviets were producing and trying to disseminate throughout the US. China and China-related propagandists and fabricators are doing the same sorts of things. Many conspiracy theories are the products of foreign enemies trying to spread chaos in the US. I want to combat this kind of disinformation. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to just surrender to this and say it’s all relative and say that there is no way to know whether this is true or not or whether the person disseminating it is lying or acting in bad faith. I believe we can identify a lot of disinformation as disinformation and a lot of this disinformation has criminal aims and is not and should not be protected as free speech. And yet too many cases of people, I feel, slip through the cracks and make bad faith appeals to free speech when what they’re doing is making false accusations and knowingly spreading false information that causes harm to individual life.
When we went to Daccau, e were surprised at the sign over the gate, which sounds kind of mormon Wòrk will make you free?
You do realise America has truth in Advertising Legislation? Could it be more difficult to recognise/stop hate speech?
Many of those advocating for unfettered free speech for individuals, might allow the removal of hate speech in order to create a more tolerant, inclusive, and caring society.
A good number of trumps former advisors have been working in think tanks so that Trump is more organised when he gets in. If he doesn’t get in it proves it was stolen.
Trump was disapointed that on Jan 6 he was not supported by government bodies like the military, the national guard, even the FBI. Trump intends to have his revenge on those he believes should have backed him up, he now is arranging something called schedule F that would allow him to sack public servants and replace them with people who are loyal first to him . There are 50,000 on this list so far.
https://www.axios.com/2022/07/23/donald-trump-news-schedule-f-executive-order
Many in the Justice department are to be replaced with special prosecutors who are loyal to trump So he can prosecute anyone he wants. Biden for example will be prosecuted because he was illegally in the whitehouse, every govenor or official who did not declare trump won will be in trouble. Imagine if the leaders of the FBI, the national guard, and the military pledge their alliance to trump as well as/ rather than the flag and Republic. He can call them out to deal with whoever he says. Sounds like a dictatorship to me.
A former conservative Australian Prime minister who attended world leader meeting described trump and putin, as like a 10 year old who meets his hero. The hero is putin.
An interesting point in all this “deliberate misinformation” angle is that in the NY Trump hush money trial, Pecker (of the National Enquirer) not only testified that he had a “catch & kill” scheme for any stories (true or false) that involved Trump that would be damaging, but he also had agreed with Trump during the 2016 primaries to create false stories about Trump’s GOP opponents. Trump is uniquely dangerous in terms of disinformation and propaganda. Instead of standing for the truth and rule of law, one party has completely thrown its knickers to the wind and agreed to live in this alternate reality where utterly ridiculous and easily disproven lies are truth, easily proven truth is a lie, and contradicting the party is unforgivable disloyalty, which is exactly the church’s playbook. I don’t see how it’s truly loyal to let people believe things that are wrong, but thus it has always been with the powerful. And yes, AI ups the ante exponentially.
In case it was lost in the comments above, it’s interesting the difference between the US prosecutor and the Russian prosecutor in the Nuremburg Trials. The US prosecutor wanted a presumption of innocence, listening to witnesses, and allowing the defendants to be judged for real. The Russian prosecutor wanted a highly controlled show trial for propaganda purposes, and also sought to pin things on the scapegoats that were actually Russian collaborations and misdeeds (e.g. carving up Poland and East Germany in a settlement). The rule of law can appear to be in effect when in reality it is not. We have to look at the actual evidence. When half of our legislators are unwilling to be honest about their own dear leader’s (and voters’ more importantly) insurrection, the rule of law is being cast aside in favor of party loyalty, and that’s no longer a democracy.
It seems pretty apparent from the likes and dislikes on the comments that we have some very fundamental disagreements about freedom of speech, whether we should control it or not, and views on “dictators” who control freedom of speech. It may also show how hard it is to communicate and why freedom of speech is such an important topic to address.
Tangential to the discussion, I would like to nominate Toddsmithson as a permablogger here at W&T’s. I find his analysis compelling.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this discussion. Thank you all for the lively back and forth, which is many ways illuminates how free speech ought to work, I think. I concur with Brad and LWS on the damage much speech does, including conspiracy ideas, defamation, etc. I also am quite reticent to formalizing legislative action that would silence certain voices. IMO, that top-down enforcement then becomes a brutal game to garner that position of power. I think as LSW alluded to that people have the right to say stupid things, even untrue things, but they do not have the right to say them without an understanding that your position is also subject to being challenged. The truth is most commonly found by the proving of contraries. Countervailing voices must exist to provide some kind of burden on the speaker to at least attempt to say something true. If a jury was always and only privy to the prosecutions story, a defendant would have exactly zero chance and the prosecution would have zero motivation to tell the truth as there only goal is to win. Fox news being sued for defamation is an example of counter valence.
Now, little has been said in this conversation about how free speech operates within the LDS church. I think one of the most nefarious statements our LDS tradition adheres to is “No evil speaking of the Lord’s anointed”. I’m not sure the statement is entirely bad, but the interpretation has run amuck. “Evil” has become anything critical, contrary, in disagreement with, negative or even true if it’s not seen as useful. And who are the “Lord’s anointed”? Are they the ones deemed as special and therefore we protect them from defamatory speech, while all the other regular folk are free game? Commanding not to speak evil of the Lord’s anointed is a way to cloak authoritarianism inside the subtlety of obedience to God. That statement is an effort to remove all countervailing voices but really only illuminates the utter weakness of that leader. The best leaders I have been around, whether business, church, political, etc. are the ones who readily accept advice, maybe especially from the cheap seats. Our LDS leadership has made it clear that they face the Lord, not the people, and it is the requirement of the people, the ones whose boots are on the ground every day, to respond to leadership who largely operate in a vacuum of privilege. There is no flow from Top to bottom and bottom back to top, allowing for, even requesting free thought and speech from the members who, after all, ARE the Church. I don’t understand why on one hand members would lobby for free speech, but readily comply with the silencing mandate that is alive and well in the Church.
toddsmithson,
We comply first of all because that is the only example we had and all that was taught to us. We comply because in the first half of life that’s all we are ready for. Than we have matured, and can see the need for dialogue we discover there is no avenue made available to us. All the power for communication is in the hands of the leaders. They only choose to listen on their whims, which occur rarely. We are silenced by our entire community, which reinforces compliance, silence, pretend happiness, and little communication. Even when we choose to speak up, the leaders still do not hear us and we shout into the darkness.
Thank you Lws for that comment and the reminder that the first half of life is necessary, but it’s not the end, only a means to the second half of life which is largely rejected in organized religion as it does not work very well with institutional power.
The contours of freedom of speech are still being defined. The US Supreme Court released a unanimous decision this morning, and Justice Sotomayor’s opening words were: “Six decades ago, this Court held that a government entity’s ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion’ against a third party ‘to achieve the suppression’ of disfavored speech violates the First Amendment. Today, the Court reaffirms what it said then: Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.” We all realize that freedom of speech is a particularly American concept not enshrined or hallowed in most other countries.
Freedom of speech in a church context is a different creature. A church by nature is a voluntary association, and voluntary associations are expected to craft their own rules, and they can punish (expel) members who break the rules. Some issues may be plain: the Lord said x, and the Lord’s messengers say x and only x. But most decisions, like what constitutes a meaningful and valuable youth program, or whether we should have wi-fi in our church buildings, or how we might embrace people with differences, are not usually “Thus saith the Lord” issues. Nor are how the church grows investments or provides funding to missionaries, or many more issues. Many issues are for us as people and as a church to resolve. The president of the church doesn’t need pre-approval when he speaks as prophet, but when he speaks as president of the Church, which is almost everything that he does, then there might be room for collaboration and for receiving multiple opinions: “Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellers there is safety” (Prov. 11:14) and “For by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war: and in multitude of counsellers there is safety” (Prov. 24:6). When he acts as president, he can receive inspiration from the Holy Ghost, and many leaders have spoken and written about how they’ve learned by listening within Q15 meetings.
Maybe one day stake presidents and bishops will listen more to their members. What if twelve stake high councilors actually sat in council with a stake presidency and discussed issues, but I surmise that they usually say yes to what is presented to them. Why couldn’t a stake president call together all the parents of youth and have an open discussion about whether the youth programs are meeting the need? What if a Primary president asked prents if Primary, as it exists in their ward, is helping their children? or if an EQP or RSP engaged their group to ask about improving ministering? We talk about sitting in council, but do we do it well? Leaders have encouraged bishops and stake presidents to listen more to their RS, YW, and Primary presidents, but is that happening? I can hope so. I don’t see more communication as threatening, but I can understand how some feel that it is.
Georgis,
In the church what stands in the way of open discourse is authority. We are socialized in the church to follow quietly and to acknowledge our leaders ideas as the will of God, rather than to think for ourselves, voice concerns and discuss. This can be seen as murmuring, like Laman and Lemuel.
And as far as “listening ” to female leaders in council, any social convention that causes men to be quiet in a meeting exists to a much higher extent for women. The authority of the men around them, (and often, higher numbers of men) puts them in position where they often won’t speak without a specific invitation, and even then they tend to mind their own stewardship, and their stewardships are tiny. So…to be fair our culture organizes things so that often there isn’t much from the women officially called, to listen to. And by the way, they aren’t called because of their ability to frequently speak up. Often the women seen favorably by male leaders are young pretty women that quietly defer. Women that do speak up come to be seen in an itchy way and are quickly released.
All these are great ideas as a beginning, for building consensus, but mostly we are unified in our church by following without speaking up. We need to find ways to make regular members opinions that differ from leaders, to be more accepted as legitimate.
On the church and free speech, I don’t see any direct free speech violations on the part of the church. It is a private organization and has the freedom to use its own channels to discipline members it believes to be saying incorrect things. It obviously is powerless to imprison or fine people. The question, however, is how the church deals with those critical of it or with those who have heterodox views. I think that it handles critics quite poorly. I think that its excommunications of John Dehlin and Kate Kelly as well as a number of others (Bill Reel, Sam Young) were in poor taste. For one, higher leaders denied being a part of the excommunications of Dehlin and Kelly and said it was simply a local decision. I find that very hard to believe. Those two excommunications happened right next to each other. Second, these excommunications simply make the leaders look very thin-skinned, unwilling to have conversations about difficult topics, and archaic in their thinking.
Because of the church administration’s role at BYU, knowing that it will fire faculty upon any suspicion of apostasy, and that even students will report faculty for saying things they think aren’t quite in line with the church, I find it often difficult to fully trust what a lot of faculty members say on a number of controversial issues. They know that they have to be careful and finely word everything so as not to appear critical of the church.
One more thing. Trump has been found guilty!
Apologies for not having read the previous comments closely at this point–just saw the post (it did not show up on LDS Blogs for some reason)–but a few comments:
I could go on about all of these issues, but given how late I am to the discussion, I will refrain.
A
““Hate” speech can better be defined as “speech I do not like.”” Nope, not really. I really get immense satisfaction when it’s directed against those I don’t like. Hey. if it’s funny, I’ll laugh, even if it’s directed against groups I support. That’s part of the insidiousness of it. It’s so damn entertaining.
Speech like defamation, threats, and “fighting words” are supposedly not protected by the first amendment. Should people be free from threats of violence intending to intimidate? Gosh, it’s seems like some people here don’t think so. Go free speech.
See if Joe Blow builds a gallows on front yard saying Hang Mike Pense. I’m okay with it, cuz I like it. (Didn’t like it with the hanged Obama effigies, but think people should be free to express their opinion about the most powerful person in the world) But have a gallows on government property while hoards of rioters are rampaging through the Capitol looking for him. No, I don’t approve.
But some dude who’s upset some black family moved next door doesn’t get to build a gallows or burn a cross in his front yard. Especially when they told him their uncle and cousin were lynched. And he’s scaring their little children. In some states, hey slavery was good for the enslaved, so this might be legal. But it’s, so far, not protected by the first amendment
What do I think shouldn’t be protected, Nazi’s parading around concentration camp survivors and celebrating the holocaust. That’s me. Don’t care how funny it is.
A, much of Europe has anti-hate speech laws, and for the better. Europe’s history has witnessed extremism and violence beyond what we’ve seen in the US. Some hate speech simply disturbs the peace, invite violence, and is threatening and intimidating. Engaging hate speech with more speech in many cases can only make things worse. Those engaging in hate speech aren’t generating speech to have a conversation.
On the marketplace of ideas metaphor, our own market has all sorts of guardrails and regulations to make it work effectively. The stock market is vital to US capitalism, and yet we must guard against many offenses such as insider trading.
I think a big part of the problem we are having now is the right is putting out things that several years ago could be prosecuted as defamation. But the Supreme Court of US said that political figures can be smeared with provable falsehoods—no problem because lying about public figures is free speech no matter how damaging or provably false. I don’t think defamation of a public figure should be any different than defamation of any private citizen yet somehow Hilary Clinton lost all rights to protecting herself from any smear campaign the right wanted to put out. Yet that same far right is screaming bloody murder about any provably true statements about Trump. We have created a political climate where the biggest liar wins, then we wonder how a crook like Trump can be elected.
I don’t see free speech only in terms of Clinton/Trump or Biden/Trump.
There are already guardrails on free speech in the US: libel, defamation, slander, threats, intimidation, fraud, inciting violence, conspiracy, perjury, speech which creates an unsafe workplace, and false advertising, to name some (I’m not a lawyer). Some people say burning a cross on a black neighbor’s front yard is speech, or burning businesses during a protest, or trashing college offices, but I see these more as actions, and the state can criminalize most actions.
I don’t want to criminalize speech that might be a crime in some quarters but not in others, or might be a crime depending on who heard it, or why it was said, or depending on the speaker’s race or background. Thus the problem with criminalizing the utterance of the n-word.
The First Amendment recognizes some exceptions to free speech, as I mention in the first sentence in this post, but there is no exception for hate speech, and I think that this is good. Those who seek to create a new exception for hate speech should explain precisely what speech the government would be allowed to suppress and what speech would remain protected. They should also explain how policemen, prosecutors, judges, and juries are supposed to distinguish between what is protected and what is not. For example, will it be illegal for white people to say the n-word, but legal for black people? Do we put a college student in an American literature class in jail when he is says the word while quoting from a literary text? Do comedians get a pass? Does hate speech have to be spoken hatefully to be criminal? If yes, to be used hatefully in whose opinion? the speaker speaking hatefully, or the hearer hearing words of hate, or the bystander who hears only two or three words, but that’s one of them?
To those who want to criminalize hate speech, I think there would be difficulty in define and enforcing it, and in determining what exceptions to allow. I think we’re probably better living with hate speech and growing some thicker skin than with creating laws and penalties that a bureaucracy will have to implement and enforce.
Anna is right, in part. The US Supreme Court’s ruling restricts the ability of public officials to sue for defamation. That was a 1964 case, sixty years ago. And it applies to public officials (and candidates for public office) of all colors, stripes, and hues, both Democratic and Republican. From Wikipedia:
“The underlying case began in 1960, when The New York Times published a full-page advertisement by supporters of Martin Luther King Jr. that criticized the police in Montgomery, Alabama, for their treatment of civil rights movement protesters. The ad had several inaccuracies regarding facts such as the number of times King had been arrested during the protests, what song the protesters had sung, and whether students had been expelled for participating. Based on the inaccuracies, Montgomery police commissioner L. B. Sullivan sued the Times for defamation in the local Alabama county court. After the judge ruled that the advertisement’s inaccuracies were defamatory per se, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Sullivan and awarded him $500,000 in damages. The Times appealed first to the Supreme Court of Alabama, which affirmed the verdict, and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. In March 1964, the Court issued a 9–0 decision holding that the Alabama court’s verdict violated the First Amendment.”
The article continues: “The Court said that because of these core American free-speech principles, it would have to consider Sullivan’s defamation claims ‘against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.'”
So the Supreme Court decision that worked against Ms Clinton worked for Martin Luther King and against the police commissioner in Alabama. I’ll take Ms Clinton’s grief if it helps stop segregation and racism. I think that Ms Clinton would, too. And by the way, not only is it hard for Ms Clinton to sue those who attack her, it is equally hard for Mr Trump to sue those who attack him. It goes both ways.
Anna, you are on to something when you wrote: “I don’t think defamation of a public figure should be any different than defamation of any private citizen.” You may have friends in justices Gorsuch and Thomas. From the Wikipedia article New York Times Co. v. Sullivan: “Thomas reiterated his stance against the New York Times v. Sullivan decision in the Court’s denial to grant certification in October 2023 to hear a case brought by Don Blankenship claiming defamation from news agencies; Thomas argued in a dissent to the denial that NYT v. Sullivan allows news agenices to ‘cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.'” So some (not all) conservatives agree with you that the Supreme Court’s decision in 1964 was wrong and needs to go. They do not hold the majority yet.
Brad D
Many European counties have blasphemy laws. I don’t agree with blasphemy laws (or state religions) I think it’s ludicrous that countries with a history of inquisitions, pogroms, and burning and hanging witches and heretics criminalizes insulting religion. Apostasy as criminal offense, what a concept.
I can see the argument about a need to maintain religious peace(yeah right), but privileging a believers feelings over facts, not so much.
Apparently God is so feeble, he needs zealots and state officials to protect his almighty magnificence.
Sullivan recognizes that the First Amendment specifically protects the freedom of the press, If the press were constrained by the usual limits concerning libel and defamation the press would be unable to operate effectively in real time. The Court in Sullivan set forth a standard of actual malice, as well as knowledge of falsity or recklessly failing to determine the true facts. This standard is only applied to public figures. Fox settled because they knew that Dominion had not illegally changed votes, and knowing that they asserted the contrary with the malicious intent to stir up their viewers. If the plaintiff instead of Dominion had been me, a private citizen, I would only have to prove falsity and not malice.
Holocaust denial and Nazi propaganda are crimes in Germany. Genocide denial is a crime in Bosnia. Given those countries’ history of extreme violence, violence that incited by hate speech I think it makes sense to criminalize that sort of speech given that it could become the basis for regrowing extreme nationalist movements that would perpetuate violence to achieve their political aims. Given the tension in the US that has occasionally burst into violence (although not on the scale of Bosnia or Germany), I think it would make sense to explore criminalizing some forms of very provocative speech. Perhaps QAnon theories or white supremacist rhetoric. Bear in mind that conservatives, who frequently posture as champions of absolute free speech, have been trying to criminalize the teaching of CRT in schools.
Brad D: Bingo on the anti-CRT notion, and that coupled with school vouchers to funnel government funded free public education funds into the hands of private actors including religious people who don’t want their kids to know real history and real science. Again, if they want to do that, I guess have at it, but stealing from public coffers to do it boils my blood.
Brad and Hawkgrrrl: Probably like all of us, I’m been thinking a lot about Trump getting convict on all 34 counts and what this has to do with free speech. Of course Trump complained about Biden and basically threw the entire judicial system under the bus. But, the entire Utah congressional delegation along with the Governor and those running for congress and senate, all Republicans, are doing the same thing with what they are saying. Then I think of all the things they’ve done on the state and national level to limit voting rights, teaching history, science, or any number of other things all in the name of parent rights. I think of how they get “equal” representation to say what they want in the media and never get called out for their blatant lies and misrepresentations. Then I think about talking about in the church foyer after all these church member candidates have slobbered all over themselves supporting Trump and I can imagine people challenging our right to say anything supporting the courts or our system of justice. They’ll talk about Biden and communism, and the Constitution hanging by a thread all in support of a man who was unfaithful with a porn star, lied about it, paid someone to pay her off, and is selling Bibles with the Constitution in it to raise campaign funds. The Hawkgrrrl, you mentioned Vouchers and paying people to either go to private unaccountable schools or to home school their children to indoctrinate them with all the garbage and my blood boils too. We may value free speech but it’s readily apparent that many in the church or in the GOP don’t unless it’s them talking and everyone else listening. We are living in a day when even the very elect will call right wrong and wrong right and bear their testimony to validate their views.
Words and ideas are not violence. Contemporary culture has bastardized the actual meaning of “violence” significantly. Since SCOTUS rulings have been broached, see Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) for the standard that has been in place for five decades with regard to the relationship between speech and violence.
As for restricting speech, I would submit again the question: quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Once speech with which you disagree is banned or criminalized, why would it stop there? As has been pointed out above, partisans of any stripe can use restrictions on speech to attempt to stop speech or ideas with which they disagree (e.g. COVID policies or anti-CRT). The only answer, as mentioned above, is to grow thicker skin and allow the conversation to continue within the expansive bounds established over time under the first amendment.
There are many problems with NYT v. Sullivan, including the definition of “public figures” (almost anyone today can be characterized as such given even a modest online profile) and the expansion of the definition of “press” in the contemporary media landscape. Moreover, I have friends who fall under the 1964 definition of “public figure” for whom the press has had a horrific effect on their reputations and families because of that more elastic perspective–emboldening the press had some worthwhile outcomes (e.g. the Watergate investigations by the Washington Post only eight years later), but it also created a recklessness that has continued to undermine the standing of much of the press in the eyes of the public.
Finally, I agree with the comment above: too much of this (and many other) conversation(s) are overly influenced by today’s political divide. The disdain for either of the 2024 presidential candidates causes so much polarization that realistic, pragmatic conversations simply cannot happen. Further, citing “orange man bad” or “old man incompetent” as the basis for an argument is simply not useful or persuasive, which leads to a lack of true engagement on ideas. That is a tragedy.
One last point and then I will stop. I saw the following announcement today:
Canada is considering a draconian new censorship law called the “Online Harms Act” that would:
– Target speech that “foments hatred”
– Use a standard of “detestation or vilification” (whatever that means)
– Carry penalties ranging from five years to life in prison (for speech!)
– Establish a commission of politically appointed censors who are “not bound by any legal or technical rules of evidence”
This type of legislation (which observers expect to pass and become law in the near future) is the nearly inevitable evolution of speech restriction. I can think of few things that have more potential for abuse and weaponization against one’s political or socio-cultural enemies than laws like this.
Instereo,
Today one of my longtime friends posted a pic of a flag upside down and added another post comparing Trump to Christ, in being convicted falsely, anticipating that Trump will be crucified next.
I just feel ill. And she is/was supposedly so religious. I feel ill that the Republican party, really my party, has supported this man and that so many members of the church (my church) are part of this group.
It’s just really bad for everyone. They really believe the things they are saying. They feel true distress. They can’t see through what I see as misinformation. Of course they see my point of view as misinformation too. What will become of us?
A, you seem given to this sort of naive free speech absolutism.
“Words and ideas are not violence”
Threats aren’t free speech. Georgis listed above a number of areas of speech that are criminal. In my comments I’ve argued that we should take into greater consideration how digital speech can possibly be or lead to criminal acts and explore expanding what is considered defamatory. Trump has goaded Republicans into uncharted territory and regularly pushes the boundaries of free speech. He has cryptically intimidated witnesses throughout his trial. He goes into a lot of grey area and shows his supporters how to do it and get away with it. We need to invade the grey area and set new boundaries.
“Canada is considering…”
Good on Canada. But are you talking about areas outside the US then? What do you think of Bosnia’s criminalization of denial of the Bosnian Genocide? That’s a country that is still on the verge of breaking up and breaking out into violence yet again. It is a country where radical Serbian nationalism could rise again to the detriment of Muslim Bosniaks. There are forms of speech that can’t be negotiated with, that can’t be ignored, that simply need to be shut down. But I don’t know. Maybe you’re OK with say, radical jihadists trying to infiltrate mosques in the US and cryptically radicalize Muslims to undertake violence, who live in the grey zone of seeming threats that they can plausibly deny are actually threats. Or we could keep doing what we’re actually really doing and closely monitor what Muslims do and say and stop extremist ideas in the early stages. Irony of ironies is that many free speech advocates ignore Muslims, Islam, and pro-Palestinian rhetoric. They cry and shout about how free speech is absolute and then when someone says something pro-Palestinian, they cry anti-Semitism and stop at nothing to shut them down.
A
I remember all the shrieking and and hysteria by reasonable men when sexual embarrassment law were put in place. What an affront to free speech.
I saw the movie North Country based on Jenson v Eveleth Taconite Co. While the courtroom scenes seemed hollywood, the workplace scenes felt authentic. No strike that, it seemed toned down.
I guess it’s fine and dandy to create a hostile work environment, cuz free speech, can’t stop some dudes right to say it.
Do you believe women have constitutional protection from discrimination under the fourteenth amendment equal protection clause?
lws329: I agree, it’s sad, I’m sad, and I really am at a loss. I think the saddest thing is that so many of the Utah politicians who are all LDS, have spoken so critically of the verdict and the judicial system and praised Trump in the process. Do they think that doesn’t reflect on the church? Does that embolden many church members to push even harder against the Constitution and this country, which God ordained for the restoration of the Gospel and do so thinking they are saving the Constitution. Where is a statement from the Brethren? Has the shear mass of the MAGA movement in the church paralyzed any action or for that matter free speech from the leaders. It’s all very upsetting.
Maybe I am missing something. I see nothing in A’s posts that is a naive free speech absolution, and nothing that supports harassment in the workplace.
He cited the Brandenberg v. Ohio Supreme Court decision from 1969, in which the Court ruled with zero dissents that the government cannot constitutionally punish abstract advocacy of force or law violation. Justice Douglas, generally considered a hero to liberals (he is often considered to be the court’s most liberal justice ever), concurred, writing separately that “all speech is immune from prosecution, regardless of the governmental interests advanced in suppressing some particular instance of speech” (from Wikipedia).
Also from the article: “Finally, Douglas dealt with the classic example of a man ‘falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.’ In order to explain why someone could be legitimately prosecuted for this, Douglas called it ‘a classic case where speech is brigaded with action.’ In the view of Douglas and Black, this was probably the only sort of case in which a person could be prosecuted for speech.
I am not saying that Justice Douglas was right, but he was perhaps the most progressive justice in history, and he was a strong supporter of free speech. Why? Maybe because he cherished liberty, and he knew how important to liberty free speech is.
The weekend is upon us. Best wishes to all for a safe weekend.
Georgis
Civil libertarian Douglas retired in 1975, at the start of gender discrimination cases.
It wasn’t until 1986 Meritor Savings Bank v Vinson that the Supreme Court first ruled Sexual Harassment violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (if only the court hadn’t chucked the Civil Rights Act of 1857)
Catharine A. MacKinnon, the author of Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination (1979), was co-counsel. Having lived through the Sex wars of the 1980’s, I am aware of much criticism of her work. To quote her opening lines in Weaponizing the First Amendment: An Equality Reading
“Once a defense of the powerless, the First Amendment over the last hundred years has mainly become a weapon of the powerful. Starting toward the beginning of the twentieth century, a protection that was once persuasively conceived by dissenters as a shield for radicals, artists and activists, socialists and pacifists, the excluded and the dispossessed, has become a sword for authoritarians, racists and misogynists, Nazis and Klansmen, pornographers, and corporations buying elections in the dark”
“I see nothing in A’s posts that is a naive free speech absolution”
Here’s what I see.
“Once speech with which you disagree is banned or criminalized, why would it stop there?”
Slippery slope fallacy here.
Trump and his sycophants and goons have given us a treasure trove of speech examples that are borderline threats and incitement to disorder and violence, but are able to maintain plausible deniability that it’s not a threat. Trump posting a photoshopped picture of himself holding a baseball bat over Alvin Bragg’s head is a threat. Any other person would have been prosecuted for that.
“The only answer, as mentioned above, is to grow thicker skin and allow the conversation to continue within the expansive bounds established over time under the first amendment.”
The idea of just “allowing the conversation to continue” and that the offended person is always in the wrong and just a thin-skinned crybaby is naivete. There is no conversation to be had with a former president who threatens violence against a prosecutor, even if he maintains plausible deniability that it wasn’t a threat. If you’re not unnerved and offended by that, then something is wrong with you. Do you own a business? Try exercising some speech and putting a sign that says “Whites Only” on the store front. When asked about it, say, “oh I just mean the color of socks for sale.” There is no conversation to be had with overt or cryptic white supremacy and segregationism and dog whistling. We should simply shut that kind of speech down. Any social media organization is crazy not to moderate comments, which is a form of private censorship. A’s comment is quite naive.
Brad D: When Trump said during the 2016 election that maybe the “second amendment people” would take care of Hillary, I could not believe my ears. It was so shocking at the time, and yet the constant dogwhistles for his supporters to commit violence never ends. Him joking about Paul Pelosi being attacked with a hammer in his own home was another one that was just sickening!