From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Many people say that chant is a call for genocide. Erasing the state of Israel. It’s a call for the end of the world’s only Jewish state and its people. From the river to the sea!
If they are advocating genocide, should that chant then be illegal? The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, but there are exceptions. Laws forbid speech that incites “imminent lawless action.” Now Democrats and Republicans in the House have approved a bill making saying “from the river to the sea” illegal discrimination at universities. If it becomes law, that would be something new for America.
Here even hateful speech has been legal. That’s not true in most of the rest of the world. Most countries now have laws against what they call hate speech. And Canada’s about to pass a law that would imprison people for life if they advocate genocide. We stand with the Palestinian resistance and their heroic and brave action on October 7th.
Who’s going to be the determinant, determiner of who’s going to be prosecuted? Canadian Ezra Levant, founder of the media outlet, Rebel News, fights for free speech. Life in prison for saying the wrong thing. I’m worried about a law like that, that gives a politician the chance to criminalize his peaceful opponent. Some countries criminalize their opponents now.
A Brazilian judge recently ordered Twitter to block popular accounts that support the former Brazilian president.
This crusading judge says, take the accounts down, I’m not going to tell you why. Elon Musk said no. We will lose revenue, but principles matter more. He called the judge “Brazil’s Darth Vader,” and he does resemble Vader.
You believe misgendering a transgender person is a hate crime. Why? Scotland recently banned misgendering Well gender is a protected characteristic just as much as race. Calling her a man could get you seven years in jail. The politician who pushed the law says, don’t worry!
Unless your behavior is “threatening or abusive and intends to start up hatred,” then you have nothing to worry about.
Nothing to worry about, unless “a reasonable person” views the speech as “insulting” and “likely to result in hatred.” Do you have any idea how serious this is? Harry Potter’s creator sees the problem. J.
K. Rowling says Scotland’s new anti-hate crime law is a threat to free speech. She wrote: If the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal. “Freedom of speech and belief are at an end.” This made her enemies!“Slit her throat,” says one. J.K. Rowling? Not a good person!
But Rowling won’t back down. The day Scotland’s new law took effect, she intentionally broke it by misgendering some trans people on Twitter, she said these “aren’t women, but men.” “I look forward to being arrested.” J.K.
Rowling has the wealth to fight a strong defense. She said, anyone who’s charged under this, I’m going to repeat their words. Let them come after me. Scottish police chose not to. If you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent simply on the grounds that they have offended you, you have crossed a line to stand alongside tyrants.
She and Elon Musk, are the two people in the world who have done more to stop cancel culture. In Britain, police enforce cancel culture. Police there arrest people who criticize so called marginalized groups. Remind me again why I’m being arrested? This man was arrested just for retweeting this image.
Four progress pride flags put together, so they form a swastika. He wasn’t supporting Nazis. Just arguing that the woke movement is totalitarian. You should not be doing this to me. I expect my freedom of speech.
They handcuffed him. Why did they handcuff him? Was he some physical menace? I don’t think you’re reducing the hate when you police it in that way.
But polls show: Most people say, yeah, we should have rules against spreading hate.
But every once in a while, the ability to speak the truth is a more pressing value. Even if we’re going to hurt a feeling, even if we’re going to upset the apple cart, that’s what freedom of speech means. It means it trumps those other values. Canada’s laws now give politicians power over people’s speech. Levant’s been charged multiple times.
I wrote a book about Justin Trudeau, a knockoff of The Sopranos. I called it the Libranos because he’s with the Liberal Party, oh he hated that book. He hated the cover art, which looked like he was a mafioso, and so, I was prosecuted. What was your marketing plan. Levant was called before investigators working for Elections Canada.
Was it political advertising? Canada has laws against unregistered political ads. But Levant asked the investigators: Is anyone in your office investigating any other books about Justin Trudeau or just the book that’s critical of him? They convicted me. They fined me.
Five years later, I’m still in court over a book that criticized Justin Trudeau. Organizations like yours continue to spread misinformation and disinformation. Now Trudeau is pushing that law imposing life in prison for hate speech. Canadians must like this, he gets re-elected. A lot of Canadians and Americans and Brits want a net nanny, but for the other guy.
It’s important that everyone have free speech. Give people that peaceful outlet for their grievance. You need that in case of fire break glass freedom of speech when there’s a crisis, when you just need to speak the truth.
If you cork them up, if you don’t let them have the safety valve of free speech, they’ll explode in another way, possibly including violence. I think there’s a correlation between the countries that have the least freedom of speech and countries that have violent terrorism.
Free speech is a preventive mechanism that prevents an escalation of problems. Canada’s punishing certain speech with life in prison will discourage some from speaking their truth. We’re a laboratory of bad ideas. It’s good that so far, American police, when they make arrests, say the arrests are for trespassing, or property damage, not speech. I don’t agree with what these people say, but I’ll defend everyone’s right to say it.
Here at Stossel TV, we support free speech. In a few weeks, we’ll post our full interview with Ezra Levant about free speech and its enemies.
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