In 2006, at the University of Toronto, my late friend and the brilliant writer and orator Christopher Hitchens gave a speech whose eloquence I could never pretend to emulate, defending the argument that the freedom of speech includes the freedom to hate. At the time, he was castigating the Canadian Government for its legislation regarding hate speech.
Alas, once again the Government has introduced legislation to curb free speech in the name of safety, but this time in even more insidious ways. Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, purports to keep Canadians safe online, but does so by regulating speech that “foments hatred” via civil penalties within a human rights framework that invites abuse.
Under the proposed legislation the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal could fine defendants accused of online hate speech violation up to $50,000, and they could be made to pay up to $20,000 to complainants. Journalist Christine Van Geyn cogently described in the National Post last month the many worrisome features of this aspect of Bill C-63, which resurrects previously repealed attempts to allow hate speech to be penalised via civil rights penalties.
Effectively, complainants bear no financial risks while having large financial incentives to make complaints, while those accused will be responsible for paying thousands of dollars to defend themselves even against frivolous complaints. And complaints can be against anything you have ever written, going back as far as records might exist. As Van Geyn put it: “The process becomes the punishment even if the case does not proceed past an investigation.”
The Canadian criminal code already prohibits supposed hate speech, which is narrowly defined as advocating violence against individuals or groups. A law which allows a tribunal of Government bureaucrats, empowered with the same powers as a federal court — without any of the protections of rules of evidence provided in actual legal proceedings — to decide whether online speech foments hatred, and then to financially penalise individuals accused to have done so, is more than a direct assault on free speech. It is downright Kafka-esque!
But it gets even worse. Toby Young, writing in the Spectator, pointed out an even more dangerous feature of this new legislation.
If the courts believe you are likely to commit a ‘hate crime’ or disseminate ‘hate propaganda’ (not defined), you can be placed under house arrest and your ability to communicate with others restricted. That is, a court can force you to wear an ankle bracelet, prevent you using any of your communication devices and then instruct you not to leave the house…. Anyone who refuses to comply with these diktats can be sent to prison.
If prospect of this kind of thought-police legislation on its own doesn’t give Canadian legislators pause, they might want to learn from the example of Scotland, whose hate speech laws have recently been widely mocked, including quite publicly by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, who has invited authorities there to arrest her for claiming a man cannot become a woman, a biological claim deemed by some to be hate speech.
Beyond the worrisome legal issues at place here, there are deeply misplaced philosophical underpinnings of the newly proposed legislation that I want to focus on here, returning to the brilliant arguments of Hitchens in 2006.
In the first place, aside from your own concern about who may decide whether your own speech is hateful, whom do you trust to tell you what you should not be able to read online? Are you willing to give up the right to learn what others might think before knowing what they actually say? And if they say something unpopular, or something you think was wrong, do you want to give up the right to learn why they say it?
Next, if the speech is so unpopular that some deem it to be hateful, that speech is the speech most worth protecting. I paraphrase a joke Hitchens used to say: if the Pope says he believes in God, one says to oneself, “well he is doing his job”. But if he says he has doubts, then you might say “he may be onto something there”. Speech that is the most difficult to express against the background of political correctness is the bravest, whether or not it may be true. As a host of philosophers have pointed out, by denying the haters their right to express their views, you deny yourself the right to hear them. Hearing them might force you to re-examine your views, which you might decide were wrong. Or alternatively it may force you to come to grips with why you believe what you do. In the end, you come away richer for it.
Although I am an atheist, I come from a Jewish background. As a result I have had my share of antisemitic insults thrown at me online over the past year. When I read something hateful, I first recognise that the person has his own issues to deal with. I can choose to ignore him, which I usually do. Or, depending on the way he says it, I may wonder, if he hates Jews, what is the reason? And I may even respond. Is there something I said, or anyone else said or did, or any government actions that caused this hatred? Is there anything we can do to assuage this kind of hate in others in the future? It may be stupid or ignorant, but shouldn’t be illegal to express reasons why one might hate Jews, or even encourage others to agree with you. What is illegal and should be illegal is to claim that Jews should be killed or harmed, and to encourage others to kill them. There is a profound difference. The first speech can be countered by reason. The second promotes violence against individuals.
Finally, if fomenting hatred is to be forbidden online, what are we to make of religious teachings? There are few books as full of hate, or which have promoted hate more than the sacred books of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Islamic fundamentalists, for example, may claim Islamophobia when the violent teachings of their holy books, and the violent practices carried out in some corners of the world based on them, are called out. But are the hate laws to be applied only to those who then condemn such teachings? And if not, will Online Harms legislation forbid web pages that present the scriptures of these religions, which have in many cases fomented hatred not just for decades but for hundreds if not thousands of years? Will people like me be able to claim $20,000 from every church, synagogue or mosque in the country every weekend when offending verses in the Old or New Testaments or the Koran are recited?
It is a slippery road, and there is no way to avoid it except to defend free speech absolutely against tyrannical legislation like C-63. And more generally, as a matter of fundamental principle, that means defending the freedom to hate.
Lawrence M. Krauss is a theoretical physicist, the President of the Origins Project Foundation, and the author, most recently of The Edge of Knowledge: Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos.
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Christopher Hitchens’ work whether written or spoken was captivatingly incisive, mordant and wry. His seminal ‘God is not Great.–Why religion Poisons Everything’ is what got me hooked from the outset. I recommend listening to his prodigious debating skills on many Youtube offerings where his evisceration of the more meretricious God-botherers is a joy to behold.
Atheopathologies were the great charnel pots of the 20th century, I am not sure what the atheopaths add to the debate in either morality or rationality.
Hitchens the militant atheist or atheopath, did admit about 15 years ago, that the Muslimification and multi-culturalism of the UK would lead to hate speech. In a video he told people to stand up and be heard before it becomes illegal. Well here we are. Some areas of clown world like Canada are further ahead it appears.
This fascism is directed only at Whites and in particular people like myself – Christians. Castro said that ‘old stock Canadians’ and in particular Christians were a menace to ‘democracy’ and must ‘be replaced’. His own words. Isn’t that hate speeech as described in this article?
Muslims, Blacks, non-Whites, mentally ill freaks called Tranny’s, the climate cult, the jab-tards, ‘The Science’ etc can and will say whatever the hell they want.
During Rona the government and jabtards engaged in nothing less than the Jewification of the unstabbed. Punishment? Nada. The pets of state fascism and their industry’s and cults are off limits.
Not difficult to see what these fascist tactics are trying to accomplish.
There is nothing wrong about hating.
It’s what you hate that counts.
But therein lies the problem, because there’s no general agreement on what is justified in being hated. For instance, not so long ago I’d have assumed that there’d be a general consensus on opposing and hating terrorism. This should surely be the stance of anyone living in a civilized society, I naively presumed. But recent history especially has shown us that people we thought of as ‘civilized’ go out of their way to actively support or just condone terrorism. Not only that, they somehow compartmentalize and pick and choose which terrorist organization they deem to be justifiable, which just displays complete hypocrisy, to my mind.
So Manchester arena bomber, London and Bataclan, German Christmas market massacres=’Bad’, but blatant terrorist attack on Israel=’Good’.
How did we get to a place in our once ‘civilized’ society where people would have no problem being vehemently opposed to ISIS but actively support Hamas? I can’t do the mental gymnastics necessary in order to make that make sense, because it is entirely nonsensical to have these double-standards. Rational people either stand against terrorism or they don’t. They do not compartmentalize terror attacks and barbarism.
There are no double standards here, just people making their own choice wrt which other people they consider friends or enemies. Reality is not a movie about itself and good guys/ bad guys is a false dichotomy.
I hate our entire political and media establishment.
Oh Dear Canada what has become of you? I watch in disbelief at the increasing adoption of Iron Curtain practices with no sound of rebellion by the Canadian people just what seems to be meek acceptance.
The truckers fought back and were debanked the latest weapon in the war against the people.
All law’s against something, whether religious or secular, are an expression of hatred or a lack of tolerance toward that action which therefore extends to the people who continue to do those things. This leads to the censorship and therefore hatred of those people by the law.
In a democracy law is of necessity an agreement between the people of what should and should not be censored or hated, and therefore requires that the people are free to be able to discuss the right and wrong of things so as to be able to obtain agreement about what it will in fact formally hate and censor under law.
The introduction of hate speech laws undermines this democratic process, it is a coup d’etat by the governing elite, giving only them the authority to hand down what is to be censored and hated instead. The plebs aren’t allowed to discuss or contribute on certain subjects ,it is a new form of blasphemy law which protects the ruling elites narratives.
The usual excuse is for our safety and security, but denying the proper human agency of the common man, is neither safe nor secure towards surely everyone’s default aspiration for their proper human flourishing.
The author favours prohibition of freedom of speech when he argues that expressing support for violence against someone ought to be illegal. He’s already stepped into the slippery slope he warns against and has conceded his enemy’s argument that free speech isn’t absolute.
I’m not sure that incitement to violence evenly very narrowly defined ought to be illegal but the author’s intolerance of any expression of support for violence makes him an enemy of free speech. I think violence against the architects of lockdown is entirely justified. Why should saying so be illegal?
Hi I don’t think free speech absolutism is a workable approach, and therefore not a way to counter the current encroachment on free speech proper. Free speech requires that reciprocity is necessarily implied, or if you like the golden rule, give unto others the free speech you want for your self. By implication this means that all forms of speech and actions which stop you from expressing yourself should be banned. This is not a slippery slope, it is clearly stopped and ring fenced by reciprocity and the golden rule.
Free speech absolutism is a meaningless phrase. People should certainly have the right to state that other people should be silenced for as long as they’re not trying to enforce that themselves. Wrt to violence, the author is using a loaded example. Where he to swap Jews for Germans, quite a few people would see nothing wrong with demanding that they should be killed or harmed. That’s obviously a loaded example as well, but a realistic one. But what about war in Ukraine? Expressing support for either side is condoning if not encouraging violence against the other. As worded, the statement of the author makes no sense unless for the really unlikely case that he’s really an ideal pazifist who wouldn’t even defend himself or his kin against an actual attacker. He probably isn’t and even if he was, the reality that most people certainly aren’t wouldn’t go away.
I totally agree. People should remember that people have free will. Libel is another matter when harm can be proven.
““The process becomes the punishment even if the case does not proceed past an investigation.”…..That is one way to financially break even a wealthy critic of the state. Think Julian Assaunge, Mark Steyn and many more.
And the leaders of the Canadian Truckers Freedom Convoy, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber have not only been imprisoned, but are being dragged through the courts in exactly that way, “The process becomes the punishment, even if the case does not proceed past an investigation…”
The judge in their case announced that she will take half a year to pronounce “sentence” after the case supposedly concludes this August.
10 stupid arguments against free speech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP2S1-A_FXM
This Jewish author Lawrence Krauss is to be commended for pointing out the appalling hatred in the sacred books of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, not to mention the deep racism of the Hindu/ Muslim/ Buddhist caste system, as well as the cannibalism and human sacrifice of pagan religions worldwide.
But he says “What is illegal and should be illegal is to claim that Jews should be killed or harmed, and to encourage others to kill them.”
And yet the Jewish Torah/Talmud claims over and over that Gentiles should be killed or harmed, and encourages all Jews to do so. As far as I know, that is not illegal, just as slavery is not illegal in Israel, as long as the slave is not Jewish. These ideas are also common in Islam, but not in the Christian New Testament.
So let’s just commend the author for supporting Christopher Hitchens’ courageous defence of the freedom to hate. “Hate Speech” is, after all, an entirely Jewish concept, alien to the western world, originating in “Lashon Hara”.
I am sorry where and in what context does the Jewish scripture say that gentiles should be killed.
Also please be aware of the gross slaughter by atheism, under Stalin, Pol Pot and communist China.
The very best place to find the truth about Judaism is to listen to the few truly heroic Jewish people who courageously tell the truth about Judaism to the world, even though the world, and especially Christians, rarely believe them. These heroic Jews are risking everything to help Christians understand, but Christians close their hearts and minds, instead of listening to these messengers.
The List of Honour of Heroic Jews must include Dr. Henry Makow and Brother Nathanael, as well as Professor N. D. Abrams, now at Bangor University in Wales:
Goyim are Animals- The Talmudic NWO – henrymakow.com
Satan At The Wailing Wall/ NOT ONE STONE LEFT UPON ANOTHER (youtube.com)
Porn Again Jews: Jewish Involvement in the Adult Film Industry. – Bangor University
And if you want to read some of the things the Talmud actually says, see Elizabeth Dilling’s English translation and analysis:
The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today – Elizabeth Dilling (come-and-hear.com)
Also, please be aware that Communism was invented by…
And Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg must also be added to the List of Honour of Heroic Jews, for writing:
The Child-Rape Assembly Line (vice.com)
“Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, a Hasidic Rabbi from the Satmar Community in Williamsburg, created a hotline featuring weekly, impassioned lectures in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English – imploring victims to report sexual abuse to the authorities, while accusing community leaders of silencing the reporting of child abuse. Rosenberg also uses his social media presence to share his opinions on the state of child sexual abuse in the Jewish community, and chronicle his efforts and struggles as an activist.”
“Rosenberg is often shunned by communal authorities, and there have been instances in which he was physically attacked.”
So then, the Jews were first separated out by God through the calling of the patriarch Abram. The point of this calling and separation was so that “all people’s on earth will be blessed through you”, Gen ch12 v3a so where is the kill all gentiles in that? This is essentially the founding reason for the existence of the Jews, anything inconsistent with it, is rubbish.
You’re like a horse with blinkers on.
It is the human condition that is under attack. Hatred, envy, devilishness and evil are all in our rich tapestry whether we are the leaders or, the led and there is no heaven on earth in this regard. We have to live with it and hopefully not suffer but, get wise.
It is so obvious that these protagonists create a greater hell for humanity and themselves through a blindness of our true nature.
Hate speech will be defined as opinions Trudeau does not agree with?