UK Men Arrested For Anti-Semitic Tweets After Football Game 598
magic maverick writes "Reuters reports that three men were arrested for posting anti-Semitic comments on Twitter following the English Premier League match between Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United in October, police said on Friday. 'Two men, aged 22 and 24, were arrested on Thursday in London and in Wiltshire, while a 48-year-old man was arrested at his home in Canning Town in London last week on suspicion of inciting racial hatred. The investigation following the match on October 6 was triggered by complaints about tweets that referred to Hitler and the gas chambers.'
I guess it goes to show, you'd be stupid to use your real name or identifying details on Twitter. Perhaps the British should also work on reforming their laws on free speech (or lack thereof)."
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
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Which is a blatant violation of the first amendment.
You can browse to see post under certain threshold. Don't get your panties in a bunch because you fail at browsing.
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Spurs are on their way to auschwitz
Hitler's gonna gas em again
We can't stop them
The yids from tottenham
The yids from white hart lane
I don't know whether I want that to be illegal but I want the motherfucker to be struck by lightning while sitting on the shithouse.
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Depends on the context of the hate speech. If you're organizing violence, you're not covered. If you're organizing a peaceful demonstration, you're covered. It's a fine line, but everything below that line is allowed.
I can't find the tweets themselves though, so I couldn't give some insight.
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Nice of you to assume everybody in UK have dual US citizenship... get a fuc**ng clue and learn to understand what you read.
Hey, if you are willing to extradite Assange, an Australian citizen, for us enough that he has to hide in a foreign embassy to avoid it, you might as well be Connecticut in terms of whether or not you are a polity subservient to the U.S..
"We are done defining what you ARE, madam; now we are merely haggling over price".
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So, Assange doesn't want to be extadited to be tried for rape, so he hides in a foreign embassy to avoid it.
He was investigated for a sex crime and cleared. After the US put pressure on (presumably to ship him to the US), the investigation was re-opened. He has tried to cooperate, but the investigators refuse to interview him. He's not wanted for trial. He's not trying to be extradited for trial or arrest, but to be interviewed for questioning. Something that has been done remotely before, and this is an unusual case to refuse it. Nobody has answered why it's a standard practice to perform remote interviews
The remedy (Score:2)
The remedy to unwanted speech is speech. And only speech. Any other efforts go towards some purpose other than remedying unwanted speech.
Laws alone don't prevent arrest (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps the British should also work on reforming their laws on free speech (or lack thereof)."
You could be arrested for the same activity in the US under the 18 USC 245 -- Federally protected activities, act. There is the first amendment, but there is some separation between constitutional theory, and law enforcement fact. You might or might not ultimately prevail incourt.
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Not applicable. These guys tweeted something that is supposed to be so racist that they were all arrested. That doesn't do the thing you said- they weren't screaming at a stadium or anything. Also note that one of the teams is closely associated with Jews for some reason that I guess makes sense if you are British, so these guys were probably not REALLY saying anything more than "fuck the Raiders".
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Re: Laws alone don't prevent arrest (Score:3)
Another thing blamed on the left which was actually put in by Thatcher / Major. Like speed cameras and free movement of people in the EU.
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Also note that one of the teams is closely associated with Jews for some reason that I guess makes sense if you are British, so these guys were probably not REALLY saying anything more than "fuck the Raiders".
I think that's it. They're trying to come up with something that will get the other side.
It's like the American right-wingers saying, "Obama is a socialist!"
I predict that one of these guys is going to say, "But I have a Jewish girlfriend," which is what happens all the time in these racial harassment cases in the U.S.
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or "I hate the Redskins"? would that be racist?
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I could, hypothetically, say the words "Christianity is a myth" and be arrested under 18 USC 245. All you need is to have a different religion from me, and claim I made you feel "intimidated" or I "interfered" with you.
Never happens. There's more to the law than the U.S. Code. You have to read the U.S. Code Annotated.
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Perhaps the British should also work on reforming their laws on free speech (or lack thereof)."
You could be arrested for the same activity in the US under the 18 USC 245 -- Federally protected activities, act.
As the American Civil Liberties Union keeps patiently explaining, there is a bright line between words and action.
You can punish action, but not words. You can punish words that lead immediately to action, like shouting, "Let's kill the Jew" in front of an angry mob, but you can't punish free expression, like publishing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (as Henry Ford did) or an interview with George Lincoln Rockwell, head of the American Nazi Party (as Playboy did).
There have been times when the First Am
This is why I don't use Twitter (Score:2, Funny)
My racial hatred is confined to family gathering where I can blame it on my own blood and the alcohol provided.
Posted by a typical American? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Posted by a typical American? (Score:5, Interesting)
isn't it a bit pretentious for somebody not a citizen or residing within a given country to tell them they need to work at making their laws more like your own?
I don't think so. Criticizing someone when you think they're doing something wrong is perfectly acceptable to me. A country isn't immune from criticism just because you don't live in it.
Re:Posted by a typical American? (Score:4, Informative)
I agree with you. I get quite irritated when people in the UK tell me we should emulate them in gun control laws, healthcare laws, or their habit of dropping random 'u's in words where they clearly don't belong. Courtesy requires I refrain from telling the UK how they ought pattern their free speech laws on our First Amendment.
It is enough to say that I am pleased to live where I do, and that I believe the evils of generally-unregulated free speech are far far outweighed by the good.
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I agree with yo. I get qite irritated when people in the K tell me we shold emlate them in gn control laws, healthcare laws, or their habit of dropping random 'u's in words where they clearly don't belong. Cortesy reqires I refrain from telling the K how they oght pattern their free speech laws on or First Amendment.
FTFY. Also, as a UK citizen, can I just recommend you cite some statistics about gun control laws and their effects in the UK... in the 5 years following the hand gun ban in 1997, crimes com
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If you yell "fire" in a crowded theater where there is no fire, you have taken a safe situation and turned it into an immensely dangerous one.
If you yell "fire" in a crowded theater where there is a fire, you are attempting -- as best you can -- to mitigate the risk of an immensely dangerous situation.
The law prohibits shouting "fire" in a crowded theater where there is no fire present. There is no law against alerting your fellow patrons to the fact the building is on fire.
Free speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the British should also work on reforming their laws on free speech (or lack thereof).
The British (and the Europeans) have perfectly adequate laws against hate-speech, which is what these comments were likely caught by. Just because you don't know what those laws are, understand how or why they came about, or how their application works, doesn't mean they necessarily need to be reformed.
Re:Free speech (Score:5, Funny)
when you threaten someone at gunpoint (which is what an arrest is)
Not quite. Maybe in the US but in the UK the police do not usually carry guns so an arrest is not at all like that.. it is more a polite request to accompany the officers to the station for a nice cup of tea. If you don't resist you may also get biscuits. For dramatic effect the officers may sometimes say things like "You're nicked, sunshine" which typically elicits the response "It's a fair cop" from the cooperative arrestee.
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In the UK (Score:2)
I Hate Hate. I'm Intolerant of Intolerance... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate is the defamation of a group.
For example, I hate those who defame blacks by proclaiming blacks to have a higher crime rate than whites.
I hate those who defame Jews by proclaiming Jews to have disproportionate influence relative to their numbers.
I hate those who defame the poor by proclaiming the poor to have lesser capabilities than the rich.
I hate those who defame the rich by proclaiming the rich to have engaged in unfairly acquired their wealth.
I hate those who say that ugly people are ugly.
I hate those who say criminals are criminal.
Hate is Great!
Depends on what they said (Score:2)
It is impossible to form an informed opinion without knowing what they actually said. The article does not elaborate, but it does give some general guidelines. Even as a Jewish Israeli, I have to admit those guidelines are worrying:
Supporters of the club often chant "Yid Army" and "Yiddo" at matches, using a term deemed offensive by some in the Jewish community, but fan groups say the term is used as a badge of honor rather than a derogatory remark.
However, the governing Football Association and police have warned that using the word "Yid" could lead to prosecution and a ban on attending matches.
Okay, so the "badge of honor" claim is bull. These are offensive. They are not (or, at least, should not), however, be criminal.
In my book, it is okay to ban fans who use those terms from attending plays (which is what "more speech" and social consequences is all about), but not,
real names on the Internet (Score:2)
This is a ToS violation, I've made it a habit not to cuss or flame on the written in stone Internet
(if/when my kids search me out) the point being glad I don't do the social networks; I do have a twitter account of many years
that I've never really used, but it's not my real name.
I have youtube and a Gmail account that have become joined at the hip, I log on as Trax and am always asked :}
if I'd rather use my real name Penny Wise
Double Standard (Score:2, Insightful)
Amazing how people frequently bash Muslims, Asians, and Arabs in the UK and nothing happens (even full EDL and BNP rallies in the street), yet an anti-Semitic tweet is cause for arrest. Both are disgusting, but either legalize or ban both.
It started with a good idea (Score:3)
Once upon a time, there was a distinction made between:
"The Holocaust was a good idea"
which is abhorrent but is opinion protected under free speech, and:
"The Holocaust is a hoax"
which is a fraudulent statement of fact which is almost never said out of genuine ignorance, but with a malicious and anti-social - i.e. criminal - intent.
Society has a duty to respond to the latter. The only catch is that there is almost never proof of hateful intent sufficient for a court of law.
Sadly, anti-hate laws degenerated into yet another way for weak-willed politicians to create unequal rights for a particular identifiable minority.
Re:Perhaps not (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe people should be free to speak their mind without being arrested. I'd rather live in a world where someone can call me a name and not be locked up than any alternative.
Nosy Parkers (Score:2)
Re:Nosy Parkers (Score:4, Insightful)
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Your freedom stops, where someone else's nose begins.
Last I checked, looking at tweets was voluntary; perhaps their nose should not have been placed in a known offensive environment in the first place, which would have avoided the problem as well. If I intentionally go looking for red tank tops, I should probably not be surprised when I find red tank tops.
Re:Perhaps not (Score:5, Insightful)
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what fun can you make out of "press 1 for English" ?
Re:Perhaps not (Score:4, Insightful)
what you are advocating is another inquisition.
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Re:Perhaps not (Score:5, Insightful)
Making "racism" illegal is no different that declaring thought crime. When the state can govern your speech and your thought, alls well, as long as you agree with the state. Once you don't, you're fucked. I've always argued, you can easily determine if a law is a good one by the simple thought experiment: "Once we inevitably elect the next tyrant, will this law help or hurt his ascent to power?" What do you think Hitler would have done with such a law? I think it's rather clear.
Re:Perhaps not (Score:5, Informative)
Making "racism" illegal is no different that declaring thought crime. When the state can govern your speech and your thought, alls well, as long as you agree with the state.
Europe has some rather strict hate crime laws because of a certain incident that happened during the 30s and 40s.
It'd be nice if they had strong free speech laws, but their history has led them down a different path.
This was the offending tweet
Spurs are on their way to auschwitz
Hitler's gonna gas em again
We can't stop them
The yids from tottenham
The yids from white hart lane
There's also some other related tweets, but they link to pictures that are now gone.
Re:Perhaps not (Score:5, Insightful)
The way I would prefer to make sure that nothing like the Holocaust ever happens again is to publically ridicule the neo-Nazis, not send the police after them. The entire country pointing and saying "You people are crazy and dangerous" is a better safeguard than throwing some folks in jail. (Hitler got thrown in jail too, and look what happened to him...)
You cannot ban your way into removing things from society.
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Nothing convinces one that hate groups haven't a worthy thought in their heads faster than hearing them speak.
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to the educated, informed and intelligent, yes.
but most people don't fit that classification.
if what you said was true, we would have not race or culture-inspired wars. and yet, we did and still do.
if you let racists speak, they WILL find a following. not everyone will point and laugh at them, as much as we'd like it to be so.
you give humanity too much credit.
Re:Nothing comvinces the haters they're right (Score:4, Interesting)
Nah. If they're ordered to shut up they'll just decide it's because they were telling some sort of uncomfortable truth and then they'll play on the whole oppression thing.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Europe has some rather strict hate crime laws because of a certain incident that happened during the 30s and 40s.
Seems like they didn't learn from their experience. Just look at how common neo-nazis are in Germany and Austria today.
The lesson Europe should have learned isn't that hate-speech enabled hitler, it was that hitler put words to what a great deal of people already believed. The hate speech wasn't the cause of the problem, it was a symptom. Make it illegal and all they accomplish is to make it harder to diagnose the problem in the future.
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That's a song fans sing at the game to annoy the Spurs fans. I think it originated with Chelsea fans.
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I thought no-one noticed because the propagation time of sound across a stadium makes it impossible to keep everyone in sync - all most people can hear is a slurred vaguely voice-like sound.
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Europe has some rather strict hate crime laws because of a certain incident that happened during the 30s and 40s.
It'd be nice if they had strong free speech laws, but their history has led them down a different path.
why do american "news" people say "n-word" ?
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Because it would cause a backlash with their viewers. It certainly wouldnt get them arrested, though it might get them fired.
Surely you see the difference between the two?
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This was the offending tweet
Spurs are on their way to auschwitz
Hitler's gonna gas em again
We can't stop them
The yids from tottenham
The yids from white hart lane
I can put up with that. I've seen worse in T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Shakespeare.
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These kinds of laws would make sense if the problem in Nazi Germany had been that individuals were racist and committing crimes against each other while the German government was powerless to intervene. But that's not what happened.
What happened in Nazi Germany was that an overly powerful German government was passing laws restricting free speech, restricting political protests, restricting the r
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Free speech is not the cause of what happened; that's absurd. If they actually cared about ideas like freedom of speech, they wouldn't sacrifice those ideals even if doing so would give them safety (and it doesn't).
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"Once we inevitably elect the next tyrant, will this law help or hurt his ascent to power?" What do you think Hitler would have done with such a law? I think it's rather clear.
Rather clear? Yes, he'd have ignored it, because his ascent to power was built on populism and illegal thugs, not on obeying the technicalities of existing laws. Once he got into power, the presence or absence of the law would be irrelevant, because he'd control the judiciary.
I don't see how your thought experiment helps. It just tells us that consideration of tyrants is the wrong way to think about these laws.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is so true.
Besides, i prefere to know who the racist are. Words do not hurt anyone unless the are directing violence at someone or something similar. That point is even debatable. But you knowing who the racist are makes it a hell of a lot easier to know who you do not want around and if some action truly is racist rather than circumspect. I mean how do you really know an employer or manager is a racist and the low minority employment rates are not because of that instead of the lack of qualified appli
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In America, how much blood will need to be spilled in order to gain back the ability to scream "fire" in a theater, or to slander someone and harming his profession? None at all, because there's nothing to gain and much to lose from that kind of freedom. And who gets to draw a line between free speech and putting public safety at risk? It is commonly accepte
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Re:Perhaps not (Score:5, Insightful)
'The People' of course.. For example, north korea is a 'People's Republic'!
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You, sir and or madame, are the worst kind of imbecile. Because as soon as you accept the notion that speech should be censored, you put someone else in the position of deciding which speech is to be censored.
Yes, that does mean you have to put up with all sort of racists, anti-semites, and plain old lunatics spewing anything they feel like. That's far better than
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You, sir and or madame, are the worst kind of imbecile. Because as soon as you accept the notion that speech should be censored, you put someone else in the position of deciding which speech is to be censored.
Just about everyone accepts the notion some speech should be censored, I think. From Wiki [wikipedia.org] : "In practice, the right to freedom of speech is not absolute in any country and the right is commonly subject to limitations, as with libel, slander, obscenity, sedition (including, for example inciting ethni
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or, perhaps western society should grow a thicker skin instead of having its governments ruin lives with criminal records just for offhand comments. Coddling these crybabies just give the wannabe tyrants more justification..
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This. People can complain as much as they want about the lack of free speech, but I'd much prefer living in a country that my rights to privacy are properly respected* over being allowed to say what ever I want. It would be interesting to see when the protections against employers snooping into their employees pasts were implemented, and what prompted it.
* In the Netherlands you are not allowed to publish the name or a photo of someone unless they have been convicted of a crime. In short, they take innocent
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Re:Perhaps not (Score:5, Insightful)
This! It's always the racist Republicans in the USA that whine constantly about free speech.
But where do you draw the line? If the government has the authority to arrest someone for hating Jews, then why can't they also arrest you for hating Republicans?
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Easy. You don't. Because the people never gave YOU the right to draw lines for them. And if you think, well, this one time I'll delegate line-drawing authority on this subject, to these people... you just set the precedent and people you never expected will inherit powers to draw lines you never wanted.
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well we can't legalize gay marriage because then we have to legalize marriage to dead people and marriage to dogs
and we can't legalize marijuana because then we have to legalize methamphetamine and heroin
i'm being sarcastic in both statements: those statements, and you, are relying on what is called the slippery slope, which is a logical fallacy
it's also kind of strange to see people using it when arguing against what they perceive as hysteria and fear, since the slippery slope is basically hysteria and fea
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it's also kind of strange to see people using it when arguing against what they perceive as hysteria and fear, since the slippery slope is basically hysteria and fear instead of logic
Says the person arguing against perceived hysteria and/or fear...
One use of the slipper slope is to note where others are actually falling down it. Sort of like pointing out the slippery slope of a "war on terror" which leads to a despotic war against privacy in that it's an actual slippery slope one tends down if you are being an overly frightened hysteric absolutist.
i understand why the laws exist, as defined within a narrow scope. and i don't believe that scope will change, because i have faith in people's ability to think
Right, so I think you've missed the point of what we're talking about here. And that is: Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words wi
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well we can't legalize gay marriage because then we have to legalize marriage to dead people and marriage to dogs
The problem with gay marriage being legal or not is that the state is still involved in any way whatsoever with the institution of marriage. Anything you add on top of that is frosting the turd that is state involvement in ratification of marriage in the first place.
There are historical reasons for state involvement, most having to do with incentivizing population growth to fill empty spaces which are no longer empty, and for providing soldiers for wars which should no longer be fought, and a tiny fraction
Re:Perhaps not (Score:5, Insightful)
look: it's easy for americans to grandstand and showboat on this issue, because they didn't have something happen in the usa within 80 years ago which consumed the lives of millions of people because of a hateful, racist ideology.
Ever think the reason we didn't have that happen is because of freedom of expression? That the worst that's happened here never got to those proportions because people were free to talk about it both to blow off steam and to have their hate publicly refuted?
The one thing that the US does better than any European state is cultural integration. Freedom of expression is a big part of that, we air our dirty laundry right out there in public for all to see, to duke it out in the marketplace of ideas. It ain't pretty at all, but there is no pretty solution, only varying degrees of effectiveness and they are all ugly. We let those assholes have public freak-outs so that the people on the fence can hear the response from the sane ones.
When you censor speech it doesn't go away, it only goes underground where there is no voice of reason to point out the flaws. The cure for bad speech is good speech, not silence.
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as opposed to the racist/sexist democrats who blatantly build race/sex-based protectionist law into the system instead? The fact they do this under the guise of fighting discrimination on these attributes makes it doubly galling.
Today Antisemitism Comes From The Left (Score:2, Insightful)
In the United States, Antisemitism overwhelmingly comes from the political left [washingtonpost.com], both the Occupy Wall Street crowd and the victimhood identity politics left that regard Islamists and Palestinians as protected species.
There are also significant amounts of Antisemitism among liberal black politicians. Indeed, Jesse Jackson seems to have lost no political influence after calling new York City Hymietown [thecrimson.com].
These arrests bear this out. (Score:2)
Because the "right" would have had absolutely no issues with the men for tweeting anti-"Arab" messages.
Those "raghead" jokes will always be popular, but woe betide the dumb bastard who ever criticizes Jews or Israel.
It's with enormous regret that I can say this as both a Jew and an Israeli.
Somewhere, sometime we lost whatever tolerance and sense of humor we may once have possessed.
(Yes, I know: Someone will instantly reply "In Auschwitz and Dachau." How astute of you.)
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Somewhere, sometime we lost whatever tolerance and sense of humor we may once have possessed.
Fortunately, we haven't lost all our sense of humor. http://www.evcomics.com/ [evcomics.com]
Re:Today Antisemitism Comes From The Left (Score:4, Insightful)
To say that Palestinians have been subjected to a form of genocide at the hands of the state of Israel is hardly 'antisemitism'.
How is it antisemitism? Israel is a nation with a parliament, army, laws. It is not Judaism itself. Much of the population is Jewish and virtually all of the genocide has been conducted by people who happen to be Jews.
But to call it genocide is not being 'against Jews' any more than calling the Nazi-era holocaust genocide is being 'against Germans'. It doesn't make sense in the context of Germany and it just doesn't make sense in the context of Israel.
The people who drive the bulldozers that flatten Palestinian houses and kill old folks who are still in them? I hate them and the fact that they are Jewish makes absolutely no difference to me. Ariel Sharon, who slaughtered Egyptian prisoners of war in cold blood, I hate him and the fact that he is Jewish is completely irrelevant.
Re:Today Antisemitism Comes From The Left (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not an OWS guy (though I do have sympathy for some of their complaints), I'm decidedly on the traditionalist right (hence my agreement with OWS that something should be done about the accumulated and centralized power of banks), and I'm no fan of Islamic fundamentalism. That being said, I do think humans ought to be a protected species. At the very least, humans ought not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property unjustly. Of course, I'm sure you regard Palestinians as human.
Re:Today Antisemitism Comes From The Left (Score:5, Informative)
In the United States, Antisemitism overwhelmingly comes from the political left [washingtonpost.com], both the Occupy Wall Street crowd and the victimhood identity politics left that regard Islamists and Palestinians as protected species.
This accusation is so utterly stupid that it requires a Jew smarter than me to answer it.
http://forward.com/workspace/assets/images/articles/Eli_OWS_greyscale-FINAL-greyscale-for-web.jpg [forward.com]
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In the United States, Antisemitism overwhelmingly comes from the political left, both the Occupy Wall Street crowd and the victimhood identity politics left that regard Islamists and Palestinians as protected species.
You realize that the "left"/"right" tag on the "Occupy Wall Street" and "Tea Party" people has a lot more to do with keeping them from getting together and forming a single "Throw the Assholes Out" party with some real teeth than it does with them having left/right leaning ideologies on their own, right?
Armchair linguist (Score:3)
By the way, totally irrelevant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_antisemitism [wikipedia.org]
"The history of antisemitism - defined as hostile actions or discrimination against Jews as a religious or ethnic group - goes back many centuries"
Re:Perhaps not (Score:5, Informative)
if you know anything of history you'll realize it's the Democrats who are the party of hate and bigotry.
Quick history lesson.
Up to the 1960s, the southern Democrats (the Dixiecrats), were the party that supported the Confederacy, Jim Crow, discrimination, etc. The northern Democrats were completely opposed, and they had big fights in the nominating conventions. The Republicans were also opposed.
When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which started us on the way to ending discrimination, he said that it would probably cost the Democratic Party the South.
He was right. Nixon adopted the "Southern Strategy" for the Republican party, which was to appeal to the racist southern whites. It was successful. They won elections, and racist Democrats went over to the Republican Party.
So the Democrats were the party of Southern racism. They are (imperfectly) not today. When they reformed, the Republicans eagerly took their place as the party of Southern racism, which is where they are today.
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back then the democrats were the conservatives
Yes they were, and Lincoln was a Republican. Democrats wanted things to stay the way they were, with slavery, not without.
Keep in mind they were also the ones against integration in the south later.
No need to rewrite at all.
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Or perhaps hate speech should only be a crime when it's directed at a specific person or persons.
I don't really see why you shouldn't be able to insult someone in specific.
If you make derogatory comments or threats toward a general group, that's not really hurting anyone.
Careful. You're giving people who despise free speech some leeway, here. Is offending someone the same as hurting them? I do not believe it should matter whether you offend them or not.
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It's already against the law to make threats.. I question whether that's a good idea, because it just gives passive aggressives another outlet to make false accusations.. Laws against 'hate speech' allow even more of this. Fuck that.
I swear, western society is going feral. People need to learn to graduate junior high again, with the lessons they're supposed to learn about handling social adversity intact. The only way this is going to happen is if we take control of school policies away from the soccer
On Racism and Hate Speech (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it remarkable that the world we live today, especially those in the West, people are trying to outdo each others in the "I am the best counter-racist there is" competition.
Who is *NOT* a racist ?
Who *DARE* to say that he or she is absolutely 100% free of racism ?
I am not here saying that racism is a good thing, but to point out that RACE is something that is deeply ingrained into what we are.
It's in our psyche, it's in the genes, man.
And regarding "Hate Speech" ... this bastard child of the Political Correct movement is DOING MORE HARM than good in the society.
What actually constitutes a "Hate Speech" ?
If you call a black a "nigger" is it a hate speech ?
Then what if a black person calls another black person a "nigger", is that a hate speech too ??
How about calling a Chinese a "chink", is that a hate speech ?
As a Chinese, (I can only speak for myself) I've met people who tend to describe me with many kinds of very very creative adjectives, and whenever that happen, you know what I do ?
I say "Thank you".
I thank them for letting me know how they feel about me.
It's better that I know how they feel about me up front, than to have someone who keep their grudges hidden and then backstab me at any given chance they get.
Furthermore, I respect their human rights - including their rights to say whatever they want, with their mouths.
Let me put it this way ...
I am born with a mouth, a mouth that is belonged to me. Ever since I was born, I have had the veto power over my own mouth, which includes each and every single words that I've spoken.
And as I do not wish to have other people having the veto power over my own mouth, I do not want to have the same veto power to control other people's mouths.
For me, this "Hate Speech" thing by itself is hateful.
It's a tool used by hateful people to limit other people's rights.
It's a tool to propagate hate, to make the society more hateful.
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Yes. It is 100% agreed that the use of that word by non-blacks in the present day is grossly hateful and in fact a "fighting word". This gradually came about. The word is a derivative of the word "negro", which is simply a spanish word meaning "black". However, even "negro" (almost universally) and "black" (by some people) are now considered disrespectful. Heck, even "african american" is considered offensive by some. Sensitivities are deeply pe
Re:On Racism and Hate Speech (Score:4, Insightful)
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Uh, no, I don't recall saying anything like that. I certainly don't believe anything like that.
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No, because it is not said with hateful intent.
It is interesting how you consider intent in this scenario, but you don't when a non-black uses the word. To me, intent is always relevant.
So does the fact that you can be arrested for wearing only the covering nature gave you in public. Or that public displays of affection beyond a certain degree are considered rude and can even get you arrested.
All of those seem silly to me, and not just in the abstract. These are violations of freedom.
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And it is in our "gene" to also (as men) widely spread our sperm in as many nubile women as possible, them willing or not, and it is in our "gene"
(as women) to sleep wizth as many strong men as possible. Yet you don't see women sleeping with any men passing by,
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Antisemitic behavior got you the death sentence in the Soviet Union. Watch your tongue, goy.
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Yes, if the government succeeds in saddling their indigenous population with sufficient disincentives to breed, work, and be prosperous..
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Re:Not a problem for long (Score:4, Informative)
That RT article is bogus. This [ons.gov.uk] shows that Islam rose 2% from 3% to 5% - in the same period, "no religion" rose 10% from 15% to 25%. Islam is still a tiny religion in the UK. The increase in non-UK born Christians was larger than the _total_ increase of Muslims. The decrease in UK born Christians is almost entirely because of the rise in "no religion".
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"This isn't good for anyone."
Despite the beliefs of some who are ignorant of history, censorship has never been good for anyone.
Prohibited speech is just like other prohibited behavior: it just gets driven underground, where it festers.