You ban dangerous actions, not speech. When you start censoring speech, you give a very small group of people the ability to silence whoever the please.
Surely it's also true that when you start preventing actions, you give a very small group of people the ability to prevent the actions of whoever they please. It's hard to see the point being made here.
The difference is that when you prevent speech, you can't even discuss changes to the laws. The censorship of speech gives a much different and somewhat hidden form of power.
This is a type of speech, and there's no reason all speech should be regulated uniformly, just as speech and actions should presumably not be regulated uniformly. We could just prevent actions without bothering with speech at all, but (for instance) it seems similarly doable to ban certain forms of speech that cause unreasonable harm while leaving other forms alone.
An argument could be made that this would be yet another slippery slope, but I think at some point every law falls into that category and a society must decide whether the benefits are worth the tradeoff of starting down this path.
The article at best provides some counter-examples, it does not refute the case in general, especially when other commenters in this thread have pointed out counter-counter examples such as in West Germany. The article also does a pretty poor job of the examples it describes; for example, it assumes that the rise in FN is on the backs of those who share the ideas targeted by anti-hate-speech laws, but to support FN one need not have any of the racist views the laws target. The article only shows that the laws have failed to target right-wing thought; it does not speak to their ability to target the spread of far-right ideas which they were designed to do.
The article does not address whether it's a bad idea, rather its entire premise is built upon the fact that whether it's a good or bad idea is preceeded by a question of whether it works. Several commenters in this thread have pointed out that it does work, and is used to this day, from China's authoritarian implementation to the implementation at other points in history.
I think it's reasonable to make the statement: assuming that it does work (and maybe the article is correct - perhaps it doesn't work), would it still be a good idea? What number of people would it need to work on to be a good idea?
> The article does not address whether it's a bad idea, rather its entire premise is built upon the fact that whether it's a good or bad idea is preceeded by a question of whether it works.
An idea that won't work is a bad idea (to me, at least). From the author's point of view, it won't.
> Several commenters in this thread have pointed out that it does work, and is used to this day, from China's authoritarian implementation to the implementation at other points in history.
> I think it's reasonable to make the statement: assuming that it does work (and maybe the article is correct - perhaps it doesn't work), would it still be a good idea? What number of people would it need to work on to be a good idea?
Depends on your definition of works, I suppose. Unfortunately, even if the main objective could be achieved, there are drawbacks. I would not call CCP's implementation a success. Sure, in some ways they have squashed extremist speech, but at what cost? They have also severely curtailed speech which criticizes them. They have created a culture of fear where people self-censor. Eventually, I believe something will have to give. It is simply too early to call it a success or failure at this moment.
