Posted on 07/06/2019 8:12:39 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
Just over a year ago, French President Emmanuel Macron came to the United States to import two different species to Washington. One was a French oak tree and the other was a crackdown on free speech. Ironically, soon after the tree was planted, officials quickly dug it up to send it to quarantine. However, the more dangerous species was his acorn of speech controls, a proposal that resulted in rapturous applause from our clueless politicians.
Ultimately, the tree died and the acorn has not fared much better. While our politicians may applaud Macron like village idiots, most Americans are hardcore believers in free speech. It is in our blood. Undeterred, however, Macron and Europe are moving to unilaterally impose speech controls on the internet with new legislation in France and Germany. If you think that this is a European issue, think again.
Macron and his government are attempting to unilaterally scrub the internet of hateful thoughts. The French Parliament has moved toward a new law that would give internet companies like Facebook and Google just 24 hours to remove hateful speech from their sites or face fines of $1.4 million per violation. A final vote is expected next week. Germany passed a similar measure last year, imposing fines of $56 million.
The French and Germans have given up trying to convince the United States to surrender free-speech protections. They realized that they do not have to: By imposing crippling fines, major companies will be forced into censoring speech under ill-defined standards. The result could be the curtailment of the greatest single invention fostering free speech in the history of the world. And it is all happening without a whimper of opposition from Congress or from most civil liberties organizations.
The move by the Europeans hits in the blind spot of the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment does an excellent job of preventing government action against free speech; most of the laws in Europe curtailing speech would be facially unconstitutional in the United States. However, although protected against Big Brother, we are entirely vulnerable to Little Brother, the private companies that have wide discretion on curtailing speech while controlling a huge amount of speech around the world.
Europeans know that these companies are unlikely to surgically remove content for individual countries. The effect will be similar to the “California Exception.” Under the Clean Air Act, all states are subject to uniform vehicle emissions standards. However, California was given an exception to establish its own, more stringent standards. Rather than create special cars for California, the more stringent standards tend to drive car designs. When it comes to speech controls, Europeans know that they can limit speech not only in their countries but practically limit speech in the United States and other pro-free speech countries.
They are building on past success. In 2013, a group of Jewish students used French laws to sue Twitter to force it to hand over the identities of anonymous posters of comments deemed anti-Semitic. To its credit, Twitter fought to protect anonymity but the European courts ruled against the company and, ultimately, it caved. Anonymity is now being rolled back as rapidly as free speech in these countries.
Macron knows that the European speech-controls are likely to metastasize throughout the Internet. They have already laid waste to free speech in Europe. These laws criminalize speech under vague standards that refer to “intimidating” or “inciting” others based on race or religion. For example, fashion designer John Galliano was found guilty Thursday in a French court on charges of making anti-Semitic comments against at least three people in a Paris bar. At Galliano's sentencing, Judge Anne-Marie Sauteraud read out a list of the bad words used by Galliano to Geraldine Bloch and Philippe Virgitti: “He said ‘dirty whore’ at least a thousand times.”
Likewise, the father of French conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was convicted for calling Roma “smelly.” A French mother was prosecuted because her son went to school with a tee-shirt reading “I am a bomb.” In Germany, a man was arrested for having a ringtone with the voice of Hitler. A conservative politician in Germany was placed under criminal investigation for a tweet on New Year’s Eve in which she accused police of appeasing “barbaric, gang-raping Muslim hordes of men.” Last year, even German justice minister Heiko Maas was censored under his own laws because he called an author “an idiot” on Twitter.
The result of these ill-defined laws is predictable. A recent poll showed that only 18 percent of Germans feel they can freely speak in public; more than 31 percent did not even feel free expressing themselves in private among friends. Just 17 percent felt free to express themselves on the internet, and 35 percent said that freedom of speech is confined to the smallest of private circles. That is called a “chilling effect.”
There are renewed calls in the United Nations to make hate speech a type of international crime. Muslim nations want blasphemy included, while Israel recently called for anti-Semitism to be criminalized. Even in our own country, politicians like former governor Howard Dean (D-Vt.) and various academics have declared that hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment. Just last week, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) called for people to be “prosecuted” for making fun of members of Congress. Worse yet, a recent poll showed that half of college students in the United States do not believe that speech deemed hateful should be protected.
The sad irony of France now leading anti-speech efforts worldwide is overwhelming. Once the bastion of liberty, France is now one of the greatest threats to free speech in the world. It has even cracked down on free speech with criminal investigations. For years, we have been content to watch from our side of the Atlantic and dismiss these trends as a “European thing.” With these new laws, however, it is now a global thing. Macron’s acorn is growing, and this invasive species is about to be unleashed on the worldwide web.
If one cannot universally define “hate speech” then there is no such thing. It is merely free speech, guaranteed in America by the First Amendment. The accelerating factor in this issue is the open borders proponents who are trying to placate extremists new to their country at the expense of their own traditions and native citizen’s historical rights.
“exerted on behalf of the left or the right.”
A third option: on behalf of the two together.
islam is a totalitarian death cult founded by a child rapist.
France is a "private" company. It can do what it wants, and force all the other "private" companies to do what it wants too.
Ping to Semimojo.
So - how much of Twitter does Macon own? Ironic that they protect the real haters and then harass those who point out how hateful the haters are because to do so is "hate speech"...
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