France’s parliament has just passed a law that forbids denying that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 constituted genocide. This has infuriated Turkey which has suspended military, economic, and political ties with France.
Outlawing points of view, however much you disagree with them or think them repugnant, is never a good idea. When ideas are suppressed, we all lose. Even bad ideas cause us to think. Countering bad ideas is a good way to sharpen good ideas.
This is related to why I also oppose ‘hate crimes’ legislation. If you attack someone and hurt them, it is the intent to harm and the degree of injury suffered that should be the prime determinants of the punishment, not the motives for the attack. The idea of ‘hate crimes’ is usually the precursor to the censorship of ideas that lie behind the hate. And once you start censoring ideas, minority views tend to suffer the most.
The best counter to speech that you disagree with is more speech.
The Truth™ cannot be determined by legislative fiat. In this particular case, everyone knows the Turks are either lying or deluded when they deny the Armenian genocide. However next time creationism or Holocaust denial or some other non-truth may be legally declared to be The Truth™.
The French government definitely screw up royally with this particular law.
Couldn’t agree more. The best way to counter bad ideas is to allow them out in the open where they can be openly refuted. The only thing the French legislature done here is force these ideas underground where credulous listeners may hear of them without any accompanying criticism.
I think a lot of hate crime opposition comes from not understanding the historical context behind hate crime legislation. Essentially, hate crimes are terrorism. They’re acts of political violence that are committed targeting not just the immediate victim but anyone else that would identify in some way with the victim. The history matters in that this grow out of things like anti-lynching legislation, as lynching is also a form of terrorism.
“If you attack someone and hurt them, it is the intent to harm and the degree of injury suffered that should be the prime determinants of the punishment, not the motives for the attack.”
But that’s never been true. The law has always considered means and motive as both mitigating and aggravating factors in deciding just punishment for a crime. There’s a difference between crimes of passion, crimes of opportunity, and crimes “with malice aforethought.”
For example, there’s a difference between shoplifting in a moment of desperation, and shoplifting as part of a criminal enterprise. There’s a difference between killing your wife when you find her with another man, and planning, executing, and covering up her murder as part of a conspiracy to defraud an insurance company. Motive matters, and always has.
This is all old news, and has been part of Common Law for centuries. The only thing “Hate Crimes” legislation does is add bigotry to the already long list of factors that can aggravate a crime.
If anything, hate crimes legislation eliminates a weakness in existing law, in that, with a sympathetic judge and jury, bigotry is often considered a mitigating factor in violent crime. (See, e.g., the American Deep South and lynching.)
I absolutely agree that making an unpopular opinion illegal is the height of folly. The unpopular opinion can only be dealt with by being heard and refuted. If it cannot be refuted that makes the point that just because an opinion is unpopular does not make it untrue. Once we go down the road of whose opinions are allowed and whose are banned, we then get into the question of who gets to decide the matter. Even the most knowledgeable people on a given subject can be wrong, if they can use the law to prevent people from pointing out that they are wrong they will stay wrong for ever. Is that really what we want?
I am unaquainted with the details of this particular massacre. I assume that it is overwhelmingly supported by historical and archeological evidence and that those who are pretending that it didn’t happen are doing so for nationalistic reasons.
I live in the UK, my country used to have an empire. The process of building this empire involved much arrogance and brutality. It also spread some arguably positive values around the world. All of this happened before I was born, I cannot be held responsible for any of it. Though I might have benefitted by being born into a prosperous country, I can’t change the past. These thoughts and the evidence that this massacre actually happened will have a better chance of dealing with these opinions than banning them. However unlikely, it may be possible that the incident didn’t happen and that those who are now banned from denying it are right.
While I basically agree I cannot close my eyes for the other side of the coin. Would you have written the same if you were the son or the grandson of victims of genocide? I certainly not. I think the adherents of free speech at all cost tend to neglect empathy a bit.
“The best counter to speech that you disagree with is more speech.”
You’re an optimist. Alas genocide deniers belong to the same category as creationists: not susceptible for reason with the same bag of logical fallacies. The difference is that creacrappers do not hurt feelings.
My family and I did once have to go into hiding for a week because mobs were rampaging the streets looking for people of my ethnicity and murdering them and setting fire to their homes and other property. I have had relatives brutally murdered, again purely on the grounds that they were the ‘wrong’ ethnic group. So I do not come by my commitment to free speech casually.
The point of free speech is not to persuade those who are arguing against you. I agree with you that that rarely works. The point is to persuade the large mass of largely silent observers. Prejudices tend to benefit from darkness. The problem is not that bigots and hate-mongers are allowed to speak. It is that those who oppose them do not speak more.
Back in 2000, France and Germany made the mistake of trying to hold Yahoo accountable for the actions of its users regarding the sale of Nazi memorabilia.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/35754/germanys_yahoo_bans_auction_of_nazi_items.html
Denying atrocities is as reprehensible as advocating atrocities, but they’re not the same legally.
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