Here’s a good example of my point that the idea of what constitutes inalienable rights is not universal and may not even be shared among countries that are closely related. The French have arrested a comedian on the charge of being an apologist for terrorism:
Notorious French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala has been arrested for being an “apologist for terrorism†after suggesting on Facebook that he sympathised with one of the Paris gunmen, a judicial source has said.
Prosecutors had opened the case against him on Monday after he wrote “Tonight, as far as I’m concerned, I feel like Charlie Coulibaly†– mixing the slogan “Je suis Charlieâ€, used in tribute to the journalists killed at magazine Charlie Hebdo, with a reference to gunman Amédy Coulibaly. Dieudonné was arrested on Wednesday.
Here in the States Dieudonné’s remarks would have made a lot of people angry and you might even have been able to get a warrant for his arrest in Podunk, Mississippi but it would have been thrown out in court as a violation of the First Amendment.
Hat tip: memeorandum
Elsewhere it’s reported that 54 have been arrested, none directly involved with attacks, but not certain if the same grounds as the comic:
“In its message to prosecutors and judges, the ministry said it was issuing the order to protect freedom of expression from comments that could incite violence or hatred. It said no one should be allowed to use their religion to justify hate speech.”
I’m not sure this is that different from the U.S. Is the First Amendment the only thing that keeps hate speech from being criminalized? Some of our “conservative” groundings (adherence to 18th century principles) some times makes the U.S. more liberal in some ways.
As I understand our law “incitement” is much more narrowly defined. You’d need actually to be encouraging violence in some proximate way rather than just lending verbal support to those who are perpetrating violence.
I agree, but what I’m getting at is that I believe there is broad political support in our country (or at least in blue states) for laws against “hate.” In 1992, the SCOTUS ruled that a Minnesota law that criminalize burning a cross on the front lawn of a black family was unconstitutional. (Notably, the law used was not an arson or trespass laws, but one that criminalized the burning of a cross or use of hate symbols like swastikas) It’s really the SCOTUS, an elite undemocratic institution, that is interfering with a political process that might be closer to France.
Another way of explaining it, the difference in outcomes is probably more about burden-shifting than anything. In France (and most of Europe) the assumption is that the state will act responsibly in mediating various social values. We’ll see if these arrests ever amount to anything. In the U.S., the assumption is that the state will eventually abuse power. Sure, burning a cross on someone else’s lawn is so clearly wrong, but what if it’s not really a cross, and what if the swastika is an old dutch symbol, so many slippery slopes introduced, let’s throw it all out.
That gets to something I’d intended to work into another post. Government, even authoritarian government, requires a certain level of consensus to function. The more centralized the government the stronger and more comprehensive that consensus must be. Denmark’s government can do things that would be considered intolerably tyrannical here because there’s a consensus to support it. Most of the population is ethnically Danish, most of the population is (at least traditionally) Lutheran, and so on. There’s a broad and deep consensus.
What I think is happening in Europe is that with the influx of immigrants who have drastically different views of what’s good, true, and beautiful, the consensus is breaking down and with it an entire approach to government. They can become much, much more totalitarian or they can decentralize. The first instinct is towards totalitarianism.
The potential change in Europe that I think means the most to the U.S. is the UK becoming part of the Continent. I do think there are significant philosophical differences between the British and French Enlightenments. And the EU project appears to subvert the former for the latter in the name of technocracy. We have technocrats too.
Well then thank goodness for the Supreme Court (and the Constitution) protecting us from our own stupidity.