Can you bullet point some of the key differences, for people who want to learn but don't have time to read the entire text of two different bills? It seems like you have done this work already, and it would be a valuable contribution to the discussion.
I have not "done this work already" (I have read but summarising and bullet pointing is separate work).
The tone of your comment seems facetious - you seem to be expecting me to accept the burden of you being informed enough to comment on a topic. If you want to form an opinion on a topic I'd suggest doing the work learning about it. If you're too lazy to, I'd suggest refraining from commenting in ignorance (though I guess I can do nothing to prevent you).
Your original comment made it seem like you had read the bills you were accusing others of not understanding as well as you, so I was giving you an opportunity to lay out some evidence or make an argument.
> I was giving you an opportunity to lay out some evidence
While the is very generous of you, typically I find in these matters it's customary to place the burden of evidence on the person making the initial claim (in this case that being the the bill is a repeat of / resembles Ireland's old blasphemy laws)
Just for context on the publication here - "Persuasion" seems to be a Substack blog run by Yascha Mounk, a US political commentator who's mostly known for campaigning against "multinationalism" in Germany.
The points made in the article aren't a reflection of broad public sentiment within Ireland - in particular the following statement:
> Despite outcry from civil-liberties activists, the bill sailed through the lower house of Irish Parliament
Civil-liberties activists within Ireland are overwhelmingly in favour of the bill. The word "outcry" links to an article reporting that Donald Trump Jr is against the bill, and that the Irish Council for Civil Liberties supports it.
In short: this is blogspam wildly misrepresenting its own references.
I would imagine that some civil liberties unions would have a lot of trouble with criminalizing "hatred". Not sure how accurate that fits the bill, but if it does, it wouldn't be the brightest bill among the stars or Ireland presumably.
Are you referring to American civil liberties unions, or Irish? I would recommend familiarising yourself with the bill & contributions to it from actual Irish bodies - its being carefully scrutinised & debated already, with a lot of nuance covered.
Neither nor, I assume some universality among civil liberty unions. You maybe can sanction insults, although I wouldn't recommend that either, but can not legislate hate, love, solidarity or apathy. It is a fantasy and will surely at some point collide with the freedom of individuals, which civil liberty unions should protect.
> I assume some universality among civil liberty unions
This seems like an extremely naive outline which I would read as basically saying "I assume everyone in the world should align with my personal cultural perspective".
> can not legislate hate
This is in my experience an Americanism that isn't particularly widely shared outside of the US.
The universal declaration of human rights might be naive politically, that is true, but another topic and then it must be true for every civil liberty people fight for.
I am not American, although I am kind fond of the US for their focus on freedom, which is a strong requirement for any liberty as well.
> The universal declaration of human rights might be naive
This isn't remotely what I said.
> their focus on freedom
Freedom is a word the definition of which can be, and very much is, twisted to most people's agenda. Being fond of freedom is a meaningless statement in isolation, without an accompanying discourse on the meaning of that freedom. The US record on freedom in practice is exceptionally poor when compared to the rest of the world. There's certainly a strong focus on talking about it but I've seen very little evidence of delivering on it.
It was just my case that some liberties might be universal.
> Freedom is a word the definition of which can be, and very much is, twisted to most people's agenda.
That is true, but it is a positive definition. When in doubt make the case for freedom. This is different when we talk about hatred or expressions of it.
I do think the US makes some wrong decisions when it comes to social responsibility, out of the question. But I have even less doubt that hatred will an umbrella term to restrict speech. We already see instances of such cases today.
Wow this is terrifying, I read some of the details and if a bad government gets in power this is the type of law that could bring incredible abuse against journalist, comedians, etc... crazy town.
Does anyone know how it prevents misuse? As "hate" can be construed in such different ways.
> Does anyone know how it prevents misuse? As "hate" can be construed in such different ways.
Its been carefully scrutinised and amendments submitted by many groups - including the Irish Council for Civil Liberties who support the final draft of the bill.
If you're reading about the context around the bill this blogpost is a bad place to start: the author is pushing a racist agenda & the blog misrepresents its own linked references.
Ya I am very curious how it protects against misuse and defines these things.
Have you found any good links?
Everything I found online seems to indicate it needs to be better thought out and was pretty negative. Even EuroNews which I didn't think was anything but neutral on most things?
IE, if a comedian makes a religious joke, why do they not face prosecution under this?
The Euronews article leads with Donald Trump Jr's objections, and finishes with the Irish Council of Civil Liberties supporting the bill with some minor reservations which they submitted amendments on (as is normal in democratic procedure).
The bill went before the house in september 2022 so there's been quite a lot of discussion, submissions and amendments accepted. Public engagement has been high.
On whether Euronews is neutral - I don't know much about it tbh. Wikipedia says it's French and has been accused of having ties to Orbán of all people, which would align with the Trump representation.
> IE, if a comedian makes a religious joke, why do they not face prosecution under this?
The qualifier is direct encouragement of violence toward a group and there's explicit protections listed for "a reasonable and genuine contribution to literary, artistic, political, scientific, religious or academic discourse,"
The bill has been criticised by representations of the UN Human Rights Commission and TDs from different political parties.
As an Irish person I find it infuriating that the Irish Council for Civil Liberties would approve of a bill which criminalises even unintentional "hate" speech with up to 5 years imprisonment but fails to even define what "hatred" is. The bill can't even coherently define the protected groups like 'gender' either.
It is all but guaranteed to be misused to target journalists and political dissent. We are likely to see Sinn Fein take power in some capacity soon. With laws like this soon to be on the books I think people have every right to be worried.
I hadn't heard of the representation from the UN so I Googled it but all I could find was an article about them praising it[0] - do you have a link to the criticisms?
As for politicians opposing a bill, this seems... unsurprising. There's generally politicians on all sides of any given bill. It passed relatively easily so they were clearly in a small minority.
Fwiw this bill was widely supported by many opposition parties - so not something that's been forced through by a ruling party majority.
All said your doomsaying around SF coming to power alongside the scare quotes around the word "gender" give me a fairly strong indication that your own political perspectives likely align with the intolerant minority of politicians who opposed this.
I spent a bit time there for work many years ago, along in Scotland. It was a large project that involved Ireland and Scotland and the US. It also had people from England working it too.
So, depending upon who I was with in the caf, the Irish would "talk hate" to the Scottish. But the Irish and Scottish would talk hate to the English. And all three would do the same against Americans (me).
I thought it was funny. But with this law being active back them, and depends upon the law system, might as well lock us all up. I got my digs in too :)
1. This blog post is far from the first to do this, but I object to the use of the term 'lawmakers'. For one thing, the term is an unnecessary simplification, and refusal to use the proper titles for members of legislative bodies (in this case, Teachtaí Dála and Seanadóirí) only exacerbates our cultural solipsism. For another, the nature of these 'lawmakers' is crucial to understanding their motivations and intentions: a 'lawmaker' can be any of the following:
* A person elected to represent a constituency that has an equal share of a population, e.g., a Member of Parliament, Deputy or Member of the House of Keys;
* A person elected to represent a constituency that has an unequal share of a population, e.g., a US or Australian Senator, or a US congressperson;
* A person elected to partially represent a multi-member constituency, e.g., a Teachta Dála;
* A person elected to a legislative body on the basis of proportional representation albeit with no specific constituency, e.g., a list MP in New Zealand;
* A person appointed to a legislative body on the basis of merit (e.g., a Canadian Senator or some life peers in the House of Lords);
* A person appointed to a legislative body ex officio, e.g., the Lords Spiritual;
* A person appointed to a legislative body on the basis of ancestry (e.g., the seventy-two representative hereditary peers in the House of Lords or the now-defunct Fijian Council of Chiefs);
* A lobbyist or employee of a non-government business or organisation writing 'ready-to-enact' bills;
* A non-political monarch, viceroy or other head of state who provides Royal Assent (or otherwise signs bills into law), e.g., the King of the United Kingdom, the Governor-General of Australia, or the President of Fiji;
* A political monarch or head of state, e.g., the King of Saudi Arabia; or
* A person appointed to political office, e.g., the Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia or a US cabinet secretary.
2. Irish Parliamentarians are elected by the people of Ireland to solve problems for the people of Ireland. Every right granted limits other rights, and so governments must balance these competing rights for the benefit of their people. The article makes no mention of the actual situation in Ireland, of examples of problematic discourse in Ireland, or examples of problematic suppression of discourse in Ireland. This is, again, cultural solipsism.
2. The majority of the public do not want these laws. There is a lingering distrust of such things due to the decades long heavy hand of the church on Irish life. There is also no epidemic of 'hate speech' or any such extreme situation warranting them. Individual instances of opposition to immigration for example (which is causing serious issues with hotel and student accommodation at the moment) are so rare that the make national headlines for days or weeks. These laws are a solution in search of a problem. Unfortunately these "lawmakers" are rushing to sacrifice the rights of citizens for a quick PR win.
It bears mentioning that despite the Justice Minister’s unsubstantiated claims to the contrary, polling consistently shows that the vast majority of Irish people are opposed to this. Which in itself isn’t unusual, but the Irish seem more energized around such issues than others at present. will be a place to watch in the near future.
I campaigned to end the Blasphemy law in Ireland. This law is hoestly sickening. We all know if will be weaponised to fight culture wars and target political dissent.
I cannot wait until someone asks for the Archbishop of Dublin or the Chief Rabbi or Imam to be arrested under these laws - but they won't be of course. Taken literally it even permits people in possession of a Bible or Koran to be arrested - texts which promote slavery, murder of unbelievers and homosexuals, genital mutilation, praises genocides and the mistreatment of women and so on.
The most official source is gov.ie’s public consultation results. These have been reviewed by others, with a little under a quarter in support of such measures and a little under three quarters against them, with very few conflicted on the subject. These are the same consultation results cited by Helen McEntee when she claimed it had the support of “the vast majority of people”.
Thanks for the link - I hadn't read the gov report and it's a good read. But I can't find any reference in it to surveying support - the questions are qualitative or open-ended to elicit suggestions. The only graphs or percentages in the report at all are showing that just over a quarter of the respondents were based in Ireland.
Your Journal link is not a poll on this legislation - in fact the wording is so loaded I think you must surely be posting it here as some kind of joke?
Maybe we’re looking at different graphs. The one I saw indicated that 79% of respondents were in Ireland, followed by the UK and US (likely Irish citizens living abroad). But no, they didn’t break it down into favorable or unfavorable responses. That’s been done by others looking at the responses.
No need for catty the catty response. It doesn’t matter if it was about this specific legislation. It was about the entire concept behind it. I can find more polls which will show similar results, and I’m sure they all have things you can nitpick. It the fact is that all available data, whatever the quality, supports my position. If there’s such an outpouring of public support, surely that would be worth documenting. Something which supporters of these laws pointedly have avoided doing.
Apologies if I came across as catty, but if you think a TV talkshow hosting an alt-right commentator posing the poll question "Do you support placing limits on free speech to protect people from being offended?" is somehow equivalent to nuanced legislation on incitement to violence, I think that's worth questioning.
What I feel, and what I believe most people who aren’t already bought in feel, is that there is no such nuance. At best, such laws are redundant with existing laws against threats of violence. But in practice, even in places like America that are comparatively lax, that’s just the motte. The bailey is throwing people in jail for things like stickering and flyering because they can be construed as harassing those who disagree with them. Or arresting those speaking non-threatening but “offensive” language because such speech is necessarily going to provoke violence from their opponents (i.e. "inciting a riot").
There are other similarly informal polls from sources which could be classified as slanted. In themselves, they could be dismissed, but there's a backdrop of existing polling in western countries at large, which find the same public coldness toward such laws--and yet they get them anyway. And, again, the public consultation results themselves are available. You're only going to find right-slanted sources for polls because the right know that they have the public support on this. The pointed lack of polling data from those behind the legislation is damning in itself; they measure public opinion on everything. The notion that they just forgot to do it in this case is absurd.
I understand you personally may be opposed to this legislation, but the original claim is that there's broad public opposition to it. Equating your own personal views with those held by the public is all I'm questioning here.
TV & online self-selecting polls on tangentially related topics are not indicative of broad public views on any individual piece of legislation.
> such laws are redundant [...] in practice, even in places like America that are comparatively lax
I will say though that I do find it amazing you acknowledge America (where incitement to violence is a very clear problem) is lax, and also positing that such laws don't work, almost in the same sentence.
I trust the assessment of the ACLU about this kind of law, but I will point this out: almost EVERY time you see an instance cited about how some "woke" ideology went wrong, if you follow up the original incident you will see there is more to the story.
For example, in this article they cite Glasgow police arresting LGBT protesters because of their sign. Read the link, here is what happened to the protestors from their point of view:
"Bradley detailed the incident: “We went to the front of the march in an attempt to lead it ourselves. We were quickly jumped on by uniformed officers. I was wrestled to the ground, cuffed in a very painful way, and taken to the side, my friend was held in a chokehold and another was arrested too. We were charged with breach of the peace, and let out after seven hours in custody.”
Another queer activist arrested on the day, Rob, related his experience to Dazed. Rob says that after activists unravelled their banner they experienced “immediate aggression” from officers. Two activists were pinned to the floor, with more eventually cuffed.
“The officers proceeded to detain us by pinning us against a fence nearby with little to no explanation of why,” they explain. “It took them 10 minutes to decide we were being arrested after alternating between excuses – initially I was told it was because I told a cop to ‘fuck off’ through the megaphone, though videos show no swears leaving my mouth throughout the entire action. Later it was decided we were disrupting the peace.”
The explanation that they were arrested because their sign said "f**ts" was what the POLICE said was the reason why.
Grains of salt all around, and a recognition that reactionary forces will have no qualms about exploiting the appearance of "woke gone wild" to defend their brutalist tactics.
Just to clarify the general thrust of your comment - you open with trusting the ACLU. I haven't seen them assess this particular law & I'm not familiar with similar assessments; what's their stance?
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[ 9.5 ms ] story [ 1298 ms ] threadThe tone of your comment seems facetious - you seem to be expecting me to accept the burden of you being informed enough to comment on a topic. If you want to form an opinion on a topic I'd suggest doing the work learning about it. If you're too lazy to, I'd suggest refraining from commenting in ignorance (though I guess I can do nothing to prevent you).
While the is very generous of you, typically I find in these matters it's customary to place the burden of evidence on the person making the initial claim (in this case that being the the bill is a repeat of / resembles Ireland's old blasphemy laws)
The points made in the article aren't a reflection of broad public sentiment within Ireland - in particular the following statement:
> Despite outcry from civil-liberties activists, the bill sailed through the lower house of Irish Parliament
Civil-liberties activists within Ireland are overwhelmingly in favour of the bill. The word "outcry" links to an article reporting that Donald Trump Jr is against the bill, and that the Irish Council for Civil Liberties supports it.
In short: this is blogspam wildly misrepresenting its own references.
This seems like an extremely naive outline which I would read as basically saying "I assume everyone in the world should align with my personal cultural perspective".
> can not legislate hate
This is in my experience an Americanism that isn't particularly widely shared outside of the US.
I am not American, although I am kind fond of the US for their focus on freedom, which is a strong requirement for any liberty as well.
This isn't remotely what I said.
> their focus on freedom
Freedom is a word the definition of which can be, and very much is, twisted to most people's agenda. Being fond of freedom is a meaningless statement in isolation, without an accompanying discourse on the meaning of that freedom. The US record on freedom in practice is exceptionally poor when compared to the rest of the world. There's certainly a strong focus on talking about it but I've seen very little evidence of delivering on it.
It was just my case that some liberties might be universal.
> Freedom is a word the definition of which can be, and very much is, twisted to most people's agenda.
That is true, but it is a positive definition. When in doubt make the case for freedom. This is different when we talk about hatred or expressions of it.
I do think the US makes some wrong decisions when it comes to social responsibility, out of the question. But I have even less doubt that hatred will an umbrella term to restrict speech. We already see instances of such cases today.
Does anyone know how it prevents misuse? As "hate" can be construed in such different ways.
Its been carefully scrutinised and amendments submitted by many groups - including the Irish Council for Civil Liberties who support the final draft of the bill.
If you're reading about the context around the bill this blogpost is a bad place to start: the author is pushing a racist agenda & the blog misrepresents its own linked references.
Have you found any good links?
Everything I found online seems to indicate it needs to be better thought out and was pretty negative. Even EuroNews which I didn't think was anything but neutral on most things?
IE, if a comedian makes a religious joke, why do they not face prosecution under this?
The bill went before the house in september 2022 so there's been quite a lot of discussion, submissions and amendments accepted. Public engagement has been high.
On whether Euronews is neutral - I don't know much about it tbh. Wikipedia says it's French and has been accused of having ties to Orbán of all people, which would align with the Trump representation.
> IE, if a comedian makes a religious joke, why do they not face prosecution under this?
The qualifier is direct encouragement of violence toward a group and there's explicit protections listed for "a reasonable and genuine contribution to literary, artistic, political, scientific, religious or academic discourse,"
As an Irish person I find it infuriating that the Irish Council for Civil Liberties would approve of a bill which criminalises even unintentional "hate" speech with up to 5 years imprisonment but fails to even define what "hatred" is. The bill can't even coherently define the protected groups like 'gender' either.
It is all but guaranteed to be misused to target journalists and political dissent. We are likely to see Sinn Fein take power in some capacity soon. With laws like this soon to be on the books I think people have every right to be worried.
As for politicians opposing a bill, this seems... unsurprising. There's generally politicians on all sides of any given bill. It passed relatively easily so they were clearly in a small minority.
Fwiw this bill was widely supported by many opposition parties - so not something that's been forced through by a ruling party majority.
All said your doomsaying around SF coming to power alongside the scare quotes around the word "gender" give me a fairly strong indication that your own political perspectives likely align with the intolerant minority of politicians who opposed this.
[0] https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/07/dialogue-ire...
I spent a bit time there for work many years ago, along in Scotland. It was a large project that involved Ireland and Scotland and the US. It also had people from England working it too.
So, depending upon who I was with in the caf, the Irish would "talk hate" to the Scottish. But the Irish and Scottish would talk hate to the English. And all three would do the same against Americans (me).
I thought it was funny. But with this law being active back them, and depends upon the law system, might as well lock us all up. I got my digs in too :)
I think some refinement is probably needed.
* A person elected to represent a constituency that has an equal share of a population, e.g., a Member of Parliament, Deputy or Member of the House of Keys;
* A person elected to represent a constituency that has an unequal share of a population, e.g., a US or Australian Senator, or a US congressperson;
* A person elected to partially represent a multi-member constituency, e.g., a Teachta Dála;
* A person elected to a legislative body on the basis of proportional representation albeit with no specific constituency, e.g., a list MP in New Zealand;
* A person appointed to a legislative body on the basis of merit (e.g., a Canadian Senator or some life peers in the House of Lords);
* A person appointed to a legislative body ex officio, e.g., the Lords Spiritual;
* A person appointed to a legislative body on the basis of ancestry (e.g., the seventy-two representative hereditary peers in the House of Lords or the now-defunct Fijian Council of Chiefs);
* A lobbyist or employee of a non-government business or organisation writing 'ready-to-enact' bills;
* A non-political monarch, viceroy or other head of state who provides Royal Assent (or otherwise signs bills into law), e.g., the King of the United Kingdom, the Governor-General of Australia, or the President of Fiji;
* A political monarch or head of state, e.g., the King of Saudi Arabia; or
* A person appointed to political office, e.g., the Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia or a US cabinet secretary.
2. Irish Parliamentarians are elected by the people of Ireland to solve problems for the people of Ireland. Every right granted limits other rights, and so governments must balance these competing rights for the benefit of their people. The article makes no mention of the actual situation in Ireland, of examples of problematic discourse in Ireland, or examples of problematic suppression of discourse in Ireland. This is, again, cultural solipsism.
I cannot wait until someone asks for the Archbishop of Dublin or the Chief Rabbi or Imam to be arrested under these laws - but they won't be of course. Taken literally it even permits people in possession of a Bible or Koran to be arrested - texts which promote slavery, murder of unbelievers and homosexuals, genital mutilation, praises genocides and the mistreatment of women and so on.
Quite a lot of the established Irish media has, roughly speaking, been opposed to the law, but there seems broad public support for it.
https://www.gov.ie/en/consultation/c3d5e9-hate-speech-public...
And other polls tend to bear out the same result. https://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-freedom-of-speech-3178693-...
Your Journal link is not a poll on this legislation - in fact the wording is so loaded I think you must surely be posting it here as some kind of joke?
No need for catty the catty response. It doesn’t matter if it was about this specific legislation. It was about the entire concept behind it. I can find more polls which will show similar results, and I’m sure they all have things you can nitpick. It the fact is that all available data, whatever the quality, supports my position. If there’s such an outpouring of public support, surely that would be worth documenting. Something which supporters of these laws pointedly have avoided doing.
Apologies if I came across as catty, but if you think a TV talkshow hosting an alt-right commentator posing the poll question "Do you support placing limits on free speech to protect people from being offended?" is somehow equivalent to nuanced legislation on incitement to violence, I think that's worth questioning.
There are other similarly informal polls from sources which could be classified as slanted. In themselves, they could be dismissed, but there's a backdrop of existing polling in western countries at large, which find the same public coldness toward such laws--and yet they get them anyway. And, again, the public consultation results themselves are available. You're only going to find right-slanted sources for polls because the right know that they have the public support on this. The pointed lack of polling data from those behind the legislation is damning in itself; they measure public opinion on everything. The notion that they just forgot to do it in this case is absurd.
TV & online self-selecting polls on tangentially related topics are not indicative of broad public views on any individual piece of legislation.
> such laws are redundant [...] in practice, even in places like America that are comparatively lax
I will say though that I do find it amazing you acknowledge America (where incitement to violence is a very clear problem) is lax, and also positing that such laws don't work, almost in the same sentence.
For example, in this article they cite Glasgow police arresting LGBT protesters because of their sign. Read the link, here is what happened to the protestors from their point of view:
"Bradley detailed the incident: “We went to the front of the march in an attempt to lead it ourselves. We were quickly jumped on by uniformed officers. I was wrestled to the ground, cuffed in a very painful way, and taken to the side, my friend was held in a chokehold and another was arrested too. We were charged with breach of the peace, and let out after seven hours in custody.”
Another queer activist arrested on the day, Rob, related his experience to Dazed. Rob says that after activists unravelled their banner they experienced “immediate aggression” from officers. Two activists were pinned to the floor, with more eventually cuffed.
“The officers proceeded to detain us by pinning us against a fence nearby with little to no explanation of why,” they explain. “It took them 10 minutes to decide we were being arrested after alternating between excuses – initially I was told it was because I told a cop to ‘fuck off’ through the megaphone, though videos show no swears leaving my mouth throughout the entire action. Later it was decided we were disrupting the peace.”
The explanation that they were arrested because their sign said "f**ts" was what the POLICE said was the reason why.
Grains of salt all around, and a recognition that reactionary forces will have no qualms about exploiting the appearance of "woke gone wild" to defend their brutalist tactics.