The free speech situation in Denmark is worse than the title implies, and not limited to Islam or religion - "The ban is expected to be added to a section of the criminal code that bans public insult of a foreign state, its flag or other symbol." The existing punishment is up to 2 tears jail time, if Breitbart can be trusted - https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/08/25/blasphemy-laws-a...
And if the Daily Mail is to be believed, the upcoming ban is much broader and vaguer than just Quran burnings: "Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard told reporters that the government will present a bill that will 'prohibit the inappropriate treatment of objects of significant religious importance to a religious community'" - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12445021/Denmark-ba...
What your comment is missing is the current political context in Europe: we currently have far right accelerationists that are purposely trying to create outrage among Muslim, both locally and abroad, hoping that it will cause terror attacks against their country, pushing their agenda further. It has nothing to do with free speach, it's just strategia della tensione modernized to the 21th century, and I'm glad politicians are falling for the “but free speech” trap. These people give no shit about freedom of speech, they are playing with fire in order to reach power, and they'll censor all opposition as soon as they reach it.
I'm sorry but if some political games bring someone to terror attacks that's on them. Creating outrage is despicable but it is nothing compared to actual physical harm.
If you can't handle your fairytale book being burned you don't belong in modern society.
Do plays such as the following also count as strategia della tensione, and so should be prohibited, stripped of free speech protections, and their performers jailed for up to 2 years?
Provocateurs testing the limits of free speech is nothing new. In the US, we had the Westboro Baptist Church protesting at funerals for soldiers, for example. After a while their gimmick gets stale, they stop getting media attention, and eventually they move onto something else.
The far bigger problem is people who think it is appropriate to respond to political speech with terrorism and murder. Hasn't Denmark learned this lesson already, after the Mohammed cartoon controversy?
To me the implication is that Denmark's politicians think they can make this all go away, rather than escalate it. It's harder to stand by principles and slowly make headway in addressing people trying to undermine or attack those principles than it is to just give in. It requires being able to enunciate just why those principles matter, even when they're inconvenient.
In practice Denmark could launch public campaigns aimed both at explaining what's been going on, and how ultimately it has nothing to do with Denmark.
> It requires being able to enunciate just why those principles matter, even when they're inconvenient.
Nobody serious really think these principles are some kind of holy Grail that should be defended at all cost without any critical judgment.
There are many democracies in Europe that restrict some kinds of speeches in one way or another, and even though the US apply them much more strictly than most countries, even there freedom of speech is restricted by laws (try sending death threats and defend yourself with “free speech ” argument).
We're a long way from "all costs" here, and a long way from the sort of reasonable restrictions on speech in the furtherance of a crime that's the norm. We're talking about responding to threats of violence from the likes of Al Qaeda (https://www.thelocal.se/20230815/al-qaida-calls-for-revenge-...) with capitulation. Not because the act in question is harming anyone, not because it's common or remotely illegal otherwise.
> We're talking about responding to threats of violence from the likes of Al Qaeda (https://www.thelocal.se/20230815/al-qaida-calls-for-revenge-...) with capitulation. Not because the act in question is harming anyone, not because it's common or remotely illegal otherwise.
> It's just appeasement and it won't be enough.
No. We're talking about disarming seditious groups that want to leverage Islamic terrorism as part of their accession to power. It has nothing to do with appeasement (let's continue to assassinate Islamist leadership all day), it's about neutralizing another (arguably bigger) threat.
Alright, and when the seditious groups don't burn or destroy the Quran, now they wrap it in a Pride flag... what then? Will that be outlawed? And then the next iteration, and the next, because it's not exactly hard to figure out ways to piss off literal terrorist groups. Will it be illegal to draw a picture of Mohammad?
How far do you go before you realize it never ends?
Attempting to trigger terror attacks on purpose should be prosecuted, that's it. The same way the driver carrying terrorists can be prosecuted without forbidding anybody else to drive.
For now the legislators targeted one specific way, but if they diversify their methods the law will adapt and generalize. There's just nothing to win in appeasing fascists who complain about their freedom of speech, we already know where it leads to https://i.redd.it/3b470c0htra61.jpg
> Attempting to trigger terror attacks on purpose should be prosecuted, that's it. The same way the driver carrying terrorists can be prosecuted without forbidding anybody else to drive.
Was Charlie Hebdo "attempting to trigger terror attacks"? Was Kurt Westergaard trying to incite his own death? How about Salman Rushdie? If you're just going to say "doing something which pisses off terrorists is illegal" then I hope you're prepared to convert, because that's what it would take.
> For now the legislators targeted one specific way, but if they diversify their methods the law will adapt and generalize.
That's the problem right there, it's a genuinely short walk to anti-blasphemy laws.
> The far bigger problem is people who think it is appropriate to respond to political speech with terrorism and murder.
Nobody says the Islamists aren't the baddies, but the one trying to help them recruit to push their agenda aren't any better. And cooperation between those two faction is nothing new either, the guy who sold the weapons involved in Charlie Hebdo's terror attack was also a far right member[1].
That article only says he is "on the far right", per the testimony of a police commissioner, and does not allege membership in any organization. The arms dealer himself claims he is far left, though he likely cannot be trusted.
Regardless, he was an arms dealer and police informant long before that terror attack. I would not call selling arms without discrimination "cooperation".
I don't know what translator you use, but you should probably change it:
- he doesn't claim to be “far left”, he claims to be moderate left (“I'm from the left” “I abhor all extremists”) (don't get confused by the “Communist” word later in that sentence, the French Communist party has been a center left party for more than 40 years now, and a former head of the PCF (Robert Hue) was supporting Macron in the last two elections.
- it's not just a testimony of the police officer, he's being presented in the whole article as being a supremacists influential member.
I used Google translate. Outside of two or three sentences of police witnesses calling him far right, there was no other mention of his political activities or affiliations.
> Mais cette figure des milieux identitaires du Nord
This isn't just political affiliation, it means it's a well-known/prominent member of far right in the city of Lille.
Also, this is just one article, this topic has received a lot of coverage in the French press, providing lots of additional details about his political background.[1]
Overall you should probably avoid going full “well actually” when discussing internal politics of a foreign country with one of its citizen.
Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN and please don't use HN for political or ideological battle. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Burning something is not speech. It is an expression, yes, but a destructive and demeaning one. It's time to move on from thinking that burning things needs government protection. We've run the experiment and no public good has resulted.
"Speech" is not limited to vocal communication, which is why a book is a form of protected speech, and flipping someone off is a form of protected speech, and yes, burning a flag or a book may also be a form of protected speech.
Your blanket statement "Burning something is destructive and demeaning [expression]" is clearly wrong. Consider Zozobra ("Old Man Gloom"), an effigy burned during the annual Fiestas de Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Quoting the Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zozobra :
> As its name suggests, it embodies gloom and anxiety; by burning it, people destroy the worries and troubles of the previous year in the flames. Anyone with an excess of gloom is encouraged to write down the nature of their gloom on a slip of paper and leave it in the "gloom box" found in City of Santa Fe Visitors' Centers in the weeks leading up to the burn. Participants can also add documents on the day of the burning, up until 8 pm MT, at a "gloom tent" in the venue where they can add to the marionette's stuffing. Legal papers, divorce documents, mortgage pay-offs, parking tickets and even a wedding dress –– all have found their way into Zozobra to go up in smoke. At the festival, glooms from the gloom box are placed at Zozobra's feet to be burned alongside it.
Burning in this case is destructive, yes, and a form of emotional relief.
There's also police present, to ensure the burning goes well, and people leave in high spirits. That burning has been around for over 50 years, with a lot of public good.
> Sikh religion, any copies of their sacred book, Guru Granth Sahib, which are too badly damaged to be used, and any printer's waste which bears any of its text, are cremated. This ritual is called an Agan Bhet, and it is similar to the ritual which is performed when a deceased Sikh is cremated
Do you really want to argue that's demeaning, and that no public good has come from it?
This was constitutionally protected free speech in service of their constitutionally protected religious beliefs. And you want to make it so the police couldn't protect them when exercising their rights?
I think the answer is more or less there in your question:
Speech? Do it freely.
Retaliation? Go to jail.
Of course there are huge caveats to these.
For instance, doxing is speech which I don't think should be protected ("Joe was was a member of the Nazi party and he lives at this address"). There's no debate or formulation of ideas in it. But if you said "All former Nazi party members should be deported". It's hateful but I think it should be protected: it's political, it's abstract, it can be debated.
So it started by bunch of losers seeking fame in insulting others.
I understand the stupidity in today's internet is out of proportions, but Muslims themselves burn Quoran to dispose of it. The sole intention of the losers here is to insult a large group of people. The retaliation is coming in several forms including the call to bankrupt such miningless countries and that's a good thing. The exact reason why Denmark and Sweden are banning acts of hate speech against Muslims.
Now you are writing that (selective) hate speech should be free and protected and all retaliations should be banned.. which is funny because it's not how the world works and you don't get to dictate the rules.
If you take to the streets because some rando far away burned your favorite fantasy book, there's something really wrong with you.
No wonder people in western democracies dislike the idea of Islam spreading there if its followers include such unenlightened, aggressive snowflakes (not everyone yadda yadda).
This is why I always laugh when western progressives attack any criticism of Islam as Islamophobia.
Like, really? Try living in Nigeria, Indonesia, or any other Muslim-majority country where being accused of cursing Mohammed can get you stoned and burned on the streets and then come back and preach to me about the religion of peace.
Just last year, a young Nigerian Christian girl was stoned to death and burned BY HER MUSLIM CLASSMATES who accused her of insulting Mohammed. If you think people who think like this have a place in civil society, I don't even know what to tell you.
I don't understand why people are so protective of the "right" to burn Quran or to publish rude cartoons of prophet Mohammed.
Free speech is important and we should protect the right to criticize things and to debate, but burning books is not that. It's childish, offensive and seriously carries no informational content other than "fuck you".
Especially in an age it's almost rude to not put your pronouns in email signature. It's important to be nice and considerate to trans people, but OK to shit on 1.8bn people?
I have nothing in common with Muslims / Arabs otherwise.
Say what? I know zero, none, no people who put their pronouns in their signature. Given that I work with college students, I'm not exactly sheltered. You live in a weird, woke bubble.
Which is probably why you don't see the need to allow disrespecting symbols. That is a classic means of protest, whether it's a flag, a picture, a book, or something else. It is meant to get attention, and yet harms no one.
But disrespecting peoples closely held beliefs is just unnecessary. Reasonable people can disagree, about anything really, and anything can be said, politely. Portraying prophet Mohammed as a terrorist, or burning books, is just hate speech. The latter is literally what the Nazis did.
Criticize whoever you want, with respect. Not this nonsense.
> disrespecting peoples closely held beliefs is just unnecessary.
How dare you call them 'beliefs'? Are you implying that they're not facts? You're telling every Muslim on the planet that they're subscribing to fairy tales.
Hyperbole aside, I don't want my tax money going towards paying police to break up 'unnecessary' demonstrations.
> I know zero, none, no people who put their pronouns in their signature. Given that I work with college students, I'm not exactly sheltered. You live in a weird, woke bubble.
Roughly 50% of the tech folks I interact with (at minor companies like Salesforce and Amazon) list them.
But tell me more about my “weird” “woke” (as if you can define the word) bubble. Because of course it’s not that you live in a bubble. You’re the main character. Or whatever.
I’m so tired of this pervasive, self-important bullshit. Grow up.
> carries no informational content other than "fuck you".
If that's your argument, you should know that saying "fuck you" in the US is, broadly speaking, a protected free speech right. Including for childish, offensive and information-free reasons. This means there is plenty of case history to test your analogy.
You can read more about how "fuck" fits into the US concept of free speech at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohen_v._California with Cohen v. California (wearing a jacket saying "Fuck the Draft" in a courthouse was free speech) and its followup cases. In particular note how Blackmun, in dissent, said wearing the jacket 'was not speech but conduct (an "absurd and immature antic")'.
So if that's your argument, you've already lost ... in the US.
Denmark, of course, is another country.
> it's almost rude to not put your pronouns in email signature
Wow! I don't know what sort of people you associate with, but almost none of my email signatures have that. I just checked - four distinct people over the last year, all from a librarian list I'm on.
Yes, it should be! You are free to get upset by what I say, but at no point should the government be intervening on your behalf to punish me, unless it turns to harassment.
Well, that's one way to look at the world. Absolutist free speech.
But from a pragmatic point of view, free speech is a tool. It is useful protecting it up to the point it is, well, useful, but not beyond.
It is important that everyone can get their point across. But in any way? Surely not. If a billionaire decides to blast his podcast from every street corner, you'd be right to be annoyed. Putting it online suffices, and going beyond is harassment.
Further, even if you are happy with an absolutist free speech agenda, it doesn't mean everyone is, and I can't see why your approach should be imposed on others.
See, that's the problem with your overuse of hyperbole - you end up making this a thread about "freeze peach", rather than the real issue.
People can't tell if you mean literally die fighting for their use to say "fuck you", or if you mean figuratively people shouldn't take the topic to court to defend their free speech right to say "fuck you."
catboybotnet clearly wasn't making arguing for absolutist free speech - see the "unless it turns to harassment" exception. I'm sure catboybotnet also supports time-place-manner free speech exceptions, but didn't think include all the exceptions.
Here's the point. Saying 'fuck you' is already, broadly speaking, covered under free speech protection in the US. Since you think burning the Koran is equivalent to saying "fuck you", then burning the Koran is covered under free speech rights.
If you think "Free speech is important" but you don't recognize that saying "fuck you" is free speech, then there's a fundamental difference between your concept of free speech and the one I'm familiar with - the one in US law.
You need to explain why people should care about your non-standard definition.
Your excessive use of hyperbole is annoying and detrimental to your argument.
1) not "holy enshrined right", and I never claimed that. I wrote "broadly speaking" for a reason. There are the usual time-place-manner restrictions, minors may have limits that adults do not, etc.
2) not literally "a hill worth dying on", because we're only talking jail terms at worst.
3) For the people who have pushed this up to the state and national supreme courts, yes, it was worth it.
It feels like the dynamic in the US is a lot different. Probably because an obvious majority of people get offended when you bag on minority religious groups. And especially true in urban areas where you are likely to find them. Not to mention most American's have a deep seated sentimental attachment to immigrants.
Side comment. Most of the far right crap you see on the internet in the US doesn't smell homegrown if you get my drift.
Because this is water on a mill of far right parties. They just need to point out to this law and tell to people that the left is protecting Muslim terrorists. Easy rise up of preferences
Would Denmark ban offensive speech/act against other religions too? If not, this just means your religion will be respected only if you act vigilantly against people disrespecting it.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadAnd if the Daily Mail is to be believed, the upcoming ban is much broader and vaguer than just Quran burnings: "Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard told reporters that the government will present a bill that will 'prohibit the inappropriate treatment of objects of significant religious importance to a religious community'" - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12445021/Denmark-ba...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension
If you can't handle your fairytale book being burned you don't belong in modern society.
Avignon Performance Art Festival Features Caucasian Babies “On Skewers” - https://www.thepublica.com/france-avignon-performance-art-fe...
The far bigger problem is people who think it is appropriate to respond to political speech with terrorism and murder. Hasn't Denmark learned this lesson already, after the Mohammed cartoon controversy?
In practice Denmark could launch public campaigns aimed both at explaining what's been going on, and how ultimately it has nothing to do with Denmark.
Nobody serious really think these principles are some kind of holy Grail that should be defended at all cost without any critical judgment.
There are many democracies in Europe that restrict some kinds of speeches in one way or another, and even though the US apply them much more strictly than most countries, even there freedom of speech is restricted by laws (try sending death threats and defend yourself with “free speech ” argument).
It's just appeasement and it won't be enough.
> It's just appeasement and it won't be enough.
No. We're talking about disarming seditious groups that want to leverage Islamic terrorism as part of their accession to power. It has nothing to do with appeasement (let's continue to assassinate Islamist leadership all day), it's about neutralizing another (arguably bigger) threat.
How far do you go before you realize it never ends?
For now the legislators targeted one specific way, but if they diversify their methods the law will adapt and generalize. There's just nothing to win in appeasing fascists who complain about their freedom of speech, we already know where it leads to https://i.redd.it/3b470c0htra61.jpg
Was Charlie Hebdo "attempting to trigger terror attacks"? Was Kurt Westergaard trying to incite his own death? How about Salman Rushdie? If you're just going to say "doing something which pisses off terrorists is illegal" then I hope you're prepared to convert, because that's what it would take.
> For now the legislators targeted one specific way, but if they diversify their methods the law will adapt and generalize.
That's the problem right there, it's a genuinely short walk to anti-blasphemy laws.
Nobody says the Islamists aren't the baddies, but the one trying to help them recruit to push their agenda aren't any better. And cooperation between those two faction is nothing new either, the guy who sold the weapons involved in Charlie Hebdo's terror attack was also a far right member[1].
[1] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/societe/justice/proces-des-atten...
Regardless, he was an arms dealer and police informant long before that terror attack. I would not call selling arms without discrimination "cooperation".
- he doesn't claim to be “far left”, he claims to be moderate left (“I'm from the left” “I abhor all extremists”) (don't get confused by the “Communist” word later in that sentence, the French Communist party has been a center left party for more than 40 years now, and a former head of the PCF (Robert Hue) was supporting Macron in the last two elections.
- it's not just a testimony of the police officer, he's being presented in the whole article as being a supremacists influential member.
> à la fois figure de l'extrême droite lilloise
And later in the text:
> Mais cette figure des milieux identitaires du Nord
This isn't just political affiliation, it means it's a well-known/prominent member of far right in the city of Lille.
Also, this is just one article, this topic has received a lot of coverage in the French press, providing lots of additional details about his political background.[1]
Overall you should probably avoid going full “well actually” when discussing internal politics of a foreign country with one of its citizen.
[1]: for instance you could check this one: https://www.huffingtonpost.fr/actualites/article/qui-est-cla...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you don't like the book, then use your words.
Your blanket statement "Burning something is destructive and demeaning [expression]" is clearly wrong. Consider Zozobra ("Old Man Gloom"), an effigy burned during the annual Fiestas de Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Quoting the Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zozobra :
> As its name suggests, it embodies gloom and anxiety; by burning it, people destroy the worries and troubles of the previous year in the flames. Anyone with an excess of gloom is encouraged to write down the nature of their gloom on a slip of paper and leave it in the "gloom box" found in City of Santa Fe Visitors' Centers in the weeks leading up to the burn. Participants can also add documents on the day of the burning, up until 8 pm MT, at a "gloom tent" in the venue where they can add to the marionette's stuffing. Legal papers, divorce documents, mortgage pay-offs, parking tickets and even a wedding dress –– all have found their way into Zozobra to go up in smoke. At the festival, glooms from the gloom box are placed at Zozobra's feet to be burned alongside it.
Burning in this case is destructive, yes, and a form of emotional relief.
There's also police present, to ensure the burning goes well, and people leave in high spirits. That burning has been around for over 50 years, with a lot of public good.
Or, consider this example from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning#Sikh_book_burning :
> Sikh religion, any copies of their sacred book, Guru Granth Sahib, which are too badly damaged to be used, and any printer's waste which bears any of its text, are cremated. This ritual is called an Agan Bhet, and it is similar to the ritual which is performed when a deceased Sikh is cremated
Do you really want to argue that's demeaning, and that no public good has come from it?
As I pointed out at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31185643 , book burnings are pretty common in the US. I quoted one source that during the 1980s and 1990s, "church youth groups coordinated book burnings and music bonfires to purge their world of evil art." https://religionnews.com/2020/06/17/evangelicals-perfected-c...
This was constitutionally protected free speech in service of their constitutionally protected religious beliefs. And you want to make it so the police couldn't protect them when exercising their rights?
The free speechers are asking for the opposite: this is a situation in which the government should not intervene.
when the government shouldn't intervene? when there's hate speech against Muslims or when the Muslims retaliate?
Speech? Do it freely.
Retaliation? Go to jail.
Of course there are huge caveats to these.
For instance, doxing is speech which I don't think should be protected ("Joe was was a member of the Nazi party and he lives at this address"). There's no debate or formulation of ideas in it. But if you said "All former Nazi party members should be deported". It's hateful but I think it should be protected: it's political, it's abstract, it can be debated.
I understand the stupidity in today's internet is out of proportions, but Muslims themselves burn Quoran to dispose of it. The sole intention of the losers here is to insult a large group of people. The retaliation is coming in several forms including the call to bankrupt such miningless countries and that's a good thing. The exact reason why Denmark and Sweden are banning acts of hate speech against Muslims.
Now you are writing that (selective) hate speech should be free and protected and all retaliations should be banned.. which is funny because it's not how the world works and you don't get to dictate the rules.
No wonder people in western democracies dislike the idea of Islam spreading there if its followers include such unenlightened, aggressive snowflakes (not everyone yadda yadda).
Like, really? Try living in Nigeria, Indonesia, or any other Muslim-majority country where being accused of cursing Mohammed can get you stoned and burned on the streets and then come back and preach to me about the religion of peace.
Just last year, a young Nigerian Christian girl was stoned to death and burned BY HER MUSLIM CLASSMATES who accused her of insulting Mohammed. If you think people who think like this have a place in civil society, I don't even know what to tell you.
Free speech is important and we should protect the right to criticize things and to debate, but burning books is not that. It's childish, offensive and seriously carries no informational content other than "fuck you".
Especially in an age it's almost rude to not put your pronouns in email signature. It's important to be nice and considerate to trans people, but OK to shit on 1.8bn people?
I have nothing in common with Muslims / Arabs otherwise.
Which is probably why you don't see the need to allow disrespecting symbols. That is a classic means of protest, whether it's a flag, a picture, a book, or something else. It is meant to get attention, and yet harms no one.
But disrespecting peoples closely held beliefs is just unnecessary. Reasonable people can disagree, about anything really, and anything can be said, politely. Portraying prophet Mohammed as a terrorist, or burning books, is just hate speech. The latter is literally what the Nazis did.
Criticize whoever you want, with respect. Not this nonsense.
How dare you call them 'beliefs'? Are you implying that they're not facts? You're telling every Muslim on the planet that they're subscribing to fairy tales.
Hyperbole aside, I don't want my tax money going towards paying police to break up 'unnecessary' demonstrations.
Roughly 50% of the tech folks I interact with (at minor companies like Salesforce and Amazon) list them.
But tell me more about my “weird” “woke” (as if you can define the word) bubble. Because of course it’s not that you live in a bubble. You’re the main character. Or whatever.
I’m so tired of this pervasive, self-important bullshit. Grow up.
If that's your argument, you should know that saying "fuck you" in the US is, broadly speaking, a protected free speech right. Including for childish, offensive and information-free reasons. This means there is plenty of case history to test your analogy.
It is a protected free speech right, for example, to say "fuck you" to the cops - https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdbqz/saying-fuck-the-polic... .
It is a protected free speech right to post a sign in your yard saying "Fuck Biden and fuck you for voting for him", even if that's childish, offensive, carries no informational content, and shits on 81 million people. https://freespeechproject.georgetown.edu/tracker-entries/jud... (sign at https://www.thefire.org/sites/default/files/styles/860x484/p... )
You can read more about how "fuck" fits into the US concept of free speech at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohen_v._California with Cohen v. California (wearing a jacket saying "Fuck the Draft" in a courthouse was free speech) and its followup cases. In particular note how Blackmun, in dissent, said wearing the jacket 'was not speech but conduct (an "absurd and immature antic")'.
So if that's your argument, you've already lost ... in the US.
Denmark, of course, is another country.
> it's almost rude to not put your pronouns in email signature
Wow! I don't know what sort of people you associate with, but almost none of my email signatures have that. I just checked - four distinct people over the last year, all from a librarian list I'm on.
The pronouns thing was a hyperbola.
But from a pragmatic point of view, free speech is a tool. It is useful protecting it up to the point it is, well, useful, but not beyond.
It is important that everyone can get their point across. But in any way? Surely not. If a billionaire decides to blast his podcast from every street corner, you'd be right to be annoyed. Putting it online suffices, and going beyond is harassment.
Further, even if you are happy with an absolutist free speech agenda, it doesn't mean everyone is, and I can't see why your approach should be imposed on others.
People can't tell if you mean literally die fighting for their use to say "fuck you", or if you mean figuratively people shouldn't take the topic to court to defend their free speech right to say "fuck you."
catboybotnet clearly wasn't making arguing for absolutist free speech - see the "unless it turns to harassment" exception. I'm sure catboybotnet also supports time-place-manner free speech exceptions, but didn't think include all the exceptions.
Here's the point. Saying 'fuck you' is already, broadly speaking, covered under free speech protection in the US. Since you think burning the Koran is equivalent to saying "fuck you", then burning the Koran is covered under free speech rights.
If you think "Free speech is important" but you don't recognize that saying "fuck you" is free speech, then there's a fundamental difference between your concept of free speech and the one I'm familiar with - the one in US law.
You need to explain why people should care about your non-standard definition.
1) not "holy enshrined right", and I never claimed that. I wrote "broadly speaking" for a reason. There are the usual time-place-manner restrictions, minors may have limits that adults do not, etc.
2) not literally "a hill worth dying on", because we're only talking jail terms at worst.
3) For the people who have pushed this up to the state and national supreme courts, yes, it was worth it.
Side comment. Most of the far right crap you see on the internet in the US doesn't smell homegrown if you get my drift.
And yes I know this is about specific Danish laws, still I don't see what is so noble in burning Quran that deserves legal protection.
On the other hand, deal with it.