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I thought EU countries don't have a legal right to free speech?



We do, by way of Article 10 of The European Convention on Human Rights: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_10_of_the_European_C...


Not really. Saying for example that the holocaust didn’t happen can very well land you in prison in many EU countries.


No free speech is absolute. There are things you can say in the USA which also get you into trouble. That said, I will agree that more speech is free in the USA.


IANAL, but generally, the speech that is limited in the US is to things like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater - i.e. things that might cause general panic.

Speech such as the Holocaust didn't exist doesn't represent immediate harm, and as despicable as it may be, is protected.


There's a huge gulf between absolute free speech and jailing a man for teaching his dog to give a Nazi salute.


“””The 30-year-old taught his girlfriend's pug to react to the words "gas the Jews", which he repeated 23 times in the short video that he uploaded to his YouTube channel last year.””” — https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/pug-nazi-salute-...

I think what you see as a huge gulf, I see as a moderate width river.


How so? In the USA that is explicitly protected free speech, no ifs, ands, or buts. That's my point.


I did say the USA allowed more speech than the EU. However, my point with this example is that while the USA may allow this, it is not simply “teaching his dog to salute”, it went far beyond that.

If anything, I might now argue this is case can be considered an example of “fighting words”, a concept which varies between legal jurisdictions but certainly does exist in the USA.

On further consideration, given the trigger phrase the dog was trained on, it might (IANAL) be argued to be “incitement”, which is also a thing which exists in USA law.


> which is also a thing which exists in USA law.

That's exactly it, this is clearly not incitement according to US law. Here are the two important concepts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_and_present_danger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action

According to the latter, the smell test is:

> "Advocacy of force or criminal activity does not receive First Amendment protections if (1) the advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and (2) is likely to incite or produce such action"

The pug case in no way comes close to either of those clauses. I'd argue, from a legal standpoint, this is absolutely simply teaching his dog to salute. It's crass, rude, and offensive but also perfectly legal under any meaningful definition of free speech.


I’d argue that (2) could apply in certain countries given the current political situation in those countries. However, I am already certain you won’t see it that way at all. I find it rather more interesting that we disagree about the magnitude of the difference between the systems.


And yet don't many European countries deny other genocides (or refuse to call them genocides) for political reasons? At the very least the law should be fairly applied to genocides.


Could you please elaborate?


For political reasons people have used far lighter language with incidents such as the Armenian genocide.


> restrictions ... for the protection of health or morals, ... preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, ...

Sounds legit.


> for the protection of health or morals

The 1st amendment has a similar set of exceptions (morals: [1, 2]; health: [3, 4]).

> preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence

Several of the exceptions discussed in [5] apply here.

Some speech about non-gov't secrets is also not protected by the 1st. Two examples include anything the court decides is not of public interest (e.g., DeCSS), and publication of recordings or transcriptions without prior consent (in some states).

And then there's the most obvious historical exception to the First Amendment: being too dark in any century except this one.

The differences between the EU and the US are much more attributable to political culture. The massive and obvious failures of the First Amendment's protections in previous centuries demonstrate that the constitutional text itself plays only a small role; the political culture that ultimately interprets the text is also important.

Mistaking the First Amendment for a permanent, carte blanc, or unambiguous license to free speech willfully ignores the fact that the force of the document is inseparable from the political and governmental culture entrusted with its care, and that ALL current and previous political cultures have interpreted the First Amendment in a way that DOES restrict speech for "the protection of health or morals". and for "preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence".

It is the degree to which these tradeoffs are made, not the mere existence of the tradeoffs, that differentiates the First Amendment from Article 10. And to see how those tradeoffs are made, you have to go beyond the text and delve into case law.

--

[1] https://courses2.cit.cornell.edu/sociallaw/student_projects/...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...


IANACL, but the language of the US' constitution's first amendment has no such exceptions. The conditionality of the right in the EU convention practically makes it a dead letter, and this is borne by the way EU states play fast and loose with freedom of expression. Comparatively, the right is sacred in the US. Which is part of why most transgressions involve the judicial branch heavily, the exceptions get their own page on Wikipedia.


> but the language of the US' constitution's first amendment has no such exceptions

None-the-less, those exceptions do exist!

> Comparatively, the right is sacred in the US

I argue this is much more a result of political/governmental culture than the letter of the constitutional law.

I.e., we could swap the text of the First Amendment with the text of Article 10 and speech in the US would still be freer on average.

I believe this because it turns out all of the categories of speech not protected by Article 10 are also not protected by the First Amendment (there are differences, but those differences are matters of boundary rather than category; concretely, Article 10 could be interpreted in a way that's congruent with the current interpretation of the First Amendment).

> Which is part of why most transgressions involve the judicial branch heavily, the exceptions get their own page on Wikipedia.

The thesis that pithier speech protections and less explicit exceptions result in judges more jealously guarding speech is an interesting legal theory. IMO it's much more likely that these differences are attributable to political culture and national ethos.


>None-the-less, those exceptions do exist!

In the US you can say practically anything anywhere and have no fear of getting arrested. That is not the case in the EU.


What was the business with the "free speech zones", anyway?


Maybe you are thinking about the "fire in a theater" case? It's a bad decision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM


No. Also, speculating about what I'm thinking of is unnecessary because my original post [1] includes 5 concrete examples that justify my claims. None of those refer to Schenck.

If you believe my claims about are inaccurate, I implore you to read through those 5 citations in my original post.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17296329



Well, you can pass laws blatantly targeting a major world religion, you just can't talk about it out loud.


> Well, you can pass laws blatantly targeting a major world religion

Which one would that be?


> Which one would that be?

Anti-burqa laws, e.g. in Austria.


[flagged]


People targeting that religion are what ended up causing the human rights laws that say we shouldn’t target religions. I think also the right to join a trade union, though that might have something to do with who was on the winning side in the war that made all of this an issue anyone really cared about.




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