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Bask in the Crazy: Hate Speech
Though the bulk of a conservative’s time engaging liberal arguments is best spent addressing their most pointed and nuanced positions, I believe we should occasionally indulge ourselves by reveling in their worst arguments and fringe elements. Arguments such as this piece by Tanya Cohen which flips George Orwell the proverbial bird.
Published on the site Thought Catalogue — a name is straight out of an Orwell novel — Cohen makes the case that the United States trails far behind such paragons of virtue as Turkey, Jordan, Russia and India when it comes to basic human rights.
No, not real human rights such as life, liberty and property, but make believe human rights, such as the right to not be offended.
Why do these so-called “backwards” countries respect basic human rights more than a supposedly free and liberated country like the US does? The US has ruled that not only is hate speech protected by the First Amendment, but so is advocating violence – in the view of the United States Supreme Court, these things are supposedly part of a “marketplace of ideas” and are “free speech”.
Perhaps Russia is considered backwards because of their government’s tendency to imprison political opponents. Just a theory. One may also posit that Turkey’s regime is perceived as backward for taking actions such as cracking down on opposition journalists. But in a world where freedom of expression has been the extreme exception throughout history, Cohen believes we should always error in favor of the heavy hand of Big Brother.
We need to outlaw all forms of hate speech and we need to set up federal and state Equality and Human Rights Commissions to strictly regulate all press and media to ensure staunch compliance with human rights, and to investigate, prosecute, and enact surveillance of people who spread hatred, intolerance, and other anti-freedom ideologies which have no place in a modern democracy.
Feel that chill heading down your spine? Good, says Tanya Cohen.
This paragraph reeks so heavily of totalitarianism that it warrants re-emphasis. Cohen’s Ministry of Truth Equality and Human Rights Commission will “strictly regulate all press and media to ensure staunch compliance” as well as “investigate, prosecute, and enact surveillance of people.”
Cohen would no doubt find my presentation of her words to be unfair, as she clearly states that she only wants this new bureaucracy to target evil doers who speak hate. I’m sure her definition of hate speech is incredibly narrow and temperate.
Organizations like Fox News and individuals like Bill Maher routinely spread hate speech against Muslims, against immigrants, against our government and our President, and more – all with zero respect whatsoever for the most fundamental human rights and freedoms. This cannot continue to persist in a country that claims to be free and democratic. In a truly free and civilized country, Bill Maher, for example, would have been sent to prison for inciting racist hatred and violence against Muslims, who already face high levels of hatred and violence in American society.
Oppose mass border immigration? If you say so, Cohen wants you to go to prison… for 25 years.
Anyone guilty of hate speech – which should carry criminal penalties of 25 years to life – should be sent to special prisons designed to re-educate them and to instill values of tolerance, freedom, democracy, and human rights in them. Prison is about punishment, but it’s also about changing the behavior of criminals.
This is a literal call for re-education camps. Orwell analogies are over used, and I try to avoid them, but the left simply will not allow me to follow my own best practices. Did they stop forcing kids to read 1984 in school? Who reads this novel and says “Hey, this sounds like a good idea.”
Real journalists in the UK have unanimously supported the plans for government press regulation, citing the need to stop right-wing tabloids from spreading lies.
Words fail me. And that’s a good thing I suppose. I’m already staring at life in prison for the crime of disagreeing with Tanya Cohen on the issues of Islamic terrorism and executive amnesty.
Serious journalists understand the need for licensing of the press in order to stop right-wingers from using the press to spread their propaganda. The press must be used in an ethical and responsible manner…
…We are not talking about censorship here.
Freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.
We are talking about cracking down on hate speech and protecting basic human rights.
The phrase “basic human rights” appears 18 times in her piece, and in every instance, acts as a proxy for “the right to not be offended, provided you are a member of a protected class.” References to the United Nations and “international law” appear a nauseating number of times. The message is clear: The United States is out of step with the rest of the world when it comes to freedom of speech. Inexplicably, she did not intend this as a compliment.
What model then should the US look to? Cohen believes Australia is on the correct trajectory.
A proposed human rights law called the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill would have made it illegal to offend, insult, humiliate, or intimidate people on the basis of age, sex, race, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, immigrant status, marital/relationship status, political opinion, social origin, religion, nationality, medical history, family responsibilities, or industrial history – and the law stated that people would be declared guilty until proven innocent, effectively requiring people to prove in court that they did not violate the fundamental human rights of others with hate speech. The law also would have outlawed any expression of religious belief if someone were offended by it. Although most human rights activists agreed that the law did not go nearly far enough…
Emphases mine. As far as I can tell, Tanya Cohen is not a conservative plant, whose sole aim is to make the left look like fringe lunatics. If she were though, I’m not sure how she could be any more effective at the task. Her list of speech that should be punishable under law includes items such as:
-Speech that harms and/or divides society in general, including speech that damages social cohesion.
-Speech which is found to be irresponsible, unethical, antisocial, hurtful, impolite, uncivil, abusive, distasteful, and/or unacceptable in general.
-Speech that objectifies women and/or reduces them to their sexual dimension, such as pornography and catcalling.
-Speech that undermines the authority of the state and/or interferes with the state’s ability to properly function and do its job. This would also include speech that undermines the authority of the United Nations and/or international law.
-Speech which constitutes microaggressions against vulnerable minorities.
But aside from that, you totally have free speech. Oh, and if we don’t do all of this…
Otherwise, we are truly no better than Nazi Germany was.
Except for that whole not slaughtering millions of innocent people thing. In that small way, we’d still be better than Nazi Germany.
Published in General
I am offended by Tanya Cohen. To the camps with her!
Statists/utopians never consider they might find themselves on the wrong side of their proposed laws.
Are you sure?
I have some other comments I would like to make but I am waiting for those to be cleared by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Charles Cooke believes this is an elaborate hoax, though someone by the same name is writing at the Daily KOS with the same language. That would be one hell of a hoax.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/02/1355143/-Reddit-s-White-Supremacist-Squatzis-Launch-an-Online-War-Against-Murdered-Black-Men?detail=hide
Then there’s Canada.
I’m sure people are still reading 1984 in school; however, I’m also sure they are now being instructed to root for the swine.
“Damages social cohesion”– upsets me. Or someone I chose as being allowed to object…..
Obviously, throwing a mob temper tantrum at a ceremony for, say, a hundred year old war vet, that isn’t damaging to social cohesion. Nor was Woodstock, or anything else approved, even if the stated goal was to tear down whatever.
Why isn’t this woman in jail? Hell, she should ask to be jailed.
crazy triggers me.
The swine were in charge in Animal Farm also.
Having had personal experience discussing Speech Codes and the like with a devout leftist, I can tell you this:
The true believers cannot be helped.
Best drive them out to Seattle, fling a gluten free, non-GMO, vegan cookie out the car window, and speed away while they chase after it.
Wow, I really am tired today.
Frank,
Thanks for the take down. I just don’t know where I would start with someone like this.
Vox Headline:
“Frank Soto destroys Tanya Cohen”
This has got to be a hoax or satire. There’s just no way someone can be that nuts.
“The glory of chaining all those who don’t agree with me. Because only someone as enlightened as I am can see the ‘intent’ of free speech ”
Tanya Cohen envisioning her sainthood while being completely psychotic.
Given that an anagram of Tanya Cohen is, “An act, honey”, I think she must be a sleeper planted by The Onion years ago, and now activated.
No, fortunately it seems America is not that far gone.
First I went to the artcle itself. It is, actually, even more 1984 than Frank portrays it. That’s the bad news.
The good news, I went through the first 15 or 20 (out of 200) comments, and every single one of them were anti-Tanya to the extreme, and every single one of the anti comments had thumbs up winning out heavily over thumbs down.
Then I went to Thought Catalog itself. From my briefest of perusals, it seems to be they actually do print absolutely ANY point of view. One person called its collection of writings a compost pile, which would seem to be a good metaphor. Throw in absolutely anything, and something good might grow from it.
And there seems to be spoofing going on. Quite a few people are speculating that Tanya Cohen would be one of those. But her piece is really long. Is getting published by Thought Catalog really worth that kind of effort? In any case, one guy from Sweden, posing as a 20 year old American female, got his feminist rant printed, much to his astonishment and amusement. On the other extreme, there is a virulently white racist article about Ferguson (haven’t read it, but it seems to have excited many protestations to that effect).
Is Tanya real? If she is, at least her fellow riders would seem to be either too few or too embarassed to support her at Thought Catalog.
So the offensive must be offenders.
Arrant nonsense offends me*. Whom do I call to round up Ms. Cohen?
—————
* Other people’s. Mine is OK.
Ain’t that the way it always is?
So, what we just saw in Paris would be state sanctioned under Ms. Cohen’s plan?
That we are debating whether or not this is real tells us that the left has reached Onion territory. Whether or not she is real, we believe she could be. Which is why I think the column on The Federalist about having reached peak leftism is correct.
Poor timing to publish this the day before 12 people die in the name of free speech.
The writer should be forced to answer a question on that.