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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29555 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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Interesting. What do you do if a resourseful enemy defames you, suck it up? What do you do if a bunch of people openly conspire to kill you? It appears that you cannot legally defend yourself until they act, which they're free to do at the moment they pick.

If you're physically struck but not hurt, have you been assaulted?

Presumably conspiracy is a crime because planning crimes is also a crime.

I could see the argument that a threat to commit a crime is not a plan. A threat is usually contingent on some condition.

If the threat is to be believed (presumably threats are punished because we think they are credible) then there's no stated plan as long as the condition isn't fulfilled.

I suppose as soon as the victim ignores the threat, then perhaps the threat can be assumed to be a plan.

Presumably conspiracy is a crime because planning crimes is also a crime.

I'd presume so, yes, but they're claiming they're a free speech absolutist and that any speech act is just speech. Planning to inflict pain doesn't inflict pain itself.

Even if speech is not a crime it can be compelling evidence of another crime. If I confess to the cops that I committed a murder, that can put me away for murder ... unless I was actually on video with a dozen witnesses at the time of the murder, in which case my exact same speech would not get me convicted, because the speech itself isn't the murder.

(Though I'd say it should get me convicted of making a false police report, but I assume this is where @reconnaissent and I differ)

(Not OP, but will try and steelman the position as best I can)

Were such norms in place re: speech, defamation would be "priced in", so to speak, i.e., people would have ingrained defenses against believing defamatory remarks to be true, inculcated over a lifetime of experiencing free speech absolutism first-hand.

So, they'd believe nothing?

What is the mechanism by which you can separate defamatory remarks from genuine ones, which you'd likely want to do in order to retain basic communication ability?

A newspaper (for example) which regularly published untrue defamation would be equally-regularly corrected by competing newspapers, eager to siphon savvy newsreaders away from a competitor. Then the defamatory paper's paying subscribers would vote with their wallets and switch to other papers with better records of truth-telling.

Or so the theory goes.

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