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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   20076 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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Re military hospitals, I had meant that I can imagine protests being banned outside some sensitive location in the US, especially if they are held repeatedly, are disturbing to the staff and visitors at a vulnerable moment, and are in contradiction of a court order. This is what happened outside a UK abortion centre, and that Vance is furious about. Obviously the same thing wouldn't happen outside a US abortion centre in the current climate, my point is that an equal infringement of freedoms at a different location not so important to christian fundamentalists would not cause any outrage, so if that's true, it's not at actually freedom that is at issue.

A military hospital was just my stab at an example location where the American public might not like to see repeated protests held.

The Westboro Baptist Church was A Thing for a while- nobody suggested bans on protests at military funerals.

I wondered if you were right and this is the first thing google turned up – protests at military funerals were in fact banned in nine states and twenty others at least considered doing the same. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/apr/18/usa.gayrights

especially if they are held repeatedly, are disturbing to the staff and visitors at a vulnerable moment, and are in contradiction of a court order.

It appears that Scotland is banning silent prayer which is a far cry from violent or even noisy demonstrations.

my point is that an equal infringement of freedoms at a different location not so important to christian fundamentalists would not cause any outrage, so if that's true, it's not at actually freedom that is at issue.

Christians in America have been concerned about the infringement of religious freedom in the military and even – despite the rightwing/business alliance – in the workplace. If the VA forbid silent prayer inside of their medical centers right-wing evangelicals would be livid (and in fact every so often issues like this crop up in the military and the right wing Christian evangelical/fundamentalist types get Big Mad about it). Now, I do think it's true that righties and Christians, like everyone else, often aren't perfectly principled. But I also don't think that having e.g. in-group bias means you are insincere .

That's a wilful misunderstanding of the law invented by the Telegraph – the most extreme case that might fall under the legislation would be people praying in a window visible from the abortion clinic with the intention of influencing the patients. I don't actually agree with the law but it's clearly been made in order to deal with persistent protesters causing upset to patients, not to criminalise what people do in their own heads.

That's a wilful misunderstanding of the law invented by the Telegraph

From my linked article:

Lois McLatchie Miller, senior legal communications officer of Alliance Defending Freedom International, on Tuesday posted on social media a video of a police officer reading a piece of paper to a pro-lifer stating that a “silent vigil” violates Scotland’s law.

Is it your position that the police officer here got this from the Telegraph, or that this is some sort of hoax?

it's clearly been made in order to deal with persistent protesters causing upset to patients

Yes – in the United States we generally frown on banning peaceful expression even if it upsets people. And while perhaps some of this is a "cultural differences" thing, I think that Vance and Americans more broadly are correct about the need for free speech, particularly in a democratic society. Cutting off free speech is bad for society because it cuts management classes off from authentic feedback. (It's darkly comic to see Germany cracking down on right-wing extremism when, as I understand it, cracking down on right-wing extremism in the 1930s did not stop and may have actually aided Hitler's rise.)

I'm not aware of any crackdown on right-wing extremism in 1930s germany. There was Hitler's Beer Hall putsch in 1923, but he got off easy, one year in prison for an attempted coup with loss of life.

I'm not aware of any crackdown on right-wing extremism in 1930s germany.

Mea culpa, I probably should have said "1920s" instead, as Hitler came to power in 1933, although I assume some of the censorship technically lasted into the 1930s.

On the crackdown in the 1920s I'll let FIRE do the talking.

Weimar Germany had laws banning hateful speech (particularly hateful speech directed at Jews), and top Nazis including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch and Julius Streicher actually were sentenced to prison time for violating them. The efforts of the Weimar Republic to suppress the speech of the Nazis are so well known in academic circles that one professor has described the idea that speech restrictions would have stopped the Nazis as “the Weimar Fallacy.”

A 1922 law passed in response to violent political agitators such as the Nazis permitted Weimar authorities to censor press criticism of the government and advocacy of violence. This was followed by a number of emergency decrees expanding the power to censor newspapers. The Weimar Republic not only shut down hundreds of Nazi newspapers — in a two-year period, they shut down 99 in Prussia alone — but they accelerated that crackdown on speech as the Nazis ascended to power. Hitler himself was banned from speaking in several German states from 1925 until 1927.

Far from being an impediment to the spread of National Socialist ideology, Hitler and the Nazis used the attempts to suppress their speech as public relations coups. The party waved the ban like a bloody shirt to claim they were being targeted for exposing the international conspiracy to suppress “true” Germans.

I despise hate speech laws, but an argument can be made that a few hundred dollar fines and maybe 3 weeks in prison for 30 counts of hate speech over 10 years, is too mild. What would Stalin have thought of this "crackdown"? Where are the cracked heads? Starting with Hitler, of course. The man was an awoved enemy of the state, had caused deaths in trying to overturn it, and he was let go with a slap on the wrist because he had 'noble intentions'.

Yes, well if that's the case Germany needs to either increase their penalties for "hate speech" massively or drop the dang thing. Instead they seem to be pursuing the exact same path they did last time, handing out slaps on the wrist.

Or forget about hate speech, focus on attempts to overthrow the government. The lesson from that time may well be: in cases like the beer hall putsch and january 6, hand out death sentences like candy. ok for Jan 6, they looked like a collection of village idiots, they may be spared under low IQ threshold rules, but a man of sound mind, attempting to grab supreme executive power? That‘s do or die for the state, and therefore, death for the man.

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I mean another poster just said you didn't ban Westboro Baptist Church and it turns out many states actually did ban protests at funerals, so I'm not even certain if it's true that the US views protests strongly differently than the UK, it just has different values about what deserves banning.

The silent vigil story is true but refers to people doing so intentionally to influence/harrass patients around the clinic, not to people doing it privately in their homes.

Can you give some examples of things Blue Tribers wish to protest through silent vigil without signs or messages, where you believe a ban on such protest is similarly understandable?

I'm not sure I understand your request? Silent praying abortion protesters do generally have signs with them btw, though I'm not sure about the specific one Vance was mentioning. Reading between the lines, though, maybe you're thinking it's a big difference between banning silent prayer and the signage of the Westboro Baptist Church, and therefore represents a difference of kind between the UK and the US attitudes toward freedom? If so, maybe, but it's a marginal and for my money irrelevant one given everything else going on in the world.

To answer your question literally, no, I don't think blue tribers typically use prayer as a form of protest. The only example I can think of at all is the silent walks that were held to protest the community neglect that led to the Grenfell fire disaster in west London. These protests were calling for higher safety standards and community cohesion so at leaning blue tribe even if not a clean example. (These should obviously not be banned.)

Prayer doesn't seem to me to be a necessary component. As I understand it, what is under discussion here is whether there should be some things where simply being silently present as a visible symbol of opposition should not be allowed, because it constitutes, in your words, "influence/harassment" of the people engaging in the activity. I'm asking which Red Tribe things are sufficiently sacred that when we do them, those who disagree need to keep that disagreement strictly invisible within a protected zone since expressing it there would be "influence/harassment".

In the US, of course, we actually tried a bipartisan solution to this: protest at Abortion Clinics and places of worship were placed under equivalent restriction. Only, the bureaucracy enforced the law zealously for those protesting abortion clinics, and notably refused to use the law for people protesting places of worship, so I'm not inclined to take it on good faith that there's actually a common principle at play here.

I mean another poster just said you didn't ban Westboro Baptist Church and it turns out many states actually did ban protests at funerals, so I'm not even certain if it's true that the US views protests strongly differently than the UK, it just has different values about what deserves banning.

I think this is actually not about what deserves banning but what US 1st Amendment law would call a "time/place/manner" restriction. There are a lot of TPM restrictions. Banning a viewpoint outside of incitement and the like is regarded very skeptically. Of course you could construe the UK's regulations as a TPM restriction, but even so (without breaking out Wikipedia 1A caselaw) I think analogous ones in the US would not fly. And since you agree it's not a good law, surely you agree it's not above criticism!

The silent vigil story is true but refers to people doing so intentionally to influence/harrass patients around the clinic, not to people doing it privately in their homes.

Yes, in the United States it is generally speaking not illegal to influence people. Major European countries do not seem to share this view.

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