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A curtain is falling over Europe. It looks like Nathan Cofnas, the heroic researcher that uncovered Jason Arday's academic fraud may end up in a Belgian prison.
His crime is talking about racial differences in intelligence. The complaint stems from this talk which he gave at a gathering of Flemish Catholic students.
It seems that Belgium has something call Unia, which is an independent governmental institution. They receive complaints about discrimination, and then in some cases refer these to courts, who will try them. Unia sometimes joins the prosecution. Perhaps our Belgium users can shed more light on the process. To me it seems very indirect and Orwellian which I suppose is the point.
Although it is probably unlikely that Cofnas will go to actual prison, there are significant risks of fines and other punishments, including the process itself for which he will need a criminal defense attorney.
Your comment is missing some links. Brussels Times:
My favorite part about this is there is zero discussion of whether is it true; just whether they dislike the content.
Where possible there is a push to create laws about speech that causes offense as a means of sidestepping the truth as a defense. They wish to make speaking 'offensive' truth a crime.
I’m reminded of the Cathy Newman Jordan Peterson interview where she asks why should his right to speech be more important than her right not to be offended.
And to me that is the core conflict between Europe and the New World captured in a single exchange.
Jordan Peterson is Canadian and Cathy Newman is a resident of the planet Idiot - it's too pat to boil it down to New and Old Worlds.
Especially since free speech is defended by law in both England and apparently Brussels, as it says in the article. The defendant wins most of their cases if they actually get to court.
The issue is informal sanctions and discrimination producing a chilling effect, something which is at least as prevalent in the US as it is in the 'Old World'.
Very much agreed. If you are dependent on PAYE/W-2 employment to put food on the table, you de facto have more free speech in the UK than the US, at least if the online accounts of the Great Awokening from non-leftist Americans are accurate.
Not really, no. The people who actually tend to lose their jobs for public speech in the US are typically high up enough that Europe would call them executives with lower protections around that stuff.
Most Americans would be under no danger from their companies finding out they run a racist Twitter account. Now screaming racial slurs at a customer, yes, that would get you fired- but Europe would call that ‘misconduct’ or something.
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Are you saying that in the UK it's possible to work for a leftist industry (like say film or publishing), say "black people have lower average IQ" and keep your job?
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