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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'.
If free speech is protected in the UK, why are there literally thousands of arrests for tweets?
Easy: the UK defines free speech as the ability to say X but not Y. Suffice to say a dog is not a cat even if the government says it is a cat. Likewise, Europe lacks free speech even if they claim they have it.
If free speech is protected in America, why do people get fired and blacklisted for the things they say?
Come on, be serious. There are compromises made in every country on Earth
In practice, the UK has more legal protections against being fired or discriminated against for your views, even when those views are right-wing. That is why people who go to employment tribunals tend to win their cases. It doesn't usually give them their jobs back.
The UK has less protections for tweeting in a way that makes the government worried. This is not good.
Broadly, in the US you are more likely to be ruined, in the UK you are more likely to get arrested. Neither of these are good.
Because the American goverment is one of limited powers. The protection is protection from the government.
Being arrested is far worse than people deciding not to do business with you. Being arrested is the state using its monopoly on violence on you.
That's a perfectly valid perspective. But we're now talking about the real tradeoffs and decisions that America makes: we can't protect your speech from retaliation by your employers because that infringes their rights.
America has a particular, limited right to free speech which says that no government can legally punish you for your speech. And that's fine, that's a perfectly valid conception of free speech. I personally happen to disagree with it: I think many people would rather spend a night in a police cell than be blacklisted from their career. That's just my opinion.
What irks me is silly "in America unlike Europe we have Free Speech" comments which ignore the complexity in both countries.
If you spend time in jail, how is that not awful for your job prospects. Are mugshots not searchable in the UK?
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