scholarly journals Antisemitism in the Urban Dictionary and the Responsibilities of Online Publishers

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3.1) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Daniel Allington
Keyword(s):  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
Free Expression ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Doing Business ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Right ◽  
Internet Companies

This article focuses on antisemitic and racist content in the Urban Dictionary: a global top-1000 website built upon user-generated content. It argues that the Urban Dictionary’s founding principles have directly facilitated the site’s exploitation as a platform for the dissemination of antisemitic hate speech and white supremacist ideology. These principles can be seen as typifying the free speech absolutism that became dominant within the US tech industry during the 1990s. However, the right to free expression cannot reasonably be taken to exempt internet companies from responsibility for content whose publication they facilitate. The article concludes by arguing that websites such as the Urban Dictionary are essentially publishers, and that the solution to the problem of their indulgence of big-ots may be for those who do not wish to be associated with bigotry to refrain from doing business with institutions that publish content that they consider abhorrent. Keywords: alt-right, antizionism, brand contamination, definitions, dictionaries, free speech, Urban Dictionary, user-generated content, Web 2.0

A Call from the Task Force

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Rodney A. Smolla
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Virginia Beach ◽  
The Right ◽  
Constitutional Protections ◽  
The City

This chapter introduces the task force created by Governor Terry McAuliffe in Richmond, Virginia that are tasked to study the racial violence in the city of Charlottesville during the summer of 2017. It mentions the violence in Richmond that claimed the life of Heather Heyer when a white supremacist, James Alex Fields Jr., slammed his speeding car into a crowd of counter-protesters confronting a “Unite the Right” rally. This chapter explains the work of the task force, which requires them to deeply investigate the constitutional protections of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and the rules of engagement governing what society could or could not do when confronted with racial supremacist groups rallying in a city. It also describes the famous free speech case called Virginia vs. Black involving vicious racist hate speech. The case involved a cross-burning rally of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in rural western Virginia in 1998 and a second cross-burning incident in Virginia Beach in the yard of an African American, James Jubilee.

Freedom of Speech

2018 ◽  
pp. 305-354
Author(s):  
Sandra Fredman
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Us ◽  
Section Viii ◽  
The Right

This chapter assesses the theories justifying freedom of speech (Section II). Section III considers how free speech is protected by human rights instruments. The absence of an express limitation clause in the US First Amendment contrasts with other jurisdictions, which permit justifiable limitations. Sections IV–VII consider how courts have dealt with the most burning issues confronted in all of these jurisdictions: whether freedom of speech protects subversive speech, pornography, and hate speech. Where the limits of liberal tolerance lie remains a challenge for courts. While the harm principle provides a starting point, much depends on how speech is seen to cause harm. Section VIII asks whether the right-bearer includes not just the speaker, but also the recipient of speech and assesses the role of freedom of information. The chapter concludes that freedom of speech should go further than curbing State power to censor speech, creating conditions of genuine equality.

From Skokie to Charlottesville

2019 ◽  
pp. 54-71
Author(s):  
Ulrich Baer
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Legal Decision ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Us ◽  
Legal Precedent ◽  
White Supremacists ◽  
The Right

This chapter argues that the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in summer 2017, present a watershed moment when the general public realized that free speech can become weaponized to undercut discourse and destroy the social order. At a widely publicized event in 1977, a small group of neo-Nazis won the right, in a court decision, to march in a small town in Illinois. That legal decision set the cultural and legal precedent for the mainstream attitude toward hate speech for several decades. Critically, that legal decision was matched by public condemnations of anti-Semitism and racism by political figures all the way up to the US president. When a group of white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville in the summer of 2017 and murdered or come to demonstrate a, the US president failed to unequivocally condemn these events. The chapter examines the assumption that tolerating hate speech does not mean condoning it in light of these two events.

Confessions of a Free Speech Lawyer

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney A. Smolla
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gang Rape ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

This personal and frank book offers an insider's view on the violent confrontations in Charlottesville during the “summer of hate.” Blending memoir, courtroom drama, and a consideration of the unhealed wound of racism in our society, the book shines a light on the conflict between the value of free speech and the protection of civil rights. The author has spent his career in the thick of these tempestuous and fraught issues, from acting as lead counsel in a famous Supreme Court decision challenging Virginia's law against burning crosses, to serving as co-counsel in a libel suit brought by a fraternity against Rolling Stone magazine for publishing an article alleging that one of the fraternity's initiation rituals included gang rape. The author has also been active as a university leader, serving as dean of three law schools and president of one and railing against hate speech and sexual assault on US campuses. Well before the tiki torches cast their ominous shadows across the nation, the city of Charlottesville sought to relocate the Unite the Right rally; the author was approached to represent the alt-right groups. Though the author declined, he came to wonder what his history of advocacy had wrought. Feeling unsettlingly complicit, the author joined the Charlottesville Task Force, and realized that the events that transpired there had meaning and resonance far beyond a singular time and place. Why, he wonders, has one of our foundational rights created a land in which such tragic clashes happen all too frequently?

Where to limit the freedom of speech? Analysis in the context of the First Amendment to the US Constitution and the fighting words doctrine

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-256
Author(s):  
Karolina Palka
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
Socialist Party Of America ◽  
The Right

This article is about the limits of the right to free speech. The first section provides a brief introduction to this topic, primarily in the context of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The second section describes the case of Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, which was fundamental to the topic of this paper because the United States Supreme Court created the so-called "fighting words" doctrine based on it. In the next two sections, two court cases are presented that perfectly demonstrate the limits of the right to free speech in the United States: Snyder v. Phelps and Village of Skokie v. National Socialist Party of America. The fifth part shows the right to freedom of speech in the context of Polish civil, criminal, and constitutional law, as well as acts of international law binding on Poland. The last part is a short summary.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Anushka Singh
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
University Of California ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Mob Violence ◽  
A Chain ◽  
The Right ◽  
The University ◽  
Public Lecture

On 1 February 2017 at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, mob violence erupted on campus with 1,500 protesters demanding the cancellation of a public lecture by Milo Yiannopoulos, a British author notorious for his alleged racist and anti-Islamic views.1 Consequently, the event was cancelled triggering a chain of reactions on the desirability and limits of freedom of expression within American democracy. The Left-leaning intellectuals and politicians were accused of allowing the mob violence to become a riot on campus defending it in the name of protest against racism, fascism, and social injustice. In defending the rights of the protesters to not allow ‘illiberal’ or hate speech on campus, however, many claimed that the message conveyed was that only liberals had the right to free speech....

The Nature of Offence

2021 ◽  
pp. 7-34
Author(s):  
Nicholas Hatzis
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Special Problem ◽  
Free Expression ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Narrow Definition ◽  
State Coercion ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Offensive Speech

The experience of suffering offence relates to a constellation of unpleasant feelings stirred up when one’s expectations of being treated in a certain way are frustrated. This chapter explores how the nature of offence matters for the way the law responds to offensive conduct. Prohibiting speech which offends poses a special problem because it clashes with the free speech principle, i.e. the idea that there is something particularly important in being allowed to speak our minds, which sets free expression apart from a general liberty claim to choose a way of life. It is suggested that when deciding what should count as properly offensive for the purpose of exercising state coercion, only a very narrow definition of offensive speech is compatible with the values underlying freedom of expression. Then, offensive speech is distinguished from hate speech. As the two are morally different, it is inappropriate to borrow arguments from the hate speech debate to justify restrictions on offensive speech.

scholarly journals FROM IDEOLOGY TO HATE SPEECH AND THE PROBLEM OF EURO-AMERICAN WHITE SUPREMACIST EXTREMISM

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-13
Author(s):  
Joel Ivan Gonzalez Cedillo ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Critical Thinking Skills ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Political Extremism ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
The Us ◽  
Definition Of

This article analyzes the relation between ignorance and extremism, and the proposed process, which transforms the ignorance into hate speech the elite uses to achieve their political goals. This type of analysis continues to become more urgent as fascism and ethnonationalism gain popularity in Western societies and in their politics. The article analyzes the definitions of ideology and ideological consistency presented by several academics to understand how extremist ideologies manage to get individuals engaged, and to propose a definition of ideology and extremism. The analysis of manifestos written by two American white supremacist terrorists, who in 2019 murdered twenty-three people in the US are included to demonstrate the relation between the lack of legislation for protecting freedom of speech, ignorance, and the commission of violent deadly attacks on innocents. The conclusion exposes the necessity of legislation that protects freedom of speech and a healthy social coexistence, as well as education and critical thinking skills to avoid the emergence of Euro-American white supremacist extremism. This theoretical and documental research might be used by academics working on ideology and political extremism in Western countries, as well as by policymakers trying to understand the phenomenon of white supremacist extremism.

scholarly journals Giving Oral Expression “Free Rein”: Implications for Diversity of University Hate Speech Code

1997 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-39
Author(s):  
Tim A. Pilgrim
Keyword(s):  
Free Speech ◽  
Political Correctness ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Speech Code ◽  
University Campus ◽  
Oral Expression ◽  
The Right ◽  
The University

This paper uses history, law, and First Amendment theory to examine the concepts of political correctness, free speech, and hate speech in a search for a solution of how best to deal with hate speech incidents that occur in the university campus community. The paper notes the American tendency toward tyranny of the majority as noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s and then proceeds to examine the double-edged sword of free speech. By guaranteeing freedom of speech we promote the right to shout down ethnic and other minority groups; by providing penalties against those who use it to shout others down we make society less free. This paper suggests a different answer: promote more speech expressed in community meetings conducted in an atmosphere that is safe and encouraging for all to express their views.

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