Summary
Candace Owens, a U.S. conservative commentator, has been denied a visa to enter New Zealand for a speaking tour after being banned from Australia.
Australian officials barred her in October, citing her Holocaust denial remarks and potential to incite discord, following calls from Jewish groups.
New Zealand immigration laws prohibit entry to individuals banned from other countries.
Owens, known for controversial statements on topics like Black Lives Matter and vaccines, had planned to discuss free speech and Christianity at events in both countries. Tickets for her tour remain on sale.
If you are a person who doesn’t defend freedom of speech then you are not a defender of democracy. You can’t have one without the other.
Free speech =/= Speech without consequence.
She’s free to speak whatever she wants. She’s also free to live with the consequences of her speech.
“Free” does not mean “unregulated”. Fire in a crowded theater. Everyone who flogs the free speech argument in the service of promoting fascism can fuck right off.
Intolerance to the intolerant.
This sounds so good on paper, but completely falls apart without carefully defining free speech. Like, what if I hire actors with prop weapons to march around minority neighborhoods and scream that they’ll shoot any non-whites who try to vote?
You think that fun performance art is going to be healthy for democracy? Really?
What if I use AI to make convincing video footage of politicians I disagree with mutilating dogs and then graphically fucking their corpses? Do you think my commentary on their lack of support for dog shelters is going to foster democratic dialog, or do you think that maybe some voters will develop a viscerally unpleasant disgust and have trouble looking at them or engaging in what they have to say?
What if you buy a botnet and use it to convince both sides of the aisle that the other candidate is an authoritarian who will destroy democracy and try to control their life. Or to send death threats to people who publicly admit to being trans?
It is important to make room for marginalized voices to be heard, yes, that is essential for democracy, but there are also tons of bad actors who will try to use the very freedom you’re trying to protect to deny others that freedom. A completely laissez faire approach to free speech will ultimately serve to silence the marginalized and further empower the wealthy.
Threatening others is a crime. Generating false AI videos to harm another person’s reputation is a crime. Opinions are not crimes. It’s really not that complicated. People want to pretend it is complicated so they can control what can be said to gain power. Really not complicated.
But what if your opinion is threatening to others? If you believe that white people are inherently superior to other races and it is right for them to be served by the inferior races, then expressing that opinion is inherently threatening to many non-whites.
Sure, I’ve given hyperbolic examples, because I wanted to demonstrate that you can use freedom of expression to make threats, but there will also be examples that are in more of a grey area. There’s nothing inherently threatening about the Confederate flag. If you had flown it in 1600 people would’ve just said “cool flag, what does it mean?”.
Now however, many people see it as a threat, a constant reminder of how things used to be for their ancestors. Expressing your opinion by flying that flag says to those people “I want your children to live as your forefathers did”
Now, not everyone who flies that flag is making a threat, but some of them absolutely are. So what do we do?
I’m not saying I have a one size fits all solution. Simply banning anything that neo-nazis adopt clearly isn’t practical and could also be easily abused by the government to quash dissent. I’m just pointing out that it’s not a simple fucking problem.
It is pretty simple. If an action\opinion is deemed threatening then laws are created to stop that action\opinion. If there is no law making it illegal then it is just an opinion. So you can have a flag with a swastika, a confederate flag, BLM, OR LGBTQ.
So your baseline is whether or not something is criminal.
That’s easily solved, create laws outlawing the undesirable behaviour, such as the ones in Germany regarding Nazi paraphernalia.
Or the ones defining potentially damaging behaviour as a reason for denying visa access… give it a sec, I’m sure you’ll get it.
Obligatory, countries outside of the US exist and, I imagine rather inconveniently for your argument, have their own laws.
But if your definition of the basis of democracy is freedom of speech except for when there is a law specifically preventing it then you probably have bigger concerns than weak foundations for your arguments.
Yes freedom of speech ends at criminal action or illegal behavior. That is where those boundaries exist. If they do not end at that juncture then where do they end?
So , given that New Zealand and Australia are using their law based framework to deny visa access it’s all good right ?
I also noted you conveniently didn’t address this in your response.
I’m not saying that laws aren’t useful for this purpose I’m saying that using laws as a baseline without accounting for laws being different in different places is a weak argument foundation, not even mentioning that laws change over time based on unlawful actions being allowed and previously lawful actions now being denied, so not only do you need to account for geographic location you also need to account for time.
As an example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67601647
By your proposed framework, you’re cool with this because their freedom of speech (or i suppose expression in this instance) is illegal.
To be clear, if you are cool with that, you do you, I’m not your parent, nor am i any moral or ethical authority. I’m using it as an example to gauge how married you are to the idea of laws as absolutes when it comes to freedom.
Yes i dont have a problem with how Australia or New Zealand run their countries. They can ban whomever they wish. I do have a problem with people wishing we would implement these same standards as it would be a clear violation of freedom of speech. It sucks the kiwis are so limited in their ability to express themselves or their opinions but that is what they got.
Dude, you’re complaining about a nation using its laws to prevent her from speaking. If your requirement is if laws prevent something it’s fine, then I don’t know what you’re discussing anymore. I think you need to return to the basics of your position and reconsider it for a moment.