Free Speech. Just how Free?
I see Queensland has just passed a law proscribing the phrase, "From the Mountains to the Sea." It is a common slogan for Palestinians on the West Bank and in their diaspora. Apparently, this is part of the response to the Bondi Beach shooting in 2025 Story here,
I think this brings up a interesting topic for discussion: How free is speech in your country? There is an old saying in the US that our speech is free, but you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater (unless there really is a fire). I know our obscenity laws are weird. While we pass such laws the Supreme Court of the US often rules them unconstitutional. Once, when a justice was asked if he knew what was obscene, he replied he would know it when he saw it. But, recently more and more conservative states are passing laws which limit things like the types of flags that can be flown on official flag poles and suppressing gender identity discussions.
I know there is a big difference in liable laws in the States vis a vis British laws.
I also know Fascist propaganda is forbidden in some countries, but not in the US unless it is used to incite violence. Same with other extreme groups. Just heard a comedy routine in which the comedian was complaining about the restrictions on our HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes in California. You have to have at least two people to be in that lane or you will pay a heavy fine. He said he could dress up like a KKK Grand Dragon and be pulled over for not having another KKK member in the car if he tried to drive the HOV lane by himself.
So, I ask, just how free is free speech in your country, region, state, neighborhood. (Yes, neighborhoods can even proscribe the type of paint you can paint the outside of your house)?
I think this brings up a interesting topic for discussion: How free is speech in your country? There is an old saying in the US that our speech is free, but you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater (unless there really is a fire). I know our obscenity laws are weird. While we pass such laws the Supreme Court of the US often rules them unconstitutional. Once, when a justice was asked if he knew what was obscene, he replied he would know it when he saw it. But, recently more and more conservative states are passing laws which limit things like the types of flags that can be flown on official flag poles and suppressing gender identity discussions.
I know there is a big difference in liable laws in the States vis a vis British laws.
I also know Fascist propaganda is forbidden in some countries, but not in the US unless it is used to incite violence. Same with other extreme groups. Just heard a comedy routine in which the comedian was complaining about the restrictions on our HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes in California. You have to have at least two people to be in that lane or you will pay a heavy fine. He said he could dress up like a KKK Grand Dragon and be pulled over for not having another KKK member in the car if he tried to drive the HOV lane by himself.
So, I ask, just how free is free speech in your country, region, state, neighborhood. (Yes, neighborhoods can even proscribe the type of paint you can paint the outside of your house)?
Comments
I'm pretty sure official flag poles have never been regarded as venues for protected speech under the First Amendment, or similar statues in any other countries. Because you'll always need permission from the authorities to fly a particular flag, and the state is under no obligation to host every viewpoint represented in the vast array of flags, even if they'd have no ability to restrict their display on private property.
Pretty sure all of us can think of flags that, were someone to try and hoist them on a legislature flagpole, we would say "Nope. If you wanna put it on your front lawn, that's one thing, but not at city hall."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cewzqxg17yzo
A can't see obvious problems with it -but I have no expertise in this sort of thing...
As can be seen, while Justice Stewart is typically quoted as saying he knows “obscenity” when he sees it, he actually said he knows “hard-core pornography” when he sees it. As can also be seen, he didn’t offer “I know it when I see it” as some kind of test for when something was hard-core pornography. Rather, he was saying that it was his opinion that under the Constitution only hard-core pornography could be criminalized by a state, and while normally this would mean a test was needed to determine what is and what isn’t hard-core pornography, no such test needed to be articulated in this case because regardless of the test, the movie at issue—the French film Les Amants (“The Lovers”)—was never going to meet any definition of “hard-core pornography.”
Meanwhile, @stetson, what @Gramps49 is talking about with “official flagpoles” are state laws that prohibit local governments (towns, cities, counties, school districts, etc.) from flying things like pride flags or Palestinian flags from flagpoles at places like city hall.
From the article:
I didn’t know Australia could even do that. Forgive me, but I find this horrifying.
The First Amendment has never been held to protect threatening speech.
I can't answer ill-defined hypotheticals. The most likely answers are either limited enforcement capabilities (and/or indifferent enforcement officials) or failure to meet the "true threat" threshold.
Historically, SCOTUS has used the first amendment to protect the free speech of minority groups from larger groups who would want to bully them.
Our first amendment also includes freedom of the press, right to petition, peaceful assembly, and government noninterference in religion.
But, for the purposes of this thread, I want to keep it to our different understanding of what entails free speech.
Also our libel/defamation law seems to favour the trigger-happy.
So you mean they favour the offended person who wants to sue the journalist or commentator?
Rightly or wrongly, I suspect American law makes a distinction between someone shouting threats of criminal violence against people trying trying to patronize an establishment, and someone shouting vitriolic but still non-violent insults at them.
And, yes, I know there's the argument that vitriolic but non-violent insults can still be interpreted as threats, but I personally don't know how far I'd wanna go in applying that logic.
Yes. In the case of Sullivan vs. the New York Times, they ruled against the white racist and in favour of the more liberal newspaper the racist was claiming had libeled him. I believe the principle established was that journalists can't be sued for false news, IF it can be shown that they published in good faith, IOW the alleged victim of the libel has to prove that the journalist was deliberately lying, which is a fairly tall order.
There was the NCAAP vs Alabama (1958) dealing with the freedom of association
West Virginia v, Barnette (1943) no official can prescribe what is orthodox in politics or religion.
Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) students do not shed their rights at the schoolhouse door.
Cohen v California (1971) Offensive Political Speech is protected
Texas v Johnson (1989) The burning of an American Flag is protected symbolic speech.
Snyder v Phelps (2011) Deeply offensive speech on public issues is protected.
Matal v Tam (2017) Disparaging speech even using racial slurs is protected.
Holder v Humanitarian Law Project (2010) advocacy for minority or unpopular groups is protected.
Across the decades, the Court has repeatedly affirmed that the First Amendment protects the powerless, the unpopular and the marginalized.
The principal established in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan was that a public figure (like a politician or celebrity) can prevail in a defamation case against a media outlet only if they can establish that the media outlet acted with “actual malice,” meaning it published knowing that what it was publishing was false or “with reckless disregard” for whether what it was publishing was true or false.
Was that law a geography-based bubble-zone sorta thing, ie. you can't protest within a specified area around an abortion clinic? Or a content-based restriction, ie. you can't say X, Y, and Z in general? Or a combo, ie. you can't say X, Y, and Z while protesting around an abortion clinic?
A similar federal law was enacted a few years later.
In what ways does the curtailment of free speech protect people against bullies where you live? How does this work?
Thanks. But just so I'm clear, did the illegal speech have to involve threats of actual violence?
And also, wouldn't blocking someone's access to a building already have been illegal under some existing criminal law?
UK law generally favours order over freedom. Where the intimidation breaches public order this has the side effect of reducing the effectiveness of the intimidation. It has its own severe problems but it is not wholly without benefit.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/mar/11/shabana-mahmood-approves-police-request-to-ban-al-quds-march-in-london
Which is interesting in the context of seeing a "pro-war" march last weekend.
It's funny how that happens; some marches are considered fair comment and others are considered to be glorifying murderous regimes.
Unfortunately there are comedians who hide behind this thinking - "You have no right to be offended."
Yes, I was thinking that. Surely if you ban support for the Iranian regime you should also ban support for Israeli and US regimes too?
That's clearly not the case, have you ever been to a place where there is a Far-Right rally?
I was once in Dover and there were busloads of riot police confronting masked Far-Right protestors who threatened local businesses and people. There was clearly a policy of containment that allowed behaviour that was way way beyond holding up a cardboard sign outside a court building.
I think morally the politicians who are making these choices are all over the place. Either people gesticulating at and threatening other people are a threat or they are not. It shouldn't really matter what flag they are holding.
As an aside, the last march to be banned this way was one by the BNP in 2012.
There are already laws in place to prevent incitement of violence and hatred towards muslims in the UK.
This latest move has been seen as an enforcement of not being allowed to criticise muslims at all..
It's a weird leftist moral superiority thing, trying to protect the "vulnerable" but just shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to extremists and curtailment of free speech.
"has been seen"? By whom? Why the passive voice weasel words? If it's what *you* see then argue the case.
Are you not in Australia? How are you making intelligent comment about politics in the UK?
In actual fact your comment makes no sense. Muslims, like everyone else, are frequently "criticised", including by being imprisoned for terrorism. Even if we replaced the word "Muslim" with "Islam" I still doesn't really make any sense given that plenty of people criticise the religion in many ways.
So based on your view down the binoculars from thousands of miles away, what exactly do you think is happening in Blighty?
Perhaps but not necessarily, depending on the circumstances. And I think, without going back to look, that the law made violation of the statute a higher class of misdemeanor, meaning more severe punishment, than might have been the case in general circumstances. It also made a second offense within a prescribed time an even higher class of misdemeanor, while a third offense within the prescribed time was a felony.
I'm not clear where you're going with this. If I have something I want to say, but someone else might be offended by it, their potential offense, by itself, should be enough to prevent me from saying it?
Thanks.
Not necessarily in my opinion. For instance, if I want to say that "X group matters as much as white people do", there are definitely people in my country who would be offended. But I think that makes the statement more important. Since they are humans, X group still deserves to be valued, and the more likely people are to doubt their value, the more important it is to clarify that they are humans and thus of value.
Right. But I think @Alan29 was refering to a situation where I am not, as in your example, simply expressing in a sincere and neutral manner an opinion which some people happen to take offense to. Rather, going by his reference to comedians, something like...
Those people who follow the Widgetarian religion are all a buncha morons who believe a theology that would insult the intelligence of a brain-dead goldfish, and would eat their own sh*t and ask for seconds if their priests told them that's what The Great Widget God wanted them to do.
Thanks.
But is there any sort of unofficial, commonsensical selectivity in the application of the hate-speech laws(*)? For example, assuming Widgetarians are a group most enlightened thinkers would consider socioeconomically marginalized...
...if someone were to complain that a comedian was talking about Anglicans in the way I wrote about Wigetarians above, would the police just sorta assume that it's impossible to denigrate a member of the established church qua a member of that church, and tell the complainant to just get over it?
Also, we're talking about criminal law, right? As opposed to civil law.
(*) This is not asked in any judgemental tone. Canada also has hate-speech laws, which I think are enforced inconsistently(and which I dislike anyway, being a free-speech absolutist), but I'm not gonna discuss that in this specific post.
Firstly, it is subject to criminal law and people have been imprisoned for online hate speech. It usually has to be inflammatory though, so a judge and jury would have a tricky task.
That said, yes, different situations and different times and places.
I think the usual fear is that if you allow a good ruler to ethically police speech with good intentions, then you will allow a bad ruler will take over and apply the same tools to bad intentions.
Trouble is a bad ruler is going to do stuff like that anyway, I think. So you might as well. Overton window? What overton window?