Shadowstalker16: because the principle is most likely making every community ''protected'' from the ''hate speech''.
That's basically the worry, yes. That instead of having some reasonable ceiling for what is acceptable to front as a public person, that it becomes a general kill-switch against anything someone finds offensive. "All christians are stupid and encourage child-abuse!" - did that just break the law because it was typed down? Is it "incisive social commentary" because I've had a christian upbringing? Rather than incitement of hatred towards a group? Would it be considered a threat if it was said in a church? Would it be libel if I directed it at a specific priest?
The context for the actual initiative is more of an encouragement to discuss how it might be possible to enforce existing laws against threats of violence in public fora that aren't normally affected by these laws. I.e., it's highly illegal for a politician to create a platform that encourages violence against other people. That's easy to understand. A politician creating a "pledge" for example to rid the country of specific groups of people, by law or otherwise, is also not necessarily something you can get away with legally. Even so - public people who insist that all muslims are subhumans, murderers and rapists who will take away our goat-cheese and our skiing holidays, don't actually get punished legally, because they are not specific. While a certain muslim "activist" here in Norway has been sentenced twice for confirming in public, truthfully and in my opinion a very obvious logical view, that if our prime minister argued for a war against muslims, then he would be justified in seeing this person as an enemy and to encourage activity that would seek their death. So that's illegal, because it's incitement of terrorist activity.
(Note that arguing in public for bombing Sweden to get their bacon for free, or to attack any random country in the Middle East to crush ISIS in an aggressive war against the UN Charter, is not covered by terrorism statutes, as it encourages the state to take this obviously measured and appropriate action against legitimate enemies. Clearly this is just and fair, and only terrorists would not see that.
Anyway. So what do you do, then, when it's usually obviously illegal as a public person to encourage specific acts of violence. But it is not actually illegal to say it as a public person on facebook? For example, you frequently get groups of people who talk openly about attacks against ghettos or to burn down immigration camps - without being so specific that they could be covered by planning an actual attack. While then public people, politically affiliated persons for example, pile on and say that "yes, immigration should not be handled this way, well done articulating what everyone thinks!". You know, is that illegal? Is this public person then encouraging crazies on the internet to take the law in their own hands, in their unwise and fairly reckless way to exploit racism on their political populism platform? Should this be "reported" and removed, or should it be punished under the law?
It's not an easy question, so you get these discussions about frameworks for EU legislation that might be adopted by other countries. And those laws would then gain some traction by the individual countries putting a focus on finding out exactly what is supposed to be seen as illegal. I'm not going to defend this, because I think these assholes should have all the public attention they would like. There's just nothing better than confronting people and explaining to them that if you were a muslim and argued from your personal religious conviction how you feel the laws in this country do not apply to you, you would have been sentenced for encouraging acts of terrorism.
For example. I've sat and heard a well-known public figure here in Norway (who has now retired to his own state-pension funded and tax-free property, where he is employed as his own caretaker, thanks to legislation he himself has specifically managed to get through the committees his party had presence in for a while, outside normal public legislation in general), speak at a fundie christian meeting. And he would stand there and argue that a specific religion (not Christianity, obviously) disqualifies a person from being integrated into a society based on laws and legislation through parliament. He was simply pampering someone else from that group who had got it into their heads that muslims have no concept of obeying the law of the land they're currently living in, as the Quran is elevated above it, etc. Clearly, that's very very different from a christian fundie insisting that they would follow their conviction as per their faith if it came down to choosing between that and the law. And they had a very complex approach to this that for example suggested that Norway is so steeped in Christianity and christian culture that the laws of the land would be considered christian in nature. This kind of stuff is actually represented by parties, though they have.. four votes nation-wide or something like that. But it is public and a public platform turns up once in a while that argues for a more christian weight on enacted laws. A more moderate party called "Christian people's party" actually do have a christian foundation to their political platform, for example. And I'm quite a fan of that, because they're at least honest. Very often supposedly moderate parties seek very obviously to legislate with religious morality in the back of their heads, to "encourage" social change. And having that party being forced to say that this is an attempt to insert what we believe is christian morality into actual law is very liberating from a purely political standpoint.
So this now retired politician was fishing for fundie votes. And he was, as it happens, recorded while saying that he believes muslims cannot be integrated into Norwegian super-culture without denying their faith. And he of course suffered a bit of a public image problem after that, this church-society got exposed for the money-laundering operation they were (the guys running this was maintaining a public company without any actual income, etc). Their finance and support from public tax-money got a small do-over. And generally some of us were fairly happy about this. Although it takes some time, people who believe themselves to be above the law because they're so awesomely right tend to run into problems when their activities are actually made public.
This isn't completely unlike a series of other initiatives that are oriented around this curious racism-waves we've been seeing a few times over the last 20 years or so. Where some of the views are simply gutted when they move into the public sphere, while others have their hat put on so it fits (as we say) and they do moderate their actual views, rather than just their rhetoric.
The question therefore is on the one hand: what should you be doing to punish actual legal offenses, and should public fora at all be a target for discouraging offensive views. And on the other: what sort of public activity should we encourage should take place.
In between that, there's a very solid tradition, and legal tradition, in for example Norway (which is modeled on legal doctrine on the continent) on making it 100% legal to curse someone to high heaven in private without being held to account. While saying the same in public as a public person is illegal. Now, enter facebook-societies and an expectation from the users that what they say is private, along with facebook making private discussions more public in nature (and public legally) as people more readily express themselves without reservation -- not to mention the fact that facebook groups are echo-chambers and very easily inundates you with views that mirror your own -- and we're in for a real treat politically.
So don't make the mistake of thinking that this is an EU-wide public ban with legal implications for saying something offensive to a person able to click the report button. It's instead part of a more holistic approach to making public arenas free of actual encouragement to violence and law-breaking. And the question is what should be done to encourage that to happen. To encourage some form of reasonable debate in public spheres.
Does it encroach on your private sphere to say you can be punished by law if you write down your stupidities in a public forum on the internet, for example. Is that really suppression of free speech? To rob "immigration skeptics" of the immunity they're afforded under the law as per their "expectation" that no one would read their opinions? Should a certain politician be surprised if their racism-pandering is exposed for what it is, and even perhaps considered illegal incitement towards violent activism?
Obviously not. But you do get a certain amount of .. stupid racist idiots.. who align themselves with crusaders to nazis, to American republicans in Minnesota who run their mouths, and all the way back to whatever they feel "real europe/Norway/scandinavia", or whatever the hell it is, is all about -- who will insist that even having the discussion about what statements may very well be considered illegal, is an "overt attempt" to silence their racist bigotry.
Frankly, I can live with that. Because if you don't have the guts to stand in public and say that you want "Norway for Norwegians, and Germany for Germans", then you can bloody well keep quiet with your semantic dog-wishtle bullshit.
Anyway. So no - it's not a EU-wide ban on offensive opinion. As if that would fucking work anyway.
