684. Why Should We Be Concerned About Censorship in Other Countries?

Hi everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Way the World Works. Today I want to talk about free speech, but not actually something that's happening in America, which is a, I guess, good for a change to talk about something bad happening somewhere else. So I want to talk about what happens when things like jokes become a crime and if we should worry about that here, which we should always be worried about our rights because our rights are always under threat, so long as there is government because they, guys, government, they love to be violating our rights, so let's jump into it.

Imagine you are telling a joke about a politician or maybe you post a meme or you call somebody a name. Many of us are guilty of this, we've done that. Imagine you do that and a day later there's a knock at your door and it's the police and they're saying, hey, you've committed a crime for making fun of this politician, for saying something online.

I mean, this is the kind of dystopian nightmare we would freak out if happened, you know, on our soil, but it's happening. It's not happening here, but it's happening elsewhere and I want us to understand what's going on so that we can be more vigilant here at home. There's much debate over when free speech is not protected and you hear this a lot from the left.

You know, I hate to play left-right card because both do bad things, but you hear a lot from the left that actually it's not, I'm going to take that back, it's not just the left because it always depends on what side is having the issue. You hear that, you know, speech can be violence or hate speech is bad or all this stuff and there are limits to free speech. We've talked about this before.

We've talked about you can't incite a riot. There's certain things you cannot do, but is joking about a politician is a meme that somebody gets offended by on the internet? Is that where the line should be drawn? I don't think so, but let's talk about what is happening and for that we are going to go over to Europe and look at Germany. This is going to sound ridiculous, but Germany actually has laws against insulting people and I know that sounds ridiculous to think of, but it's there, including public officials.

To me, if you're going to be able to insult anybody, it should be public officials. You'd also think that Germany, because I don't have the greatest past with free speech, would be good about this, but no, they're pretty bad. So online speech now can be investigated under, you know, hate speech or insult laws, which sounds crazy to say, but those are real.

So right now there's a very real threat to free speech in Germany. Now what does this mean? Like what can police actually do? Well, they can issue fines. Okay.

They can conduct home visits. So come and search your house. I don't know what they would be searching for proof of because if they saw that you posted something, I don't know why searching your room would matter, but they can confiscate phones or computers during these investigations.

And this is again, just, just wild. That could be if you're mocking a politician, that could be again, anyone that thinks they're being insulted, I think, but you can get thousands of euros worth of fines, which again, just nuts. And so this is happening and people think that this protects democracy and that is what blows my mind.

And as you heard this, like, okay, we need these laws against hate speech to protect our democracy. Well, one people throw around the word democracy whenever they want to make a point. They say like, oh, it's hurting democracy.

Most people don't really understand what democracy is and they probably wouldn't like it because democracy is mob rule. We use it and we talk about it being a good thing because democracy, when people talk about it as like a government by the people, it's a, it's a democracy, meaning the people get to make decisions. We love that, right? What does our constitution start with? We, the people, we love that, but democracy is not as great as it's cracked up to be because it's when you have a majority saying, no, we know more than, than the minority and we're going to implement our laws, which is why our framers, the constitution, we're very careful to make a, um, you know, we have a constitutional republic.

We have democracy, but with representation, so people have more of a say and that's why we have the house and the Senate, which give, you know, it's supposed to kind of rotate between giving everybody a fair share and giving people with the most people in their states a fair share at voicing their opinion. So we have all this. So to say that like hate speech laws are going to protect against or protect democracy is just, it's just silly and it's just something people say to make it sound like it's better than it is.

Another country that's really having an issue with this right now is the United Kingdom, which again, we fought a war for a reason, right guys? But they also, and I love this, they call their laws, let me read it here so I don't get it wrong. They call it grossly offensive. I think that, I don't know what kind of accent that was.

I was trying to do an English accent and I don't even, I don't even think that was a place. So grossly offensive sounds slightly more British, but they do this thing where they track non-crime hate incidents. I don't even know what that's supposed to mean because it sounds like a way to just make something a criminal act when it isn't.

So people have been investigated for jokes, for offensive posts, and if you're doing the audio only version of this, you won't see that I just did square quotes because what does offensive mean? That is so subjective that it's hard. I could be offended that, I could be offended that you like a show that I don't like and guess whose problem that is. That is my problem, not my problem to stick the government after you and have them show up at your door.

So there doesn't even have to be violence involved. You can still have a criminal record over this just because you offended someone. And again, it's not that hard to offend somebody.

People get offended all the time. So this is a very dangerous precedent to set. Another country with a lot of bad censorship laws when it comes to free speech online is Canada.

In fact, Jordan Peterson, who titled Twinsley the 12 rules bootcamp book that was based off his 12 rules book, Jordan Peterson became famous. People started knowing who he was because he got into trouble with the government over free speech issues. And in fact, because of his Twitter content, I think it's called X now, but Twitter content, he had to go to this like, like he had to basically be banned from posting or something forever or get like a, go to like a reeducation camp where he was like trained on how to be a better person with his online interactions, which is just crazy.

So again, you're in Canada, you're going to get these hate speech laws that come with civil penalty penalties, including this ridiculous thing he had to go to. And then, which was a government tribunal. And that leads me to the next point.

There's these government tribunals, which punish speech without traditional court protection. So like we have right to a jury and all this stuff. But then in the post nine 11 war on terror era, you had a bunch of like secret tribunals going on.

So Canada has this, but for speech where you don't have to, you're not going to your regular court, you're going to the special court. And actually we, we do still have this problem in America today. It's called agency adjudication.

I won't get into all that, but that's when these like bureaucratic agencies like the, like FTC and stuff, they will have their own little tribunals within their little, you know, bureaucratic agencies where they will try people outside of the actual court system, which is not okay. And so Canada is doing this, but with free speech. And so again, Jordan Peterson had to do this because they thought that what he was posting was offensive to people.

And it's just so crazy to me. And I remember hearing him talking about where he's like, well, I had to go to that. Like they offered to go through this, like, like I had to get a, I had to go to this class on how to learn how to be nicer to people online or like pay a fine.

And it's so just crazy. And it's so funny that it's, it's continuing to get worse over the years because free speech is not about protecting people from offense. It is letting people share their opinions.

And the good thing about it is letting people share their opinions online is actually a good way for us to decide whether we want to associate them with or not. If I see somebody posting something truly hateful and truly just, you know, ignorant online or, or making fun of somebody, it isn't, it's not like in a fun way. It's not, not fun.

Meaning like, meaning it's not like teasing or poking fun. It's like, it's hateful and hurtful. I can be like, you know what? I don't want to be friends with that person.

I don't want to associate myself with that person because they're kind of a jerk, right? But it's different than me being like, I am going to call the ministry of, I don't know, speech, whatever it would be. And I'm going to complain because I'm offended by this person. No, you don't have the right not to be offended.

That's not part of the first amendment, right? You have the right to express yourself and to, to associate with who you want to associate with. So we have these protections and we have more, like we've clearer protections on this than other countries, but that doesn't mean we are immune and we've already seen this. We saw stuff like this during COVID where people wanted censorship if you didn't believe what the government was, was saying their story, right? So just because we have these protections in our bill of rights, the first amendment doesn't mean that they are safe permanently, right? It's I always say one of my favorite quotes from Harry Potter is a professor Matt I Moody who says constant vigilance, like the way to protect against evil is constant vigilance and that's what we have to do.

So it's good to look at these countries. It's good to say, Oh my goodness, I can't believe this is happening. And you know, Germany and the UK and Canada, which is so close to us, like we can see that this is happening.

How do we make sure this doesn't happen here? So we should be looking to these countries for examples on what not to do. And so it's really important to keep track of all this. I know there's a lot to keep track of these days, but this is really important.

So we will leave it there as always. Don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, I will talk to you later.