“Ms McEntee is expected to outline on Wednesday that the intention of these changes is to make it easier to secure convictions.”
It shouldn’t be easy to secure a conviction. It should be difficult as everyone has the right to be presumed innocent. If convicted you then receive an appropriate sentence for the crime you committed – not for what you were thinking at the time. A serious crime should equal a serious punishment every time.
Can someone copy and paste what is said in the article ?
From the title and comments I’m assuming this is going to broaden the criteria for hate speech a lot so they can punish more people which I’m not in favour of.
Being a cunt isn’t illegal and nor should it be because it opens a massive can of worms and opinions on whether something is hateful or not shouldn’t carry legal repercussions.
The one regarding gender expression and identity is a bit of a slippery slope tbf, how can you prosecute someone for not recognising something another person feels?
It’s feels like the Dermot ahern blasphemy law again which we ended up voting away in a referendum.
“Hate speech” laws essentially give government the power to prosecute you for saying things they don’t like. They are utterly, utterly incompatible with the idea of a free and democratic society. Who decides what is acceptable? Do you trust both Sinn Fein and Fine Gael to have the exact same idea of what is or is not hate speech? If not, you should probably be concerned.
Governments giving themselves the power to decide what hate speech is and additional powers to prosecute it what could go wrong.
seems pointless when the guards do fuck all in general
“The new Bill will include online speech which is intended to stir up hatred against a person or group with a protected characteristic.”
So under the new guidelines you could argue that the Liveline debate on Trans Issues & subsequent online discussions would fall under the category of hate speech.
I knew Helen McEntee was useless and wasn’t going to solve problems but it takes a special kind of useless to create potentially huge problems that don’t need to exist.
I’m not a big fan of legislation that impedes on free speech.
Hopefully this legislation is it and there isn’t more that goes further. That fact that the legislation only seems to apply to existing laws means that the only additional thing to happen is to note whether or not the motivation for the crime was out of hatred (as opposed to monetary gain or something). This means if someone attacks you for being white, catholic, cross eyed, Scottish, etc. they are punished harsher than if they just attacked you to take your money.
That should apply to the government themselves.. cunts
More things a judge can give suspended sentences for, great.
Ah feck…
Jesus the responses in this thread so that the government could cure cancer and you guys would still moan that they haven’t cured AIDS.
If you read the article, fir it to be hate speech it needs to “attemp yo stir up hatred”, in other words it needs to be incitement. Calling someone a slur won’t be hate speech however doing something like organising a rally and then giving a speech about how no Muslims should be allowed to enter the country because they are all terrorists will be, as its untrue and is said purely to create hatred against Muslims.
As for a hate crime, it’s not something you would be charged with on its own. Say you are harassing someone, which is already a crime itself, but are doing it whilst berating them with a racial slur then the original crime will be considered a hate crime if it deemed that the reasonyou are harassing them is due to their ethnicity/race/religion etc.
Sorry but I have to lol at a million threads this week boldly insisting that in a United Ireland, all these “KAT” bonfires will be banned!!1
But the instant actual legislation that would prevent stuff like that is proposed, it’s a terrible assault on freedom of speech??
Look, if you think “every taig a target” on a mis-spelled sign in some shithole estate in Portadown is a hate crime, but you think it should be legal for someone to shout racial slurs at someone on the DART – you are a massive hypocrite and a bit of a gobshite.
The government should have no role in legislating what people may or may not say. Do you trust the current and future governments to not abuse this in some way?
Also, a crime should be a crime based on the act, not the identity of the victim, motivation may already inform sentencing. A random assault is no less destructive than one where a slur was spoken, both are awful.
After the Nazi Pug debacle, I cannot see this being a good thing.
>At present, Ireland does not have specific legislation dealing with hate crime, although a hate motive can be an aggravating factor that judges can take into account when sentencing.
If judges can already take ‘hate motives’ into account, why is this necessary?
Well goodbye freespeech lads
Great to see that the government is working hard to solve the most important issues such as what we can or can’t say.
Controlling what the plebs speak and think is surely far more important than the housing crisis, the cost of living crisis, the energy crisis, the environment crisis, the insurance cartels, the banking cartels, the scumbags running wild and free with 100s of convictions, the pathetic public transport, the pathetic healthcare system… Hmm wait a second
Complete and utter nonsense bill. This clown literally couldn’t do anything worthwhile if she tried.
Well if this goes ahead then half the people in this sub will be arrested for what they say about travellers. Hate crime laws are fair enough but hate speech is absolutely bananas. Who even defines what it is and how are you going to arrested someone if they say crazy shit.
In France a Muslim comedian was fined for making jokes about Jews and Israel. The government controlling what you say is never a good idea.
Soon wont be able to say anything except, hello. Wont be able to say goodbye because some fucker will be offended.
Oooh, a topic I know something about.
This bill will not be coming after people who merely disagree with something.
If you say “I don’t like xyz.” No one’s coming after you. If you say “I think xyz should be burned alive.” Then yeah that’s a problem.
Hate crime and hate speech is very difficult to legislate. Deciding at what point something is an actual hate crime is not always easy. Countries who had hate crime legislation for years are still having to treat it as a living entity because it keeps changing. The issue is finding a middle ground that works. If it’s too narrow then things that should considered hate crimes slip through the cracks, if it’s too broad it becomes worthless.
However this is the Irish government. The only thing they successfully implement is their own pay rises.
This is a fucking disaster for free speech.
Hate laws = anything that hurts peoples feelings. Pathetic
I can see this being abused by pols and other public figures to basically shut down debate on certain topics.
Being in Ireland, we are usually late adopters of cultural shifts that originate in America and are mirrored in the UK. The fact of our late adoption means we have metrics on the effectiveness of such measures, but that doesn’t seem to even enter the conversation.
Are these the hate speech laws that were written by racist bigot Alan Shatter?
I can’t for a second believe they have any good intentions, as McEntee is involved, does this prevent Irish people from talking about nationality? Is this basically to silence Sinn Fein? You know how pathetic these authoritarian scum are.
“making it easier to secure convictions” is worrying, that sounds like they will want as little court involvement as possible like with fines.
So who gets to determine what is
hate or not?
Why the fuck are they focusing on this instead of dealing with the high amount of crime in the city centre? The most racism and xenophobia occurs in physical alternations in the city. Another Fine Gael spin.
Policing of speech like this will only cause a greater amount of harm.
34 comments
[deleted]
“Ms McEntee is expected to outline on Wednesday that the intention of these changes is to make it easier to secure convictions.”
It shouldn’t be easy to secure a conviction. It should be difficult as everyone has the right to be presumed innocent. If convicted you then receive an appropriate sentence for the crime you committed – not for what you were thinking at the time. A serious crime should equal a serious punishment every time.
Can someone copy and paste what is said in the article ?
From the title and comments I’m assuming this is going to broaden the criteria for hate speech a lot so they can punish more people which I’m not in favour of.
Being a cunt isn’t illegal and nor should it be because it opens a massive can of worms and opinions on whether something is hateful or not shouldn’t carry legal repercussions.
The one regarding gender expression and identity is a bit of a slippery slope tbf, how can you prosecute someone for not recognising something another person feels?
It’s feels like the Dermot ahern blasphemy law again which we ended up voting away in a referendum.
“Hate speech” laws essentially give government the power to prosecute you for saying things they don’t like. They are utterly, utterly incompatible with the idea of a free and democratic society. Who decides what is acceptable? Do you trust both Sinn Fein and Fine Gael to have the exact same idea of what is or is not hate speech? If not, you should probably be concerned.
Governments giving themselves the power to decide what hate speech is and additional powers to prosecute it what could go wrong.
seems pointless when the guards do fuck all in general
“The new Bill will include online speech which is intended to stir up hatred against a person or group with a protected characteristic.”
So under the new guidelines you could argue that the Liveline debate on Trans Issues & subsequent online discussions would fall under the category of hate speech.
I knew Helen McEntee was useless and wasn’t going to solve problems but it takes a special kind of useless to create potentially huge problems that don’t need to exist.
I’m not a big fan of legislation that impedes on free speech.
Hopefully this legislation is it and there isn’t more that goes further. That fact that the legislation only seems to apply to existing laws means that the only additional thing to happen is to note whether or not the motivation for the crime was out of hatred (as opposed to monetary gain or something). This means if someone attacks you for being white, catholic, cross eyed, Scottish, etc. they are punished harsher than if they just attacked you to take your money.
That should apply to the government themselves.. cunts
More things a judge can give suspended sentences for, great.
Ah feck…
Jesus the responses in this thread so that the government could cure cancer and you guys would still moan that they haven’t cured AIDS.
If you read the article, fir it to be hate speech it needs to “attemp yo stir up hatred”, in other words it needs to be incitement. Calling someone a slur won’t be hate speech however doing something like organising a rally and then giving a speech about how no Muslims should be allowed to enter the country because they are all terrorists will be, as its untrue and is said purely to create hatred against Muslims.
As for a hate crime, it’s not something you would be charged with on its own. Say you are harassing someone, which is already a crime itself, but are doing it whilst berating them with a racial slur then the original crime will be considered a hate crime if it deemed that the reasonyou are harassing them is due to their ethnicity/race/religion etc.
Sorry but I have to lol at a million threads this week boldly insisting that in a United Ireland, all these “KAT” bonfires will be banned!!1
But the instant actual legislation that would prevent stuff like that is proposed, it’s a terrible assault on freedom of speech??
Look, if you think “every taig a target” on a mis-spelled sign in some shithole estate in Portadown is a hate crime, but you think it should be legal for someone to shout racial slurs at someone on the DART – you are a massive hypocrite and a bit of a gobshite.
The government should have no role in legislating what people may or may not say. Do you trust the current and future governments to not abuse this in some way?
Also, a crime should be a crime based on the act, not the identity of the victim, motivation may already inform sentencing. A random assault is no less destructive than one where a slur was spoken, both are awful.
After the Nazi Pug debacle, I cannot see this being a good thing.
>At present, Ireland does not have specific legislation dealing with hate crime, although a hate motive can be an aggravating factor that judges can take into account when sentencing.
If judges can already take ‘hate motives’ into account, why is this necessary?
Well goodbye freespeech lads
Great to see that the government is working hard to solve the most important issues such as what we can or can’t say.
Controlling what the plebs speak and think is surely far more important than the housing crisis, the cost of living crisis, the energy crisis, the environment crisis, the insurance cartels, the banking cartels, the scumbags running wild and free with 100s of convictions, the pathetic public transport, the pathetic healthcare system… Hmm wait a second
Complete and utter nonsense bill. This clown literally couldn’t do anything worthwhile if she tried.
Well if this goes ahead then half the people in this sub will be arrested for what they say about travellers. Hate crime laws are fair enough but hate speech is absolutely bananas. Who even defines what it is and how are you going to arrested someone if they say crazy shit.
In France a Muslim comedian was fined for making jokes about Jews and Israel. The government controlling what you say is never a good idea.
Soon wont be able to say anything except, hello. Wont be able to say goodbye because some fucker will be offended.
Oooh, a topic I know something about.
This bill will not be coming after people who merely disagree with something.
If you say “I don’t like xyz.” No one’s coming after you. If you say “I think xyz should be burned alive.” Then yeah that’s a problem.
Hate crime and hate speech is very difficult to legislate. Deciding at what point something is an actual hate crime is not always easy. Countries who had hate crime legislation for years are still having to treat it as a living entity because it keeps changing. The issue is finding a middle ground that works. If it’s too narrow then things that should considered hate crimes slip through the cracks, if it’s too broad it becomes worthless.
However this is the Irish government. The only thing they successfully implement is their own pay rises.
This is a fucking disaster for free speech.
Hate laws = anything that hurts peoples feelings. Pathetic
I can see this being abused by pols and other public figures to basically shut down debate on certain topics.
Being in Ireland, we are usually late adopters of cultural shifts that originate in America and are mirrored in the UK. The fact of our late adoption means we have metrics on the effectiveness of such measures, but that doesn’t seem to even enter the conversation.
Are these the hate speech laws that were written by racist bigot Alan Shatter?
I can’t for a second believe they have any good intentions, as McEntee is involved, does this prevent Irish people from talking about nationality? Is this basically to silence Sinn Fein? You know how pathetic these authoritarian scum are.
“making it easier to secure convictions” is worrying, that sounds like they will want as little court involvement as possible like with fines.
So who gets to determine what is
hate or not?
Why the fuck are they focusing on this instead of dealing with the high amount of crime in the city centre? The most racism and xenophobia occurs in physical alternations in the city. Another Fine Gael spin.
Policing of speech like this will only cause a greater amount of harm.
Is it this they are proposing?
https://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Legislating_for_Hate_Speech_and_Hate_Crime_in_Ireland_Web.pdf/Files/Legislating_for_Hate_Speech_and_Hate_Crime_in_Ireland_Web.pdf
Laughing at a bin on fire is going to be hate speech?
A political argument is hate speech but not a serious crime hate speech? This is fucked.
If this is the proposal it does indeed go too far to the point of being a silencing mechanism for the government.
Being offended should not be grounds to imprison someone in a less powerful position.
McEntee should stick to trying to push for her Boris Border between Ireland and NI.
What can we do to prevent this or at least how can we prevent this from eventually being used by the government to target minorities?
So what happens if a traveler gets into a fight with an Indian? Are they both charged with hate crimes?