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Right-wing pundit Candace Owens now barred from New Zealand as well as Australia

There may be good reasons to restrict where people go and for whatever reason. Disease control eg. during Covid might be one, combating organised international crime might be another. That the government doesn’t like the cut of someone's jib is a terrible reason and will backfire on the left.

The NZ government under whose watch Owens has had her visa denied is of the National Party, their Conservatives.
I don’t think you can really make this a right v left thing.
 
That the government doesn’t like the cut of someone's jib is a terrible reason and will backfire on the left.

Again, do you have any examples of how not allowing a fascist moron a visa has backfired on anyone else?

It's just the mission creep theory, that's not manifested in reality.
 
This is the crux of why I don't think there is a case for banning people AT ALL. Why do foreigners have less right to hate speech than citizens? What is achieved by this double standard?

It's not a double standard. Like it or not, citizens have rights that non-citizens don't. We can't do anything about our native scumbags. We can however, tell foreign ones to get fucked, by the simple refusal of a visa.
 
I can tell. It’s the same place I always come from on this question. The argument I’ve made on those boards for a quarter of a centrist. And the thread has gone the way I predicted.
It’s a straightforward position: don’t give the state the power to define acceptable speech or extremism.

They haven't though. She can say what she wants just not in a monitising tour. Otherwise you're arguing for the right for anyone to be able to go anywhere and do any work they want. A position which.. Has issues.
 
I think it is to the extent that you gave (state censorship of the boards) or to the extent that I would find concerning.

Do you have any examples of it happening?
The state criminalising social media posts in particular, or the wider point about the state expanding its definition of extremism to include more and more views? Because I’m sure you can think of examples of both yourself.

Here’s an article about a list of organisations produced by the police about “counterterrorism” which includes an organisation I was at the time a member of.

 
It's not a double standard. Like it or not, citizens have rights that non-citizens don't. We can't do anything about our native scumbags. We can however, tell foreign ones to get fucked, by the simple refusal of a visa.

Well citizens don't have the total freedom to cause potential incitement in public arenas either.
 
Again, do you have any examples of how not allowing a fascist moron a visa has backfired on anyone else?

It's just the mission creep theory, that's not manifested in reality.

Well I've already given an example. Raed Salah - who is an Islamist but may have important things to say nevertheless.

I'm not a big fan of the mission creep argument fwiw. On this particular question of bans on individual visitors, we're already at the thick end of the wedge. It's very alarming that people on here are defending this status quo because they think free speech doesn't matter.
 
It's not a double standard. Like it or not, citizens have rights that non-citizens don't. We can't do anything about our native scumbags. We can however, tell foreign ones to get fucked, by the simple refusal of a visa.

What does that achieve? 100 native scumbags have the right to say things we don't like, but we can ban one foreigner from doing the same. Hurrah.
 
Again, it's the messaging. It's a protest against what that person has to say. It's the diplomatic equivalent of calling them a cunt.

And yes; hurrah!

Ie. pure gesture that achieves nothing.

But yes OK the stakes are low on this question. Fifty years ago, before the Internet, this question would have been more pressing. Nannyish attempts at coddling us against the outside world would have meant something.

What is more important to me is that so many on here don't see the importance of defending free speech. And that broader question is where the slippery slope lies.

We are seeing in America right now a quite brutal crack down on free speech on campuses and on ostensibly anti-hate speech grounds. Protect Jewish students from hearing protests over Gaza.
 
Ie. pure gesture that achieves nothing.

But yes OK the stakes are low on this question. Fifty years ago, before the Internet, this question would have been more pressing. Nannyish attempts at coddling us against the outside world would have meant something.

What is more important to me is that so many on here don't see the importance of defending free speech. And that broader question is where the slippery slope lies.

We are seeing in America right now a quite brutal crack down on free speech on campuses and on ostensibly anti-hate speech grounds. Protect Jewish students from hearing protests over Gaza.

Well yet again, I reject the suggestion that the state is trying to 'coddle' or somehow protect us from nasty people saying mean things. As already stated it's a moral position rather than a practical one.

Do you think I should be allowed to stand in Hyde Park and tell people to kill jews?
 
It's not about free speech though. No one has ever had the right to monitise speech where and whenever. You can argue it's a mistake they have denied her a visa, that's fair but you can't sight an inalienable right to free speech in this context to do so, since one has never existed anyway.
 
Australia has also denied visas to David Icke, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, David Irving, and, last month, a former Israeli minister who called for the expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza, so at least they're showing some consistency
Plus they booted out Novax Djocovid a couple of years ago.
 
Being barred from entering the country has nothing whatsoever to do with the state attempting to stop her views being heard. As you say, anyone can listen to them online with a few button clicks.

The entry bar is a token gesture, making the statement "We think you're disgusting. Fuck off and do it elsewhere".

Good.
Being barred gives her, and grifters like her, even more reason to complain about being 'silenced' and victimised. And their followers lap it up.
 
It's not about free speech though. No one has ever had the right to monitise speech where and whenever. You can argue it's a mistake they have denied her a visa, that's fair but you can't sight an inalienable right to free speech in this context to do so, since one has never existed anyway.

At a local level yes. Venues should have the right to decide who speaks there. But whole nations?

The monetisation relates to work visas as I understand it. But why not argue that work visas should not be used to block speakers? I don't imagine that's particularly difficult to legislate.
 
Being barred gives her, and grifters like her, even more reason to complain about being 'silenced' and victimised. And their followers lap it up.

Fuck 'em. Who cares?

The only people who are going to swallow that shit are people who've already buried themselves down that rabbit hole.

Robinson and his cronies moan about having their free speech curtailed. Everyone else just calls them wankers.
 
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That was because he wasn't vaccinated though.
Not exactly.
It was on grounds of 'health and good order'.
He also lied on his visa application.
The 'good order' part of the ruling is what is most relevant to the Owen case.
Why let someone go on a hate speech tour if there is a high likelihood that there will be a breach of public order?
 
At a local level yes. Venues should have the right to decide who speaks there. But whole nations?

The monetisation relates to work visas as I understand it. But why not argue that work visas should not be used to block speakers? I don't imagine that's particularly difficult to legislate.

OK but then at the local level, what if the Police decide there's a serious risk of incitement, public disorder if a given individual presents a public event?

Should they be allowed to refuse a license for that event? (or what ever the mechanisms are.)

Quite rightly, we don't allow individuals to stand in the street shouting racist bile without the potential for censure and legal consequences. This seems more akin to that than the spector of senshorship.


Also seems to be some posters are coming close to saying, we should let people who spread hateful likely inciteful bile in more eloquent terms do so because otherwise the right will play the victim card. Fuck the right, they'll use anything and as I say, there's no consistency in their positions anyway.
 
If it stopped at that.

But allowing the state the power to define acceptable speech and indeed to define “told to fuck off” is a mission creep to authoritarianism that may one day include your posts on these boards.
I think you'll find Spymaster is quite regularly told to fuck of and is often banned from the boards. He has some lived experience on being banned for his speech and writings. So I think he has some authority on this subject.
 
Gestures never achieve nothing. Everything in society is constructed through what we communicate to each other. Gestures make all the difference in the world

Gesturing about free speech may achieve something, it starts a more serious conversation at the very least. Celebrating the banning of a speaker is just an expression of schadenfreude. Hence the hopeless purity of the gesture.
 
I think you'll find Spymaster is quite regularly told to fuck of and is often banned from the boards. He has some lived experience on being banned for his speech and writings. So I think he has some authority on this subject.
Nor by the state though. There’s a difference. Though it is one many of you seem unable to perceive.
 
OK but then at the local level, what if the Police decide there's a serious risk of incitement, public disorder if a given individual presents a public event?

Should they be allowed to refuse a license for that event? (or what ever the mechanisms are.)

I'm not sure where things stand in terms of the legal realities. But in principle, no the police should not be called on to police speaking tours. This has been a long standing anti-fascist principle.

Quite rightly, we don't allow individuals to stand in the street shouting racist bile without the potential for censure and legal consequences. This seems more akin to that than the spector of senshorship.

The police can deal with such breaches of the peace.

Also seems to be some posters are coming close to saying, we should let people who spread hateful likely inciteful bile in more eloquent terms do so because otherwise the right will play the victim card. Fuck the right, they'll use anything and as I say, there's no consistency in their positions anyway.

I think those posters are arguing that the ban will be counterproductive. It's not the point of principle, but it's pretty reasonable. Think when Kellie Jay Keen aka Posy Parker toured Australia and ended up with literal neo-nazis supporting her. She effectively marginalised herself. OTOH she'd have made political capital if she had been banned.
 
Why let someone go on a hate speech tour if there is a high likelihood that there will be a breach of public order?
There's possibly a certain irony in this context to not letting someone into the country because of the high likelihood they will have a negative impact on society.

Gestures never achieve nothing. Everything in society is constructed through what we communicate to each other. Gestures make all the difference in the world
For a second I missed the "never", and was about to disagree in rather strong terms :oops:
 
I'm more concerned about British citizens not being able to bring their partners to live in the UK because they don't have very high salaries than some bigot being banned from going to Australia to give speeches. If they're that desperate to hear her they can still do so via Zoom or holograph her in if the want a more 3D encounter.
 
And there we have it
And what?

It's hardly controversial. Anyone who does believe in absolute freedom of speech is an idiot.
Yeah, almost no-one believes in absolute freedom of speech.

It has been, somewhat embarrassingly, one of the things I routinely get most irritated by in recent years. You have people going around making impassioned arguments for freedom of speech, while in other situations telling people what they can't say, with seemingly no internal connection between the two.

What really irritates me, though, is that people who are fairly fundamentally ideologically opposed to each other will usually make the same arguments, often almost verbatim, in favour/against 'freedom of speech', depending on what kind of speech is under discussion at the time.

You don't believe in freedom of speech, and that's fine. You believe some speech should be allowed, but there is other speech you don't think should be allowed. Can we all just be honest with each other, and ourselves, about that? And, please, be more specific with our reasons for which we like and which we don't, and the arguments we're making for either? Otherwise we're just shouting past each other, which is very boring and gets us nowhere.

I mean, if there was a kind of speech I'd like to restrict the freedom of...
 
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