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Some say it's time for Canada to criminalize residential school denialism
(www.coastreporter.net)
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
109 points (94.3% liked)
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It makes me very uncomfortable to make speech and holding opinions (whether factual or not) illegal.
It sets a dangerous precedent and is a double edged sword. What if we’d declared criticizing internment camps or the 60’s scoop as hateful prejudice against Canada? What if the next government makes speaking against oil illegal?
Education and acknowledgement is the answer. We need to continue making everything about residential schools public. It should be easy to see evidence of their practices, know who ran them, how many children died and where they’re buried, etc. It should be obvious this happened and was awful.
This slope is not slippery at all. Denying holocaust has been a crime since ~~2002~~ 1994 in Germany and yet Germany had no issues with upkeeping free speech in the ~~two~~ three decades since.
edit: oops it's actually older than I thought
TIL it's that recent. I know there was at least some anti-Nazi laws from the start.
The slope gets slippery at some point, though, right? I don't think it's a stupid thing to worry about, even if ultimately this is the right choice.
It gets slippery depending on who is in power, which is exactly what we have to defend against.
Well, any group in power has incentive to abuse it, and I think history shows they always will given the chance (at least in the long run).
I agree completely, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely"
Sure. I wouldn't like to see climate change denialism criminalized in this century and I'd be pretty worried if any government pushed for it - but we're so so far away from something like that happening. We're way closer to going backwards in reconciliation.
Um... the trend is to criminalize research on climate change if conservatives win in November.
That's my point. The far-right of this country is already working to destroy opposition and we're closer to implementing climate change denialism policies and going backward on reconciliation than we're close to having free speech at danger. And in any case, it's not like the precedent doesn't exist already or that the far-right needs the precedent to grow fascist.
There is basically one thing that people should prevent fascists from doing, and that is getting hold of the state apparatus. Once the army, police, health, education and social services are under far right control there is no horror we can put past them.
Censorship should make us uncomfortable for all those reasons, but I think history has shown hate speech can't be beaten with just reason. Whether this specific proposal is worth the precedent is another question on top of that, though.
I’m not against it for the tolerance/intolerence aspect, I’m against it for the potential weaponization.
Could a future government say “woke” speech is hate speech? That’s why I think we need to be careful.
I don't disagree.
Canada already has laws restricting hate speech, adding a law that adds a very specific definition is not going to lead down a slope more than the current system does.