andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> On 20-12-2010 21:48, Warp wrote:
> > andrel<byt### [at] gmailcom>  wrote:
> >> He was consistently trying to provoke violence towards groups of
> >> people by selective portrayal of individual actions as that of a whole
> >> group (while trying to keep within the boundaries of what is just not
> >> racism). He was also trying to anger a lot of Dutch people that happened
> >> to have immigrant forefathers, apparently hoping that one of them would
> >> be so angry that he would misbehave. Or so at least is one view on what
> >> he does.
> >> The case against him was therefore on provoking violence and not on
> >> freedom of speech, just as Assange's case is on rape and not freedom of
> >> speech.
> >
> >    Good to see you are not prejudiced in the least.

> I try not to be, indeed. (unless you meant it cynical, in which case I 
> would be interested to know on which side my prejudices are)

  I was referring to your *assertion* that he was "trying to provoke
violence" etc, as if it was a given and something clear to everybody, in
the same vein as if someone had broken a window with twenty eyewitnesses
and five security cameras clearly testifying about it without any possible
doubt. It sounded like you were saying "he did that, and the only remaining
question is if he should be punished and how much".

  There are many other reasons why someone would publish a critique of
a phenomenon (regardless of whether that critique is accurate or not, or
whether it's presented in a misleading way or not, either intentionally
or not). Outright claiming "it was made to provoke violence" is prejudice.

> In general the majority in a country has to be able to get more 
> criticism than a minority.

  That's an interesting assertion, and something I don't necessarily fully
agree with. The main reason why I don't fully agree with it is because it
is contradictory with the basic tenet of equal rights: Everybody should have
the same rights and duties regardless of background, ethnicity, sexual
orientation, and so on. Everybody should be judged equally before the law.
This is one of the fundamental principles of human rights and constitutional
freedom and equality.

  A country which claims in its constitution (or otherwise) that everybody
is equal before the law, but at the same time applies law differently on
different groups of people based eg. on background, has a double standard.

  Being more lenient of criticism of the "majority" and stricter of criticism
of a "minority" is a double standard and, as said, contradictory with the
fundamental principle of equality.

> If that minority is more vulnerable.

  More vulnerable to what? To getting offended?

  Why is it more permissible to offend the majority but less permissible
to offend a minority? What difference does it make? How is offending a
minority a worse crime than offending the majority? That *is* a double
standard.

  (How do you even *define* the "majority" that needs less protection?
There was once an article, I think it was on a major British newspaper
website, that over 50% of the population of the UK belongs to a protected
minority. Ironically this means that less than 50% of the population
belongs to the sector that gets no special protection from the law,
making them effectively a minority themselves.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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