Tweet
The Japan Times, Japan
Feb 2 2007
Declining tolerance of dangerous words
By GEORGE P. FLETCHER
NEW YORK -- Nowadays, words are often seen as a source of
instability. The violent reactions last year to the caricatures of
the Prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper saw a confused
Western response, with governments tripping over their tongues trying
to explain what the media should and should not be allowed to do in
the name of political satire.
Then Iran trumped the West by sponsoring a conference of Holocaust
deniers, a form of speech punished as criminal almost everywhere in
Europe.
As Turks well know, it is dangerous to take a position on the
Armenian genocide of 1915. The most recent Nobel laureate in
literature, Orhan Pamuk, was prosecuted in Istanbul for denying
Turkey's official history by saying that the Armenian genocide
actually occurred. Other Turks have faced prosecution in Western
Europe for saying that it did not.
So words are now clearly a battlefield in the cultural conflict
between Islam and the West. The West has learned that, simply as a
matter of self-censorship, not legal fiat, newspapers and other media
outlets will not disseminate critical pictures of Muhammad, and the
pope will no longer make critical comments about Islam. But these
gestures of cooperation with Muslim sensibilities have not been met
by reciprocal gestures.
Instead, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Iran's president, has threatened to
wipe Israel off the map. The Israeli Foreign Ministry now seeks
prosecution of Ahmedinejad for incitement to commit genocide -- a
violation of international law.
But the Israeli press is also bellicose. Israeli newspapers regularly
carry stories about why Israel may need to attack Iran to prevent it
from acquiring an arsenal of nuclear weapons. U.S. President George
W. Bush has made similarly ominous, if more vague, statements about
Iran. In Germany, preparing and calling for preemptive military
strikes from within the government are subject to criminal sanctions.
The world's different legal systems have never been in much agreement
about the boundaries of free speech. Even between good neighbors like
Canada and the United States, there is little agreement about
punishing hate speech. Canadians punish racial insults, but Americans
do not, at least if the issue is simply one of protecting the dignity
of racial minorities.
But threatening violence is more serious. Many countries are united
in supporting the principle that if, say, Ahmedinejad does meet the
criteria for incitement of genocide, he should be punished in the
International Criminal Court. Indeed, the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda punished radio station operators who made
aggressive public broadcasts urging Hutus to pick up their machetes
and murder Tutsis.
A decade ago there would have been a good argument in international
law that the Hutu-Tutsi example supports prosecution only after the
damage has been done. All the international precedents -- from
Nuremberg to the present -- concern international intervention after
mass atrocities. Domestic police may be able to intervene to prevent
crime before it occurs, but in the international arena there is no
police force that can do that.
It follows, therefore, that the crime of incitement should apply only
to cases like Rwanda, where the radio broadcasts actually contributed
to the occurrence of genocide. In cases where bellicose leaders make
public threats to "bury" another country (remember Khrushchev?) or to
wipe it off the map, the courts should wait, it was said, until some
harm occurs.
But the international community has become ever more intrusive in
using legal remedies against persons who engage in provocative and
dangerous speech. In September 2005, the United Nations Security
Council passed Resolution 1624 -- paradoxically, with American
approval -- calling upon all member states to enact criminal
sanctions against those who incite terrorism. The model of incitement
they had in mind is the same one that British Prime Minister Tony
Blair has publicly invoked: Muslim leaders standing up in their
mosques and urging their congregations to go out and kill infidels.
Americans have traditionally said that, absent a risk of immediate
unlawful violence, this form of speech should be protected under the
First Amendment. U.S. courts reasoned that it is better to allow the
release of hateful sentiments than to call attention to them by
showcasing them in court. But when it comes to terrorism in today's
world, most countries, including the world's democracies, are not as
tolerant as they used to be.
So the traditional liberal position in support of giving wide scope
to freedom of speech, even for extremists, is losing ground
everywhere. When it comes to fighting terrorism and the prospect of
genocide, the world is now becoming afraid of dangerous words.
George P. Fletcher, Cardozo professor of jurisprudence at Columbia
University, is author of "Romantics at War: Glory and Guilt in the
Age of Terrorism." Copyright 2007 Project Syndicate/Institute for
Human Sciences (www.project-syndicate.org)
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo2007020 2a1.html
Feb 2 2007
Declining tolerance of dangerous words
By GEORGE P. FLETCHER
NEW YORK -- Nowadays, words are often seen as a source of
instability. The violent reactions last year to the caricatures of
the Prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper saw a confused
Western response, with governments tripping over their tongues trying
to explain what the media should and should not be allowed to do in
the name of political satire.
Then Iran trumped the West by sponsoring a conference of Holocaust
deniers, a form of speech punished as criminal almost everywhere in
Europe.
As Turks well know, it is dangerous to take a position on the
Armenian genocide of 1915. The most recent Nobel laureate in
literature, Orhan Pamuk, was prosecuted in Istanbul for denying
Turkey's official history by saying that the Armenian genocide
actually occurred. Other Turks have faced prosecution in Western
Europe for saying that it did not.
So words are now clearly a battlefield in the cultural conflict
between Islam and the West. The West has learned that, simply as a
matter of self-censorship, not legal fiat, newspapers and other media
outlets will not disseminate critical pictures of Muhammad, and the
pope will no longer make critical comments about Islam. But these
gestures of cooperation with Muslim sensibilities have not been met
by reciprocal gestures.
Instead, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Iran's president, has threatened to
wipe Israel off the map. The Israeli Foreign Ministry now seeks
prosecution of Ahmedinejad for incitement to commit genocide -- a
violation of international law.
But the Israeli press is also bellicose. Israeli newspapers regularly
carry stories about why Israel may need to attack Iran to prevent it
from acquiring an arsenal of nuclear weapons. U.S. President George
W. Bush has made similarly ominous, if more vague, statements about
Iran. In Germany, preparing and calling for preemptive military
strikes from within the government are subject to criminal sanctions.
The world's different legal systems have never been in much agreement
about the boundaries of free speech. Even between good neighbors like
Canada and the United States, there is little agreement about
punishing hate speech. Canadians punish racial insults, but Americans
do not, at least if the issue is simply one of protecting the dignity
of racial minorities.
But threatening violence is more serious. Many countries are united
in supporting the principle that if, say, Ahmedinejad does meet the
criteria for incitement of genocide, he should be punished in the
International Criminal Court. Indeed, the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda punished radio station operators who made
aggressive public broadcasts urging Hutus to pick up their machetes
and murder Tutsis.
A decade ago there would have been a good argument in international
law that the Hutu-Tutsi example supports prosecution only after the
damage has been done. All the international precedents -- from
Nuremberg to the present -- concern international intervention after
mass atrocities. Domestic police may be able to intervene to prevent
crime before it occurs, but in the international arena there is no
police force that can do that.
It follows, therefore, that the crime of incitement should apply only
to cases like Rwanda, where the radio broadcasts actually contributed
to the occurrence of genocide. In cases where bellicose leaders make
public threats to "bury" another country (remember Khrushchev?) or to
wipe it off the map, the courts should wait, it was said, until some
harm occurs.
But the international community has become ever more intrusive in
using legal remedies against persons who engage in provocative and
dangerous speech. In September 2005, the United Nations Security
Council passed Resolution 1624 -- paradoxically, with American
approval -- calling upon all member states to enact criminal
sanctions against those who incite terrorism. The model of incitement
they had in mind is the same one that British Prime Minister Tony
Blair has publicly invoked: Muslim leaders standing up in their
mosques and urging their congregations to go out and kill infidels.
Americans have traditionally said that, absent a risk of immediate
unlawful violence, this form of speech should be protected under the
First Amendment. U.S. courts reasoned that it is better to allow the
release of hateful sentiments than to call attention to them by
showcasing them in court. But when it comes to terrorism in today's
world, most countries, including the world's democracies, are not as
tolerant as they used to be.
So the traditional liberal position in support of giving wide scope
to freedom of speech, even for extremists, is losing ground
everywhere. When it comes to fighting terrorism and the prospect of
genocide, the world is now becoming afraid of dangerous words.
George P. Fletcher, Cardozo professor of jurisprudence at Columbia
University, is author of "Romantics at War: Glory and Guilt in the
Age of Terrorism." Copyright 2007 Project Syndicate/Institute for
Human Sciences (www.project-syndicate.org)
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo2007020 2a1.html