Danish Elections and Politics

[DL]

How is burning a book an example of "free speech"? Its not speech, its a physical action.

In any case there are always limits on free speech. You cannot yell "fire" in a packed concert hall. There are laws against hate speech in most democracies etc...

I find the burning of ANY book very unsettling and makes me thing of Nazi bonfires of book burning in 1933. Why single out the Koran when you could just have a law against publicly desecrating any book or religious symbol.

I'm 100% atheist and have no use for any religion. If someone wants to give a lecture on why they think that Christianity or Islam or Judaism are false and based on myths - I applaud that. But burning Bibles and Korans etc... seems to just be gratuitous hatemongering

[DL]

In any case there are always limits on free speech. You cannot yell "fire" in a packed concert hall.

This example gets repeated ad nauseam, but few people know its background. It comes from a U.S. court case during World War I where SCOTUS decided that distributing flyers opposed to the draft is not covered by free speech -- the Justice who wrote the decision argued that opposing conscription in wartime was akin to shouting "fire" in a theatre (Schenk v. United States, overturned a few decades later). Time to find a new analogy?

It was a bad analogy during WW1 since I see no comparison at all between yelling "fire" in a movie theatre and expressing a political view on the draft. But there are many other limits on so-called free speech. For example it is illegal to libel someone. Its illegal to commit perjury (when is the last time someone tried to defend themselves in a perjury charge by saying "I have the freedom to lie under oath - its my free speech". Also, in many countries Holocaust denial is illegal and hate speech is illegal. Many years ago a neo-Nazi Holocaust denier in Canada was jailed for "spreading false news" when he kept claiming that the Holocaust never happened (though he kept saying he wished it had happened).

In many countries (including the US) it is illegal to burn the national flag.

I don't know what the laws are in Denmark, but if in Canada you spray painted "Death to Jews" on a synagogue or even on a billboard, you would get charged with a hate crime and claiming the defense of "free speech" to spew hate would not get you very far - and that's a good thing.

Do you agree or disagree that it should be illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded concert hall - or does that constitute an example of free speech that must be protected?

[DL]

What exactly is supposed to be the consequence of making it illegal to desecrate religious books and symbols? is there some huge sub-culture of people in Denmark whose idea of fun is setting fire to Bibles, Korans and the Book of Mormon etc. and if they can't do this anymore, their lives are no longer are worth living?

As said above, I am atheist and consider all religions to be a joke, but if the law says I can't set fire to to religious books - what's it to me? I can still enjoy my life despite that "limitation" to my fun.

[DL]

How is burning a book an example of "free speech"? Its not speech, its a physical action.

free speech is a Common Law concept, in Continental Europe they typically use broader terms which makes it either less relevant or irrelevant whether something is speech or another way of expressing an opinion. German has Meinungsfreiheit (freedom of opinion), Spanish and French have libertad de expresión and liberté d'expression (freedom of expression), and the Scandinavian term yttrandefrihet (Swedish) and ytringsfrihed/t (Danish/Norwegian) also means freedom of expression.

So I guess child pornography is also freedom of expression?

Alao aren’t there all kinds of laws against women wearing hijabs. I guess their “freedom of speech” doesn’t count. In fact these days when people talk about freedom of speech it really boils down freedom of speech for angry, bigoted white men. No cares about free speech for the rest of society

[DL]

Imagine being such a snowflake that you get driven to a mad rage by some women making a wardrobe choice to cover their hair with a hijab?

[DL]

A Voxmeter poll for Ritzau. Had hoped it would at least have been 50/50, but there seems to be support for the ban. So if other pollsters show similar result, hard to see the government backing down.

Among other things the burning of Qurans should be illegal. 48% for, 30% against.
It would damage Danish security if Quran burnings remain legal. 64% agree, 16% disagree.
It would hurt Denmark's reputation if Quran burning remain legal. 62% agree, 15% disagree.
Making it illegal can be a slippery slope towards further limitations on freedom rights. 47% agree, 30% disagree.

Seven opposition parties have made a common statement against the government's ideas. Only Social Liberals and Alternative are not part of this declaration, and even those parties are split. Incredible how Løkke managed to drag the government's position so far to the left on this issue. There must be some polling results on this question soon, and the results will be interesting to see.

I’m not sure EL would consider Løkke to be dragging the government to the left 😁

On issues like multiculturalism, value relativism etc. I would normally have the Social Liberals and Alternative as the most left-wing parties, or lenient or liberal or which terms one would prefer to use. But yeah, nice to see the principled stances from SPP and Red-Greens here.

I wonder why the question is so specifically about banning the burning of the Koran as opposed to banning the burning of religious books in general - not just a ban on burning the Koran but also a ban on burning the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Talmud etc... The law and the polling question should stay away from being so specifically about the Koran and Islam and should be broader and apply to other religions.   

[DL]

The koran burning discourse made me curious about its most obvious comparison (flug burning laws); amusingly in Denmark it is legal to burn the Danish flag but not non-danish flags. How did that weird situation arise?

They're scared of upsetting the Swedes?

[DL]

What's wrong with simply having a law against burning or desecrating any books - no matter what the subject matter. With the only exception being when institutions such as libraries or book stores have so much extra stock that there is no other way to dispose of them - though even in those cases, books are paper and ought to be recycled.

People should be free to criticize the content of a book, but physically burning it should be off limits. I find the burning of the printed word to be very distressing. I don't even want to see Mein Kampf burned - it just makes us a society just as bad as Nazi storm troopers burning books in Babelplatz in 1933.  

Back in the 18th century Heinrich Heine wrote "Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also" (Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen) and I agree with him!

"Heine’s first ever play "Almansor" is a tragic love story between an Arab man and Donna Clara, a Moroccan woman who’s forced to convert from Islam to Christianity. Taking place in Granada in 1492, the tragedy depicts the burning of the Qua’ran, the act that prompts the sentence now engraved in the ground of Berlin's Opernplatz commemorating the horrifying book burning of 1933."