This seems to go way too far
A panel of four prestigious international experts on constitutional law backed by the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation (ECTR) have spent three years consulting widely and drafting a 12-page document on “tolerance”. They are lobbying to have it converted into law in the 28 countries of the EU.
The proposal would outlaw antisemitism as well as criminalising a host of other activities deemed to be violating fundamental rights on specious religious, cultural, ethnic and gender grounds.
These would include banning the burqa, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, polygamy, denial of the Holocaust and genocide generally, criminalising xenophobia, and creating a new crime of “group libel” – public defamation of ethnic, cultural or religious groups. Women’s and gay rights would also be covered.
The proposed legislation would also curb, in the wake of the Paris attacks, freedom of expression on grounds of tolerance and in the interests of security.
Now if these were each treated by common sense by the governments concerned then possibly something reasonable might be enacted. Imagine this type of power in the hands of the Front National, what becomes a security interest? Where do you draw the lines and how do you enforce them?
Do you really believe this would be effective? Like in the US people would just create key code words that say the same thing politely.
Do you really believe making people be polite to each other by legal threats is the way to go? Has this ever worked?
If by banning you think you are going to somehow change the reality you have another thing coming. You can only talk about this issues freely without the threats of some form of retribution controlled by the State.
Where do you stop?
Then they come up with this
The Holocaust, the Rwanda genocide, and the mass murder of Muslims by Serbs in Srebrenica, Bosnia, in 1995 would be covered. The Turkish massacre of Armenians in 1915, for example, would not be covered.
Why not? Honestly they should really have to answer how they got to that exclusion.
We already have enough laws, you cannot impose tolerance by intolerance.
I can agree with the sentiments, you can teach tolerance but you cannot impose it. The only way you know how people think is by hearing them, then trying to persuade them to think otherwise.
To my mind this is an attack on freedom of speech even though I agree with the reasons I do not agree with the proposed methodology. I think it is playing with fire and with the new security legislation coming down the pike this is more than worrying.
Change people's way of thinking by all means, but where do you draw the line?