Should Leeds United be hosting this?

Peaceful demonstrations are a danger these days, people only have to know how to drive to cause havoc!..

Britain is now overrun with people like this and they are allowed to say and do as they please yet if we went to there countries and did the same you would be lucky if all you got was flogged and imprisoned. Most likely show up on a youtube video being beheaded

Violence and hate shouldn't be excepted as free speech anywhere in the world.
Ban them, imprison them, deport them.
Any hateful religious propaganda has no place in a civilized society. It happens everywhere and not just Muslims, you only have to look at the fake Christians ruining the U.S. while pushing their views on the general public.

Honestly, GB news are such wind-up merchants. You can find nut bars of every persuasion on the internet, but that doesn’t mean they’re taking over the world. Just switch it off.

There is no "normally am for free speech" you are either for free speech or you are for regulated speech.

The problem that people have is because the concept of freedom is so fundamental to everything we value, freedom of choice, freedom of movement, freedom to love who you want people, that people try to convince themselves they are for freedom of speech, because like the things listed above it must be the correct thing to be for because it has that good word, freedom in the title.

Free speech is an absolute, whereas regulated speech is on a spectrum.

and if you do not believe in free speech, or believe in free speech but... or believe in hate speech, then guess what, you are on that spectrum.

Now where you are on that spectrum is up to you, but you do not believe in free speech, you believe in regulated speech.

In the same way that North Korea, Saudi Arabia, the British Government and loads of other nations believe in regulated speech.

It’s just that you don’t sit where they sit on that spectrum.

Also, this isn’t a free speech issue, we aren’t the government. Us hosting or not hosting this organisation has no impact on their ability to state their message, if we didn’t host them could they still say everything that they would say at this meeting?

The answer is yes, they could.

Should we host them? of course not they are hateful wretches who can go rot and I don’t want them anywhere near my club.

Excellent comments, Matty. Does this mean that you have never deleted a post on one of your threads? I haven't done that, even though I have read comments that are repugnant to me. I just believe that everyone has the right to express their points of view and that common sense and decency will prevail.

There are so many media organisations and bloggers competing for our attention, it's easy to gravitate towards your own brand of crazy, and lose sight of the fact that there are extremists for every point of view. Five minutes with Piers Morgan or GB News or Fox News or Al Jazeerah...it's impossible to know who's telling the truth, and who is worth listening to. Ultimately, algorithms figure out who you believe in, closing your mind to alternative points of view. We are becoming, I think, more intolerant as a race, more hostile to others. And this is where extremists realise that those who are the loudest, the vilest, the most radical and aggressive, are the ones who we hear, not the voices of reason or empathy for another person's point of view.

Many years ago, I was in a bar in Ireland watching a Spurs game, and the man beside me was making comments about David Ginola being a Jew, too mean to pass the ball. He continued in this vein for a while until I turned to him and asked if he knew any Jewish people. He said no. So, I said, you are actually ignorant about Jewish people. I may have added a comment or two about his general lack of education. He, and two of his mates stood up and invited me outside to settle this matter. The whole bar watched on in silence.
I realise four things at that moment.
One, I was about to get the sh!t kicked out of me.
Two, most people steer clear of conflict when they can.
Three, saying what you think after four pints is not always a good idea and
Four, that's what you get for going out on Shabbat.
That was when I stood up and did my Usain Bolt impression.
It's hard to take a stand, but when the choices we face are as easy as switching off the laptop, we can at least do that.

Good for you. You did both the right thing and the smart thing.

comment by The heart of Farkeness (U19827)
posted 2 hours, 2 minutes ago
Excellent comments, Matty. Does this mean that you have never deleted a post on one of your threads? I haven't done that, even though I have read comments that are repugnant to me. I just believe that everyone has the right to express their points of view and that common sense and decency will prevail.
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But that’s not free speech or a free speech issue. Me deleting or blocking a person in no way shape or form limits their free speech. They are free to post the exact same comment elsewhere, I'm not the government and if I don’t want to engage with a person then I won’t.

Free speech is about protection from the government for the words you speak. Not protection from people, organisations, or personal consequences of your speech, as long as that consequence is not from said governments.

Far, far too many people think free speech is saying whatever you want whenever you want, and everyone has to listen to you.

It’s not, free speech is that you can say whatever you want, whenever you want, and the government can’t sanction you for it.

Now, realistically speaking, most people don’t believe in that and think that there should be laws for incitement or for hate speech.

Thats fine if that is your opinion, but you can’t say that there should be a law against speech and say you support free speech... which is what a lot of people do.

Sometimes the best way to see if you believe in free speech is to take an extreme case study, someone who makes your skin crawl saying something that makes it crawl even further...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/bradley-lowery-football-sunderland-sentencing-b2449082.html

We all remember this sick little F.

If Sunderland and Sheff Wednesday ban him for life has his freedom of speech been impacted?

No, they are private organisations and as long as they are not discriminating against a protected characteristic, they can ban whoever they want whenever they want for whatever they want, in fact not allowing them to do so would in fact be against their free speech.

If his boss sacks him is that a breach of free speech, again no if his speech is causing harm to the business through his actions and those actions been linked to his words than the boss has the right to end his employment.

His free speech was only impacted when the government sent him to court.

Now here the question is not do you think what he did was okay, it wasn’t, it’s do you think the government should have sent him to court for this?

Because if you do then you don’t believe in free speech. You believe in regulated speech.

I think that all any of us demand is consistency. We’ve heard a lot about this recently and I think it’s perfectly valid.

You can’t have one message being sent for one group and different message for another. Well, the club apparently do not not want hate from people attending the stadium.

So the answer is simple in the case of Leeds United. If they want heir credibility to be respected then then just now decline the organisers of this event the opportunity to use the venue. You can’t send one message to fans about hate during match days at the stadium and then say that it’s acceptable on another occasion just because it isn’t related to football.

Fair points, Matty, I see what you mean.