So I've been meaning to make a thread on this for awhile, but given that Marc recently made a thread which I can't respond to without basically saying "this is 100% predictable given European attitudes towards free expression," which would and risk derailing the thread, I think that the time has come. Americans and the rest of the world, but especially Europe, tend to have very different attitudes when it comes to free speech. Americans are generally disturbed by the lack of speech protections in other countries, while Europeans are annoyed by our criticism of their laws, which they believe ignores the difference in historical context.
Debates over US and European speech laws tend to center around "hate speech," however it is not as if the only difference between US and European laws is an exception for hate speech. To be clear, I think that hate speech laws are problematic, and I will get to that, however I think they are a symptom of the problem (and yes, I do see it as a problem), rather than the cause. European countries don't just have hate speech exceptions, they also often have other exceptions the US doesn't have, and the exceptions we all have tend to be broader in Europe. Several European countries have exceptions for blasphemy and lese-majeste, while defamation laws tend to be stronger and fair use exceptions to copyright weaker in Europe than in the US. And there are other differences as well, my post would be far too long if I listed all of the examples I knew and I'm sure there are far more which I don't.
The idea of free speech originated in parliamentary privilege in England, the idea being that representative government requires a free exchange of ideas, and that is still the justification used in countries that recognize that right. In Europe, in Canada, in Australia, and even in the US, governments have tended to take the view that only ideas worthy of considering are worthy of protection. And in the US, as recently as a century ago, the Supreme Court had tended to concur. The difference is that since that time, the Supreme Court has increasingly taken the view that the government has no business determining which ideas are worthy of protection. In the US, we have come to see free speech as valuable in itself, because it protects unpopular ideas which may still nonetheless be born out by history, and because allowing the government to decide which ideas merit censorship tends to favor the powerful.
In the US, the government tried to prohibit abolitionist literature and tried to prohibit resistance to World War I, fringe ideas at the time that most people today would recognize as justified. The US government tried to restrict criticism of the Vietnam War, discussion of homosexuality, and investigation of Watergate. In the US, liberals and conservatives alike (and especially libertarians), generally recognize that if we give the government the power to restrict meritless or divisive speech, it will at some point restrict our speech, or at least the speech of people advocating positions we care about. And so we have increasingly resisted any governmental restrictions on speech, and the Supreme Court has increasingly narrowed the scope of existing exceptions, while refusing to create new ones.
The last exception created by the Court was New York v. Ferber in 1982, which carved out an exception for depictions of sexual activity involving children. Meanwhile, other exceptions have been considerably narrowed, rendering obscenity and fighting words dead letters. At this point, there are basically three enforceable criminal exceptions to noncommercial speech protection: 1. Incitement to violence, 2. True threats, and 3. child pornography. The US still has somewhat weaker commercial speech protections, with the government allowed to ban things like false advertising and marketing tobacco to minors. We also allow several torts against unprotected speech, including defamation, invasion of privacy, and copyright infringement. With both our commercial speech exceptions and torts though, these exceptions are narrower than they in most or all European countries.
Defenders of the European approach to speech point out that circumstances in the US and Europe are different, however the US is, AFAIK, alone in the approach we take to speech. No other country has tried it. The Dutch seemed at one point like they might be on a similar path, but under EU regulations they have come more in line with the rest of Europe. The most common exception that comes up is of course "hate speech": Europeans, and Canadians, and Aussies, generally seem to take the view that hate speech is meritless speech which does not require protection, and moreover the emotional harm it causes to the targets means it probably shouldn't be protected.
I do not believe that it is possible to carve out a hate speech exception and otherwise follow the US approach, because hate speech restrictions govern which opinions are permissible, something which . Opposing groups can and do argue that the criticism of each other is hate speech. Some religious organizations make claims of hate speech against apostates, feminists, gay rights activists, and other critics; TERFs make the same claim against trans activists. Actual, fallible humans need to evaluate their claims, and tend to do so with a "squeaky wheel gets the grease" approach.
But as I have said, European views on hate speech are a symptom of a larger problem. Outside the US, speech may be nominally called a right, but it is still effectively considered a privilege, it is dependent on the speech having merit, and can be restricted if it inflicts emotional harm which outweighs any merit the government determines it has. We see this with the gag orders the UK sometimes issues, we see it with the British Parliament using copyright to block satire. We see it too with copyright, where the French notion that authors have a moral right to their work is leading to expansions of copyright and the shrinking of fair use across Europe.
Restrictions on speech require government action, and by their nature they tend to suppress the views of the politically marginalized more than the views of the political powerful and well-connected. With restrictions on blasphemy and lese-majeste, this is the goal. With the French view of copyright and the British view of defamation, this has been the practical effect. Hate speech is a weird exception which is nominally supposed to favor the powerless, but even there, it benefits vocal and well-connected minorities such as orthodox Muslims over less powerful minorities such as Ahmadis, Bahais, and ex-Muslims. But even if you think hate speech laws are worth having, is it really worth an approach to speech that allows the government decide which views are legitimate and which are beyond the pale?