No Stupid Questions

Criticism and rebellion are our right, duty, and delight.

Green card holders are permanent. They're not any form of temporary and are absolutely not guests.

When you are a guest, yes, follow local customs.

Everyone can criticize anything. You can't stop people from it.

Right wingers don't stop with immigrants. "Love it or leave it" applies to everyone as far as they're concerned.

Since it's clear we're talking about the US here, the 1st Amendment clearly states (emphasis added):

Congress shall make no law respecting ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It says nothing about citizens, tourists, foreign nationals, etc. In fact, the amendment only limits what Congress can do (and the Supremacy clause extends this to the states). It doesn't say "Citizens have the right to free speech." It says "Congress shall pass no laws abridging the freedom of speech."

It's pretty clear that anyone and everyone has the right to free speech and assembly. The right wingers you're talking about are trying to rewrite the first amendment to justify their fascism.

That depends on if we consider Thomas Paine a founding father or a criminal speaker.

Free speech means you can speak freely

A government that can't stand up to simple criticism is a weak government.

Lots of people seem to think it's either or, and it really shouldn't be, in my view. (I'll note I'm canadian, since it seems to matter to some these days).

The argument that foreigners shouldn't be allowed to protest is to me somewhat valid, but with a bunch of reservations. Peaceful protests, publishing op eds, (obviously) University papers, online posts, and other 'regular' forms of expression I'm totally in agreement that they should be allowed to express themselves/participate.

But we've also seen cases in Canada where our immigration levels got so high, that we literally had CCP organized protests in favour of a detained Chinese CCP Billionaire, as well as the tearing down of "peaceful protests"/awareness things in regards to HongKong and the crack down the CCP did there. We've seen large, organized groups of Indian students -- their messages of "go get free food" being amplified by foreign controlled social media -- draining our food banks dry, the loss of that social support helping to fuel class conflicts and increased animosity towards Indian people as a demographic. We've seen 'protests' leveraged by foreign powers to sow discontent and animosity intentionally, and/or to control the narrative around news stories.

And that's really no surprise: one of the stated methodologies of authoritarian regimes, for attacking democracies, is to basically sow civil unrest through the amplification of contested issues/topics. They'll amplify/fund controversial right-wing and left-wing viewpoints in order to cause internal conflict. They'll hype up race conflicts. Like how the majority of people are totally fine saying both "Hamas is bad" and "Israel's genocidal actions in gaza are bad", but somehow it's always framed as just a 2 sided thing where you're on one side or the other, is great for authoritarians: why fight a democracy, when you can make it fight itself. If we're accepting Students/people from authoritarian regimes, we have to be realistic in acknowledging many of these people will share the regimes beliefs, and will be actively working against our governments / peoples. They aren't the stereotypical refugee seeking a better/freer life, but rather people with malicious intentions and a desire to disrupt.

So I'm fine with such people having visas and non-permanent citizenship revoked if the person's involved in criminal activity (violent protests), and/or if they're a primary organizer/instigator/funder of such things, or (as was the case with some 'student' groups in Canada) they're actively coordinating their protests with foreign embassies/agents. I'd also be in favour of increased scrutiny of people from such regions when it comes to long term stays / partial immigration (where they don't renounce their former non-democratic country). Lots of countries also expect singular citizenship, I see no particular issue with western democracies at least requiring that their citizens not support/be registered citizens of authoritarian dictatorships. If you want to live in an egalitarian/democratic country, you shouldn't be supportive of authoritarian autocracies/dictatorships.

And again, similar to the note about 'one side or the other', in terms of free speech, most folks generally recognise that there are some reasonable restrictions / repercussions involved with it. Hate speech, explicitly calling for the killing of some group of people or what have you, clearly not a 'right' for most sane people -- at least, not one that wouldn't come with consequences. In the same way that the left is fine boycotting Musk for his Nazi salutes (he's free to express himself as a Nazi, and other people are free to take issue with that / not support him because of it), foreigners explicitly challenging the existing norms of society should be prepared for potential consequences if they do so in a manner deemed inappropriate.

Anyone has the right to criticise any government. Tons of Lemmy thread on !world@lemmy.world are basically foreigner giving negative (and sometimes positive) critics about government with sometimes locals giving contexts

If you can criticise dictatorship like Russia, North Korea you can also criticise democracies like US or France. Even better, in these countries, you can legally do it from national soil, while in dictatorship you'd get into trouble

The USA is supposed to be a "free country." Everyone within its borders should have the right to criticize the country, or anything at all, and not face repercussions from the government.

That doesn't mean they won't face repercussions from everyone else in the country, who also have the right to criticize them.

In the USA everyone is supposed to have 1A rights

Are you asking if humans have the right to free speech? Because yes.

Any “government” that doesn’t recognize that deserves the respect of no human being

In a democratic country, you can think and say whatever you want from its government. At best, being there, you should expect some side eyeing: you're there; if you don't like it, go your own way.

In countries where you know such criticism can bring harm your way, just avoid going there altogether.

Either you can speak freely or you cannot... right now in America you cannot. It is no longer considered a free democracy, plain and simple.

Everybody has a right to criticize anything they want.

I don't have to visit the Sahara to know that it's hot and dry there, and there's no reason I shouldn't be able to say it's too hot and dry for me to want to go there.

Someone else might criticize the Sahara for being too cold and wet. That doesn't make any sense to me, and I can claim that they don't know what they are talking about, but they have the right to believe that.

I think that you should follow local norms. If you're in the US, go for it. If you're in Saudi Arabia, maybe keep that shit in your head.

Provided it's legal, yes. I've trashtalkes trump while visiting the US, no problem there. But I keep my mouth shut when visiting Saudi Arabia.

In the case of the US, free speech is universal (de jure, at least. Not de facto, as we've recently seen). As beneficial as it would be to prevent, for example, foreign propaganda agents and their talking points, doing so would mean selective free speech, which isn't really free.

If we’re talking about the USA specifically, then the answer is yes. The Bill of Rights applies to everyone.

It's just an excuse. They want to get rid of him because they don't like his politics and he's an activist. Whether the state categorizes you as a citizen, resident, tourist, undocumented, etc. should have nothing to do with your right to speak out.

People on work, study, spouse, etc. as well as permanent residents and other long-term categories absolutely should in my opinion. I say this even though my ability to do that as a long-term (decade) resident of Japan doesn't fully exist. Tourists I'd say... probably but I don't see the usecase where one would want to go to a place just to protest in that place outside of some edge cases.

If there is something to criticize, everyone should do so. Criticism is a good thing: you don't necessarily have to share it, but you can learn from it.

Pragmatically: It depends on the country’s laws for free speech and criticism, your location, and a country’s extradition relationship.

Personally: Yes, we should all have the right to criticize our own and others’ governments. But we should also take the responsibility and initiative to get educated while doing so.

Should doesn't enter. They do have that right, it's a human right, the right of free expression. Doesn't depend on nationality or location, only humanity.

If freedom of speech is granted to all and there is legal precedent and long standing tradition for that case then all should be able to have freedom of speech regardless of status.

Also consider US citizens living or traveling abroad and their ability to criticize their government, and former US residents who've since left for good, and citizens of another nation who may know as much or more about history related to America and its politics but don't actually intend to visit.

As the cons continue gatekeeping their critics, let's decide whether the entire world has the right to an opinion.

My interpretation is that visitors don't have specific rights to criticize a government per-se. However! In most non-authoritarian countries, everyone has the unequivocal rights to criticize a government as long as they are not intending on disobeying other harassment/discrimination laws, regardless of their status. Since visitors are also included in "everyone", they can criticize a government too

Of course this only applies to non-authoritarian countries. Authoritarian countries don't have that right even for their citizens, so visitors are not excluded either

(I hate where this train of thought is going but whatever...)

There's a whole field of philosophy rooted on the idea that the world is never perfect, there is no end to history, and thus we must always be critical of the status quo.

It's called Critical Theory.