Hate speech

Arthur Milikh writes in part in Heritage.org,

America’s big tech companies—Google, Twitter, and Facebook—largely imitate the premises of Europe’s “hate speech” laws. And they are currently in the midst of expanding restrictions. A leaked Google internal memo shows the company’s skeptical view of the freedom of speech, comparing the “American tradition” to the “European tradition”: America prioritizes “free speech for democracy, not civility,” while the European tradition “favors dignity over liberty and civility over freedom.” The memo states Google’s support for the European tradition and argues that all tech platforms will move in that direction eventually.

Similarly, Twitter publicly states its commitment to prohibiting “content intended to incite fear or spread fearful stereotypes about a protected category” and “content that degrades someone.” Since inciting fear is so broad as to have no intelligible content, anything short of celebration of a protected identity group can be considered suspect, although Twitter is particularly devoted to stopping “hatred, prejudice or intolerance” that “seeks to silence the voices of those who have been historically marginalized.”

Facebook’s policies explicitly ban the use of what it deems to be “dehumanizing” terms as applied to groups. The problem with “hate speech,” according to Facebook, is that it prevents people from authentically expressing their identities. What exactly might constitute obstruction of individual expression of identity will be judged by the moral mirror within the tens of thousands of Facebook’s human “hate speech” reviewers and algorithms which monitor and ban content.

...many of America’s colleges and universities already actively promote and implement policies to ban offensive thoughts through speech codes. This, of course, is in stark contrast to the original purpose of these institutions: freedom of the mind and the pursuit of truth. Many of America’s colleges and universities are now the training ground for a generation of future citizens sympathetic to outlawing “hate speech.” A recent poll reveals that only 53 percent of college students—a bare majority—favor freedom of speech, a marked change from the spirit of 1960s campus activists.

...Many well-meaning, decent Americans do not yet clearly see the underlying goals or the political implications of “hate speech” laws. They should first recall that America’s laws already ban incitement to imminent violence of any kind; they already protect citizens against individual defamation. Perhaps even more powerfully, the law of opinion already opposes hatred and contempt for protected groups in the public square. There is thus no need for “hate speech” laws.

Restriction advocates, to various degrees, are committed to creating a world that is hostile to political liberty and freedom of the mind—viewing these, in fact, as conflicting with their genuine goal of dignity and equal self-respect. If the law’s aim becomes securing “each person’s proper pride and dignity against the soul-shriveling humiliation that a discriminatory rebuff can give rise to,” despotic measures must ultimately be instituted. 121
Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech, p. 84.



In civil conditions, one can neither compel the earnest respect of others nor force one’s own self-respect, though it is possible to destroy political liberty in the attempt. Should such laws be implemented in America, the public square will be transformed into an arena where forced silence and false celebration rather than free political deliberation are the norm and where the state uses its power to act out resentments against oppressor groups. There will be more hatred and more political instability.

Thus, at least two possible outcomes may await America: despotism if “hate speech” advocates fully have their way or rebellion if they do not. On the one hand, the obedience of a free people to the goals beneath such laws is not produced through the kind of compulsion prescribed. If laws repress speech slowly, the nation will make of citizens mindless subjects incapable of political judgement and suited to being ruled by the state or by a triumphant marginalized group acting through it. On the other hand, free citizens, while still living with the memory of political liberty, will come to despise this new order and may well rebel against it. In such a rebellion, a new fierce spiritedness could be born that judges democracy and equality to be contemptible and grotesque ideals. An unstable mixture of the two is imaginable.

In the coming years, the public should be prepared for so-called moderate voices who in time may grow friendly to speech regulation and claim that “America would be even more American” if it enacted “hate speech” laws.122
Delgado and Stefancic, Must We Defend Nazis? Why the First Amendment Should Not Protect Hate Speech and White Supremacy, p. 105.

Moderate voices, however, are moderate only insofar as their desire for immediate peace blinds them from soberly judging what awaits the nation.

Courageous and patriotic politicians must fight for the freedom of speech by reminding the public of its purpose and the consequences of losing it. Many of today’s elites have already been at least partly convinced of the need to outlaw “hate speech,” and in late democracies throughout the world, the will of the majority is more and more disregarded by them. But public jealousy of free speech and anger at possible future usurpations, along with other possibilities, will be the only imperfect barriers that in the long run may protect this right.

Read more here.

Hate speech and censorship

Emily Zanotti reports in the Daily Wire,

...According to the Daily Signal’s Kate Trinko, the group’s 2017 video starring Dr. Michelle Cretella, “pediatrician with many years’ experience and the executive director of the American Academy of Pediatricians,” was pulled off YouTube because, in the video, Cretella suggested that, “if you want to cut off a leg or an arm you’re mentally ill, but if you want to cut off healthy breasts or a penis, you’re transgender.”

“The Daily Signal recently learned that our video of Cretella had been removed from YouTube. In its place, YouTube displayed this message: “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s policy on hate speech,” the group says.

...The Daily Signal admits that Cretella’s statement is controversial, but that doesn’t make it “hate speech,” even under a broad definition. It simply makes it … controversial. The topic itself — transgenderism and gender transition measures for children — is a hot topic, and Cretella’s point is that society views some bodily alterations with scorn and others with an open embrace. Cretella’s statement doesn’t even reference transgenderism or gender transition surgery specifically.

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"I can barely hear. The irony alarm is so loud in the background!"

Tucker Carlson is doing an awesome job with his new program on Fox.

Thousands flee homes as fires burn in Israel.

Over 50,000 people have had to flee their homes in Israel.

How many Imans are praying to Allah in hopes that there will be much devastation? Well, here is one from Canada.
His name is Mazin AbdulAdhim. CIJ News reports,

Mazin AbdulAdhim, a prominent Imam of Iraqi descent in London, Ontario who is affiliated with the radical Islamic global movement of Hizb ut-Tahrir, gleefully applauds the suspected arson attacks and prays to Allah to “cause the winds to increase and the fires to spread far and wide, and burn their [Israelis] illegitimate properties and all their beloved belongings to ashes.”

Read more here.

Is the Catechism of the Catholic Church hate speech?

Criminalizing "hate speech"

Do you support criminalizing hate speech? A poll at YouGov found that 51% of Democrats and 37% of Republicans do. Roger Kimball writes at PJ Media,

But in fact, as the law professor and blogger Eugene Volokh and others have pointed out, there is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment. As Volokh wrote in the Washington Post, “Hateful ideas (whatever exactly that might mean) are just as protected under the First Amendment as other ideas. One is as free to condemn Islam — or Muslims, or Jews, or blacks, or whites, or illegal aliens, or native-born citizens — as one is to condemn capitalism or Socialism or Democrats or Republicans.”

But the law has never defined “hate speech” for the simple reason that it is a nebulous and ultimately subjective commodity, essentially coterminous with the phrase “speech I disapprove of.”

Read more here.