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Hatred isn’t big or clever, but it should never be a crime.
To lump together unpopular moralities as ‘hatred’ is to create a new category of heresy. Indeed, in modern parlance, the phrase ‘hate speech’ plays the same role ‘heretical’ once did: it denotes views that officialdom or self-styled representatives of fragile minorities have decreed to be wicked, and inexpressible. In our post-moral times, where it’s risky to say that any viewpoint is better than another, the self-elected guardians of public safety cannot write people off as evil. So instead they accuse them of practising ‘hate speech’ and throw the legal book at them. It’s a sly form of censorship, elevating the subjective feelings of the listener, their sense of being under-valued, over the objective right of the speaker to express his beliefs.
The policing of hate speech is bad for everyone. For those whose views are simply controversial, who find themselves redefined as ‘hate groups’; for those who want to challenge real hateful ideologies, who can never meaningfully confront them; for the minorities supposedly being protected, who are reduced to moral minors to be quarantined in a safe space for their own good, their fragile souls guarded by switched-on student leaders or officials. The bottom line is this: we must be free to hate. Hatred is an emotion, and when a society controls emotions, it’s not a free society. Rather, it’s a society in which authoritarianism has become so entrenched that moral guardians even think they can tell us what we may feel. The war on hate speech is the end not only of freedom of speech, but of the basic freedom of the mind.
Spinoza, the great Dutchman of the Enlightenment, who almost 350 years ago set a standard for a modern, civilised society that we are still struggling to meet in the 21st century.
Spinoza wrote that ‘In a free state, every man [to which we can add every woman or person of indeterminate gender] may think what he likes and say what he thinks’. If he were somehow to return today, he would surely be met by an online mob tweeting, ‘Think what you like and say what you think? WTF? You Can’t Say That!’
originally posted by: arpgme
Gay people and transgendered people are saying "No!" to conformity but people don't like that. They want to make laws where people are treated unfairly just for being themselves.
originally posted by: Morrad
We must have the freedom to hate
Freedom does work both ways but there is some speech which has consequences, especially when that speech is a call or implication for violence.
The only issue I have with this analysis is that it seems to assume that speech labeled as "hate speech" is actually hateful.
originally posted by: Morrad
a reply to: LadyGreenEyes
The only issue I have with this analysis is that it seems to assume that speech labeled as "hate speech" is actually hateful.
In his editorial, Brendan referred to one man's 'hate speech' being another man's deeply felt belief. Is this what you refer to or does it relate to the fear and ignorance mentioned by theMediator?
there is a deliberate rebranding of various ways of thinking, which are often based on moral conviction, as ‘hatred'