In my mind it's always been the difference between saying:
<jews/muslims/immigrants> are a problem, and saying I _think_ that <jews/muslims/immigrants> are a problem.
The same goes for insulting police officers. You can report your state of mind, but you can't use a descriptive tense, you need to explicitly state that it is your opinion.
I haven't ever been in trouble of this sort of thing, and I also think that almost every human knows when real hate-speech is being bandied about. But I do know that a few years back the courts in the Netherlands ruled that if you tell a police officer: 'you're a fag' you can't defend yourself by saying it was just an opinion.
The problem with that is it supports one position over another no matter what the circumstances. What you're saying means that the only correct position is to support ever loosening restrictions on immigration. You can't ever go the other way, can't even discuss it.
That is far more worrisome then me then the supposed reincarnation of Hitler in orange form.
Christ, if Hitler isn't the new devil, capable of possessing people at random and these aren't the new Salem witch trials, I don't know what is.
<jews/muslims/immigrants> are a problem, and saying I _think_ that <jews/muslims/immigrants> are a problem.
The same goes for insulting police officers. You can report your state of mind, but you can't use a descriptive tense, you need to explicitly state that it is your opinion.
I haven't ever been in trouble of this sort of thing, and I also think that almost every human knows when real hate-speech is being bandied about. But I do know that a few years back the courts in the Netherlands ruled that if you tell a police officer: 'you're a fag' you can't defend yourself by saying it was just an opinion.