[cyphar]

> Perhaps a more poignant current example is youtube personality JonTron. [...]

I think it's at the very least disingenuous to claim that his recent remarks are racist (the more we use that word, the more watered down it becomes). And it's also sad that people assume that your politics cannot change either.

My reading of the situation is that he was just doing a thought-experiment and asking why multiculturalism is only an issue in the western world. It's true that he appears to be more right-leaning than other people in the skeptic "community" but that view is not racist. It's just a question. When he went on to "debate" someone else, it's quite clear that he hasn't debated this topic before and it's quite clear that he probably hasn't heard any of the counter-arguments to his points before (because he hasn't argued them before). Would he change his mind if he had heard those counter arguments? Would he refine his opinions? Maybe, but calling him a racist doesn't help anyone. I would've assumed people learned that with all of the recent political events (Brexit, Trump, everything that's happening in Europe), they'd realise that calling everyone a misogynist/racist/Nazi doesn't actually help...

> But I also think it's clearly wrong to treat any hate-speech/iconography as if somehow doesn't have all that extra cultural baggage.

Right, but "cultural baggage" doesn't appear to me to be a justification for wanting such things banned or not allowed. I find some of 4chan's trolling distasteful and I probably wouldn't have done what they did, but I would never say they shouldn't be allowed to do what they do (not the least of all because I find some of their trolling quite funny).

[shuntress]

The basic point I'm trying to make is that it really depends on intent and that intent can be difficult to accurately determine.

I agree that a zero-tolerance total ban is not right and not justified. Because intelligent respectful conversation is the only way to "unpack" that "cultural baggage".

The problem is, when that conversation isn't clearly respectful and intelligent it just isn't helping and only adds noise. It is to our benefit overall to filter out that noise.