[snackbugs]

You're being confronted with a truth about the clear definition of hate speech, and you're resisting moving forward because you intuitively sense the contradiction that your own belief might pose to that. This is where you need to be brave and get past that.

[umanwizard]

Huh? That's totally out of left field and not even related to the discussion we were having. How can you possibly have any idea what my motives are for this discussion or what my own beliefs are about anything else?

[snackbugs]

We're discussing the clear and defined understanding of what hate speech is.

You lost the thread of the conversation the moment someone confronted your belief that it doesn't have a clear definition.

The reason you lost the thread is because you're struggling with the internal contradiction of your belief.

[umanwizard]

So, (if the definition is so clear) do you think claiming capital punishment should be legal is hate speech, as the person I was originally replying to has claimed elsewhere in this subthread?

[snackbugs]

In a vacuum, I would not say that's hate speech. But there are complexities in the advocacy for capital punishment in the current context of the US's criminal justice system.

Our carceral system is widely recognized to be deeply racist in practice and in philosophy. This being the case, it's not an unbelievable stretch to say that when someone holds a belief in capital punishment, there is a good chance they also have parallel beliefs that rationalize capital punishment as a functional part of that racist system.

In that case, such advocacy is part of their rhetorical framework of hate speech. The clarity of the definition of hate speech gives us to see the context of that.

[umanwizard]

Who said anything about the US?

Let's imagine you work at a social media company. You see the comment: "capital punishment should be legal". You don't know anything about the carceral system of the jurisdiction the commenter lives in.

Do you remove the comment for being hate speech, or not?

But the main point is that since the other commenter reached the conclusion that this would be hate speech, and you reached the conclusion that it might be but not necessarily, it follows that the definition he or she proposed is not clear.

[snackbugs]

Remove it or not based on your company's rules and values.

I don't know how to make this any more explicit. Hate speech having a clear and defined concept (which both you and that other commenter can research on your own) gives us a way to define whether or not the comment and context is harmful or not. I'm not going to hold your hand here, you need to read about it.