[didibus]

Okay, but how do you reconcile that with the fact that hate speech and propaganda has been a part of almost all atrocities ever done in the past?

Or put some other way, how do you reconcile that your freedom can be affected by someone's else's freedom? Like what if I use my freedom to turn others against you and have them hate you and berate you and bully you and ridicule you and refute you, and potentially have them vote for laws that take actions against you, or possibly have them commit hateful acts towards you, etc.

[inglor_cz]

Not the OP, but basically you are complaining about humans. I am not convinced that by banning certain expressions you get any security against future oppression.

Stupid hateful people might get trapped by anti-hate-speech laws, but the smarter ones, precisely the ones you need to be careful about, are fairly good at avoiding them and may even use the threat of prosecution to raise sympathy from the part of population that dislikes the incumbent government.

Most European countries have vibrant extremist movements (left, right, Islamic) even though their freedom of speech is much more limited than the U.S. standard.

[didibus]

I see your point, and I think that needs thoughts for sure.

I think most people (including myself) don't know why some harbor hateful resentment and intolerant ideals. And it isn't clear how to deal with it. It's very possible that we need to resist the temptation to try and simply brush those people aside. But I think one thing that isn't clear is if one of the cause for this increase is related to the internet providing bigger megaphones to those smart ones who like to recruit members to their ranks.

And part of that for me is how recommendation algorithms on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube operate, it seems to be tuned towards sensationalized and hateful content. So it does give you the impression that those platforms are failing to educate people with values of tolerance, liberalism, freedom, and individual rights which the USA is founded on.

It's a great question though, you probably don't fight intolerance with intolerance, but at the same time, you might need to be ready to fight it if it comes to that. But how do you avoid having it reach this point?

[zozbot234]

I have no issue with people turning against, hating, berating, bullying, etc. me. These are simply matters of feeling and opinion. I do have a problem when other people feel entitled to escalate such conflicts by reacting to these unwelcome points of view with real, actual violence, including government censorship. Even, and perhaps especially, when these people are purporting to act in my defense.

[didibus]

Ok, but what are you referring too? Because I'm not sure I'm seeing any government censorship (except for maybe the voter suppression and the child protection laws as well as some of the anti-protest forces deployed by the government in recent protests like BLM). And I'm mostly seeing violence driven by hate speech, like the various shootings happening.

I would be very against government censorship or interventions against constitutional rights of free speech and right to assemble and protest, and right to vote.

Maybe I just don't have the data you have, but right now I'm not too sure I follow you.

[causi]

I would posit there's little correlation between hate speech laws and hate crimes.

For example, the United States has no hate speech laws. In 2017 there were 2,024 anti-Semitic incidents in the United States. Germany has very strong hate speech laws, both applying to private citizens and obligating online networks to censor them. In 2020 there were 2,032 anti-Semitic hate crimes in Germany. Despite restrictions on hate speech, Germany has four times the per-capita anti-Jewish hate crimes as the US, a country with no hate speech laws.

How about the UK? They have strong hate speech laws. You can get arrested there for teaching a dog the Nazi salute. In 2018 there were 1,201 Islamophobic attacks in the UK. Despite having a rabidly Islamophobic president at the time, the US only had 223. That's over twenty-six times the per-capita Islamophobic hate crime rate.

Citations:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/816732/number-of-anti-se...

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/germanys-laws-ant...

https://thehill.com/regulation/international/499762-anti-sem...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/20/record-numbe...

https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2019/topic-pages/victims

[throwaway316943]

Bad example considering censorship is also a tool of murderous and totalitarian regimes.

[didibus]

Always in tandem with propaganda I feel. So it would censor criticism of the regime, and any opposite viewpoint, while replacing all voices with the pro-regime voices instead.

I'm not sure this is the same as letting one freely voice their hate of another and propagate lies and falsehoods about them.

I guess you see it as let's just all use propaganda and defamation against each other, and hopefully that evens out where we all meet in the middle through constant bi-directional propaganda and hatred.

But I see it more as let's not allow the use of propaganda and hate anymore, because those things are at the detriment of other people's freedom, and you should only be free to do what doesn't take away freedoms from others as well, unless it has been agreed between both parties through a contract and a system of laws.

I don't really have a proof that one would have better outcomes over the other, but personally I find having a civil debate in good faith with rational arguments is more pleasant than to have a demagogue debate in bad faith using appeal to prejudice, emotions, desires, falsehoods and defamation. So I'd rather we as a society needed to engage respectfully, rationally and in good faith, and I wouldn't mind this to be enforced both culturally and by law.

I've heard the "slippery slope" and the "what if that just radicalizes demagogues even more" arguments, and the latter one I find more possibly valid. I feel the slope isn't that slippery personally, like the slope would only slip if the person in power was again a demagogue ruling in bad faith, and at that point it be too late anyways, since they'd already be in power.

Now the argument that it could radicalize demagogues further, by giving them more ammo to justify themselves, I think that's a more plausible prediction. I'm not too sure about this bit yet, so I could be convinced here, but I'd need to also be convinced that letting demagogues continue to have large public reach isn't itself a bigger threat.