| > If you really believe that your fellow citizens can be easily influenced to undertake extreme actions by a twitter post so words have no capability of influencing people? Why speak at all if it can never change anyones opinion? See what happens when you do reduction to absurdity of any argument? But seriously, ask yourself: Is the entire ad industry a sham? Are state actors like the kremlin troll farms, the chinese fake newspapers and the cia meme department all wrong and no one can ever be influenced because they are adults and rational actors all the time? Are objectively effective misinformation campaigns like Brexit not proof of succesful compelling speech through channels like cambridge Analytica? > why not end democracy altogether? democracy is about empowering people. Leaving people to construct an identity through heaps of misinformation is not democracy, its insane and it cannot work. > Since citizens are seemingly perpetual minors who lack agency over their actions. Someone spending billions of dollars in anti intellectualism propaganda, political smear campaigns and capturing media networks is not the fault of the individual citizens, they are not minors they are victims of targetted hostile information hazards. > This is why all authoritarian regimes absolutely love hate speech laws. Authoritarian regimes tend to brag about how free their speech is. America spent the 50s chest bumping while sending people to jail over "communist ties" under mccarthyism, they spent the 60s bragging about free speech while sending students to jail for complaining about vietnam, they spent the early 2000s talking about free speech while punishing allies who did not agree with Irak (like France) and sending people to black sites like Guantanamo. And now they brag about free speech while the sitting president Elon decides which individual words get flagged in his social network and the vice president Trump jails 3 different judges over their rulings you know all that free speech |
Freedom of speech allows to hear different views and apply this critical thinking. The problem is that you seem to know better and want to choose what's allowed and not allowed to say, given your political bias and contempt for your fellow citizens.
Last, democracy is not about empowering (what an empty word...) people, but about managing the various interest to end up with something that is acceptable. If a subgroup is being bullied, it is normal that it expresses its resentment. For instance, when white british people are being mass raped, and in some case, likely eaten[0], with no or little enforcement by the Police due to fear of being seen as "racists".
As a side note, all of the examples that you give are about reducing freedom of speech, so I don't really see your point. You could have cited the Weimar Republic, that had stringent hate speech laws, which did not prevent the access of the NSDAP to power.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Charlene_Do...