I LOVE HEARING HATE SPEECH!
I love it for the same reason Brendan O'Neill does.
As he put it, "I love hearing hate speech because it reminds me I live in a free society."
This was in response to Section 18C of Australia's Racial Discrimination Act, which prohibits speech "reasonably likely... to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people' because of their 'race, colour or national or ethnic origin."
Section 18C does not belong in a free society. Yet...
Naturally, panties rose up in giant wads from those on the "enlightened" left.
At Spiked, Tim Black explains O'Neill's position:
O'Neill loves hearing hate speech, not in itself, not because he just loves vitriol, as some of his detractors really seem to believe. No, he loves hearing it because of what hearing it means: namely, that we live in a society that is confident enough in itself, in its liberal values, that it can tolerate dissenting and hateful views.O'Neill then went on to explain why freedom of speech is precisely the mechanism through which we can challenge racism: 'The real problem with Section 18C is it actually disempowers anti-racists by denying us the right to see racism, to know it, to understand it and to confront it in public. Instead it entrusts the authorities to hide it away on our behalf so we never have a reckoning with it.'
For anyone faintly familiar with a liberal and radical tradition of thought, from Voltaire to Frederick Douglass to Karl Marx, O'Neill's argument shouldn't be controversial: it is only through the airing of prejudice that it can be reckoned with. And it certainly shouldn't be difficult to understand. But sadly it seems that, for too many, it is. To these, the liberal-ish and the right-on, it is an anathema, thought from another planet.
First came the high-profile Twitterers, the attack dogs of elite sentiment. Celebrity chef Georgina Dent said: 'See, if hearing hate speech is the bit you love most about living in a "free country" you're doing it wrong.' Commentator Jane Caro quickly joined in: 'Brendan O'Neill may not be aware of how privileged he is to "like" hearing hate speech. I've seen it intimidate people into silence.' And in chimed the widely retweeted campaigner and columnist, Mariam Veiszadeh: 'Those who argue that S18C should be repealed have the privilege of never having to seek its protection.'
Clueless ninnies who don't understand that they are able to be vocal clueless ninnies because of provisions for free speech.
"Hate" speech apparently also includes anything the tender, meaty milennial finds offensive, as they continue to insist you can pick a turd up by the clean end if you call it the right name.
Radwaste at August 24, 2016 10:24 PM
Flemming Rose on free speech:
http://www.cato.org/policy-report/julyaugust-2016/flemming-rose
Amy Alkon at August 24, 2016 10:38 PM
It goes to the problem faced by people who want "censorship lite". If freedom is to be allocated only to speech that is valuable, then the question is: "Okay, who gets to decide what is valuable?" We see the Left rapidly closing down on what speech should be permitted, including many things that the average person finds innocuous. The censorship-lite people will say that all political speech should be free from censorship, but then they fall for the "this isn't political speech, it's hate speech" meme that the Left fires at the speech of its opponents. That's why the jurist (and I can't find the quote at the moment) stated, "The Constitution says 'Congress shall make no law', and no law is what it means."
Cousin Dave at August 25, 2016 6:52 AM
What the typical panty-wadders fail to understand is that dissent is eventually redefined as hate, and is silenced.
And an Orthodoxy is preserved. And the witch trials always need to find witches for the trials, so even if you support the Orthodoxy, you will run afoul of their rules and burned at the rhetorical stake.
I R A Darth Aggie at August 25, 2016 7:39 AM
If you say “I am in favor of free speech, but …” you're not actually in favor of free speech.
I'll give you a corollary to Kips Law, that those in favor of limitations on speech always see themselves as the arbiters of such limitations.
I R A Darth Aggie at August 25, 2016 7:43 AM
Making hate speech illegal is the slipperiest of slippery slopes. In Germany, a jihadist was in the process of killing people. A man on his balcony threw things at him and called him names, which had no real effect. This man is now being investigated for hate speech. In Australia, anyone saying anything about aboriginies (like a claim that certain individuals are not actually aboriginies) can be and has been prosecuted. In Canada a certain comedian just got fined $42,000 for calling someone ugly. People are claiming that disagreeing with the actions or politics of BLM is hate speech, that criticizing feminists is hate speech, that saying transgendered people may have a mental illness (and their suicide rate does seem to point that way) is hate speech, and even that objecting to men in the ladies showers is hate speech. See how this devolves into censorship of all speech? And how it slants totally left? No one is ever prosecuted for hate speech against Catholics or jews or men.
Craig Loehle at August 25, 2016 12:47 PM
Leave a comment