Comment by Hamuko
4 years ago
Yes it is. Freedom of speech is the principle of being able to express your ideas and opinions. And hate speech is just that.
Obviously no country has absolute freedom of speech, but for example the First Amendment has no hate speech exemptions.
Hate speech is often about saying other people ought not be able to express their ideas and opinions, and that the most effective way to bring about this result is for them to not be not alive any more.
Eliminationist rhetoric is a subset of hate speech overall, but it certainly exists and is trivially easy to discover. It's odd to me that none of the self-professed 'free speech absolutists' ever seems to engage with this point.
Most eliminationist rhetoric is still protected in the States under current precedent. It advocates unlawful action but without "imminency". It could have been forbidden under the old "clear and present danger" standard.
Forbidden eliminationist rhetoric is quite rare and would be something like the "cockroach" broadcasts in Rwanda.
Fine, but I'm not making a legalistic argument. I'm just pointing out that eliminationist hate speech is inherently censorious.
All of this is irrelevant and besides the point, 'hate speech' is not a magical word you say when mean people on the internet say things you don't like.
If you can't prove material damage in a court, it should be allowed.
You're welcome to just ignore the narrow and technical point, which did not include any discussion of what was allowable or not.
Hate speech always leads to further extremist behavior and death threats. Now, the US is very tolerant of hate speech in itself. The problem is haters are completely incapable of avoiding the next step wherein they call for the call for the deaths of those they hate. The very moment they do that I am perfectly fine with all of our existing laws on things like terroristic threats being wielded against those making the threats.
You have the right to speak, but you also have the right to repercussions, in specific when those actions are a call to harm.
in the US, there needs to be serious proof of intent beyond just saying something to prosecute.