* Most people don't actually need free speech because in large their ideas are popular, tame, uncontroversial, and respect the established order.
* We are quick to define ideas that disagree with popular opinion as hateful which drives those that hold them to the fringe. Only the loudest and angriest will have so little to lose socially that they'll dare speak in public (i.e. the top and bottom of the social ladder).
* By in large we like to be surrounded by people that think like we do and believe the same things we do. This leads to partitioning the internet into disjoint communities and social bubbles so strong that, despite being almost 148 million people in the US, a common sentiment is 'I don't understand the issue, I've never met someone in person who opposes gay marriage'.
No. The people that are saying black people are bad, gays are bad, muslims are bad, women are bad, etc etc, are hateful, they're the definition of hateful. It's not "PC" to call them out as hateful. In fact, there's a new Political Correctness saying we can't call bigots bigots. If you want to make a safe space for hatefulness then nobody else is going to want to be there. These hateful people are terrorists in that they feel the need to be around as many people as possible so they can inflict the most
the maximum amount of pain. They are not interested in having a nice discussion site. Nobody wants to be around them and any non-hateful community will leave if they are allowed to inflict their damage.
What a simplistic point of view. People not often say "black people are bad, gays are bad, muslims are bad, women are bad". I am moderator on a national sub on reddit, and it's a very difficult question. A few examples :
- What are you supposed to do with people who think it's unfair that men can be tricked in impregnating a woman and sued for child support ? Is this sexism ?
- What are you supposed to do with people who feel unsafe in a specific neighborhood because of the great concentration of immigrants there ? Is this "muslims are bad" ?
- Is someone against surrogacy a "gays are bad" people ? Or is this legitimate concern ?
- What about people who use IQ per country studies ? Is this racial hate speech ?
And for these examples, we have people who deeply consider all these as "bad", and harangue us mods as people who leave hate speech, yada yada.
Where do facts stop and propaganda start, where does a fast generalization ends and real, systematic hate for a whole group of individuals begin (over a common denominator considered "bad" by PC, because no one will ever harass you or call you hateful if you think people who wear fur are douchebags) ?
And by doing so, you don't allow any discussion, private or not to be made around these questions, as they are directly flagged as "good vs bad" and arguments are an expression of the hate, and not legitimate questions. Which I don't think is good, but that's my own opinion.
Since attempts to establish the genetic inferiority of specific races and ethnicities has been a bedrock of organized racism for centuries, yes, clearly abuse of race/IQ research can be "racial hate speech". Now, that's a term you didn't define. But whatever definition you choose, clearly articles from Der Stürmer will fit comfortably into it.
Obviously that begs the question of what "abusive" recourse to race/IQ studies would be. And again, I don't have to define the concept precisely to illustrate that research is routinely abused. For instance: if one makes simplified pronouncements about the genetic inferiority of black people and then adds a cite to J. Philippe Rushton, you're abusing the research in order to make hateful arguments about black people. Secondary and tertiary sources arguing the intellectual inferiority of other races based on work like Rushton's is, in fact, the modern equivalent of Der Stürmer articles.
I think you are being fairly dishonest with these examples of what people talk about when they talk about "hateful" people on sites like Reddit.
People are mainly talking about places like /r/coontown or /r/fatpeoplehate. While I'm sure there are some people annoyed at discussions about people "who think it's unfair that men can be tricked in impregnating a woman and sued for child support", I would argue the vast majority have no problem with those discussions as long as they are argued honestly.
People not often say "black people are bad, gays are bad, muslims are bad, women are bad"
I have a hard time believing you actually think this is true...
>People are mainly talking about places like /r/coontown or /r/fatpeoplehate.
You'll note the examples of OP were about people of color/muslims/women/gays, not fat people... So I don't think I'm being dishonest there.
>I would argue the vast majority have no problem with those discussions as long as they are argued honestly.
I did mention that I am a moderator on a national sub (150,000 users), and these examples are sadly not made up. We have some people who are adamant about those things and constantly bother us. Maybe they're trolling, in any case they are constanly saying how much our community stinks, is racist, homophobic, yada yada (this community being, as indicated many times by surveys, mostly made of young leftists men).
One user even regularily sends compilations of the "most disgusting comments" which are absolutely not sulfurous, and another has a sub dedicated to it.
It's probably a minority, but a rather vocal one. And you can't say things that are not 100% favorable to these topics without having people saying how anti-X you are.
So yeah I probably read OP's comment in the light of what I see everyday in our modqueue. Which is people calling out others for things which I definitely don't read as "x is bad". Honestly, you'd be surprised.
And most of all, in my experience, people who call out others and think it's a legitimate attitude are not the most pragmatic ones on these topics.
* Most people don't actually need free speech because in large their ideas are popular, tame, uncontroversial, and respect the established order.
* We are quick to define ideas that disagree with popular opinion as hateful which drives those that hold them to the fringe. Only the loudest and angriest will have so little to lose socially that they'll dare speak in public (i.e. the top and bottom of the social ladder).
* By in large we like to be surrounded by people that think like we do and believe the same things we do. This leads to partitioning the internet into disjoint communities and social bubbles so strong that, despite being almost 148 million people in the US, a common sentiment is 'I don't understand the issue, I've never met someone in person who opposes gay marriage'.