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Comment by xroche | Hacker News Reader

> This is why hate speech laws are dangerous.

You are mixing apples and oranges. Hate speech laws are perfectly fine, they intent to protect people from being harassed and attacked for what they are (philosophically, religiously, skin color...). This is not hate speech law: no group or people or people are involved here, only an imaginary character. If I say "death to religious people", this should be criminalized. If I say "death to god", there is nothing wrong with that.

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I agree with you in principle. What I was trying to say is that hate speech laws (and laws of similar spirit) tend to be written vaguely and leave room for unfavourable interpretation. Particularly in current climate, governments seem to be all too happy to sacrifice liberties under the disguise of protecting this or that (perceived as oppressed) minority.

Is the alternative a free-for-all against minorities (perceived as oppressed?).

I might be misunderstanding you, but of course not. Equal rights for all. Egalitarianism. But it seems as though these laws, well meaning or misguided as they may be, give special privileges to certain groups. Rather then preserving true equality and liberty for all.

I don't have a better alternative yet, but I can't help but think after observing the way things have played out the last couple decades that policing negative speech against minorities isn't the way to help them. I sympathize with the sentiment of lending a hand to the downtrodden, but the policy itself doesn't seem to work.

"Death to.." any actual person should be criminalized. Disallowing calls to kill certain groups, but not people generally, makes the law turn on the definition of what is or isnt a protected group. That's too vague for free speech. Calling for the extrajudicial killing of any actual person is the more workable and just approach.

If I say "death to religious people", this should be criminalized.

I think the American standard is fine. You can say that, but you can't say "let's kill those religious people over there."

But you can act on it.

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