The US is obviously nowhere Thailand, but just questioning the concept of and (lacking) principles around "hate"-speech is enough for some people to consider you a possible sexist, racist, troll... Or just a general "hater".
You know, someone who should be banned because they're obviously up to no good.
Arguing for genocide, or deportations, or coercive "cures" for gayness or etc etc is clearly harmful.
There is no reason to make space for haters. Kick them off the internet.
I'm being rhetorical. You probably don't. And that is a frightening problem.
Why do you think that? Insulting the king's dog is just a "dogwhistle" for insulting the king. By insulting the king, you break the social cohesion of a country. The respect for the king is one of the major things that has held Thailand together, and kept Thailand as one of the few Asian countries that was able to avoid European colonization. Breaking this social cohesion makes civil war and the breakup of the country more likely, which is a bad thing.
Here are some other harmful things.
Arguing for anything that raises taxes is arguing that people's money be taken from them by force of law - clearly harmful.
Arguing for reducing taxes is arguing that the government have less resources that can be used to fund social programs - which can hurt people who depend on it - so clearly harmful.
Arguing for tougher prison sentences is clearly harmful to those people convicted of a crime.
Arguing for lighter prison sentences is harmful to the victims of crimes.
Arguing to curtail free speech on the Internet is clearly harmful as can suppress valid criticism of the government.
In addition, the wonderful stuff about this supression of arguments for things you harmful, is that you can also suppress the arguments for why you should be allowed to argue for them.
This is not what "hater" means in most speech. You seem to be pretty sensitive about this issue. I guess you've been in some unpleasant arguments recently. The vague idea of hate speech is obviously in need of refinement, and has lots of problems. I'm interested in what you would do about hate speech other than criminalize/punish it. Or perhaps more narrowly define it. I won't bite your head off or call you a hater.
I don't believe you can legislate such problems away and that society holding the opinions necessary to try is more dangerous than hate speech in and of itself.
The answer to speech is more speech: I suggest making fun of people spouting "hatespeech" and drown their message in an overwhelming amount of mockery. Comedy is a well-known memetic weapon that we've lost the ability to effectively use in our pearl-clutching seriousness.
The criminalization of hate speech is actually counter-productive: it gives easy access to a social lightning rod to powerless losers while giving them more respect and attention than they deserve. It makes a serious issue out of something we're better mocking.
I'm just an avid proponent of free speech, and almost daily now I see it under attack, probably by the most well-meaning people in the world.
Today it's neo-nazis whose rights we are happy to strip away. Next out may be some other "hateful" group... Let's say racists?
But according to what definition of racism? Some people seem to think that recognizing the positive in homogeneity is racist. Others seem to mistake the religion of Islam for a race, so that any criticism of Islam makes someone a racist. And what about the Jews? Are they a race? Or a culture? Or maybe a religion? All of those? Are you a racist if you criticize Israel, a state run by Jews? Some people genuinely says so!
So if we ban "racist" speech, treat it as non-protected... What do we actually ban? And can we trust that whatever we define as racist today, will be the same which is upheld by court tomorrow?
If anything, experience should tell us to be careful, or else we risk sliding down the slippery slope into general censorship.
And it has ofcourse always been done with the best of intentions.
So when I see free speech under attack, I speak up, because I think free speech is a too damned important thing to ruin over petty stuff like individuals feeling offended.
We already have laws against acts of murder, genocide, racism, and what not. We don't need to doubly criminalize it by making speech about it criminal too. That's just redundant and IMO does more harm than good.
We can agree to disagree on that! I do agree about how squishy the boundaries can be and that it limiting speech is not to be done lightly. Speech vs acts is also fuzzy, since speech both is an act & can cause others to act. Besides the emotional/social harm racist speech causes, it fosters physical harm and financial harm. Even in an imperfect, flawed implementation, a restriction on such speech in public might provide more benefit than what it costs. Buuuuut there is speaking hatefully and then there is discussing ideas, and it would be good if courts could tell the difference.
How is this any different than germans throwing chinese tourists in jail for making nazi salutes? Or saudis throwing atheists in jail because they offended their faith. Or russians throwing lgbt people in jail for being "offensive". Or the chinese throwing pro-democracy groups in jail because they find them offensive. Or Larry Flint in jail for distributing offensive pornography.
Anything can be viewed as offensive by anyone. That's why we have free speech rights. To protect ourselves from the offended.
It's sad that the internet ( what I grew up believing was going to be the defender of free speech ) is slowly turning into a tool for censorship. And it's sad that the population of "netizens" who were extremely pro-free speech in the 90s and 00s are turning in favor of censorship as less educated people brainwashed by the pro-censorship media join the internet.