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Comment by skellington | Hacker News Reader

Then, should Kathy Griffin have been deplatformed when she showed a picture of her holding the severed head of a likeness of Trump? How is that not hate speech? Can I show a picture of a severed head of something looking like Nancy Pelosi?

When certain political groups say "we have to get in their faces" is that an incitement to violence or at least harassment?

Can I say, "in my opinion, politician X should be executed for crimes against America?" Is that incitement or just a protected statement of opinion?

When Hillary called 1/2 of Trump supporters "deplorables" isn't that hate speech? I heard plenty of people say that anti-vax people should be executed or at least left to starve to death (Chomsky said something like this). Is that hate or an opinion?

Hate speech is hopelessly vaguely defined and will be abused by whichever side is in power.

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> should Kathy Griffin have been deplatformed when she showed a picture of her holding the severed head of a likeness of Trump

She was. Fired almost immediately.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kathy-griffin-fired-cnn...

> When Hillary called 1/2 of Trump supporters "deplorables" isn't that hate speech?

She apologized as soon as it happened

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basket_of_deplorables

> anti-vax people should be executed or at least left to starve to death (Chomsky said something like this)

Incorrect. He called for classic quarantining which is exactly what happened before vaccines.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/noam-chomsky-calls-for...

> Hate speech is hopelessly vaguely defined

Incorrect! Most organizations have reached wildly close consensus on the matter

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech

> > Hate speech is hopelessly vaguely defined

> Incorrect! Most organizations have reached wildly close consensus on the matter

That wikipedia article indicates: """Hate speech is "usually thought to include communications of animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, colour, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation"."""

There was a bill in Florida which: """The legislation would prohibit individuals from making people “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin.”""" https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/19/us/florida-education-crit...

Absent any other context, "hate speech is animosity/disparagement towards ... race" is consistent with what the bill protects against: "don't make people feel distress on account of race". The concerns are ostensibly in the same direction.

I suspect those opposed to the Florida bill would really prefer a more narrow interpretation of 'hate speech', and those in favour would prefer a broader interpretation.

It's not. Public libraries aren't considered hate groups anywhere but in the current propagandists wild imaginations.

That legislation is about weaponizing existing tools to whitewash history and in the context of the Florida "stop woke act"/"don't say gay" bill follows a lineage of curtailing and restricting education in some wild "satanic panic" style attack on the manufactured issues of CRT and "wokeism", specifically as spearheaded by the Florida GOP

This is part of that legislative agenda and is meant to remove topics such as civil rights, women's rights, LGBT history and labor struggle from school curriculum.

You're free to ignore that and pretend otherwise but you're not fooling me.

Don't forget drag shows. The such bad Florida has an issue with those too.

> That legislation is about weaponizing existing tools

Right.

It seems entirely reasonable to be concerned that if 'hate speech' is applied too broadly, it can be used to silence political opponents.

> She apologized as soon as it happened

She apologized for using the word "half", not for calling Americans deplorable.

Apart from that one, it sounds like you have it all figured out. The part I think you're missing is that many people are bothered that hate speech coming from those privileged enough to be holding the majority view is forgiven with a forced apology, whereas other hate speech will send you to jail.

More than ever, it really just seems "hate speech", for Americans at least, is better defined as "speech coming from people with views I hate". It's seemingly impossible to separate American party lines from their definition of hate speech.

No matter where you go, hate speech is pretty much defined the same way

Take the UN for example

https://www.un.org/en/hate-speech/understanding-hate-speech/...

It's certainly a concept and as such needs comprehension to understand it.

People failing to grasp the concept write it off as being nonsense in the same way people write off everything else they fail to take the time to understand.

Hate groups which are always built on lies and propaganda seek to confuse the issue. They're kicking up dust. There isn't any actual confusion, only that which they've manufactured.

It's classic fear, uncertainty and doubt.

I would love to see a source showing Noam Chomsky advocating that antivaxers should be executed or "left to starve".

They probably meant something like this (no call for executions!)

https://news.yahoo.com/noam-chomsky-unvaccinated-remove-them...

Seems like all he really said was that people who refuse to get vaccinated should take responsibility for the fact that they're objectively a threat to other people and that dealing with the consequences of their own actions is ultimately their problem.

Interpreting that as him saying they should starve is certainly... creative.

> "How can we get food to them?" Chomsky told YouTube's Primo Radical on Sunday. "Well, that's actually their problem."

What if a majority group, maybe white Americans, decided that a minority group, maybe one with a high crime rate, like African Americans [1], was dangerous and should be segregated from society, and said that access to food was their problem to figure out? That they were a high-crime group, and it was dangerous to society if they continued to operate in it? I imagine you would be singing a different tune if those were the groups in discussion.

[1]: https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-2020-in...

Chomsky is arguing that unvaccinated people are a danger to those they come into contact with. Not a potential danger - a real danger. It's not like having brown skin; you can't choose not to have brown skin.

People are free to not be vaccinated; and other people are free to shun them.

That's his point, the way I read it.

This is very strange reasoning. Whatever I might have thought if he had said that, he did not say that, therefore it is not relevant.

He didn't even say antivaxers "should be segregated", the writer added that.

But clearly arguing in good faith is but a distant memory at this point. Let's just make up imaginary scenarios and argue about those, I guess.

> Whatever I might have thought if he had said that, he did not say that, therefore it is not relevant.

Do you not consider counterfactual thinking to have any value?

There's nothing wrong with counterfactuals in general, but you have to do it correctly. Doing it wrong leads to a strawman and that has very little value indeed.

> When Hillary called 1/2 of Trump supporters "deplorables" isn't that hate speech?

No, it is unequivocally, objectively not hate speech. Nowhere in there is there a threat of violence. I don't really care if it hurts your feelings. Make better choices in life.

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