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Comment by andersrs | Hacker News Reader

Hate speech is just whatever they don't like such as opinions outside the Overton window. Even the law enforcement people are scared of being labeled hateful. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit... The UK's BBC also knew about kiddy fiddler Jimmy Saville but they kept calm and carried on letting him fiddle.

Given that the terminology comes straight of Orwell's 1984 they're barely even trying to hide the blatant power grab with a few cliche excuses (children, terrorism).

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> Even the law enforcement people are scared of being labeled hateful. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...

I think you're trying to say that the police and the council ignored the rape gangs because they were scared of being called racist, but your link doesn't bear that out. IIRC it's an excuse they've tried to use to justify their staggering, inexcusable failures in this case--"it's not our fault, it's those nasty progressives!"--but it doesn't really make sense.

The Rotherham case is an example of selective focus. There is no notable difference between how abuse cases were handled in Rotherham versus other towns and cities in England.

It's that bad nationwide? That's disheartening.

I don't really understand the relevance of Jimmy Savile here.

I think the point was - if the BBC (closely tied with the political establishment) cared so much about children's safety they would have acted against Saville before they were compelled.

The establishment never acted against Saville in his lifetime. All the public allegations and investigations happened almost a year after his death.

Right. So the UK elite are not to be trusted.

What exactly were we talking about again? OP seemed to be saying "cops and the BBC don't care about child abusers, therefore hate speech isn't a real problem," which...seems to be missing several critical links.

I think they're trying to say that "hate speech" was invented by a hypocritical government to control people and it's not a real concern for regular folks, but that's obviously not true; it was born out of civil rights campaigns in the '50s and (eventually) adopted by governments due to popular demand.

'Please sir, control and regulate the contents of our speech' - smacks of astroturfing to me

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