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Comment by tim333 | Hacker News Reader

The UK is not decending into totalitarianism. It has laws against inciting hatred of the "let's kill all the immigrants" type which is not the same thing. The law was passed democratically with the approval of the majority of people. Whether it's a good idea or not is debateable.

Speaking as a Brit there has been quite a pile on by Musk and US based social media types saying weird stuff about us that is kind of inaccurate. Like saying alot of these laws are socialist policy from Keir Starmer when they were all passed by the previous tory government.

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It's true that there is some amount of "hate speech" of the form "let's kill all the $(DEMOGRAPHIC). Hitler had the right idea!" That speech is being censored in the UK.

There's also a lot of legitimate debate being censored/silenced in the UK. "Let's put an end to fake asylum." "Let's stop allowing chain migration." "Some of these people are never going to assimilate even after multiple generations, we should stop repeating the lie that they will." I don't think that's "hate speech," that's speech advocating immigration policy.

Most of the people claiming to want to end "hate speech" point to examples of the first case but most of the actual censorship is of the second case.

The Russian law was also passed democratically, but liberals dont like it because its going to be used against liberals whereas the “hate speech” laws are being used against conservatives. And yes the conservative party in the uk is anything but.

I think the difference is more whether you can criticize the government. In the UK that's fine, in Russia it causes issues. I assume even if the US if you posted "let's have a progrom in Washington DC tonight, klan outfits and let's kill some jews" you'd have issues with law enforcement over that? I think all countries have restictions on what you can say when it comes to murder and drug dealing. It's more where you draw the line.

The UK laws mix language which bans calls to violence with bans on “offensive” speech. So its not about where to draw the line, its about banning criticism of immigration, which you basically cant do without offending immigrants.

There's plenty of criticism of immigration - see https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/immigration-tracker-march-2024

but yeah criticising some of the behaviour can get tricky.

> The Russian law was also passed democratically

Russia is not a democracy regardless of how far your stretch its definition. Hardly anything democratic happens in Russia. One can argue democracy wasn't ever really a thing in Russia. I have my issues with the UK government, but comparing the Russian legislature with the UK one is laughable.

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