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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

>The comment that I replied to:

Fair enough if you consider your comment a start of a new thread, but that is ignoring the context in which the comment you replied was made.

>specifically laws against antisemitic speech

As a Jewish person, I have a bridge that fights antisemitism to sell you if you genuinely believe this. Just the simple fact that they are only against antisemitism and not all hate speech should tell you there is no genuine conservative desire for hate speech laws. And your second example is just more evidence of that. Conservatives cynically abusing existing laws does not show a conservative value eventually becoming liberal or vice versa. You can argue it shows how these laws create problems, but it isn't evidence of any sort of switch in values.

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This is similar to how many on the left don’t believe that “hate speech” restrictions should apply to speech against whites. This is the problem with laws that apply to the realm of speech and ideas; it is a very small step towards abuse that undermines equal treatment under the law, the free exchange of information, and the democratic process.

Both major US factions like to use selective enforcement and/or targeted taxation or regulation to attack their political rivals, while wrapping their actions in flowery language. This is a longstanding tradition here. If you don’t see it, I urge you to take a closer look and shed your bias.

Edit: I’ll add that this selective application is probably what creates the illusion of a change in values. In reality, it’s two tribes jockeying for power using whatever tools happen to be in front of them; naturally, the available tools shift over time. The ideological justification for a particular position or action is created after the fact.

Who doesn't believe that

>This is similar to how many on the left don’t believe that “hate speech” restrictions should apply to speech against whites.

These comparisons always seem to set up an equivalency between mainstream Republicans saying something extreme and what a random leftist said to their 50 followers on Bluesky. Like seriously, what mainstream Democrat is advocating for hate speech laws which only apply to non-white people?

Officially, there were only some small things like a house resolution that supported one-sided (minority only) hate crime protection, as well as some papers and op-eds that suggested that hate crime protection should only apply to minorities. These were about hate crimes, not hate speech, of course. It’s been a while, and I can’t find any records of statements from mainstream Dems.

What I saw in my personal experience was an army of trolls baiting this kind of response from left activists, with identity-focused activists readily complying, and with others then amplifying the message through retweets. Including many who should have known better, people I had formerly respected. There was zero condemnation or pushback on this from nearly anyone on the left, in fact there was often a sort of winking agreement with the message by the time it had trickled up to candidates and officials.

The worst offenders were the grifters in the “white fragility” consulting sphere, for obvious reasons.

Anyway, just because it’s more subtle doesn’t mean it’s not still an issue. Republicans are almost always less subtle about terrible things they believe or do; this does seem to be true in general. It’s only rarely that you can get Dem officials to say awful things like “turns out I’m really good at killing people” or “we came, we saw, he died.” This is made worse by the lack of a substantial platform or position statement in many campaigns nowadays, so it’s hard to identify what anyone really stands for at all.

Feel free to take your point on this, as I have no hard proof. But I and many others saw this happen first hand.

>Anyway, just because it’s more subtle doesn’t mean it’s not still an issue. Republicans are almost always less subtle about terrible things they believe or do; this does seem to be true in general. It’s only rarely that you can get Dem officials to say awful things like “turns out I’m really good at killing people” or “we came, we saw, he died.”

It seems like you are very close to getting it, so maybe spend some time brainstorming on possible reasons why Republican politicians say "terrible... awful things" much more frequently than Democratic politicians. There's probably some other explanation there outside one side simply enjoying subtlety more than the other for no particular reason.

If you look at actions rather than words, Dems have been equally complicit in the things that are destroying the country, namely the offshoring of US industry and weakening of domestic labor, privatization of public services (especially Clinton/Third Way), the financialization of the US economy, the expansion of the security state (especially Obama), the erosion of civil liberties, the continuation of “forever wars.” They also failed to correct course after the GFC, despite holding the trifecta, probably dooming the country in the long run by using endless QE to temporarily float the economy. We needed a hard landing and we didn’t get one.

The one good thing I have to say about the Republicans is at least they don’t fuck around. They are speedrunning the inevitable collapse, and we might actually be better off for it. With the rate they are going, there will be no time to finish constructing a fully integrated police state before the bottom falls out.

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