Hate Speech

Post Reply New Topic

Exactly. Intolerance of intolerance is utter BS and makes things worse because it doesn't resolve problems, it just sweeps the hatred and anger under the rug. Ostracizing and publicly humiliating bigots doesn't make them less bigoted, it just makes people better at hiding their bigotry.

California's Prop 8 is a perfect example of what happens when you drive bigotry underground. A lot of people were stunned that, when left in the hands of the voters, a state like California would actually vote against the GLBT community. Seriously, if you were monitoring internet chat boards about the chances of Prop 8 passing, you would have come to the conclusion that only a few religious nuts and a handful of homophobes would support the proposition; and that the other 97% of the clear thinking, politically correct population, were going to vote it down. What happened in reality was a majority of people with unanswered questions about Prop 8, and gay marriage, ended up keeping their opinions to themselves, and the GLBT community lost an opportunity to convince those people why voting "no" was so important to them. Apparently, California was not as "gay-friendly" as the anti-prop 8 pundits wanted everyone to believe. There were so many opportunities for the Anti-8 crowd to get the support they needed, but instead, too many folks wasted the opportunity to change minds on being smug and self-righteous.

That's what happens when people dismiss and ostracize others who don't share their views. Those who believe in a cause lose a strategic opportunity to gain allies by reasonably and respectfully addressing the opposition, and at some point they get sucker punched by reality.

One man's Hate Speech is another man's Colorful Locution.

ruveuyn

i have a big problem with hate speech in all its forms. the generalisations made towards a group can genuinely hurt the members of that group. it marginalises and demonises people and i tend to want to redirect or eradicate it when i see it.

when i read or hear a statement of hate speech, there's just something in my brain that flips it back to to the individual. so if i heard someone say that all blonde women are stuck-up b*****s, i would think about some nice blonde lady who never did anyone any harm. she wouldn't deserve that hate, yet she is included in the assessment. and if the speaker met that gentle blonde woman, she has already been judged.

generalising and creating stereotypes can be really damaging to individuals, as they will be personally affected by others' prejudice. either by reading or hearing the statements directly or by the subtle judgements and discrimination that happens as an undercurrent in interactions. and hate speech spreads - there are some people who sit on fences and who seem to be waiting for the nudge to start hating on yet another innocent group.

i cannot see any positive purpose to hate speech, even in its mildest manifestations. at best, it can be overlooked but at worst it can be quite damaging.

The flip side is that when someone makes a blanket generalization about a certain group, there's a chance to address it civilly. Eliminating hate speech doesn't eliminate hate, it just makes it harder to recognize.



It's weird, the whole Jesse Slaugher Stickydrama thing that happened on YouTube last year really made me reconsider the logic of "hate". Way too many people had a disproportionately negative reaction to the ridiculous trash-talking of a 13 year old girl. It seems far less frightening to have the hate spread thin towards a large group of people than to see hate that concentrated toward a single individual.

The same thing for Christian Weston Chandler. There's a small group of Youtube viewers who will go out of their way to find new reasons to be angry about the guy, or dream up new ways to torment him. I'd still say most of the people who come across a CWC video find his behavior unsettling or repulsive, eventually forget about it and rarely think about it again. But there seems to be way too much hate focused towards the guy in relation to what he actually does.

so what if it is recognisable? it is less likely to spread if it is not spoken aloud. when expressed, it rallies other people around and accumulates followers.

and in my experience people who spew hate speech are highly unlikely to change their opinions through logic and confrontation. and many people who spread hate speech are influential and charismatic - in some cases much more so than the dissenters. if hitler had kept his hate to himself and not spread his ideas, then perhaps it would not have evolved into a holocaust movement - it would have been one bitter prejudiced man as opposed to a large angry mob.

lastly, in a group... very few people stand up against hate speech or confront it directly. there tends tto be a lot of silent disagreement or sdiscomfort but very little confrontation. even on WP many people often click away or make excuses for hate speech instead of defending the target.

i think it doesn't do any good at all for people to express their hate speech ideas.people will already quietly hate whether we like it or not, but it isn't as though speaking it aloud gets rid of it somehow.


hate speech can lead to the virtual or total eradication of entire populations. enough said.

Stereotypes are often useful. Sometimes they're not useful, though, so one can simply discard them.

The other problem is that humans are tribal creatures at heart - there needs to be an 'other' to defend against.

I doubt it. If Hitler hadn't come to the fore, it would very probably have been someone else, if you look at the circumstances of the time. It would have been a power vaccuum.

that misses the point really. it's true we don't know what would have happened, but we do know it is expressing the hate that creates an angry mob.

One member of the Anti-8 crowd told me later that she was surprised at how many LGBTs stayed away from the voting booths, thinking that they already had won the battle - especially after former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom's "This door's wide open now!” speech, which not only made the LGBT community complacent, but it provoked members of the Pro-8 crowd to go to the voting booth just to vote in favor of the proposition.

I remember asking some Anti-8 people what they really hoped to gain from the rejection of Prop 8. Their responses were mostly hostile, and not fit for posting here.

Last edited by Fnord on 26 Jul 2011, 2:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I call "Godwin!"

You can't suppress 'hate speech'. It'll go underground, it'll get worse. Better to know where the nutters are so that one can keep an eye on them. And in any case, it's a free speech issue.

i think suppressing hate speech is more important than the supposed right to free speech.

and knowing where the nutters are doesn't protect people against them - they can potentially do MORE damage when in full view, not less.

there doesn't necessarily "have" to be anything at all - precedence doesn't have to predict the future by any means. for example there has always been murder since earliest recorded history, but it doesn't mean we "have" to have it.

how about examples of some useful stereotypes?

hahaha guilty! couldn't think of an obvious example of charismatic hate speech leading to annihilation.

Define 'hate speech'. Practically anything that the author disagrees with can be hate speech - as the constant drive to label any unpopular opinions or even talk of mass immigration in this country as racist. Shutting down the immigration debate in the UK hasn't done anyone any good and the main parties are terrified of talking to the public on this issue. Which is why protest parties have emerged, very few of which are racist but more often are multiracial and unicultural and wish to impose limits on immigration.

Again, though, it depends how you define 'racist', much as it depends how you define 'hate speech'. I don't like the term hate speech because it can be used by vested interests to stifle debate.



Try preventing the conditions for these nutters to gain influence and these people will lose power. Instead of trying to shut them up, give them airtime and listen to them. Take them on, don't be scared. Shouting 'racist' and saying they should be banned is counterproductive to what you want to do. Nick Griffin (the leader of the BNP, the leader of the white supremacist political party) on Question Time being a case in point.

No platforming these neanderthals allows them to grow in influence.

wikipedia sums up my beliefs:



i see it in L&D, when members say things like "all women are manipulative b*****s" or "all men are stupid a**holes", for example.





they cannot grow in influence if they cannot express hate speech. hate speech spreads when it is expressed. if there are no protections against hate speech, then people will have the freedom to spread hate. and that is damaging.

it is already underground in addition to being out in the open, so suppressing the public hate speech does not force anything underground at all.... because it's already there.

i already addressed the fact that in a given crowd, most people will not speak up. most will stay quiet, and some will be swayed towards the speaker.

obviously, i AM the person who speaks up in a group. but in any group when it has been necessary to speak up, i was the only person to say anything. as much fun as it is to be a martyr, i'd rather the haters would be legally forced to STFU.