{"id":985,"date":"2017-08-19T14:48:07","date_gmt":"2017-08-19T21:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/?p=985"},"modified":"2017-08-26T13:19:04","modified_gmt":"2017-08-26T19:49:04","slug":"hate-speech-and-freedom-cannot-coencide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/hate-speech-and-freedom-cannot-coencide\/","title":{"rendered":"Hate Speech is Fascism, not Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am losing my tolerance for the disingenuous protection of hate speech as \u201cfree speech.\u201d I used to say, \u201cLet the assholes out themselves,\u201d when it came to bigotry. But what does that accomplish? What do you do with white supremacists after they \u201cout themselves?\u201d If there are no laws in place that can touch them, only laws against punching them like they deserve, then outing them only gives them more visibility. They\u2019re like a bunch of toddlers pushing the boundaries, realizing they can do as they please and not get in trouble, so they keep pushing the walls of acceptability. As more people realize, \u201cI can say horrible shit now? I can do whatever the fuck I want?\u201d more people follow their example until decent society is destroyed.<\/p>\n

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Every civilized country, from which America is excluded until it gets it shit together, have laws against hate speech. Germany was only able to squash Nazi ideology through persistent prosecution. They decided that free speech doesn\u2019t cover the evil specifically designed to oppress (or fuel genocide against) others. Have they eliminated it? Of course not, but they don\u2019t give fascists a political pulpit to proselytize from. Neo Nazis are not allowed to march in the streets carrying guns. Germany learned this lesson in WWII. The Canadian Forces, after the Somalia Affair, cracked down on hate speech within their ranks because they understood that a white supremacist, given the chance, will more likely commit war crimes, especially against anyone who\u2019s not white. They can\u2019t entirely wipe out sexism and racism within their ranks (as I saw when I was one of them), but every soldier knew it wasn\u2019t acceptable\u2014that they would be in deep shit if they let bigotry off the leash. When your military is dedicated to peacekeeping abroad, every soldier is a diplomatic representative of your country. A nation is reflected in what behavior it allows.<\/p>\n

On the internet, if you let a bunch if trolls into your parlor, if you let them bring down the house around you, you deserve all the shit you get. If you are an organization, or even just the host of a blog, you are your worst members. It doesn\u2019t matter if you, personally, are not as toxic if other people have poisoned the air around you. It\u2019s your job to cultivate the culture around you. This job belongs to everyone. What you tolerate becomes a part of the cloud of influence around you, around your group, around your country. People in silicon valley need to realize, if their platform turns into a toxic trash fire, it\u2019s a design flaw. It\u2019s a problem that needs to be solved. And if they, like the twits who run Twitter, can\u2019t solve it, their platform deserves to die in a fire\u2014because it\u2019s a fire they were too negligent to put out.<\/p>\n

The advocates who argue for total free speech, no matter the cost, argue that not giving every view, no matter how vile, a platform will simply drive them underground. This is true, but that\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing. Take, for example, the most non-tolerated form of \u201cexpression\u201d around the world\u2014child pornography. Driving them underground doesn\u2019t mean the cops don\u2019t know where they are, and doing so makes sure they\u2019re not out in the open grooming children. Only the pedophiles themselves argue that outlawing child porn denies them their rights, because they\u2019re deluded into thinking it\u2019s their right to wank off to a five-year-old being raped. The alt-right are equally deluded in thinking making death threats to others is an inalienable right. It never has been. Even the southern states have laws against libel and \u201cfighting words.\u201d It\u2019s just the tide of foul speech has been such a catastrophic deluge, it\u2019s been impossible to enforce. The other question is one of having the will to enforce it, when most of the members of the force are a bunch of good ol\u2019 boys. Do black people in the US get the same right to free speech, the same right to bear arms? Fuck no. The police gun them down without hesitation. When free speech isn\u2019t equal, it isn\u2019t freedom. It\u2019s just a farce.<\/p>\n

The racist pieces of shit marching in Charlottesville whine that they did so legally. They had a permit. This doesn\u2019t justify them being there. White supremacists shouldn\u2019t have been given a permit to march though the streets, carrying guns, intimidating citizens along the way, particularly the entire congregation of a black church\u2014which they menaced along the way because of course they did. They shouldn\u2019t have been permitted to march through a Jewish neighborhood in 1977. Because the only reason they\u2019re doing it is to intimidate, to oppress, to say to their non-white neighbors, \u201cThese are OUR RIGHTS, NOT YOURS.\u201d It turns the very notion of freedom into a joke. White supremacists are terrorists. Their websites and marches are designed to recruit troops for the race war they\u2019re trying to incite. Let\u2019s not fool ourselves, the only reason they continually get the benefit of the doubt is by virtue of being white. They\u2019re no different from ISIS (whose speech is rightfully policed to try to prevent them from recruiting) and ought to be treated just the same.<\/p>\n

Removing monuments to white supremacism, removing their vile presence from social media, is not a slippery slope. It\u2019s drawing a line. So where do we draw the line? No one\u2019s going to drag away your grandpa for using racial slurs. We\u2019re talking about websites that call for violence, marches through the street with guns. Issuing death threats to people who offend you ought to be illegal no matter what ideology you espouse. But I\u2019m not making a false equivalency here. Hate speech, in particular, has been identified as a spark that leads to violence. It is a vile and violent ideology\u2014the idea that some people are inferior to others and don\u2019t deserve the same rights\u2014and it has no place in civilized discourse. It is evil, pure and simple, and those who enable evil by giving it a platform on which to stand are not neutral, as they claim. They are culpable in driving unhinged idiots to shoot up a black church, or a sorority, or murder people with their car. But let\u2019s not assume these people started out mentally ill\u2014extremists drive normal people, people unsatisfied with their lot, to become extremists. White supremacist ideology unhinges ordinary people. It is a viral infection, and it needs to be treated as seriously as any plague.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am losing my tolerance for the disingenuous protection of hate speech as \u201cfree speech.\u201d I used to say, \u201cLet the assholes out themselves,\u201d when it came to bigotry. But what does that accomplish? What do you do with white supremacists after they \u201cout themselves?\u201d If there are no laws in place that can touch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,18],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-rants","tag-society-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":990,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions\/990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}