The hate speech temptation
A good article in National Review:
At the start of January this year a new law came into effect in Germany. The “NetzDG” law allows an un-named and unknown collection of government agencies and tech companies to police the Internet and remove content deemed to be “hateful” or otherwise deemed to constitute “hate speech.” Around the world politicians from other nations are looking at these laws with envy.
Of course, the whole notion of “hate speech” should warrant far more suspicion and push-back than it has done recently. Incitement to violence is already illegal in most countries. As are credible threats to kill someone. But “hate speech” brings a high bar down several pegs. And the problem with it is not only that it attempts to read purpose and imagined consequences into words, but that it inevitably comes framed to give ideological protection to whoever wields power at a particular point in time.
Yep hate speech bans invariably are ideologically motivated.
For instance, in the U.K. you can now find yourself locked out of a social-media account for publishing facts about the endless, ongoing revelations of child-sexual abuse at the hands of gangs of men the British press euphemistically refer to as “Asians.”
Needless to say, this makes things infinitely more complex than they need to be. There has already been plenty of covering-up of these crimes (as shown this weekend when news emerged of yet another English city — Telford — where another 1,000 young girls turn out to have been raped in recent years. In most circumstances we believe that light is the best disinfectant. But not in these cases.
These Asians are never Korean or Chinese or Japanese.
While Mayor Khan was lecturing his audience in Austin he had failed to identify a problem far closer to his home. In particular the fact that during his time as mayor knife-crime and acid attacks in the capital have rocketed. Sixteen people have been stabbed to death in London already this year. Almost all of this is gang-related, and much of it is immigrant-gang-related. Where the trend for throwing acid in people’s faces has come from, who would dare to guess?
Not a hard one to guess.