Hate Speech and other Red Herrings
January 10th 2007 02:02
I have been thinking about this for a long time. They are usually called the PC brigade, you know, the people who force down politically correct doublespeak down our throats. But to call them PC is just plain inadequate. If they did that to everybody, there'd be no problem at all except life would a bit duller than it already is. But, they selectively impose these rules on only some sections of the society and therein lies the rub.
If you are Democrat for instance, you can call a black republican a nigger or a slave, you can bring in ethnic cleansing and other offesnive terms without batting an eyelid. If you are a Republican senator you can lose your seat for joking about somebody being a macaca. It doesn't stop there. If you post anti-jihad videos on the internet, you'llbe removed in no time but you can post terrorist video replete with grand scenes showing Coalition troops being killed and Hamas and Hizbollah can actually post recruitment videos and nobody has a problem with that.
Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a world wide Islamist group which recruits impressionable Muslims from university campuses from around the world and radicalises them can operate with impunity anywhere. But a Jewish group in the US cannot show a film called Obsession, a film on jihad, on their campus.
And of course, if you are anti-war, everything goes, from making assassination fantasies of war leaders to actually disrupt funerals of death ceremonies. A professor even gave his students a credit for doing exactly this last.
So, what really is hate speech? It's hate only if a people of certain kind of idealogy, or persuasion speak their minds. It's dissent if others do it.
Therein lies the problem, you see. It's not being politically correct, it is actually selectively enforcing one group's values while making things hard for the other group. It is actually a turf control on civil society.
It works because most conservatives and other ideological minorities believe in decency and good manners and all that sort of gooey. I say, make your statement as disgustingly as possible, even use racist epithets if possible. It's a matter of free speech. If you give in to their standards while they feel free not to follow any, your side is going to lose and pretty much instead of a free marketplace of ideas you 'll get a fascist society monitored by the PC apparchiks.
If somebody says that you're being racist or sexist or bigoted or fascist, just give them a finger. As long as its just speech issues. One must of course differentiate free speech from actions on the ground. But, yes don't give in to the PC brigade.
If you are Democrat for instance, you can call a black republican a nigger or a slave, you can bring in ethnic cleansing and other offesnive terms without batting an eyelid. If you are a Republican senator you can lose your seat for joking about somebody being a macaca. It doesn't stop there. If you post anti-jihad videos on the internet, you'llbe removed in no time but you can post terrorist video replete with grand scenes showing Coalition troops being killed and Hamas and Hizbollah can actually post recruitment videos and nobody has a problem with that.
Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a world wide Islamist group which recruits impressionable Muslims from university campuses from around the world and radicalises them can operate with impunity anywhere. But a Jewish group in the US cannot show a film called Obsession, a film on jihad, on their campus.
And of course, if you are anti-war, everything goes, from making assassination fantasies of war leaders to actually disrupt funerals of death ceremonies. A professor even gave his students a credit for doing exactly this last.
So, what really is hate speech? It's hate only if a people of certain kind of idealogy, or persuasion speak their minds. It's dissent if others do it.
Therein lies the problem, you see. It's not being politically correct, it is actually selectively enforcing one group's values while making things hard for the other group. It is actually a turf control on civil society.
It works because most conservatives and other ideological minorities believe in decency and good manners and all that sort of gooey. I say, make your statement as disgustingly as possible, even use racist epithets if possible. It's a matter of free speech. If you give in to their standards while they feel free not to follow any, your side is going to lose and pretty much instead of a free marketplace of ideas you 'll get a fascist society monitored by the PC apparchiks.
If somebody says that you're being racist or sexist or bigoted or fascist, just give them a finger. As long as its just speech issues. One must of course differentiate free speech from actions on the ground. But, yes don't give in to the PC brigade.
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