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Anil Dash’s main point appears to be that allowing hate speech will embolden racists/bigots to commit violence against minorities. My question to him is: what

Anil Dash’s main point appears to be that allowing hate speech will embolden racists/bigots to commit violence against minorities. My question to him is: what if a proper study was done and it found that suppression of hate speech actually emboldened racists and bigots to commit more violence against minorities? Would he advocate then Altman’s proposal? It appears that his entire thesis is based on his own conjecture. I would love to know if there are any studies that support his theory.

nl 9y ago
There are plenty of natural experiments showing how hate speech leads to violence. Look up the history of the Rwanda genocide for one of the clearest studies.
- mr_spothawk 9y ago
  hmmm... wikipedia doesn't support your claim, tho [1]. it seems like a lot of folks were encouraged to go out and kill, given machetes and told to kill, and in the end there's one study that suggests 10% of the violence could be attributed to the radio station (which was created to broadcast racist propaganda and obscene jokes). specifically, I take issue with the notion that "hate speech" is a meaningful descriptor of a way of talking. racism, bigotry, etc... are more specific. tangentially, I did find this: > On March 20, 2017, Pope Francis acknowledged that while some Catholic nuns and priests in the country were killed during the genocide, others were complicit with it and took part in preparing and executing the genocide. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide#Preparation_for_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide#Preparation_f...
  - nl 9y ago
    one study that suggests 10% of the violence could be attributed to the radio station I’m not sure what you are expecting here. Social sciences aren’t clean, you can’t go back in time and setup control groups etc, and being able to clearly show a causal link like that is pretty decisive. Put it another way: 10% of the violence is at least 60,000 deaths.

nl 9y ago

There are plenty of natural experiments showing how hate speech leads to violence. Look up the history of the Rwanda genocide for one of the clearest studies.

mr_spothawk 9y ago
hmmm... wikipedia doesn't support your claim, tho [1]. it seems like a lot of folks were encouraged to go out and kill, given machetes and told to kill, and in the end there's one study that suggests 10% of the violence could be attributed to the radio station (which was created to broadcast racist propaganda and obscene jokes). specifically, I take issue with the notion that "hate speech" is a meaningful descriptor of a way of talking. racism, bigotry, etc... are more specific. tangentially, I did find this: > On March 20, 2017, Pope Francis acknowledged that while some Catholic nuns and priests in the country were killed during the genocide, others were complicit with it and took part in preparing and executing the genocide. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide#Preparation_for_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide#Preparation_f...
- nl 9y ago
  one study that suggests 10% of the violence could be attributed to the radio station I’m not sure what you are expecting here. Social sciences aren’t clean, you can’t go back in time and setup control groups etc, and being able to clearly show a causal link like that is pretty decisive. Put it another way: 10% of the violence is at least 60,000 deaths.