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It is the other way around. Any criticism of immigration, even if it is illegal, is now being categorized as racist 'hate speech' supposedly being promulgated b

by Zuider 4y ago

It is the other way around. Any criticism of immigration, even if it is illegal, is now being categorized as racist 'hate speech' supposedly being promulgated by the 'far right.' There is no First Amendment in the UK, and the police have become notoriously active in prosecuting and jailing for 'hate speech' in the last decade, even as they become lax in investigating robbery and assaults. The new Online Safety Bill has a lot of draconian and arguably over-broad measures against what they call 'harmful speech' and 'hate' (who gets to define these things?) and one of them is a prohibition against showing migrants arriving illegally across the English Channel from Calais.

O__________O 4y ago
Idea that anti-immigration speech is hate speech is a stretch. Hate speech is hate speech. Yes, there might be a correlation between the two and might even be exploited as an indirect means of expressing hate, but equating anti-immigration speech as equal is deeply flawed.
- Zuider 4y ago
  It is deeply flawed, but once you introduce the notion of hate speech, the definition can be expanded indefinitely to include any speech that can conceivably cause 'offense,' which is now defined as 'harm.' OFCOM, the British media regulation authority has recently defined 'hate speech' as: ‘All forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred based on intolerance on the grounds of disability, ethnicity, social origin, gender, sex, gender reassignment, nationality, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, colour, genetic features, language, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth or age.’ It is a good thing that British weather is so variable, because that is pretty much all they will legally be permitted to talk about. Even tea and crumpets is out of bounds because 'tea' might offend the Chinese, and 'crumpets' may offend women.
  - O__________O 4y ago
    Bit of a stretch to call the OFCOM’s definition of hate speech inaccurate. Obviously if someone is going to use slang terms to spew hatred it should not be excusable.
    - tpoacher 4y ago
      They're not saying the definition itself is inaccurate. They're saying that its reliance on terms that are they themselves being liberally redefined to change the meaning of the passage, makes the passage irrelevant in the first place.
      - O__________O 4y ago
        Real world examples? Otherwise in my experience if sounds like a duck, walks like a duck, it must be a duck; that is it’s hate speech. For example, “we do not want X near us” is not a phrase based on inclusion and might easily ”spread, incite, promote or justify hatred based on intolerance” - while “all Z have committed to killing us” is obviously valid criticism, if true, which though is highly unlikely.
        tpoacher 4y ago
        Define "real". Otherwise the example to which you originally replied to was exactly offered as one such real example, explaining the reasoning behind the selected example, and why that has important implications.

by Zuider 4y ago

O__________O 4y ago

Idea that anti-immigration speech is hate speech is a stretch. Hate speech is hate speech. Yes, there might be a correlation between the two and might even be exploited as an indirect means of expressing hate, but equating anti-immigration speech as equal is deeply flawed.

Zuider 4y ago
It is deeply flawed, but once you introduce the notion of hate speech, the definition can be expanded indefinitely to include any speech that can conceivably cause 'offense,' which is now defined as 'harm.' OFCOM, the British media regulation authority has recently defined 'hate speech' as: ‘All forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred based on intolerance on the grounds of disability, ethnicity, social origin, gender, sex, gender reassignment, nationality, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, colour, genetic features, language, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth or age.’ It is a good thing that British weather is so variable, because that is pretty much all they will legally be permitted to talk about. Even tea and crumpets is out of bounds because 'tea' might offend the Chinese, and 'crumpets' may offend women.
- O__________O 4y ago
  Bit of a stretch to call the OFCOM’s definition of hate speech inaccurate. Obviously if someone is going to use slang terms to spew hatred it should not be excusable.
  - tpoacher 4y ago
    They're not saying the definition itself is inaccurate. They're saying that its reliance on terms that are they themselves being liberally redefined to change the meaning of the passage, makes the passage irrelevant in the first place.
    - O__________O 4y ago
      Real world examples? Otherwise in my experience if sounds like a duck, walks like a duck, it must be a duck; that is it’s hate speech. For example, “we do not want X near us” is not a phrase based on inclusion and might easily ”spread, incite, promote or justify hatred based on intolerance” - while “all Z have committed to killing us” is obviously valid criticism, if true, which though is highly unlikely.
      - tpoacher 4y ago
        Define "real". Otherwise the example to which you originally replied to was exactly offered as one such real example, explaining the reasoning behind the selected example, and why that has important implications.