All the Rage: Laws That Allow a Government to Ban Speech it Decides Is 'Hateful' - Granite Grok

All the Rage: Laws That Allow a Government to Ban Speech it Decides Is ‘Hateful’

Diversity Speech police

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it dozens of times and more likely hundreds, there’s no such thing as hate speech. It doesn’t exist but in the minds of people looking for an opportunity to create a legal precedent to ban speech with which they disagree. Speech they hate.

The Democrats proved this repeatedly by either their open support or stubborn refusal to denounce individuals, groups or actions that use violence and intimidation to silence speech (that contradicts their worldview). And in January Germany did something for which the American left is desperate. The government implemented a law that allows those in power to decide what is hateful and make tech companies remove it from the internet.

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.

That is already happening in America, you say, without any laws at all. And that is true. Private social media providers and internet behemoths police speech with a very deliberate agenda. A left-leaning agenda. Some would say with extreme prejudice toward one worldview. And that would be true. But there is no law that permits the U.S. government to make that happen or to demand that they do it.

Not yet.

But they never stop trying, and I shouldn’t have to remind you that laws like the one in Germany have nothing to do with public safety, but I will. Controlling speech, whether it is political, labeled by the elites as hateful, any speech at all, is about narrative control.

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.

History is filled with evidence of where this sort of thing takes a community if allowed to take root. Words, phrases, ideas, and then by extension thoughts or ideas are wormed out of the public discourse by “those in power.” And individuals who are resistant to such changes are no longer just contrarian or even dissident they are instead “extremists” who will find themselves accused of “hate speech” or “hate crimes.”

Whatever it takes to silence you because speech is the single biggest threat to “those in power.”

Anyone who advocates for such limitations should be called out for the fledgling tyrant that they are. Their motivations should be questioned.

Just don’t expect much help from the press unless the “tyrant” is a person of the right.

The “free press” in America is more than happy to assist their ideological brethren with the cleansing because they are a protected class for thinking and saying the proper things. They are not considered big corrupt corporations (though they are). Or an in-kind policial donor (which they are). Even after years of lavishing praise or support for Democrat policies and Democrat politicians day-in and day-out to their audience while pillorying opponents

This sort of Freedom of the press increasingly becomes a monopoly on speech that can say and do anything but it never quite rises to the level of hate speech if it advances the doctrines of the political class. Speech that also, by exclusion, remission, or silence, hides other crimes to protect those in power.

“…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.”

Did you know that the foreign press grooms the language so that accused Muslim Refugees are relabeled as Asians because calling them what they are is hate speech?  Calling them out for it is hate speech.

See how that works?

It’s an ugly mess that spirals out of control very quickly and begins as simply as a poorly written school district policy that punishes people for refusing to acknowledge some arbitrary preference pronoun. A refusal that is labeled as hate speech.

Which is why there is no such thing as hate speech.

“Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

Not in Germany, most of Europe, a majority of public schools, university campuses, workplaces, the government, and increasingly, everywhere else.

There is a war on free speech, and we’re just a few votes away from giving the ruling class progressives the votes they need to take away the digital age vehicles of free speech. It’s a priority to them and they won’t stop until they have it or you elect politicians to replace them who will have none of that.

So, yes, it’s all up to you.

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