BlackTron
Gold Member
Hate is subjective. And you shouldn't police speech.
"hate speech can only be criminalized when it directly incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group."
Thank you for clarifying. I now realize that genocidal chants are probably not specific enough, nor can be legally substantiated to incite imminent violence in most circumstances.
Edit: I noticed that you updated your post with an addition:
Which just seems like a judgement call. Depending on who the judge is, not what the evidence is determines guilt.
There must be some semblance of an idea of what hate speech could be, without having to ask a judge, that would be the basis for putting the matter before a judge in the first place. Sure, a judge makes the final call on whether Alec Baldwin's blunder falls under a damning legal definition; but either way, we know Alec Baldwin shot someone and that, guilty or not, certainly he was policed and nobody had a problem with that.
It should be noted that Congress' basis for censuring Rep. Tlaib was her reposting of a video with "from the river to the sea". With congress-members referencing it as hate speech in their remarks. Despite free speech (including hate speech) being protected under the first amendment and no judge having made a call on whether her example of hate speech was directly inciting or making specific threats, she still found herself rejected.
If you go back a few weeks to the Jewish kids who needed to be escorted out the back door of a library by police. You'd have a HARD TIME making the case that a threat of violence wasn't imminent. Otherwise, why did you need to sneak out with police? Surely, there must be some standard of offense that falls under a reasonable definition of "criminal hate speech" that would create expectation of action by police for further discernment by a judge. But I don't think anybody was arrested, they were allowed to act with impunity while the kids had to slither out the back door like Jews hiding from Nazis in 1940.
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