Because these days saying something offensive is exactly "hate speech" in the eyes of the offended. That's rather the point. Wilders pointed out that Islam is a fucked-up, cruel, barbaric, uncivilized, sexist, racist, warmongering evil blight on humanity, which is the absolute truth, and he's being prosecuted precisely and exactly for being offensive.Brian Peacock wrote:Is it? Why?Forty Two wrote:You mean...speak out AGAINST a religious group? That'd be hate speech. It's be like saying we want fewer fundamentalist Muslims in this country. That's definitely hate speech.pErvin wrote:The fact that Islam doesn't have an authority structure means that there is no Pope like figure to tell all the non-thinkers what to think. The moderates can only speak out. And large numbers of them do, we just don't hear about it in the western media.
OK. You're pointing out that some people can seemingly say some bad things about some other people, and get away with it, and some people can't. I don't think there's an absolute moral delineator here, and, as I've said previously, the ability or willingness of some person or group to take offence is not the measure of whether whatever it is they're offended by is offensive, or indeed not. Saying something offensive is not hate-speech, so why over-egg the pudding by suggesting that it is?
Interestingly, that is solid platform plank of conservatism and especially Libertarianism. I'd much rather know who my enemies are and giving them the rope they need to hang themselves is a fine way to determine who is an enemy and who isn't. That's why it's now easy to identify Islam and Muslims as enemies. Used to be, for a long time, Muslims kept their evil agenda pretty quiet...after the Ottoman Empire spanked them good and hard...which allowed Islam to act exactly like a cancer or slime mold and fester in the dark corners until it gained enough strength to burst out and start killing non-Muslims.Not only should we let the bigots and hate-mongers speak, for that's how we identify bigots and hate-mongers, but we should protect their right to have and express appalling ideas.
But now we know them by their works and by their ideology, which they are no longer hesitant to trumpet at every opportunity. I think that's a great thing. We should allow Islamic radicals open access to the media...along with the videos of them chopping, burning, drowning and otherwise engaging in their customary barbarities...so that people will learn just exactly how fundamentally and irredeemably evil Islam is and therefore why it must be extirpated from the face of the earth until there are no Muslims left to trumpet the ideology because there are no Muslims left.
Now this is a practical impossibility because, like cancer and slime-mold, one Muslim too soon becomes two and then the geometric progression causes the cancer to metastasizes to fatal proportions again, so the best we can do is take a page from the Ottoman Empire and crush the ideology without pity or mercy until it's no longer a threat and adherents are too afraid to stick their heads out of the ideological sewer they live in for a good long time. Repeat as necessary.
As has been said, the line is where the actions and speech lead, or are likely to lead to an "immediate breach of the peace" (as in Black Lives Matters incitement to riot), which is when the speaker can be arrested.However, that people have a right to be idiots and bullshitters does not mean they have a protected right to act on their ideals. When it comes to incitement and hate-mongery some line has to be drawn, unless we want to devolve society to a point where merely having and unshakable conviction in the virtues and merits of one's viewpoint is all that is need to justify action in accordance with that viewpoint.
The standard used in US law is that the acts or speech must lead a reasonable person to believe that violence is IMMINENT and is imminent in the place where the speech or action is taking place. There is a large body of US law respecting incitement to riot and how such cases are judged. One of the limitations on police action is that the speaker accused of incitement to riot must be physically present before the persons he's inciting to lawlessness. The general theory is that a person violating the law by intending to incite violence must necessarily be in a position to judge the temper of the crowd and engage in conduct deliberately intended to inflame the emotions and incite THOSE PERSONS to violence. This is why it's not possible to prosecute a radio talk-show host, or TV "newsperson" or someone publishing an offensive and "inciting" editorial, tweet or other on-line post for incitement to riot. There must be a direct, knowing link between the incitement and the persons being incited and intent to provoke and inflame others to violence is necessary.A radical feminist proclaiming 'All men are bastards!' or a white-supremacist declaring 'All Muslims are terrorists!' might be appalling, but it's of a different order to saying 'All men are bastards and therefore we should castrate them at birth' or 'All Muslims are terrorists and therefore we should round them up into camps and gas them', which itself is of a different order to some feminist group forcibly castrating boys or KKK members gassing Muslims. So if a line has to be drawn it is, imo, better drawn somewhere between the declaration and the advocacy of action rather than between the advocacy of action and the action itself.
A person posting an offensive opinion, such as the one I post above, has no way to judge the reaction of readers, and cannot even know if the comments are being viewed, and therefore has no control AT ALL over what some person far away does or how he/she reacts to that exercise of free, if offensive speech, and therefore cannot be guilty of inciting a riot.
This is NOT the case in Europe, where merely stating an politically controversial or unpopular (even if truthful) opinion is frequently deemed "hate speech" and is prosecutable, as we see in Wilder's case.
But fuck Europe and the tiny-minded wipers of other people's bottoms who reside there, this is the US of A, where we get to say what we like and fuck those who don't like it.
