One of the things I love about America is hate speech. In many countries, engaging in it will land you in prison, a gulag—or worse. But here in the US, you may be socially ostracized, and more recently sentenced to forced unemployment, but we’re still leagues above many of our despotic world neighbors, some of them Western allies.
Defining “hate speech” is the challenge. To the radical Left, it’s anything they disagree with, that doesn’t conform to the ideology and narrative of the day. And because on the far Left it’s subjective, inconsistent and ever-changing, the followers tend to eat their own with regularity; interestingly, the current Israeli crisis has created a rift in the ranks. Things that used to be common ground on the left and the right, such as the values of meritocracy, color-blindness, and objective sexual identity, are now cause for outrage and charges of racism, microaggression, and exclusion—hence, hate speech. Thus, the rationale for defending it—as tomorrow your views can be the new hate speech. And without disagreement and dissent, there is no discussion, and no seeking the truth, which often lurks somewhere in the middle, in that safe zone between Tyranny and Chaos.
The battle to reclaim this right to speak freely, especially for conservatives in the current climate with radical leftist ideology controlling the halls of power, has resulted in a casualty of the war against evil: the ability to call out and effectively fight it. With this spiritual paralysis, we become at best amoral, and at worst immoral. And the confusion surrounding free speech and hate speech dampens our ability to deal appropriately with the ubiquitous pro-Palestine/pro-Hamas public displays of unity. Where does the extent of freedom of speech end? Even Nazis have been permitted to publicly and peacefully march in support of their demonic beliefs. In the past, the bounds of this freedom were well defined, ending where calls for violence began. This no longer seems to apply. Cries of “kill the Jews” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, ” even when accompanied by actual acts of vandalism and assault have been insufficient to move the authorities to aggressive enforcement with imprisonment, deportation, or defunding, except in the most extraordinary circumstances. They’ve been weak, abdicating responsibility to individual agents, such as the now-awakened ex-benefactors of irresponsible universities that play a big role in the problem, instead resorting to appeasement and naively trying to defuse a situation well beyond the point of a diplomatic solution with “both side-ism,” with ludicrous exhortations of faux moral equivalency between the two sides.
If we can’t deal strongly with hate speech in the circumstances described above, it becomes almost impossible when dealing with less clear-cut circumstances. Take the recent TikTok posting of Osama bin Laden’s treatise on the rationale for 9-11 that triggered multiple online demonstrations of approbation by young people. Yes, they’re ignorant and have been programmed like others on the left to only understand the concept of oppressor vs victim, not of right vs wrong. But what’s to be done? The decision by the Chinese owners to remove the treatise in response to the blow-back seems, at first blush, to be reasonable. But is it? We’re not China, and we used to abhor censorship. And if bin Laden’s words hadn’t been publicized, the problem would have remained under the radar. Posting this written excrement didn’t create the issue, only unmasked it, and taking it down doesn’t solve it.
What about the recent kerfuffle regarding Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) response to the post “Jewish communties [sic] have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them”? He replied, “You have said the actual truth.” And the subsequent tweet in the thread declaring, “Everyone is allowed to be proud of their race, except for white people, because we’ve been brainwashed into believing that our history was some how ‘worse’ than other races. This false narrative must die,” followed by Musk’s response of “Yeah, this is super messed up. Time for this nonsense to end and shame ANYONE who perpetuates these lies!” This was roundly censured as antisemitism by the Anti-Defamation League. But is this really hate speech? I’m a Jew by birth but not religious practice and consider antisemitism as abhorrent as any form of racism, yet found myself agreeing with what I believe was the intent of Musk’s words: A large segment of the secular Jewish community, as opposed to the orthodox, or practicing Jewish community, has been a strong supporter of most of the far Left’s progressive policies. So “hate speech” is often a byproduct of a lack of clarity or misunderstanding. (Not surprisingly, a formal statement from the CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, followed, condemning antisemitism and discrimination.)
The bottom line is that there is no free speech without “hate” speech. But ignoring calls for violence to remain without consequence by people who do not share our American values and will never assimilate, especially those who are here either illegally or legally as non-citizens, is foolish and a sure recipe for societal collapse. I hope we’re smarter than that. There are some encouraging signs—i.e., the 300,000 person-strong march against antisemitism in Washington, DC.
It will be a long, hard journey, but good will win out. And that’s something to be truly grateful for this Thanksgiving.
heartheaded
Heartheaded 