Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
We'll have to agree to disagree. I can't really get in line with someone who believes the promotion of ethnic cleansing, Black people being seen as unintelligent savages, and that Jewish people are the enemy are positions that deserve promotion to an unlimited audience.
This is not a slippery slope argument nor is this about the government. This is fairly standard, hate speech is defined. You live in Canada, right? In terms of Canadian law, all three of the men (Duke, Molyneux, Spencer) banned by YouTube violate "already agreed upon illegal speech." So, do you or do you not support their right to spread hate speech despite the laws in the country you live?
Let's turn the slippery slope backwards. If we allow hate speech, why do you have a problem with child porn? I mean, it's not that much of a stretch, is it? Why can't people share child porn if they can promote ethnic cleansing? Isn't it dangerous to restrict our freedoms? What's next? First they ban child porn, then they ban regular porn, then they start putting restrictions on sexuality banning all sex not between a married man and a woman, and then they start banning sex altogether as a means to control the population? It's a slippery slope you know!
|
This is interesting and you raise some good points; you addressed the obvious hate speech that most of us can agree upon but didn’t touch his question that what if next week it is decided that any criticism of BLM is now hate speech (for the record I have nothing critical to say about BLM). It’s who decides that that is the problem.
I don’t have definitive answers of even how I feel about some of these issues as it pertains to free speech protection or hate speech supression, but I do believe the slippery slope argument is worth discussing. It’s easy to point to obvious examples of racists like Spencer and Molyneux and agree that they shouldn’t be promoted or enjoy the same exposure as others, but it isn’t so easy with other greyer areas.
Let’s take for example immigration. It is commonplace now that anyone arguing against it is racist and therefore promoting hate speech. What if their argument is purely economic, numbers we can absorb yearly, the amount of available jobs, etc? Hate speech? De-platform? What if the argument is more cultural? People from X country seem to be having difficulty adapting and accepting our western values, especially towards women and lgbtq rights. Hate speech? Who decides? Should they be deciding?
What about anti-vaxxers? I believe that they are likely responsible for the loss of lives of many and should be given less options to spew idiotic conspiracies, but that is how I feel. Should they be de-platformed because I don’t like what they are saying? I’m not sure. I do think that the slippery slope is worth considering before censoring things we don’t like or agree with