I hate the label "hate speech".
I hate when something is called racism or racist when nothing racial is mentioned.
I hate people telling me how I must speak.
I hate the willfully ignorant. Those who admitted something was incorrect but they continue to push it anyway.
I hate censorship.
I hate the concept of microaggressions.
I hate the "words are violence" nonsense.
I hate the removal of statues regardless of what those statues are. If there was a statue of Hitler even though I consider him a vile person it would be a potent opportunity to educate and talk to people. Sure they could stick it in a box or in a basement, or in a museum and say "you can still talk about it" yet the POTENT reminder that the statue represented would be gone. Removal of these things is about promoting ignorance. Those who do not know the past are doomed to repeat it. What better way to make people ignorant about the past than to erase it, and attempt to replace it with whatever narrative you want them to believe?
Really it is difficult for me to write this because really there are very few things I hate.
I actually think most of the people accusing people of hate speech are projecting and end up being the most censorious and hateful people out there. They also tend to be where you need look if you truly want to easily find examples of racism, bigotry, misogyny, etc.
I don't have much more to say. I just had a strong need to VENT. That is what this post is about.
Accurate, and well said.
Thanks!
War is peace, freedom is slavery and Antifa are fascists. We live in a world of inversion.
Two of these things are not like the other.
With that observation, I could not but agree.
Hear, hear! I'm a free-speech absolutist and I detest nonsense. And that's what it is, all of this new-speak., erasing the past, adults behaving like children traumatised by hurty words or the wrong pronoun.
Bring me back to the 1970s!
How about mysandry. We all know misogyny. Hating on women. How about being the opposite. The allowable.of.women.to hate on men and belittle and berate them.
So much disrespectful behavior these days as most of these people haven't ever had to back up that with their body.
When you can get pinched or killed for being rude and disrespectful, or consequences for your words... The world becomes incredibly polite.
Saying that because I've grown up with a blood feud affecting my family and interactions with others.. as well as me solving that said feud.
Along the same lines are hate crimes. If someone beats and kills me do I really care if they did it because of my race or because they just wanted my wallet? They should just call them by their proper name...thought crimes.
I don't think I would want a statue of Hitler prominently displayed in my town. But I get it...where do you draw the line? By any reasonable measure it has been crossed.
If there were a statue of Hitler that had a caption "A great and powerful man" below it that might be a bit disturbing.
If it had a caption below it that said something like "Hitler: This man did horrible things. Talk about it. Learn from it. Don't let it happen again."
Two very different things. We control our minds. How we react and even what we are offended by is a CHOICE. We can choose to not be offended.
But sometimes it is ok to be offended. Sometimes tearing down statues is ok, especially if they are of your oppressor. I'm sure that during the American Revolution, statues of King George were torn down. There's a giant statue of Lenin that was torn down in Berlin after the Berlin wall came down (though more recently his head was put back together).
And I doubt any statue of Hitler ever made said anything like you suggest so that would mean changing the statue. Changing a statue because it is offensive isn't all that different that removing it for the same reason. Statues are generally created to honor somebody, not necessarily to educate you about them beyond whatever it is they are being honored for. Removing a statue that honors somebody isn't quite the same as removing them from the history books.
Yes, people have gone way overboard with the whole statue removal thing but it's not like once a statue is created, humanity has to live with it forever. The trouble is that people don't seem to grasp that you can honor someone for something good they did without them being perfect.
I am biased. I view creation and making things as a good thing. I tend to think destruction is easy and not something I admire. I also don't need anyone to protect me from history. I am quite capable of educating my children about a statue even praising a person that I do not particularly admire.
I didn't say it was wrong to be offended. I said being offended is a choice. That choice happens in your mind.
Is it the correct choice? I don't know. That is on you. Yet I think it is important to identify it as a choice because often we could choose not to be offended. I personally think being offended is usually a pretty big waste of time. There are certainly exceptions though.
The best training ground for "not wanting to be offended" is where the offence takes on a painful level. Similar to when in fighting sports competition you first take a few punches that throw you to the mat in order to learn to dodge the blows. Every hit a worthy opponent lands on you can be honoured and after you get a bloody lip, signal to him a "good fight". If you put it in that context, it would be irrelevant to be offended because it doesn't do you any good to feel offended, but to frame the offence as a challenging sparring offer.
So if a message manifested by a statue offends you, like in your given example, you don't recognise it as a training opportunity, but as a thing that needs to be put out of sight. This, however, is a bottomless pit, so anything that could be offensive must be removed from perception.
In science, if it is properly understood, a thesis is not angrily chased out of the yard because it offends, but because it has been falsified, i.e. it is recognised that every theory can be disproved and then, without particularly negative energy, the old is replaced by the new without the sensationalist urge to expel it.
An offence is just an offence. It does not kill nor threat. A kill is a kill. A threat is a threat. To equal offence with threat, for example, is what happens a lot, from my point of view. But it's not the same.
True. Statues change all the time, are removed and erected.
I think I can say that I also share similar feelings to what you mentioned, but I am afraid if you simply say you hate them, you could be doing things very similar to those you hate.
There are two factors behind most of those things.
Hate speech, racism, word can be violent, etc are real, but whether they are being conducted should be judged basing on the real context, not just because some "keywords" are used.
When a misjudgement is made, originally it should be correctable simply by a debate or otherwise some communication. But often times, the human tendency of behaving in the way so that one appears to belong or bandwagoning make the situation snowball out of control.
Yep. The list of things I say I hate are very short.
I consider them carefully. Are their exceptions to this thing? If there are then I will not say it.
For me hate is much stronger than dislike. I don't use it easily.
Also if you read a lot of the things I said I hate. Some of them I did not say I hated the person... I stated I hate the act.
"I hate when something is called racism or racist when nothing racial is mentioned."
Nothing about hating the person. I hate when they do these actions.
In fact there is really still only one group of people I tend to hate. I consider them pumping poison knowingly into society.
"I hate the willfully ignorant. Those who admitted something was incorrect but they continue to push it anyway."
Pretty much everything else I hate is just certain actions. Not the people.
I easily separate the two things in my mind.
A person can have great actions, and bad actions and still be the same person.
Though I think the label "hate speech" is total and complete bullshit.
It really is just a convenient label used to censor anything a particular person doesn't want to hear or be allowed to be heard.
Sorry for the confusion. Maybe I over simplified my reply and focused too much on a few things you said you hate without elaborating which in turn might because I just wanted to say what I said, not directed at you.
I didn't mean you hate the persons, I used "them" to refer to the things you mentioned.
Perhaps much like you hate hate speech labelling (and labelling not in a careful manner), I feel that if we are not careful, we might also be labelling certain behaviours as soon as we see them, without learning the context.
The reason why I wanted to say what I said might be that I am afraid we might fall into a vicious circle of opposing one another, and something much more terrible is being brewed when we are occupied by all these and other differences.
I worry what else is happening when people are set against people.
Well I think we need to drop the "hate speech" label.
Get back to calling things WRONG, INCORRECT, etc. but be able to back up WHY those things are WRONG, or INCORRECT. Don't just say it and expect people to agree.
If we have FREE SPEECH then we should be able to say incorrect things. Yet we should also have the ability to challenge those incorrect things with our words.
Right now the authoritarians shut down any challenge to things they want to be the dogmatic narrative. "Hate speech" is one of the many labels they use to accomplish that.
Agree. And the same applies to the other things you mentioned. I mean even that kind of things really happen, the way we are labelling things simply because of some similarities, without considering the contexts just aren't helping. Kind of absurd to be honest.
I am not sure if I want to call everyone who support or go along with such narratives authoritarians, that will be a whole lot of people. Some of them might even really believe they are supporting those values. Having said that, yes, I do think that there are many who do not know or do not care what they are doing. Whether seeing that they can take advantage of it, or simply want to stay "in-group".