Sure, but if we are fine with that simplification, are we also fine with government rounding up people for protesting because they represent a public health risk? And I don't mean a biological health risk, which I'm sure they'll cite as well. I'm talking about holding a belief that they claim poses a public health risk that can spread from person-to-person.
Most ideological things are communicable.
It's scary thoughts. I don't feel good feels about people protesting during a pandemic or about rounding up people protesting during a pandemic.
Perhaps we can send out drones with loudspeakers to broadcast messages telling them to be safe, and annoying noises to attempt dispersal.
I do think propaganda and bad ideas can spread. However racist propaganda is so unpopular these days, the risk of spread is low. Also, dealing with it in the same way is ridiculous, since it's part of the free speech / censorship debate or hate crimes debate and not an actual health issue.
That said I'm not sure a sticks and stones mentality will work either.
Yeah, but "silence is violence" now. The expansion of what hate speech is has literally become saying nothing.
Fortunately, I live in Korea, one week they were supporting BLM and BTS even donated like 1M $ to the cause. The next week, this happened. The black guy who got offended had to apologize for being offended and making some rude comments about a bunch of students doing blackface and not censoring them. The funny thing is the picture was uploaded on an open high school Facebook page and definitely not private. Full loop, he was a victim of cancel culture for saying something.