Oddbean new post about login | logout The wife of a Conservative Councillor in the UK was recently convicted of inciting violence in one of her posts on X. Is what she said not an example of hate speech? https://m.primal.net/KfgR.png
the term "hate speech" is just a tool that the most cunning can capitalize on. What she said can be thought of as hateful yes and on the other hand she would tell you that she is being hated on herself by her own government which is making her have to react and I would have to agree with her.
She broke the law by inciting and encouraging others to burn down hotels housing asylum seekers. Some people actually tried to do so as we saw. That type of speech can quite reasonably be described as "hate speech". All civilised societies have laws which place limits on free speech. That's why we have laws that prohibit incitement to violence and murder.
Thats fine, it is technically incitement to violence i agree and broke the law. This is a rare case that something called hate speech is actually incitement to violence though as most of the time its not. Although like i indicated i can understand how people are getting so frustrated that they feel the need to resort to this kind of extreme behaviour and speech. Working class people get a lot of their joy in life from the simple things like social cohesion, camaraderie, togetherness, identity, familiarity. Their main things in life arent money and power like those few who are making much of the decisions for the country
