Hateful Speech vs Hate Speech
Hateful speech is mostly disgusting and annoying; hate speech is abuse.
I’m hoping this will be the last piece I have to write on the subject of the Substack ‘Nazi problem’. I wish I could say, ‘problem solved’. If you’ve been following along, you know we’re nowhere close.
The letter titled “Substackers Against Nazis” that, at last count, more than 200 of us have signed and published, got a ton of notice thanks to countless restacks and write-ups at several influential online websites, but total silence so far from the head office. So we’re still waiting.
I’ve been reading the blogs and the comments, thinking about both sides of this issue, and I want to try to clarify my own thoughts on it.
When the letter was first published here at WE, someone on Notes called me a “full-blown delusional Bitch”. I’m okay with that, as I have been with almost any other name I’ve been called over the years. I’m a loud, proud Liberal, a pro-choice feminist, an atheist, a woman of the 50s, a Yooper, and a Detroiter. I’m not immune.
I’m also a long-time political opinionator, learning the trade and the lingo while protesting the Viet Nam War, everything Ronald Reagan, including but not exclusively his anti-worker trickle-down scam, everything GWB, the Iraq War, Donald Trump et al, and any other life-changing irritations we Liberals have found so galling yet are still so out there.
Name-calling comes with the territory.
So let’s get that out of the way: Not much shocks me, I don’t get my feelings hurt by complete strangers hurling insults over the internet, and, as a writer, I’m all for the freedom to choose my words and get them out there. Nobody has to read them, nobody has to like them, but I’ll fight like holy hell if anyone tries to stifle them.
That’s because I mind my Ps and Qs. I stay away from calling for insurrections or all-out culture wars, I’ve never dressed up like a B-movie Nazi, I’ve never carried an anti-American flag, I’ve never threatened anybody, online or off, and I sure as hell haven’t called for the murders of people who do nothing more to irk me than to live on the same planet.
There would be no reason to stifle me.
This is what the anti-censorship absolutists fail to recognize when they warn that any form of stifling will eventually amount to the eradication of free speech for everyone. No it won’t. It will only put a stop to those people who thrive on getting away with their shit and are free to go on to think of things even worse.
For many decades now we’ve had pseudo-Nazis in our midst, those people dressing up in Nazi-like uniforms, stomping around in their brand new jackboots, Sieg Heiling their own pals in dark corners where nobody can see them, pretending they’re an army worthy of Hitler’s worst imaginings about the eradication of anyone not white enough or Christian enough. But now they’re out in the open and, to their utter amazement, they’re being protected!
It doesn’t matter that the people protecting their right to jam any gross thought they might have about how to make certain people’s lives miserable, about how to scare them into submission, about how, even, to kill them, are people who swear they can’t stand them.
Those same people who say they can’t stand them will do everything in their power to keep their movement alive—and they’ll do it by using the excuse that to do otherwise would (get this) take away their right to free speech!
Yes, those same Nazis1 who LIVE to take away everyone’s rights, including their free speech, have an entire American cadre standing by to make sure they can broadcast their ideas on brutality and destruction, their delicious murderous thoughts against everyone who doesn’t agree to submit willingly—which most assuredly would include that entire American cadre shouting down any plea for censorship.
‘Delighted’ is too puny a word for how thrilled the Nazis are for the support. It makes them human. It gives them gravitas. The Nazi movement in America won’t succeed until it becomes normal, and two words—’free speech’—will make it so.
But who am I kidding? It’s normal now. They no longer have to hide for fear of some sort of retaliation, legal or otherwise, as they recruit thousands of gullible people who see the Nazi uniform, the Nazi flag, the Nazi mentality as the New White Christian America.
Nothing to fear, folks, see how accepted they are? See that group out there who want to put an end to the real dangers of American Naziism? Forget about them. See that other group, even more vocal, even more influential, who can’t see beyond ‘free speech’ and a misreading of the First Amendment and refuse to accept that shutting down hate groups actually requires taking away their megaphones? Follow them.
And there’s the problem.
Added for further reading:
I’m using ‘Nazi’ here to mean those avowed Nazis who brag about being Nazis, as well as shorthand for everyone else who behaves like a Nazi. That would be fascists, supremacists, racists, misogynists, antisemites, and religious frauds—anyone calling for the application and control of their own hateful brand of as an excuse to end democracy and reduce our government and our courts to puny slaves to madmen and hatemongers. No need to name names, we all know who they are.
I come from Europe, have been living here for over 25 years now, and the free speech debate still baffles me. And I don't know the answer. In my native country Nazi symbols and speech are illegal. People have been tried (and found guilty - penalty is mostly a fine, but OK) for claiming that the Holocaust didn't happen. So, does that mean free speech is curtailed? Does it mean that "here in America" people are more free? Maybe... but what about the right of society to defend itself against toxic behavior? Where do we draw the line between hate speech and calls for violence? And even trickier, is making some forms of speech illegal threaten other forms of speech ... who decides? And just to add a scoop of complexity, take a look at recent election results in Europe. Hate speech is illegal and yet the extreme right is on the rise. The belief in the strength of the democratic system is eroding and that is much worse than morons in jackboots yelling slogans.
I've been following the rise of open Jew-hatred on college campuses and it's very scary, totally reminiscent of Nazi Germany at the beginning of Hitler's reign. And that's not hyperbole. I've read dozens of books about that period, some by witnesses.
Here's an example of serious antisemitism at Houston's Rice University: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/antisemitism-is-prevalent-on-my-us-campus/
It's not isolated--reports like this are coming in from across the country.