Hate Crimes
A Thought Crime By Any Other Name Would Stink As Much
Let's get it out of the way; hate crime and hate speech laws are thought crime laws.
The idea of hate crime laws is that, rather than simply charging people for their heinous acts, we will decide what they must have been thinking and charge them for that as well. It's a real crime to which is added the charge of being hateful, or at least out of step with the official narrative. It's a way of undermining the rule of law, and is used to further controls over people as well. How in fact is a jury, or anyone else, supposed to determine what the feelings were of the defendant? Are they supposed to just believe the prosecutor?
Why on Earth is a person who has no human feelings, a psychopath who kills others without guilt, given a break in sentencing compared to someone accused of hate? Why grant him moral superiority?
From the tiresomely leftist Wikipedia:
In the criminal law of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines a hate crime as a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. Hate itself is not a hate crime but committing a crime motivated by bias against one or more of the social groups listed above, or by bias against their derivatives constitutes a hate crime.[7] A hate crime law is a law intended to deter bias-motivated violence.[8] Hate crime laws are distinct from laws against hate speech: hate crime laws enhance the penalties associated with conduct which is already criminal under other laws, while hate speech laws criminalize a category of speech. Hate speech is a factor for sentencing enhancement in the United States, distinct from laws that criminalize speech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crim
Note that it is only hate against certain groups, others you may hate all you want.
Hate crime laws are not the same as hate speech laws, in which the crime is saying something objectionable while not committing an actual crime. Here you are just being charged for your thoughts, or at least for expressing them, maybe hateful or again at odds with the official narrative. It's better to just lump them together as thought crimes.
Again from Wikipedia:
Hate speech is a legal term with varied meaning. It has no single, consistent definition. It is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation".[1] The Encyclopedia of the American Constitution states that hate speech is "usually thought to include communications of animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, color, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation".[2] There is no single definition of what constitutes "hate" or "disparagement". Legal definitions of hate speech vary from country to country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
That vagueness of definition is a useful tool.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” would seem to be a thing of the past.
The point of Clarence Darrow's quote is that, if we are a nation of laws and not of men, you can't start punishing people for their opinions. Both hate crime laws and hate speech laws seek to do exactly that. They could have just been called them thought crime laws, but too many people are familiar with the novel 1984 and the thought crime idea contained therein, and the jig would be up.
The idea of thought crimes was popularized in the novel 1984 by George Orwell, and the idea was that the all powerful state had the right and duty of detecting those with unapproved thoughts and dealing with them. The irony is that many people people who push for hate crime or hate speech legislation think of themselves as being promoters of the common good, and think of Orwell's novel as depicting the world that their opponents support.
If you want to weaponize the law so that you can use law-fare against your political opponents this is useful. You can create a minefield for your opponents because anything they say can be used against them, and you create a propaganda source by simply attaching hate crime charges to any crime, but only if politically useful. Those who create unjust laws need to be aware that those laws may someday be used against them.
"I think free speech is probably the coolest thing we have in this country, and again, you can label it hate speech and dismiss it, and then you're allowed to censor it." ~ Dana Carvey
In the political arena it's useful to convince people that your political opposition are bad people, full of hate and general bad qualities. Their opposition to your enlightened ideas must be due to bad character, not to your ideas. Thus we see the use of the term “hate” popping up all over the place, and the idea of hate speech is that unapproved ideas must be shown to be the result of being a bad person.
"If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." ~ Noam Chomsky
Many political speeches come down to “we are the good guys, they are the bad guys.”
Remember the second rule of propaganda; The rule of disfiguration - discrediting the opposition by crude smears and parodies.
https://drp314.substack.com/p/propaganda-thoughts
Claiming that you know what is in the heart of another is a form of hubris in that you are claiming that you possess a godlike power. It's arrogance, and the price of arrogance is foolishness.
"Because federal hate crime laws criminalize thoughts, they are incompatible with a free society." ~ Ron Paul
Whether or not someone supports these thought crime laws might hinge on where that person sits on the power versus freedom chart. Does he desire freedom more that power, or power more than freedom? I think that this is one of those things that subtly steers the course of one’s life, usually without realizing it.
https://drp314.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-power-versus-freedom
And if he wishes to start changing the course of his life he must start acting and thinking differently.
https://drp314.substack.com/p/the-rudder-of-destiny
Is the proliferation of these rules and laws indicative of a deeper problem? Consider this Orwell quote.
"The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it." ~ George Orwell.
I think he may have been on to something.
Many pushing for hate speech and hate crime laws may just not know what they are asking for, such as the young and idealistic types.
"So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot." ~ George Orwell
"Free speech is my right to say what you don't want to hear." ~ George Orwell
"Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen." ~ George Orwell
Stay Brave, Stay Free
"Why on Earth is a person who has no human feelings, a psychopath who kills others without guilt, given a break in sentencing compared to someone accused of hate? Why grant him moral superiority?" Yes, of course. Meanwhile, If you beat your boss over the head because he didn't give you a raise, would that not be a hate crime? Depends, as you pointed out. "hate" is associated with prejudice, or worse, blind bigotry. I would say that Blacks Lives Matter has been guilty of this. I somehow missed this piece.
Excellent stuff David. Thank you. The word ‘hate’ itself has been weaponised and co-opted. It no longer means what most regular people would say it means. In the same way the word ‘safety’ is used to signify that people are incapable of making their own choices, or hearing contrary opinions. ‘Diversity’ is another word for a progressive monoculture. ‘Democracy’ means only choosing identical candidates from within an ever shrinking Overton window, while using the law to remove dissenters. ‘Inclusion’ means exclusion. ‘Protests’ often simply means riots. ‘Ceasefire’ means surrender and so forth. Of course Orwell also explained how the destruction of language is a tool of oppression. But that’s a post (and more) in itself.