Nov 28, 2009 -- 7:06AM, Spiritual_teacher_writer wrote:

If the US forbids free speech, it allows hate mongering groups to have a sense of persecution and validity: adding fuel to the fire. 

That's what I was thinking. Also, I've noticed something about human pscyhology when it comes to this... If you censor someone, they're going to feel like you're threatened by them, which only strengthens their belief that they are right.

For example I recently visited a message board where there was a lot of heated political discussion, with several extremist conservative members. You can flag posts as offensive there, and the moderator will review it, and if they agree it's inappropriate (against the Terms of Service - threatening, nasty, racist, gives personal information, and so forth), they will remove it. If this happens enough times with one member, they'll delete that account. Unfortunately they're not very good about monitoring members, so if you get deleted, you can just make a new account. There are a few trolls there who just make accounts over and over and over, and they get satisfaction from being deleted, because they know it means they've successfully upset someone, and that's what they crave. They say having their posts deleted just means we know they're right, and we don't want anyone to hear the truth, so we censor them. It's twisted logic, but an outsider/newcomer might hear that and think it's true (without knowing what a nasty person the troll is).

I think the same thing would happen with hate speech. If no one really knew anything about the KKK because we banned them from preaching their beliefs, and you met a Klan member, you might be curious to know what they think, and feel sorry for them not being able to express their beliefs. It does make them look like the victim, and the forbidden/taboo is always so enticing to human beings, so it really does just exacerbate the problem.

The only way to fight darkness is with light. The only way to stop hate is with love. Not with brute force or oppression. As Friederich Nietzsche said, "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that, in the process, he does not become a monster."

That said, another part of me sure does wish we could censor it. We censor it when it incites physical violence, but what about when it causes deep psychological harm? I think that is far worse than physical harm. But I know it's a slippery slope... Where would you draw the line? And of course people would abuse it and claim to be emotionally damaged by something, just to shut up their opponent. So yeah it's not exactly feasible. Personally I just try to avoid hate speech at all cost. I never watch FOX News (actually I don't watch the news in general, but especially ones like that), I don't watch shows like Jerry Springer, I don't linger on message boards that have a lot of trolls, I don't click on threads if I know the topic will invite hate speech (such as topics about minorities, abortion, etc)... Fortunately Beliefnet does have their forums divided up, which makes it so much easier to do this. The people who like to fight and debate and insult each other can have a bloodbath in the 'debate' forums, and the rest of us can have calm reasonable discussions in places like this. :)

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