I think that’s an important point. Anyone who thinks a few hate speech laws are going to magically cure what ails America is fooling themselves.
I 100% agree with this. I bring up the coming-out-into-the-light of some white supremacist groups not because I think that caused the situation in America, but because a common argument against hate speech laws is that we need to have these things out in the open so we can debate and counter them. The hypothesis that we can counter racist speech with anti-racist speech was put to the test and America voted in a president that was playing footsie with David “Actually David Duke” Duke. And while that was also because of an Archaic voting system, that hardly matters, he still got over 40% of the vote. If discussion allowed us to highlight the real horrors of racism to people who support or who are indifferent to racism then he would have gotten 2-3%.
I find this argument unconvincing. Police have been arresting and suppressing protesters for all time and getting away with it just fine. They’ll keep doing so with or without any new authority.
I think overall your point about how we should think about the change we really want to make, and if we can mobilize people then we should try to get changes more important the hate speech laws is a good one. But if we had actual mind control rays then we should just aim them at the people we disagree with instead of the ones we agree with. I don’t think hate speech laws would fix much. I just find the standard arguments about the importance of free speech are extremely unconvincing.
To me, free speech is a canary in the coal mine. While it basically isn’t having much of an effect on anything, when a leader goes after it, you’ve got to do something about that leader and fast. But American free expression, as used in Citizens United, has become actually corrosive.
