Anti Vaxers...Another Radicalized Group?

[GMDino]

(03-19-2019, 10:31 AM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: Trying to moderate the stupidity of others will be an endless task. The best thing to do is try to get the right information out there. You can't force someone to believe true statements. There will always be conspiracy theorists and there will always be people who lie with the intent to harm.

Freedom of speech vs hate speech is a very complicated discussion.

Parsing out hate speech is widely subjective (although you'd think it wouldn't be) because people take statements very personally to the point that they center their entire identity around certain beliefs. If you say something that goes against their beliefs, they could interpret it as hate speech. So who can be the objective arbiter of hate speech? Who can pass that judgment with total assurance that their biases are not affecting their choices of what is and is not hate speech?

The basic ones are pretty obvious. Hate speech towards gender, race, religion and socio-economic status are relatively easy to parse out. But then we have a congressman who ask what's so bad about white supremacy? As if this is a question worth asking in the year 2019.

So how do you define these terms in absolutes when there doesn't seem to be any single consensus on what is and is not truth? I feel like this is the crux of the problem with politics today. With a world of "fake news" and "alternative facts" how can a single person ever truly believe what they are hearing? How is everything not, at least allegedly, spun in some way towards one side or the other?

Even with something like Anti-vaxxing, which does not appear to have anything to do with political beliefs ("In 2015, the Pew Research Center conducted a survey of 2 thousand adults which concluded about 12 percent of liberals and 10 percent of conservatives believed that childhood vaccines are unsafe."), both democrats and republicans are trying to blame anti-vaxxing beliefs on the other party.
https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/childhood-vaccination-programs-should-be-exempt-political-bias

Sometimes I wish the world wasn't so politicized and wonder to myself if there was ever a time when people didn't feel this way about politics. It can be awfully exhausting always trying to determine if you believe something because you truly believe it or if it's because that's what the party you identify with believes, so you feel the subconscious need to comply...

I agree it is touchy.  I try to fall on the idea that if the "speech" is directed to harm another group (men, women, religion, ethnicity, etc) it is "hate".  But some would say that "speech" against the groups using "hate speech" is "hate" against them.

I don't feel that way.

If a group says "Jews will not replace us" that is "hate speech".  Speaking out against "hate speech" is not.

But it certainly gets complicated.