Anti Vaxers...Another Radicalized Group?

[GMDino]

(03-19-2019, 10:49 AM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: I think a perfect example is this whole Jeanine Pirro thing. She said, on air, that since Omar wears a hijab, maybe she follows Sharia Law, which is in direct contrast to the constitution.

Now, a logical person should be able to see that and say "yea, that's definitely hate speech towards Muslims, as she is clearly implying (if not directly stating) that any person who wears a hijab is anti-American."

But then she said she was merely asking a question. She wasn't saying anything definitively, so how could it be hate speech?

And then you have the President who went a tweet storm over the weekend calling for Fox News to put her back on the air and spouting a variety of other things that could very easily be seen as hate speech in themselves ("Be strong and prosper, be weak and die") which appears to be a dog whistle to the same kind of white nationalism that he claims to have condemned just a day or two before.

And then you have King tweeting out hypothetical civil war memes that appeared to threaten violence towards democratic states (and other states that voted for Trump in 2016).

But are dog whistles hate speech? How can we know for sure what people mean by the words they say? It just gets exhausting.

I covered the entire "We're just asking" trope years ago.  It's a convenient tool used by some who want to put their ideas out there while still having the wiggle room to avoid being held responsible for their words.

There is a conversation going on right now in some circles about sites/videos/individuals that say "I was only joking" when someone else cites their words/ideas to create hate or violence.

I realize we can't stop everyone from taking someone else's idea and doing something awful.  I just think that speaking out against it should be louder and longer.  Not tepid like with the POTUS and others.  If someone took something I did in jest or what I thought was taken out of context I would speak out against it strongly and apologize for making anyone think I meant to inspire hate or violence and condemn it completely.  It seems some cannot/will not do that.