Speak not of Hate
NBC reports, “Facebook’s Oversight Board to consider if ‘from the river to the sea’ is hate speech.” The article goes on to say that the Oversight Board “operates similarly to a court.”
This is “interesting” on so many levels. First and foremost, why should Facebook, or any other social media company, be privileged to censor speech at all?
Either such companies operate principally as “utilities” providing a service without an obligation to police their users or they are “publishers” privileged to edit and filter the speech in the forum that they provide but fully responsible for the content of the speech (i.e. liable for libel). This no man’s land of something in between affords them power without responsibility, which guarantees that the power will be misused and abused.
It is also interesting that there is a debate about “hate” SPEECH related to parties, who are at war with each other (even if the speech is by partisans, proxies, or supporters). Rarely would we expect parties, who are engaged in mortal combat, to speak glowingly and lovingly of each other.
Webster’s defines “hate” as:
a: intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury
b: extreme dislike or disgust : ANTIPATHY, LOATHING
c: a systematic and especially politically exploited expression of hatred.
It is nearly impossible to kill (or seriously harm or injure) another human being deliberately in the absence of “hate,” even if momentary and even if it is the result of emotional strain. The existence of the hate may be understandable even excusable, but its existence is almost unavoidable. I have always found as ironic the effort to make murder a “hate crime.” Rarely do parties engage in war or murder as demonstrations of love, caring, and altruism. Once dead, the casualties cannot be further harmed, injured, or damaged. One cannot be made “more dead.”
Regulating “hate speech” is an effort to regulate “hate” itself. In this context, hate is seen as the motivation to do harm. However, any effort to eliminate hate as concept, feeling, or emotion is an act of vanity, and it is certainly futile. It is like attempting to eliminate “evil” or “darkness” by redefining the concepts, ignoring their existence, or refusing to speak about them. Those things will still exist. Those things are the antithesis of something else — something desirable: Darkness is the absence of Light … Evil is the absence of Good … Hate is the absence of Love. One cannot regulate hate into oblivion any more than one can legislate morality. Hate has existed — even baseless and unjustified hate — since Cain killed his brother Abel in a fit of jealousy.
As a society, we can legislate and punish actions, but it is exceedingly more difficult to impose restrictions on emotion and thought. It is ineffective to command that we must love one another. As important as the Golden Rule may be, it cannot be legislated. When there is an effort to legislate outward expressions (e.g. speech), which stop short of overt action, the prohibitions and restrictions are ineffective at stopping or subverting the thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Persons may suppress the outward expressions or public displays. They may learn to hide them better, but they are not likely to disappear. “Hate Speech” may become more nuanced and subtle (e.g. “from the river to the sea”), but the hate itself is not diminished. Additionally, the efforts to hide and mask the true feelings make it more difficult to address those feelings and make it more likely that a party will act out at some point. It is like a boiler with no safety valve; it builds pressure until it eventually explodes.
When one attempts to impose morality by legislative fiat, one must first determine “moral” as to whom — from whose perspective? Morality almost inevitably carries elements of selflessness, self-sacrifice, and altruism. Where a similar sacrifice is imposed by force (of law), neither the command nor the coerced behavior is inherently “moral.”
Almost invariably, parties deem “moral” and proper actions and behaviors, which benefit them personally (particularly if the costs and sacrifices are imposed upon unrelated or disfavored “others”). This is the fundamental motivation of a culture of victimhood:
I am entitled to something or “owed” something as the result of acts of another, who is deemed an “oppressor” — even if his “advantage” was the result of circumstance rather than any affirmative bad act against the self-identifying “victim.” Therefore, I — as a “victim” of “oppression” — should be privileged to take from that “oppressor” — or from someone tangentially related or similarly situated — in order to remedy or to account for his/her/their “bad acts,” which may amount to mere “unworthiness” or “excessive privilege” as determined from the biased perspective of the alleged victim.
In this scenario, the reluctance or refusal of an “unworthy” or “excessively privileged” party to capitulate or surrender to the demands of the self-identifying victim are deemed selfishness and greed. Protecting one’s own interests are deemed “immoral.” Even where there is no causal relationship to the alleged harm or where the harms are self-imposed, the refusal to improve the station or position of the victim is considered an affirmative harm in itself.
The victim paints himself as noble, and the would-be beneficiaries deem the “takings” to be morally justified if not morally compelled. However, their underlying motivations are not inherently moral or noble. In nearly all instances, the motivations are: Avarice, Greed, Envy, Jealousy, and Covetousness. Like most organisms, human beings are motivated by self-protection, self-advancement, and self-propagation. There are few saints among us.
The regulation of “hate” — even when manifested in speech — is ineffective and almost certainly counterproductive. The practical definition of “hate” is elusive, and it is likely impossible to police hate in a manner, which is entirely objective and unbiased. Parties are motivated to project their own biases, prejudices, and bigotry on disfavored “others.” Persons who “hate hatred” likely cannot distinguish the hateful actions, feelings, and emotions in others from the personhood of the actor. It is nearly impossible for us to “hate the sin but love the sinner.”
