menthe Posted October 25, 2023 Share Posted October 25, 2023 Is anyone else fed up with the simplistic and assinine way in which we communicate these days? I have just been listening to the objections and calls for resignation and so on of Kier Starmer the Labour leader and Guterres the Secretary General of the UN for making perfectly balanced speeches, representing fairly both sides of the Israeli and Hamas conflict. It seems that nowadays, if we don't like what anyone says about anything, we demand that they be cancelled, closed down, whatever. What has happened to I disagree with what you have said but I will defend your right to say it ? Who'd give ANY public speech these days? Why cannot a speech be simply biased, partial, prejudicial, one-sided, unrepresentative, slanted, weighted? Oh no, it is "hate speech"! If there is any "hate" around, this stupid way of labelling anything said that we don 't like can only narrow down dissent and disagreement and encourage bigotry and intolerance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lehaut Posted October 26, 2023 Share Posted October 26, 2023 Our residence has numbered parking bays on private land outside the flats. Its clearly marked "Private" but it does not stop people driving in and parking. When you remonstrate with them, the speed with which hate ladened invectives pour out of them (who are clearly in the wrong) against you, the owner is incredible. ("Mange tes morts" a gitain curse used against a resident last week in this situation is a new phrase I have learnt). It is as if the person in the wrong can make it "right" by shouting the loudest and never admitting their fault. Very fragile egos? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harnser Posted October 26, 2023 Share Posted October 26, 2023 18 hours ago, menthe said: Guterres the Secretary General of the UN for making perfectly balanced speeches, representing fairly both sides of the Israeli and Hamas conflict. . Perfectly balanced? Guterres? The UN? You must be joking. The UN has long been a rat's nest of marxist theory and thinking, since Maurice Strong of the UN came out with this little gem. Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring this about? Maurice Strong 2010/2011 https://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/other/un-guterres-s-speech-justified-the-unjustifiable-editorial/ar-AA1iRhie "Pure sadism deserves no context, no explanation, no excuse. None. If Guterres doesn’t understand this, he has no business heading an organization whose goals are ostensibly to promote peace, security, and human rights. As US President Joe Biden said in a speech to the American people on October 9, “You know, there are moments in this life – and I mean this literally – when the pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world.” Hamas’s barbarous attack, he said, was one of those moments. That is moral clarity. And that is what Guterres needed to say to the Security Council convened to discuss the current war: that there is good and there is evil in the world, and that what Hamas perpetrated – what Hamas itself documented and celebrated – is sheer evil that must be uprooted. No “buts,” no stories about context or tall tales about vacuums." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anotherbanana Posted October 26, 2023 Share Posted October 26, 2023 Wikipedia definition, if you are any wiser, do tell! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech The problem is that some folk and societies have such entrenched ideas that it is impossible to discuss with or reason with them without it being seen as a personal or group attack and therefore hate speech. So, the term is used for people to hide behind. To avoid any current examples I suspect that any discussion of Franco’s regime would have been seen as hate speech and, perhaps, any discussion of the Thai monarchy. By the way, if I call someone a liar is that hate speech? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
menthe Posted October 26, 2023 Author Share Posted October 26, 2023 Good gracious, Wools, I should have looked it up in wikipedia. I really thought it was just a trendy label for any verbal communication that we don't like! What a simpleton I am😂 I thought it was a matter of semantics and now I learn, from your link, that it is a LEGAL definition!!! Anyway, who cares about legality? Some things can never be legislated against, otherwise murder and burglary would have gone out of fashion? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anotherbanana Posted October 26, 2023 Share Posted October 26, 2023 The hostility between Palestine and Israel has mutated from political to military over a period of time to pure hatred, on both sides; one reads the most awful words spoken against the other by both sides ( leaving aside the acts for the moment) which words lead to the current violence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
menthe Posted October 26, 2023 Author Share Posted October 26, 2023 This is topical, of course it is, the hostilities in the Middle East. But I was really thinking about this matter of what constitutes "hate speech". This hate speech movement (choose your own noun) seems to apply to whatever people don't like to hear. And often the word "hate" is trivialised. Just an easy example to come to mind, someone's gender and what pronoun to apply to them. Men, women are now no-no's, so non-binary, trans, gender- fluid, etc etc. This is not to say this matter of gender is unimportant because it clearly is to a lot of people. Can't upset people with "hate speech" can we? But is it really THE most important and knotty problem in people's lives the world over? To think that this is type of debate is what is exercising governments!!! In the post war Labour government, the five giants to slay were Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. Now we occupy ourselves with what labels we give people and about what will look good in the public's eye. All empty gesture politics. BTW, this comment could equally apply to my post about the embourgeoisement (thank you, Norman) of run-down areas of towns and cities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickP Posted October 26, 2023 Share Posted October 26, 2023 A couple of years ago on a social media site there was a discussion about the TV show "Hello Hello". I said it was wonderful because all nationalities were idiots, the Germans, the British, the French and the Italians. I got banned for 3 days for hate speech. 😀 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
menthe Posted October 27, 2023 Author Share Posted October 27, 2023 That'll teach you, Nick!😁 Also, not all nationalities but certainly SOME of ALL nationalities..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NormanH Posted October 27, 2023 Share Posted October 27, 2023 The thing I find difficult to understand is hatred itself. I have lived a blessed and sheltered life as have many of us born in the UK just after WW2, with the Welfare State and free good education, but I can honestly say that i feel no hatred for anyone, and cannot imagine killing them except perhaps in blind panic of self defence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Le Petomane Posted November 1, 2023 Share Posted November 1, 2023 Perhaps we need to remind ourselves that the State of Israel came into being through acts of terrorism. British soldiers and diplomats - British - were shot, bombed and hanged by Zionists. At the time they were described in the House of Commons as terrorists. Now the American President and the British Prime Minister rush across the world to hug them. How times change. This is not hate speech. It's how things were, and are. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickP Posted November 1, 2023 Share Posted November 1, 2023 39 minutes ago, Le Petomane said: Perhaps we need to remind ourselves that the State of Israel came into being through acts of terrorism. British soldiers and diplomats - British - were shot, bombed and hanged by Zionists. At the time they were described in the House of Commons as terrorists. Now the American President and the British Prime Minister rush across the world to hug them. How times change. This is not hate speech. It's how things were, and are. British soldiers were bombed shot and constantly attacked by Irish patriots who are now lauded, as you say how times change, a lot of it depends on your perceptions. Personally I have less fear of the Israelis than I do of Hamas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NormanH Posted November 1, 2023 Share Posted November 1, 2023 As relevant as ever : Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ssomon Posted November 2, 2023 Share Posted November 2, 2023 On 27/10/2023 at 13:33, NormanH said: The thing I find difficult to understand is hatred itself. I have lived a blessed and sheltered life as have many of us born in the UK just after WW2, with the Welfare State and free good education, but I can honestly say that i feel no hatred for anyone, and cannot imagine killing them except perhaps in blind panic of self defence. Not quite such a sunny life for those born in the Empire just before WW2 I'm afraid. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Everecten Posted December 6, 2023 Share Posted December 6, 2023 (edited) On 02/11/2023 at 04:17, NormanH said: As relevant as ever : geometry dash online Nice!! Edited December 6, 2023 by Everecten Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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