by zahlman | 2025-08-21 22:13:22+00:00
> I don‘t think you grasp the seriousness of hate speech.

No; I think you are wrong about that seriousness.

> by partaking in hate speech (including by sharing conspiracy theories about the group) you are playing an integral part of the violence against the group.

No, I disagree very strongly with this, as a core principle.

> and serves as an integral part to justify or deny the violence done against Palestinians in an ongoing genocide.

And with this as well.

> If you disagree, I invite you to do a though experiment. Swap out Palestinians with Jews, and swap out the Pallywood conspiracy theory with e.g. Cultural Marxism, and see how Shaun Maguire’s speech holds up.

First off, the "cultural Marxism" theory is not about Jews, any more than actual Marxists blaming things on "greedy bankers" is about Jews. (A UK Labour party leader once got in trouble for this, as I recall, and I thought it was unjustified even though I disagreed with his position.)

Second, your comments here are the first I've heard of this conspiracy theory, which I don't see being described by name in Maguire's tweets.

Third, no. This thought experiment doesn't slow me down for a moment and doesn't lead me to your conclusions. If Maguire were saying hateful things about Jewish people (the term "anti-Semitic" for this is illogical and confusing), that would not be as bad as enacting violence against Jewish people, and it would not constitute "playing an integral part of the violence" enacted against them by, e.g., Hamas.

The only way to make statements that "serve as an integral part to justify or deny violence" is to actually make statements that either explicitly justify that violence or explicitly deny it. But even actually denying or justifying violence does not cause further violence, and is not morally on the same level as that violence.

> There is a reason hate speech is outlawed in almost every country (including the USA; although USA is pretty lax what it considers hate speech).

There is not such a reason, because the laws you imagine do not actually exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat...

American law does not attempt to define "hate speech", nor does it outlaw such. What it does do is fail to extend constitutional protection to speech that would incite "imminent lawless action" — which in turn allows state-level law to be passed, but generally that law doesn't reference hatred either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

Even in Canada, the Criminal Code doesn't attempt to define "hatred", and such laws are subject to balancing tests.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_Canada

> The Pallywood conspiracy theory is exactly the kind of genocidal hate speech I am talking about. This conspiracy theory has been thoroughly debunked

Even after looking this up, I don't see anything that looks like a single unified claim that could be objectively falsified. I agree that "conspiracy theory" is a fair term to describe the general sorts of claims made, but expecting the label "conspiracy theory" to function as an argument by itself is not logically valid — since actual conspiracies have been proven before.