> No, it does not stop people from thinking that (and of course that is not what is made illegal). It stops them from publishing and spreading those thoughts, because that is what is actually made illegal

No it doesn't stop that either. They just distribute it more covertly and use coded language which then the government justifies to take away more rights and ban things like E2E encryption.

> So you don't actually have an argument against it?

Sorry that is backwards. You need to show me that it is happening if you are trying to justify taking away people's rights. Repeating a sound bite that is repeated by politicians and journalists isn't an argument or evidence. BTW I've heard many of the arguments present and the "research" and frequently they were found to be lacking.

> Then be happy that you haven't met such people. They most definitely exist

So your examples are extremists which is a small number of people by definition. This is not representative of the whole.

> That is exactly what is happening all over the internet. You have to wear pretty big blinders not to see it.

No it isn't. You think it is because you go looking for it. This is known as cognitive bias.

> And those aren't gonna be a lot of people, so they won't be able to recruit others easily, and they won't start to think they're majority.

They can't recruit others easily because most people recognise immediately that these are nasty people and they want nothing to do with them. This is fantasy that a significant percentage of people will be sold on the "Hitler did nothing wrong" idea. It is a meme on the internet because people were making fun of internet neo-nazis.

> That slippery slope argument is so silly. There is no country on earth that has ever had absolute freedom of speech. Including the USA.

It isn't a slippery slope fallacy when we are sliding down the slope in the UK with people being arrested for "offensive tweets" and "posting offensive song lyrics".

So don't gaslight me about this. The fact is that we have been sliding down the slope in the UK for years now and people like you tell me erosion of speech rights isn't happening, when it has been clearly documented to happen in the UK. The same happens in Germany as well, I have spoken to ordinary Germans (not neo-nazis or extremists) that have found themselves in trouble for basically jokes.

As for the argument "the USA doesn't doesn't do it perfectly that it is okay to deny people of free speech somewhere else" isn't an argument. Also I am in the UK, not the US. I don't care about what happens in the US. You seem to be hell bent on throwing your liberties away.

> Germany has had very clear, well-defined hate speech laws since 1960, and it's ranked higher than the USA in the Press Freedom Index.

Telling me that the laws that curtail freedom of speech have been around for a long time and are well defined isn't an argument to whether they should exist or not and just because something has been done for a long time doesn't mean it should be done.

Don't care how great the freedom of speech is for people that in the right club (in this case journalists). It has to be for everyone including odious people.

As for hate speech that is a made up concept to curtail speech rights and has been used against ordinary people in the UK (not neo-nazis or extremists just normal people).

-------------------------

I am so fed up with people (like yourself) who constantly gas light about these laws and tell me civil liberties haven't been eroded because of these laws, when they literally have and you can find example after example where this is the case.

More generally I was out of work for 9 months because of my government's response to COVID. It depleted me of most of my savings and I am now in debt which will take me like a year or two to pay off, I had zero debt before the COVID lockdowns. SO I don't trust the government to tell me the truth, I don't trust them to be able to do anything competently and they certainly shouldn't be able to legislate what can and what can't be said.