Shachar Haad
Aug 26, 2017 · 3 min read

I (and other marginalized people) worry more about being protested and no-platformed because of who I am (who we are)

As a marginalized individual, your opinion is perceived much higher than mine: on this platform, in the media, the internet as a whole, Hollywood, and various other places. You might accidentally hear some opinion you won’t like and will have to deal with it, much as anyone else, no matter the color of their skin, sexual orientation, or gender.

You just make a whole show of how some people opinions offends and marginalizes you, how disagreements are attacks and violence, and how anyone who doesn’t subscribe to your worldview, has transgressed on your personal space and took your humanity away.

The world does not work that way. Humanizing or dehumanizing doesn’t work that way. Your ideology is the template that created the alt-right. They are like you, taking identity politics and political correctness to the extreme, using nonsensical attributes and making them the most important aspect of their being.

Quite frankly, I’m tired of that nonsense, blackness, Islamophobia, anti-Antisemitism, and other, boring and divisive words are the things that work to degenerate a culture. You are a person. I am a person. Our personal experiences have nothing to do with our race, gender, or sexual orientation. You degrade your experience by attributing them as such.

There is no such thing as “free speech”

The platform you are on cannot exist without free speech, the internet that this platform is on, cannot exist without free speech, the technology that is the internet would not have existed without free speech.

despite it being frequently referenced as an aphorism or shibboleth, none of us actually believes in comprehensive “free speech,” as there will always be some expressions of speech that we (as individuals, or as a society) refuse to tolerate.

This is a silly argument. You have a right to food but can still claim that it’s not absolute, as it doesn’t grantee that the food will appear on your plate three times a day or that you can forcibly feed someone else.

Calling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater or advocating for the death of someone are caveats to freedom of speech, as they promote immediate physical harm. Any other form of speech is permitted and accepted.

Your portrayal of Milo and the reaction of the media to that one interview that started yet another controversy around him is exactly the problem with your brand of free speech: “You have the right to speak, as long as you don’t offend anyone.” People didn’t distance themselves from Milo because of what he said but because everyone got offended. They protected themselves from bad publicity.

He didn’t fall from grace due to what he said about the things he advocates for but because he is a provocateur who tries to say the most offensive things, that due to his own personal history with statutory rape, produced personal conflicts he could not use effectively without triggering people disgust of him.

Hate speech is spoken with the intention of denying these individuals’ autonomy, rights, and humanity.

Hate speech is a club you use against your opposition. It is a cudgel that is easily utilized against your opposition. Guess what: the alt-right is learning how to use that weapon against you and will be glad to do so, reducing your humanity and later, rights, as you try to do. Both of you don’t understand that it’s a double-edged sword.

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    Shachar Haad

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