They’re not really sure what hate is but are sure of this: They hate it. And thus should “it” — as represented by discrimination, exclusion, and a “dangerous nationalism”— be purged from the media via regulation.
So says Věra Jourová, the European Commissioner for Justice, Consumers, and Gender Equality. As Politico reports:
Racial abuse, discrimination and the “bad version of nationalism” that promotes exclusion and hatred are on the rise, and the media may need to be regulated to help curtail the problem,… Commissioner Věra Jourová warned today.
A “dangerous” version of nationalism is “not only visible in the rising popularity of the extreme parties” but is also evident in the political mainstream, which “accept[s] some part of this rhetoric of division,” the commissioner said in a speech in Vienna, according to pre-released notes obtained by Brussels Playbook.
Jourovà called on politicians and the press to take action.
PJ Media’s Michael Walsh weighs in on what her statements actually mean:
In other words, if you’re for little or no “immigration,” that’s now called “exclusion.” If you find some cultures (such as your own) worthier than others, that’s “hatred” [that is, unless yours is a non-Western culture]. If you put love of country over the EU, that’s “dangerous nationalism.” To demonstrate just how far the social-justice Left despises adherents of free speech (which must perforce include “hate” speech), take a gander at this justification for consumer/gender equality fascism.
Walsh then cites two Politico paragraphs, highlighting the buzzwords:
“Media can build the culture of dialogue or sow divisions, spread disinformation and encourage exclusion,” the commissioner said. “The Brexit debate is the best example of that.” Politicians should “show responsibility” and “restraint,” and must “realize that their words become justification for some people to act on their urges and their fears.”
The Czech politician pointed to far-right protests in Chemnitz, the “anti-Soros campaign in Hungary or growing anti-Muslim or anti-Roma rhetoric” as examples of when “exclusion, discrimination and lack of respect for minorities have spilled over from the margins to the center and don’t meet enough resistance from the media, politicians or opinion leaders.”
Jourovà then called for “smart regulation, if needed.”
Yet it may not be. Conventional media have long been in the Left’s pocket, and social media are now notorious for their censorship, which mainly falls on conservatives. For example, Twitter, already known for banning and “shadowbaning” traditionalists, now says that it wants to prohibit “dehumanizing” comments — with users’ help.
Commenting on this, “Twitter chief and co-founder Jack Dorsey early this month told US lawmakers that the San Francisco-based service was ‘unprepared and ill-equipped’ for the vast campaigns of manipulation that affected social media in the past few years,” reports the AFP.
No doubt. But the real question is, are social-media techies prepared and equipped to engage in sane censorship?
Obviously, many of the pseudo-elites pushing this are just interested in power. Were a spell cast upon them compelling truthfulness — as with the Jim Carrey lawyer character in the film Liar, Liar — they would, when asked to explain why they object to an “offending” argument, respond as he did: “Because it’s devastating to my case!”
Yet there are some social-justice-warrior censors who are sincere — sincerely wrong — so it’s important to explain this matter better than they understand it.
When pushing censorship, people typically ask the wrong thing: Is a statement “dehumanizing,” “hateful,” “exclusionary,” or “intolerant”? Overlooked is the only relevant question:
Is it true?
This is no surprise in our relativistic time. Yet it’s ironic that the shades-of-gray, who’s-to-say, all-is-perspective crowd will skeptically ask “What is Truth” but never wonder, “What is dehumanizing?” or “What is hateful?” As philosopher C.S. Lewis observed about such ideologues, “Their scepticism about values is on the surface: it is for use on other people’s values. About the values current in their own set they are not nearly sceptical enough.”
Yet skepticism of these ideological fashions is warranted. Note here that the right or wrong thing can be said for the right or wrong reason.
For example, if someone asserts that “homosexuality is a grave sin,” today’s fashionable assumption is that he’s a hater. But is this also claimed if someone says adultery, fornication, or self-gratification is a grave sin? That this doesn’t even occur to the sexual devolutionaries speaks volumes about how few have thought these matters through. Realize, though, that proscriptions against all four of the aforementioned behaviors are part of certain traditional sexual paradigms, the Christian one being a good example.
(Thus, it isn’t Christians who single out homosexuality for special reprobation, but the sexual devolutionaries who single it out for special recognition.)
In other words, a person who says that embracing __________ (homosexual behavior, fornication, conservatism, libertarianism, Christianity, Islam, etc.) is a sin or grave mistake may be driven by hate, a phenomenon of the emotions. Then again, he may just be motivated by a purely intellectual analysis (correct or not) informing that the behavior/ideology/religion in question is wrong.
Or it could be both. After all, an intellectual understanding can eventually seep into one’s heart, making it “felt” as well as believed. Of course, ideally this should result in the attendant emotion being love.
The point isn’t just that a disapproving statement alone — no matter how unfashionable — may tell us nothing about the utterer’s motivation; it’s that even if the motivation is impure, it has no bearing on the statement’s validity. Should we dismiss someone who says “Theft is wrong!” if we learn he hates thieves? Should the statement in that instance be scrubbed from social media?
In reality, leftists’ hate accusations generally are projection. Since leftists are disconnected from Truth and operate on an emotional level, most everything is emotional to them. And they assume others proceed likewise. They find it impossible to “Hate the sin but love the sinner,” so they suppose others are similarly handicapped.
Were we to sing their song, we’d have to assume that Western leftists seek to flood their nations with unassimilable Third World migrants because they hate their own cultures. This is often true, too, though other motivations are notions about diversity, immigrationism, internationalism, and, of course, leftists’ insatiable lust for power.
Despite these often hateful motivations, we don’t try to censor leftists. Of course, maybe it’s a little different when you know that your only chance to win a debate is to shut it down.
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