Crooks and Liars writer David Neiwert has a nice blog entry about the difference between hate speech and hateful speech. Neiwert correctly points out that some pundits, like Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, often confuse the two. In this case, O’Reilly once again confuses issues in his zest to protect the honor of conservatives he feels are unfairly being attacked: Carrie Prejean and the tea baggers.
There’s an ambiguity in the rhetoric used by people who fight bigotry that people like Bill O’Reilly — people who couldn’t care less about fighting bigotry, and indeed do their best to undermine such efforts — love to exploit. It involves the word “hate.”
We use “hate” generically as a stand-in for “bigotry”, in part because the word better conveys the sewer of hatefulness that is part and parcel of bigoted attitudes and behavior, and it wraps up the concepts of racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and ethnic bigotry all into a neat bundle.
So what properly should be called “bias-motivated crimes” we call, more handily, “hate crimes”. Deeply racist and/or bigoted organizations like the skinheads and neo-Nazis, we call “hate groups.” What is more precisely labeled “violently bigoted speech” we call “hate speech.”
Crooks and Liars:
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/oreilly-doesnt-know-difference-betwe
Showing posts with label neo-Nazis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label neo-Nazis. Show all posts
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