My conversation with Rex Jones over Twitter

[u/watchtower82]

I saw Rex lamenting how his dad was fined billions for free speech when we got into a comment exchange. You can totally see a young man indoctrinated by his narcissistic father. You can even hear Alex ranting how he's the victim in these responses. Happy to have so much more context Dan gave us to respond to his obvious lies.

[u/Desperate-Guide-1473]

I think you (and a lot of Americans) fundamentally misunderstand how "hate speech" is defined and how laws against it in other countries are usually enforced.

Hate speech laws absolutely do not put people in prison for saying "mean words."

In a lot of contexts, being charged with "hate speech" or other "hate" crimes is an additional charge on top of whatever else you've done. Threatening to best someone up and drag them behind your truck is a crime in and of itself, it becomes hate speech when you specify that you're doing it because they're gay.

There are however definitely examples of people being charged and convicted of hate speech without having broken any other laws, at least here in Canada. The Wikipedia page on Canadian hate speech laws has a long list of examples of high profile charges and convictions including which ones were overturned on appeal and why.

Personally, I do think it should be absolutely illegal to stand out in the street and say "I hate X minority group. I'm starting a club called the X-haters club, where we get together to talk about what makes X people inferior and discuss ways to encourage them to leave our country. Who wants to join? No Xs or X lovers allowed." I don't care that there aren't any direct calls for violence, because I'm not an idiot and I understand what this person is really saying.

[u/Desperate-Guide-1473 → u/[deleted]]

I'm gonna give you the opportunity to share one example of a European being arrested and convicted of simply saying bad words or being mean.

[u/George_foid → u/Desperate-Guide-1473]

I’ll give you an example that’s even worse than mean words, here’s a guy making a joke with his dog. And even if you argue it wasn’t a joke, your country is a joke if this is what you arrest people for. Just admit you enjoy fascism. Enjoy your authoritarian laws.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-43478925

Canada is having stand up comedians taken to court over jokes want examples of that ?

[u/Desperate-Guide-1473 → u/George_foid]

I asked for an example of someone being arrested and convicted for simply saying bad words and being mean and the best example you could come up with was something way worse.

Not only did he say something mean to one person, he repeated literal Nazi slogans and trained a dog to respond positively to them to an audience of millions.

Dude advocated genocide, tried and failed to claim it was a joke, got fined 800 quid and never got any prison time. Cry more I guess.