sapphi_snake said:
Have you ever heard of the anti-jew rhetoric present in Nazi Germany? Fear/hate mongering has disastrous consequences for the targets. Also, by your logic direct instignations towards violence should not be illegal either. |
Banning the anti-semitic rhetoric wouldn't have done anything about the holocaust. You cannot simply ban racism because it generally runs within families and underground in society, so having laws directly dealing with hate speech is probably not a great idea (here I think me and Happy are in agreement). However harassment or intimidation through hate speech should be illegal under more universal laws - even if not directed at a single individual (for example if somebody were to hang a black scarecrow in their front yard it should be taken as a death threat and the perpetrator punished).
I think the most succesful way of dealing with large scale racism that I've seen is what the USA did back in the 1960's, enforced integration and making discrimination illegal. If that hadn't been done there would still to this day be large numbers of all white schools and businesses because there would have been no reason to change.
