Change My Mind

Find me a legal definition.

But everybody finds different things to be hateful and you can't define something that doesn't have a universal meaning.

But hate speech is a word because some people say hateful things, yet if people say different things that some might find hateful it only counts as hateful because it's subjective to the person being hated on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#Hate_speech_laws_by_country

Who gets the moral power to decide what speech counts as what?

The governments have the power, without regard to morality. People can also decide individually, but lack power to restrict.

If the government is able to tell people what is and isn't just with something as opinionated as what is and isn't offensive where would they derive the justification for that?

Most get it from the power of government not being restrained and is a double edged sword as it can be wielded against people that want to ban hate speech just as easily. That's why the most Bill of Rights and following amendments is about tellin the government about what they are forbidden t do.

Well the US was founded on the values of the Enlightenment and the main idea of freedom of speech to come out of that would be the idea of everybody has an equal voice. This is why we have it enshrined in our early documents, so even offensive speech can be spoken because in a free society you have to risk being offended. This is why speech is regulated into categories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_States

So you agree?

Yes, hate speech is free speech.

I see multiple ways to interpret that one.
Is hate speech not reach, but it's nothing more but honest opinions? Or is hate speech not real because it's mostly only based on lies and assumptions?

The thing about it is that what people find hateful differs from person to person.

Hmmm.... The official definition I am told was my second one, but there are also people who would accuse you of hate speech while you didn't even give an opinion or even stated facts, but where just summarizing a few things. It is indeed more and more difficult to set out hate-speech from non-hate-speech as people abuse the term way too much lately. And abuse of words in the context of hate-speech causes true hate-speech not to be taken seriously anymore, and then a snowball effect takes place.

Then again people reap what they sow. Sow hatred and receive hatred. Now this is not entirely true, but it has some parts of it.

You know this debate worries me. I've once seen my countrymen "protest" against migration in a way that made me fear them more than any terrorist organization ever did. Some people objecting against hate speech are now accused of using hate speech because of it.

Different opinion is good. When there's only one opinion you can't get to improvement, as different opinions can lead to different insights and hopefully the best of all these insights will come out. But now I see more people getting divided in "left" and "right" more and more.

At least we don't solve the problem by sticking our heads in the sand, that's for sure.