The points you raised in your lengthy paragraph seem reasonable.

What exactly is 'hate speech'? Is the term used outside of polemical discourse, or is it just a snappy way of repackaging the notion of vilification and threats to harm? I guess this discussion will be viewed by some as a tributary of the "woke" thread. Sounds like Jimmy Kimmel has been identified by the Right as a purveyor of hate speech on the Kirk matter.

Let us take an example:

"Kill all the white people!"

Substitute any group you wish. Suppose a person with influence yells that to their people wanting an answer for their problems.

Is that free speech?

If so then "free speech" is the right to say whatever you want to say even if it results in death.

The recent lynching of a black man in Mississippi is free speech under this definition -- it's only the person who pulled the rope that is guilty of murder. We should be free to sing songs of lynching people.

I've given a few extended and considered replies, referencing various external sources and pointing to various arguments., — Banno

And how! Marvelously done, if I might say so. Surely one can lead a horse to water. That's my point.

See how your reply is about me? — Banno

Well, let's be honest. You do tend to steal the show at times. :smile:

My mere suggestion was in regards to your concern that this website has changed from how it first was when you first began posting. You seemed to have expressed a sentiment, perhaps even a longing or sense of nostalgia of how things have changed. I merely reinforced your legitimate view that it might be negative by saying, yes, perhaps logic and "common sense" has fallen out of favor. Don't you agree with this possibility? At least, it's viability? Somewhat?

Is the term used outside of polemical discourse, or is it just a snappy way of repackaging the notion of vilification and threats to harm? — Tom Storm

That's the conflict, isn't it - it's used "outside of polemical discourse", as the UN example shows, but from the sensitivities expressed by some here, who apparently felt offended or vilified by some uses of the term, as itself an artefact of hate speech.

Now and then, I take comfort in in the fact that the law (at least here in God's Favorite Country) has not (yet?) made the use of "hate speech" a crime. But perhaps because we're sadly and self-righteously inclined to equate the law with morality, there are laws which penalize hate of a social group when it motivates commission of a crime. The combination of this kind of hate with an already defined crime results in something described, ingeniously, as a "hate crime."