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Comment by iteratethis | Hacker News Reader

Looking in from a European perspective, the congressional hearing blew my mind in several ways.

Calling for the genocide of a demographic is permissible?

When such a thing happens, it's "bullying"? Bullying!? Are you kidding me? Imagine being the target demographic, attending school every day. A mob is outside calling for your death and everybody like you. I would not experience that as a case of "hurt feelings", I'd be terrified. Fearing for my life.

By comparison, this type of speech likely lands you in jail in many countries.

And the inconsistency. These universities are well known for being supremely protective of their favorite minorities. Less favorite minorities though can be threatened to be eradicated just fine? It's an open admission that identity politics is very real.

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> Looking in from a European perspective > Bullying!? Are you kidding me?

American public school perspective, here, but death threats were a normal part of the bullying equation growing up. Sure, it was mostly "we're going to kick your ass after school", but there was the occasional "we're going to put you in the hospital or the morgue" and just enough follow-through to make the threats credible.

Calling this bullying isn't inaccurate, the severity of bullying has been downplayed. It isn't just stealing your lunch money and calling you ugly.

Bullying is exactly the correct term for this. You just don't appreciate how evil bullies actually are.

Perhaps it's due to English being my second language, but I equate the situation of a call for genocide as a direct call to violence, or something extremely close to that.

There's examples in other parts of the world where this has led to actual deaths. When you speak those words, you're green-lighting the action. The target now has to hope that nobody is crazy enough to actually do it.

These are life or death matters.

I accept that freedom of speech is more generous in the US, but it still does not add up. If this is mere (extreme) bullying and not disallowed, it should apply to all. Meaning, you can call for the death of anyone, any group, and the consequences are the same: none.

We all know that's not the case, and that's what should be fixed in institutions.

In the US, you have to actually have to directly call for violence for it to be a call to violence and for it not to be protected speech.

That means prefacing something with "I think" or "I believe some violence should happen" is a different statement of expression than "Some violence should happen". In the former, you're expressing an opinion, in the later, you're calling for violence.

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