Bill to make attacks on Trump supporters a Hate Crime

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We need to lose the "hate crime" status. Hate crime = "thoughtcrime."

Assault is assault. "Microaggression" is ill manners. Discrimination is discrimination, and not everybody can have everything. Freedom is not the same as liberty.

Maybe just let them brawl, and whoever remains standing wins the argument.

Careful ... some snowflake might take our sarcasm seriously!

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

I agree with what you say about assault and "microagression".
I did give some thought to "hate speech", though... when it means promoting an ideology that dehumanizes a group of people. The world is too small and the weapons too powerful for tribe wars. Dehumanizing political opponents is as bad as any other dehumanizing and it's disturbingly common

I think you have a very valid point; however, 'hate speech' has gotten too broadly interpreted. Racial slurs are offensive and always have been, even if a lax or permissive society allowed for their public use and distribution. But here is an example from why I don't think "hate speech" laws will work.

OK. Catholicism is a religion & a fairly old-fashioned one. We have laws saying homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. And we have a teaching that masturbation is intrinsically disordered. (Cue the triggered, horny MF'ers on W.P.) The second teaching is just considered bizarre. The first one will get you jailed in Canada. But a Catholic can believe all these without hurting anyone.

(This is not for you people to dispute whether the Church is right or not; most of the people on here who hate the Church don't actually know much about it. But take it from me that the constant lobbying in favor of protected classes, has done more to make me skeptical of their helpfulness in society when all they want to do is make it work for them.)

Incidentally this is why I'm not associating myself with the autism awareness movement. I refuse to be part of that protected class or subculture, and end up with my public image & sense of worth irrevocably tied to a malfunction in the brain.

There are many countries around the world which have laws prohibiting hate crimes. These may be specific offences (“inciting racial hatred”, genocide denial, etc.) or they may, as in this case, be aggravating factors to another offence.

I found three which explicitly recognise hate crimes based on political beliefs: Croatia, Malta, and Ukraine. There were also a few more that recognised “belief”; however they always did so in the context of religion, so without being familiar with the case law I cannot say if this extends to political beliefs or if it only protects beliefs such as atheism or humanism.

Personally I don’t think political beliefs warrant the same protection as race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, age, or disability. Political violence is wrong, but it isn’t “more wrong” than just beating someone up for the hell of it. It isn’t based on a person’s intrinsic characteristics. The US (for example) does not have a particularly deep history of persecution for political reasons (there are obviously some examples such as the McCarthy era but this was not as endemic or remotely as violent as eg the racist or homophobic violence of the time).

I'm very rules-based and I read definitions literally. ^ I assumed that "social group or race" meant that political ideology counts as a form of hate crime, the same way terrorism is politically-motivated and considered a form of hate crime.

Maybe I misread in the definition. Does "social group" imply a socio-cultural group, or can it also mean an ideological group like those strongly affiliated with a political party? I'm not sure what they mean by "social group".

Oh look, it's the reason the very concept of a separate category for "hate crimes" is useless and superflous at best and Orwellian at worst.

I agree. ^

But if there is such a thing as "hate crime" in the law books, I want to know what it means. If it means "a prejudice-motivated crime which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of their membership (or perceived membership) of a certain social group or race", and if it's still a legal term, then it should be applied both ways in this situation.

I would personally like to know exactly what the bill categorizes as a "hate crime" -- if it says "Any crime committed against Donald J. Trump, his family,  his friends,*  his supporters, or any member of the GOP," then that is the wrong way to define a "hate crime".

What I would also hate to see is the Bullying Victim's Dilemma being played out.  This is where the bullies (Trump supporters, for example) gang up on and assault their victim (a Biden supporter, for example) until the victim acts in self-defense, and then the bullies all testify that the victim started it all "and for no good reason".  It's called a "dilemma" because If the victim does nothing, then he or she gets beaten up; but if the victim acts in self-defense, then he or she gets punished for being the aggressor.

It would not surprise me to see Trump's bullies play this out on some poor, unsuspecting victim.

*Trump has no friends.

Well, that is one half of the problem with the idea. What constitutes a race/class/social group/club/tribe/other? The hatred of gingers (red-haired people) is apparently a real thing in the UK, so is it hate assault or regular assault if I beat one up, and short of me outright telling you so, how would you establish that? If Liverpool fans and Manchester United fans clash over their mutual hatred for each others chosen team, is that just a big explosion of hate crimes being commited? If I beat up every mime I see because I hate them with a burning passion, is that a hate crime?

And the other half is this; say I hate Islam. I spend my days ranting and raving about how bad Islam is online. I run an Alex Jones-style TV-show explaining in detail how I think Islam is ruining the whole world and turning the frogs gay. But I never go beyond speech, and I don't incite people to go out and be violent to muslims or such. But one day, I get into a fight for unrelated reasons with someone who turns out to be muslim, which I only find out afterwards. Suddenly I'm in a lot more trouble than I really should be, because I have a long history of doing something that isn't a crime.

I agree Wolfram.

I believe all people have the same rights to freedom regardless of orientation, race, class, etc.
I also believe all violent crime is equal.

Does "hate crime" have a different punishment than the same crime minus "hate" ?

What is the legal reason for this distinction?

I'd say anyone who is violent has no excuse. Crime against romantic and domestic partners (presumably non-hate), is just as serious as "hate" crime against ideology. I'm trying to understand the law and why these distinctions are made, or why people draw lines in the sand to justify certain crimes, considering them less egregious.

Last edited by IsabellaLinton on 17 Jun 2020, 2:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It’s the left who created hate crimes and it’s not fair it’s only for left people attacked

You mean like how democrat bullies currently use hate crimes on others?

All this bill seems to do is bring equal and fair hate crime law.
The idea that only the left can be victims of a hate crime isn’t fair and shouldn’t be law.

The idea that a crime is worse cause one had hate for the other is stupid, but since said law exist it should absolutely be made fair and unbiased to include any such hate.

It’d be like if drug laws only made surges illegal for black people, surely yiud want either the laws repealed, or made ro it’s illegal for all people. Such a law would be seen as clearly biased and unfair. Current hate crime laws only protect left leaning groups and people. Is it a hate crime if a black person who’s racist against white person attacks a white person ? But even if a non racist white person attacks a black persons unrelated to their skin color it’s classified as hate crime.
The idea is if any white person has a conflict with a person of color it must mean their racist. <—- this idea can only lead to more racial division and segregation.

It carries more prison time. Cause if you hated the person you attacked it makes it a worse crime then some person who just for no reason attacks someone. The current laws consider the only reason people can hate someone is racism. It’s ridiculous