They actually believe they have free speech....but then go on to defend why ‘some’ speech should be punished, ‘hate speech’ and all. If you tell them that should be ok, you should be able to say almost anything, the most outrageous of offensive things, outside of a call to violence or causing panic that will lead to injury.
They’ll look at you funny. Like, “no, that shouldn’t be allowed”. Then tell them they don’t actually believe in free speech then, that the State has discretion to control their speech. You can see the gears turn.
As someone who was brought up in the UK, it’s the same, we weren’t taught about this stuff.
The whole supposed "hate speech" thing.....if its OK to ban certain speech on the grounds that its "hate speech", how do you stop politicians from abusing that power? How do you prevent them from labelling any criticism of them and their policies as "hate speech" and thus censoring it and/or jailing their critics?
They never have an answer for that. And I can tell you having lived in Germany twice, that YES! They do EXACTLY THAT. The establishment there gets hysterical and screeches that anybody who disagrees with them is....scare quotes "far right" and if that still doesn't get the public to go along they get even more shrill and shriek "they will drag us all back to the trenches!!!" no matter how utterly absurd that is.
Not want to surrender your national sovereignty to the EU? FAR RIGHT!
Think foreigners who come to your country should adapt to your culture and obey your laws? NAZI!
Question the wisdom of importing millions of military age males from a completely alien not to mention hostile culture who have nothing but contempt for your culture and who refuse to integrate? RACIST! etc etc