But Germans, and now leftists in America, apparently think that hate speech led to mass murder in the 1930s and 40s so the problem would be solved by eliminating hate speech. The problem, Pogo, is not the speech but government. A government bent on murder will of course deploy hate speech to its ends but taking away that tool, however satisfying, is hardly likely to contain a murderous intent. The problem is not the speech of individuals, no matter how hateful, but actions of government itself.
The German reaction, even revulsion, after their conduct in the third Reich has been to seek a solution to every problem through government. If a problem exists the answer is always to enlarge government to fix it.
But the problem of the third Reich was big government. Government grown too Intrusive, hateful government, ubiquitous government. One may argue that the Nazi party acquired power by exploiting hateful speech but that is to confuse a tool with motive prompting its use. By all accounts, Adolf Hitler acceded to power by virtue of his brilliant demagoguery, his effective articulation of hate. But Hitler's speech was a tool, more importantly, it was a symptom of a deeper evil. Hitler's obsession was gaining absolute political power to effectuate his evil obsessions. Churchill described him so eloquently:
… the void was open, and into that void after a pause there strode a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and expression of the most virulent hatreds that have ever corroded the human breast – Corporal Hitler.
It is fatuous in the extreme to believe that virulent hatred can be cured by suppressing speech of such maniacs. Governments have become adept at masking their true intentions with socially acceptable speech. It is noted that, although the third Reich made explicit its hatred of Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies and communists it is also to be noted that it covered up its mass executions of these people even as the gas chambers were burning. So adept are governments at lying, withholding, and spinning that the descriptive "Orwellian" has entered this and many other languages.
We are now in this posture in America in which a major political party actually believes that men can have babies and 2+2 can equal five. In other words, we are in a welter of preposterous Orwellian speech that it is unrealistic to expect that we can sort out hate speech from the patently ridiculous. To do so by invoking the mailed fist of government to determine what is true or false, hateful or otherwise is equally fatuous and, more importantly, dangerous.
It is dangerous because to invest power in government in the name of preventing hate speech is to deliver power by that very act into their hands of the same people who are hateful, whose virulent hatreds even now corrode the human breast. Hate speech by definition is an accumulation of words that evaporate into the ether but political power can be pitiless, relentless and murderous.
Alas, we in America are aping the self-inflicted habit of the Germans: to confuse symptom and tool with the real threat. To control hate speech by government is to ensure hateful government.
