You don't seem too upset about Joe McCathy getting "cancelled." Joe McCarthy was a fascist just like this guy. I don't see how rehabilitating offenders criminalizes free speech or kills the free market. None of those things are related and besides the free market is overrated anyway. In a country like America he's free to go be a racist elsewhere. Fortunately when it comes to so-called "free speech" there's more moderate countries like Canada where you can't just spew any garbage you want. For example, if you mis-gender someone in Canada, or want to be an jerk and refuse to use their preferred pronouns it's considered a criminal offense. Trans people are offered the same rights and protections as any other minority group.
Legally they are. There is a list of people who can't be discriminated against, yet it happens all the time if loopholes are found. For instance, I was told last year that the company that owns the building I live in will now not rent to people who are on the same disability benefit I'm on. So if I ever move elsewhere and want to return, they will give me a fake smile and say no, for whatever fake reason they've come up with.
This is obviously discrimination, and I could file a complaint with the Human Rights Commission (provincial agency). But it would take time and lawyer's fees, and in the meantime I have to live somewhere... so moving isn't an option.
I used to think abolishing the first amendment was a radical idea until I found out there's many much more moderate and civilized countries like Canada that have laws concerning what is and isn't allowable speech. Really it's not the idea of abolishing the first amendment that's radical, it's the first amendment that's radical. It allows racist gutter scum to perpetuate and reap the benefits of the systemic inequality that's been in place since America's founding and if they want to spew their bile, "it's jus free speech bro."
When the hate laws came in, some people screamed about "freedom of speech." There are some people here who watch a lot of American TV and get the idea that American laws and concepts apply here (some Americans think their own laws apply in Canada, which is why some of them get very angry when told they can't bring their guns across the border; while gun ownership is something people can get licenses to do, it's not a right enshrined in our constitution or Charter).
The most notorious case of someone being charged with a hate crime that I tend to think of is Jim Keegstra, a social studies teacher in my province who indoctrinated his students in Holocaust denial and anti-semitism. He told those kids horrendous lies, forced them to parrot all this back in their essays, and basically messed up years' worth of kids. Some of them rejected his beliefs but had to regurgitate them in their assignments or risk failing (this was high school, so there was a diploma on the line). Some weren't sure, didn't care, so they did the assignments. Some bought into it and at the trial they said of course they believed their old teacher. Kids who later changed their minds and felt betrayed by their teacher were really messed up, horrified at what they had been taught, and that they'd believed it to be true.
Keegstra deserved prison, in my view, and got a slap on the wrist. He was fined and stripped of his teaching license. He went back to being a mechanic, tried politics, and my grandfather (also someone who hated Jews and tried to convert me to those beliefs; I shut him down and said that whatever he believed, I did not want to hear it) said he would vote for him. One of the people I worked with in the theatre was a Keegstra supporter, and the producer and director told him to shut up about the trial - don't talk about it, and don't refer to it in other ways. He slipped up once or twice, but for the most part did keep quiet during the run of the show we were doing (he was part of the main cast).
Politics didn't work out; Keegstra underestimated his popularity, and years later, he died. Only his family misses him now and whoever sided with him. The rest of us sighed in relief and said 'good riddance.'
There are other cases, of course. A FN chief was stripped of his Order of Canada for anti-semitism (comments made in public; if he'd said them in the privacy of his own home, no crime would have occurred). A woman in Banff made a hate video, claiming the Holocaust never happened and that everything she'd been taught in Canadian schools about it was a lie because her mother said they were lies. This woman and her brother were arrested in Germany for hate crimes; I don't remember what happened to the brother, but she was eventually released for "time served." Not sure if she went back to Banff, but if so, I don't imagine she was very popular (she taught music). I saw that video, reported it multiple times to YouTube as hate speech, and it took a long time for someone there to finally take it down.
And then we get to the FN cases... I honestly don't understand why certain people in government have not been charged with hate crimes (this pertains to the residential school system). The Premier of Alberta might regret lifting some of the covid restrictions this summer. There are people who are very much looking forward to being able to protest in public again (up to now they've been doing it either online or leaving chalked messages in front of the Education Minister's office since she refuses to answer phone calls, emails, or snail mails and won't engage with anyone on social media).
This thread is trolling... and cancel culture... inevitably encouraging both.
I recommend closure... I mean cancel culturing it.
@Valka D'Ur - FWIW I'm 100% certain that
@Farm Boy was not directing the term "ratchet" at you.
EDIT:I'll PM the rest
Okay. Am reading the PM now.
