In New Zealand, we already have adequate legal protection from speech that incites violence or murder. It is already illegal to incite others to kill or physically harm an individual or group. It is already illegal for a person to threaten to kill or harm another person. This is one of the reasons why the government’s attempt to “strengthen” our existing laws against incitement is not needed.
We don’t have existing hate speech laws, but the media and the government insist on referring to our incitement laws as “hate speech laws” in order to soften us up for the implementation of actual hate speech laws, which has been their agenda from the start.
Hate speech laws are in reality hurtie feelings laws. They are a rod that identity groups can use to beat anyone who criticises or expresses a dislike of them.
Labour Minister Kris Fa’afoi was asked if the government is intending to criminalise offensive, insulting and derogatory speech.
He replied that people were entitled to their opinions and to say “stupid things”, but then he contradicted his first statement by adding the rider “but if that incites or stirs up hatred towards a particular group, that is the area we are going to put to the public about what should happen.”
So in other words they DO want to criminalise insulting, derogatory and “stupid” speech IF it “incites or stirs up hatred towards a particular group”.
Inciting harm or murder is very obvious and can be clearly defined.
A) You guys should all pick up pitchforks, go to this address and hang him from the nearest tree.
The above example is clearly incitement as the person is telling others to kill another and is providing them with information to help them to do it.
Whether or not an insult or criticism or derogatory speech “stirs up or incites hatred” is completely subjective and is completely out of the control of the person making the speech, as it is up to the person reading or hearing it to decide if they feel that it is hateful. This is why it is impossible to clearly define and also why hate speech laws are so dangerous. Hate speech laws will be used by the cancel culture mob to destroy even more people’s lives.
The recent spate of people being cancelled here in New Zealand, driven by a group of radical Maori activists, is the entree before the main course. It is likely that their coordinated attacks on individuals, costing them their jobs and their businesses, is being instigated in anticipation of the hate speech laws coming in and also to try to justify the need for hate speech laws.
Any criticism of an identity group can be labelled as stirring up or inciting hatred towards the group.
B) I don’t like identity group Z because they are telling our children that all white children are racist and they are teaching our children that white children have privilege. Yesterday my daughter was forced to apologise in front of the class for her Whiteness. She came home in tears. This makes me really angry and I think parents at my school should demand that identity group Z stop teaching this rubbish to our children!
The above example is a clear criticism of an identity group with a call to action. Identity group Z could decide that it is stirring up or inciting hatred towards them.
That is the problem with trying to criminalise insults, criticism and other derogatory speech. Whether it is perceived as hateful or inciting or stirring up hatred is completely under the control of the identity group being talked about.
If this government passes hate speech laws with impossible-to-define parameters then Cancel Culture on steroids will rip through our society.
Organised groups of radicals will hunt others for sport on social media. They will be New Zealand’s self-appointed speech police and they will destroy individuals, families and livelihoods. It has already started.
We have already seen the worst of New Zealand’s snitch culture during the lockdowns. If these hate speech laws are passed it will not be safe to say anything on social media, on YouTube videos or anywhere else that is public without risking an attack on your job or business.
These proposed laws are toxic and must be stopped.