It depends how you define “racial hate” and how you define mental or social harm. I also do mean social harm, not societal, meaning to catch things like sunset communities (ie restricting where people can live, or where they can go), rather than “society is worse off because of people’s opinions.”
Again, in my opinion, it depends on intent. If you make a post on your blog with 200 followers saying “I’m tired of X race moving to my city,” I don’t think that should be illegal, even if it is disgusting behaviour. If you post it to (eg) a community group for those people, I’d say it should be illegal.
That said, I’m very liberal on policing, so believe that the state shouldn’t be responsible for policing morality, which people may not like when they realise it involves making things that are pretty much objectively immoral legal, regardless of what they are.
You seem to think that if something is indirect it isn’t harmful, so being openly racist with your friends is OK as long as you’re not telling the people you’re dehumanizing directly? Sounds like you would think cheating on your wife is OK as long as she didn’t find out.
Personally, I don’t think there is any good or acceptable racial hatred, and pretending that there is is what got the neofascists so much political clout around the world.
It depends how you define “racial hate” and how you define mental or social harm. I also do mean social harm, not societal, meaning to catch things like sunset communities (ie restricting where people can live, or where they can go), rather than “society is worse off because of people’s opinions.”
Again, in my opinion, it depends on intent. If you make a post on your blog with 200 followers saying “I’m tired of X race moving to my city,” I don’t think that should be illegal, even if it is disgusting behaviour. If you post it to (eg) a community group for those people, I’d say it should be illegal.
That said, I’m very liberal on policing, so believe that the state shouldn’t be responsible for policing morality, which people may not like when they realise it involves making things that are pretty much objectively immoral legal, regardless of what they are.
You seem to think that if something is indirect it isn’t harmful, so being openly racist with your friends is OK as long as you’re not telling the people you’re dehumanizing directly? Sounds like you would think cheating on your wife is OK as long as she didn’t find out.
Personally, I don’t think there is any good or acceptable racial hatred, and pretending that there is is what got the neofascists so much political clout around the world.
I don’t think it’s ok.
I think it’s not the state’s job to dictate whether people can do it. I have the exact same opinion for cheating.