Como as leis contra o "discurso de ódio" acabam por atingir a esquerda

In Europe, Hate Speech Laws are Often Used to Suppress and Punish Left-Wing Viewpoints, por Gleen Greenwald, no Intercept:

If hate speech laws existed in the U.S., their prime targets would be pro-Palestinian groups, Muslims, atheists, Black Lives Matter activists, and antifa. (...)

 An excellent Guardian article on Monday by Julia Carrie Wong examines the implications of the growing liberal/left desire for “hate speech” to be restricted — either by the state wielding the power of “hate speech” laws or by private tech executives prohibiting the use of their platforms to disseminate what they regard as “hateful ideas." (...)

Many Americans who long for Europe’s hate speech restrictions assume that those laws are used to outlaw and punish expression of the bigoted ideas they most hate: racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, misogyny. Often, such laws are used that way. There are numerous cases in western Europe and Canada of far-right extremists being arrested, fined, or even jailed for publicly spouting that type of overt bigotry.

But hate speech restrictions are used in those countries to suppress, outlaw, and punish more than far-right bigotry. Those laws have frequently been used to constrain and sanction a wide range of political views that many left-wing censorship advocates would never dream could be deemed “hateful,” and even against opinions which many of them likely share.

France is probably the most extreme case of hate speech laws being abused in this manner. In 2015, France’s highest court upheld the criminal conviction of 12 pro-Palestinian activists for violating restrictions against hate speech. Their crime? Wearing T-shirts that advocated a boycott of Israel — “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel,” the shirts read — which, the court ruled, violated French law that “prescribes imprisonment or a fine of up to $50,000 for parties that ‘provoke discrimination, hatred or violence toward a person or group of people on grounds of their origin, their belonging or their not belonging to an ethnic group, a nation, a race or a certain religion.'”

Uma coisa peculiar a respeito do "discurso de ódio" é que frequentemente as mesmas pessoas que acham que a polícia e o sistema judicial são racistas, estão dispostas a atribuir a esse mesmo sistema judicial o papel de poder decidir o que se pode ou não dizer.