Greetings!
Like someone used to say, “you have the freedom to speak or say anything, but you should remember that I cannot guarantee your safety after the speech you might have made.” The first time I heard this, I burst into laughter as it was so funny to me, but after laughing, I sat down to ruminate on the statement and one thing I realised is that, in this society that we have found ourselves, such is the way of life that we live in.
Nothing is guaranteed when it comes to enjoying our freedom, although it might be stated in our constitution that we are free to do anything that we want or like to do, but alas! Not everything stated as protections in our constitution can be guaranteed in the public, mostly in the aftermath of us exercising our freedom as stated by the constitution of the land in this part of the world.
Well as for me, what people, most especially, the leaders of my country sees as hate speech is just criticism for me. When some of them are doing something bad and they are being criticized, then they result in saying that people are being wicked to them and what they say is that hate speech is being used against them. The questions are, what do you refer to as hate speech? Why can't you too do something that's right for the people to enjoy?
All these and many more are the cause of the criticism that our leaders now refer to as hate speech and one thing that I'm very aware of is that, we are going to be criticized as humans, if we like it or not, even if we are not leaders, we are still going to be criticized, but one thing is that we should not see this criticism of a thing as an act of hatred as we now see it now.
Furthermore, I would say that anything free should be free and so the purported hate speech, most especially if it doesn't hurt or harm us. One other thing that I want us to know is that, everyone has their opinion about us and we should not now see that their opinion as threats or hatred about or against us.
So, as for me, all these things that people are saying that people are using hate speech against, are kind of meaningless to me.
Although, we have people that have bad mouth and bad thoughts against the government and even others in the society, but to me, instead of criminalising them for their speech, I would suggest that they should be taken care of in the constitution and be curbed before the speech is uttered out of their mouth, this is because if not curbed before being said, there would be no need to criminalise such words after be spoken as words are like eggs, when it breaks on the sand, it would be kind of difficult to return it or recover it back to its original state.
So, as for me, if we believe that hate speech exists and that it's not that good for our society, then we should find a way of stopping it in our constitution and should be removed from under the freedom of speech as anything that would affect the society should not be given freedom.
In my own personal belief, I would say that there's nothing like hate speech as it does not exist to me. What I believe in is that, everyone has their opinion and whenever they are saying their opinions, they should not be criticized or seen as haters who would just utter hate speech just to destabilize the running of the government of society
We should try and verify their speech very well and see if it's indeed a hate speech or just criticism that can help to build our governance or even our personal lives.
In conclusion, we should not criminalise every speech that people say, but instead we should verify and see if it's hate speech indeed and if it's, we should try and check those people in a civil way. Also, people should be sensitised on what hate speech is all about and the government too must not term constructive criticism as hate speech and if there's anything to be done, it should be entrenched in the constitution so as to curb such speech seen as hate speech.
Thanks for reading.
Picture is sourced from metaAi.
This is my entry to week 235, episode 03 of the weekly featured contest in the Hive learners community.