I grew up with racism and apartheid. When I was young there was a common understanding of what these terms meant. As a child I observed that many words could be used as “hate speech” as the intent of the person using the word is to conjure up a vision of a “bad person” or a “bad act” that people could rally up against, or fight for. The ones that immediately came to mind are “nigger”, “nazi”, “jew”, “wog” and many more race related terms.
The nature of these words are that they are short, can be related to an event, or race of people. Politicians and newspapers at the time were happy to see terms like “nazi” be used to describe people but were reluctant to see the other terms being used. Over the years, the terms like “nazi” have been extended to include specific behaviours similar to those exercised by the Germans during the war.
The point here is that they are all convenient labels that can be applied to people in such a way as to invoke an immediate reaction from the person, or to demonise them in front of your peers. The newspapers at that time used this psychology all the time. This phenomena was then termed, “hate speech” and was used all the time by people in power and by anybody who craved attention. Again, the newspapers, looking for more readership and sales, used the terms at every opportunity.
In the last 3 years, I have observed that the concept of short labels being used to manipulate people in this manner, has grown at an alarming rate. To illustrate my point, consider the following examples of terms currently being used and the observed effect, or the perceived meaning of the label based on the actions conducted. I could fill a book with examples of recent events where these terms have been used to create new laws, put people in jail and worse still, break up families and divide communities, similar to what apartheid still does in South Africa.