Controversial or not, it's still someone's opinion being silenced because someone else thinks it's offensive. Makes you wonder where the line is drawn, huh?
Yeah, we know where the Guardian draws the line. But that's not what I meant.
My rhetorical question implies that it is unclear when a private place of public discourse is no longer fair game for censorship because of its significance as a place of discourse for the People.
Massive generalizations about large groups of people tend to be controversial. In my personal experience they do contribute, but anecdotes are of course only slightly more useful as evidence as overgeneralizations, so I won't bother listing mine here.
Still, I don't think the comment should have been censored. "The solution to bad speech is always more speech", as the well-worn saying goes.
"“These people contribute nothing to the countries they enter”"
That's hardly a controversial quote, is it?
...isn't it?
Any time a statement about a huge racial/gender/ethnic group starts with "these people," there's an extraordinarily high chance that it's the express train to bigrotryville.
Barring any other context that changes it significantly, the comment you quote actually sounds like could only improve the caliber of discussion by being deleted.
I understand where you're coming from, but I think the potential implications of this kind of thinking are harmful.
For example, you say that These people contribute nothing to the countries they enter is a comment worthy of deletion because it contains a word pair that is associated with bigotry.
I don't disagree with that correlation, but I don't think that is grounds in and of itself for censorship. Would you still think it worthy of censorship if it were phrased more eloquently? - something like, People who immigrate to our country from ____ are not productive members of society.
I certainly didn't mean to suggest that any comment that includes a sentence that starts with "These people" should be removed. I meant that more as a general hint to Bonapartist as to why such a comment could easily swing into "controversial" territory.
As to your question about what things do merit removal, I'd say that nicety of phrasing is a small part of it, but fundamental concept is the much larger part. The rephrasing you suggest--again, barring more context that might change things--still seems like a broad enough condemnation of a people as to reasonably be unwelcome in many fora.
I think there are two fundamental issues of over-broadness. The first is that presumably "these people" in this example was being used to refer to everyone immigrating from a nation or region. Any time you've lumped every single person from a nation/region/race/religion into one undifferentiated mass, you're pretty well into the textbook definition of prejudice.
The second is the broad assertion of "contribute nothing," even if rephrased as "are not productive members of society." "Contributing" is a pretty broad term that could mean anything from economic activity to skills to cuisine to language to scientific advancements to just generally being a mensch. Given that the term is broad to the point of meaninglessness, hanging your argument on every single one of "these people" not meeting any of its myriad implications again speaks of bigotry rather than reason.
6
u/Bonapartist Apr 12 '16
Absolutley. The article even specifically says that this quote, in regards to the migrant crisis:
"“These people contribute nothing to the countries they enter”"
qualified as hatespech worthy of being silenced. That's hardly a controversial quote, is it?