>we see someone in office with authoritarian behavior _embracing_ hate speech, both explicitly and implicitly.
Perhaps this should clue you in about how people feel about political correctness. Many of the leaders you mentioned likely got a whole bunch of votes because they didn't toe the political correctness line. This happened in many other countries too, because people generally don't like walking on eggshells.
>There have been many articles written about, for example, Bolsanaro in Brazil and Duarte in the Philippines.
Imagine this sentence, but instead of you misspelling their names, you misspelled their pronouns. Some people would label that as hate speech. Obviously not when used against the people you mentioned, because they are the enemy and we can't give ammunition to the enemy.
1. “Hate speech” in most countries is a legally defined term, and courts of law are able to determine if something qualifies as hate speech or not. This is what I’m referring to. That is different from “political correctness”, which has no legally defined meaning I’m aware of.
[EDIT] Hate speech is not legally defined in the United States. Not sure why I thought it was. My apologies. I would though argue that it’s still a more clearly defined term than “politically correct”, especially since it is legally defined in other countries.
The wikipedia article about Bolsonaro contains plenty of citations describing behavior of his which fits the definition of authoritarian. When you consider his previous association with and expressed nostalgia for the military dictatorship in Brazil (notorious for torturing its opponents, among other things), this makes his behavior especially disturbing.
Call it whatever you want — authoritarian, fascist, populist, etc, but these guys certainly don’t exhibit the behavior of a of a leader who values small-d democratic government, the rule of law, or equality under the law regardless of religion, sex, skin color, political belief or sexual orientation.
Trump is not as extreme and most of all of what he says does not meet the legal definition of hate speech.
Discussion of whether he qualifies as a wannabe-authoritarian leader or not is more complex.
There are many verifiable instances where, as President, he has undermined the laws of the country he leads. One example is when he talked about wanting to end birthright citizenship (that you are automatically a citizen if born in the U.S.), which is guaranteed by the 14th amendment of the constitution.
Please note that regardless of how distressing you may find the information I’m sharing to be, I’m not doing much more than presenting facts. Of course I have a point of view. But my goal here is to illustrate as dispassionately as I can, well-known and verifiable behavior of current world leaders which is along the lines of “demanding total obedience to those in positions of authority”,
There have been of course other leaders in the past from all sorts of political parties who have exhibited authoritarian behavior; but I’m talking about who is in power now.
There are of course plenty of other countries we could talk about as well. India, China, Russia, and Israel come to mind, in addition to the Philippines, Brazil, and the United States. And I don’t claim that list to be comprehensive.
I'm not arguing that those leaders are nor authoritarian. I'm saying that I think some people support them despite them being authoritarians because they speak out without political correctness.
My quip about the spelling of their name was to indicate the absurdity of some hate speech laws. Misgendering somebody can be considered hate speech and the difference between misgendering someone or not can simply be a typo.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I missed part of your main point.
I guess I would say with regards to someone choosing to support an authoritarian candidate for office because they liked their rhetoric ... buy the ticket, take the ride. As in, they are making a choice.
There are people who have a fondness for some ex-communist societies and or their icons like Marx, the Che, and others knowing the ideology resulted in millions of deaths and other horrors, are they oblivious to the implications?
Talking about making changes to internal laws is not in and of itself subversive. It’s done all the time. Does talking about abolishing the electoral college imply those people are undermining the constitution?
I think the president of the united states has the responsibility to be particularly sensitive and thoughtful about how they themselves discuss modifying the constitution.
Perhaps this should clue you in about how people feel about political correctness. Many of the leaders you mentioned likely got a whole bunch of votes because they didn't toe the political correctness line. This happened in many other countries too, because people generally don't like walking on eggshells.
>There have been many articles written about, for example, Bolsanaro in Brazil and Duarte in the Philippines.
Imagine this sentence, but instead of you misspelling their names, you misspelled their pronouns. Some people would label that as hate speech. Obviously not when used against the people you mentioned, because they are the enemy and we can't give ammunition to the enemy.