Online censorship: The UN’s deeply flawed approach to ‘hate speech’

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This is just an excerpt from The Ezra Levant Show. To see new, ad-free episodes, which air Monday - Friday @ 8 p.m. ET | 6 p.m. MT, become a subscriber to RebelNews+. This episode originally aired on June 19, 2023.

On last night’s episode of the Ezra Levant Show, Ezra read a since-deleted tweet from the United Nations (UN) about their approach to hate speech:

Ezra commented on the graphic used, a grenade labelled ‘words can be weapons’: 

I mean, it's a metaphor, a figure a speech, but they mean it literally. A word is not a weapon. You can use words like ‘violence’ or ‘assaulted’ or ‘hurt’ about words, but you don't actually get assaulted or hurt like you do with guns or hand grenades, you hurt your feelings, maybe, but nothing more. And the very fact that they're trying to co-opt the words and imagery of actual violence sort of gives it away. They don't want to admit that they're just coming in as censors, they wanna pretend it's different in some way that they're actually coming out against violence when, in fact, they're precisely coming against just your speech.

He went on to talk about the page on the UN’s website linked to the tweet titled ‘Countering the Dark Age of Intolerance Starts by tackling hate speech,’ which went on to say that ‘From institutionalized racism to genocide, the roots are the same according to people on the front lines of change.’

That's not hate speech, that's actual physical violence or actual actions, like racist laws. The very headline shows that the problem isn't words, it's laws or physical violence, and the absence of laws to protect people from physical violence in both cases. Free speech is the solution, not the problem.