Brazil Supreme Court ruling puts homophobic hate speech on the same legal level as racist hate speech, a decision applauded by rights activists in a country with rampant violence against the LGBTQ+ community.
Yes, you're absolutely right that the right wing does this, too, and it's just as foolish. The antiwoke culture war has been a massive failure for the American GOP and very likely cost them seats in the midterms. It absolutely affects elections. Trying to police speech is a bad idea in general, regardless of ideology. Threats, defamation, and harrassment are already illegal. New laws like these do not meaningfully protect anyone from those, but they do erode protections for free speech and also piss off vast swathes of the general population, who will usually manifest some political backlash against the party that implemented them. I'm a leftist and I'd prefer not to have Brazil slide back into Bolsanarismo before actually meaningful reforms can be implemented.
As an aside, Lemmy is becoming even worse than Reddit for people being totally unwilling to entertain alternate analyses of politics. Protip: just because someone isn't parroting the same virtue-signaling talking points over and over again, it doesn't make them a Nazi. My account was apparently reported over this conversation, so to whomever did that, good job trying to run me off rather than engage with my arguments, I guess. Enjoy your circle jerk.
@burnedoutfordfiesta we are just going to have to disagree on the effects of these laws on elections. The problem is that people only see these laws as a problem when they disagree with them (by people I mean the middle). On top of that, when you use the power of the state to silence dissidents, people feel like they can’t change things and give up.
@burnedoutfordfiesta For example, I’m not sure why you were reported (I didn’t see anything wrong in your post) and I can appreciate your frustration, but your response is a good example of this. Ending with “enjoy the circle jerk” is exactly the result the result we get from voters.
Fair points. Yeah, I hope it was clear that that last bit wasn't addressed to you, but rather the person reporting me. I appreciate your actually being civil and responding to the points I'm making. I wish that was more the norm.
@burnedoutfordfiesta agreed. There should also be a recognition that this is an imperfect forum for expressing every nuance. My view is that I approach everyone as though they sincerely want to discuss something. They can prove me wrong, but it usually pays off. I get to hear criticisms that I might not ever have considered. I’m mostly on Counter.Social for exactly this reason. No trolling.