> Hate speech is defined by Cambridge Dictionary as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". Hate speech is "usually thought to include communications of animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, color, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation".
This is a workable definition and it doesn't lead to a slippery slope argument.
Why not? Because you said so? If somebody hates communists and publicly proclaims that I don't see how it's not hate speech. Unless, of course, you massage the definition to match exactly the cases you like. Religion and ideology are the same thing - or, more precisely, religion is subset of ideology with some specific properties. Why would anti-certain ideology be different from anti-another ideology because some of these ideologies call themselves "religion"? How does it make any sense?
> something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation
Ok, so hating buddhists is hate speech, but hating communists isn't. And hating atheists is ... who knows. Now sure about Wiccans either. How about Objectivists? That looks like exactly the definition to match one narrow case of US contemporary politics (I'd even say very narrow sliver of a contemporary US politics), where racial and sexual discrimination issues is all the rage. But outside that context it makes zero sense, the categories it chooses are just arbitrary.
Is hating scientologists "hate speech"? Well, depends on whether it's a religion or not, right? Because if it's not then no hate speech for you. Is hating furries "hate speech"? If it's about sex fetish then yes, "sexual orientation", but if it's just about cosplay then no, because it doesn't fit the official categories. And so on. Completely nonsensical definition, unless you use it exactly as declared - to privilege certain categories of speech and suppress others, because you want so. There's no logical basis under it, just an arbitrary list.
> This is a workable definition and it doesn't lead to a slippery slope argument.
It's not workable because it selects arbitrary categories based on certain political agenda. If you expand it using "such as" and argue, for example, that regardless of whether Scientology is a religion or not, hating for the group characteristic of belonging to it is under "such as" - good, then how anti-communism is not "such as"? If I make a church that declares Vladimir Lenin a top saint and otherwise the views would completely match communist views with the exception that I also would celebrate Lenin's birthday once a year and call it a religion, now anti-communism is a hate speech? Or only if it's directed against me, but if it's against Chinese communist who has the same ideology but officially not in my church then it's not? Again, nonsensical.
No it's not. Here you have Google removing anti-communist speech which is not sexist, not racist and not homophobic. And communists aren't even a minority in China (though thankfully a minority in most of other countries). But "I hate Nazis" is also hate speech, obviously - should Google ban anybody who hates Nazis? Maybe not, you say? So there's some hate that is allowed, but some is verboten. And who decides which is which? Ah, now we are getting to the point of "hate speech" term - "hate speech" is hate I disapprove of. If I approve of it, it's a vigorous and righteous indignation against the evils of this world and should be lauded, but if I disapprove - it's "hate speech" and should be banned. Now we need only do figure out who holds the power to decide these questions... but wait, we already did, Google decides that. All hail Google, the bastion of free speech and protector from the hate speech! I, for one, welcome our new speech overlords.