For info, the first citation is from the 2019 UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech (https://www.rightsforpeace.org/policy-docs), so is a pretty influential body for this topic and may well affect policy. It is true that Wikipedia should not be relied upon as an authoritative resource, but the link to the Guardian article can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/27/karen-race-whi... how broadly the term is applied can be gauged from the article or other instances where it appears on social media.
Addressing each of your points:
1. I agree that every insult is not a threat and its severity is subjective. One person might be hurt or even feel threatened by seemingly innocuous language whilst another might shrug off deliberate, targeted insults; simply using a person’s name or words like ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ can be threatening if the other person is about to be violent. People can even deliberately claim offense to exploit the subjectivity in dialogue. In this instance we are in danger of granting a term a degree of recognition which it is actually too subjective to deserve and this is opening up opportunity for misuse.
2. The vulnerability of the target argument is again subjective; 1 violent criminal amongst 30 sheepish academics will feel zero threat whereas the 30 will all be intimidated by this person. My experience has been that bullies are generally a minority in a pool of people – but weak people will follow and support them. History is full of instances where subordinated groups have vastly outnumbered the minority which holds sway over them (the feudal system, caste systems, colonialism, crime bosses, corporate org structures, etc.). Power systems are not necessarily gauged by the number of people in the group – a lion will not be threatened by a herd of sheep.
3. I agree that centralised micro-management of this issue is not possible or even desirable. Will some people have to overcome prejudices against them irrespective of whether they have the same rights as everyone else? Yes. For example, women may be regarded as the weaker sex or more emotional, whilst men may be regarded as dictatorial, insensitive ‘mansplainers’. Should we try to even things out for them by introducing subjective rules that favour them above others? I do not think so.
> I agree that that using destructive blanket terms for groups and making caricatures of people is not novel ...
You are agreeing with something I didn't say. I said: "we both know we are engaging in an old debate about double-standards and 'reverse discrimination'. Let's not pretend it's some novel thing we're proposing"
Also, you keep using the world 'subjective' like it is disqualifying. You can see my GP post for why.
The idea that we don't know about many vulnerable groups in our society is absurd and theoretical; there is plenty of objective evidence and it's obvious who they are. I'm not even sure what you wrote really says anything to the contrary.
It would have been great to have a genuine conversation.
Why do I not accept that the attempt to classify things as 'hate speech' is about 'reverse' discrimination (i.e. I do not agree that this is something 'we both know')? Because this implies that it seeks to react to and target initial discrimination. But because it is subjective and open to abuse it can be used opportunistically against individuals who have done nothing to the other party (no initial discrimination to reverse). So, it is a label that can itself actively be applied in a discriminatory way.
Which are these 'obviously vulnerable groups' that you think 'it is obvious who they are'? Children - agreed. People with some disabilities - agreed. Some frail elderly people - agreed. Even with this set of groups, the degree of vulnerability will vary hugely. Are these the groups you refer to?
(Some caveats:
To talk about the elephant in the room, we both know we are engaging in an old debate about double-standards and 'reverse discrimination'. Let's not pretend it's some novel thing we're proposing.
Also, I don't know about the credibility of the first citation's definition of hate speech, and I think Wikipedia has little credibility (no idea why I'm suddenly seeing so many people citing it on HN) - it might as well have been written by you or me. So I'm not commenting on those.)
Some points:
* There are degrees to threats and danger, of course; communication depends on words, context, emotion, the parties involved, etc. Every insult is not a threat and does not rise to the level of hate speech in a significant way. Perhaps we should use the term 'threatening hate speech', to distinguish it for these purposes.
* There is a clear standard necessary to 'threatening hate speech' that is omitted from the reverse discrimination argument: The vulnerability of the target. To reuse an example I gave in another comment, if a Swede is locked in a room with 30 Norwegians and says, 'Norwegian scum should die', people might back away a bit but it's not much threat. But if a Norwegian says 'Swedish scum should die', that's a threatening and dangerous situation for the Swede. In U.S. law, this standard is expressed as 'protected classes' (afaik). Hate speech is only a double-standard if we omit this factor. The consequences to vulnerable people are very well established and very dangerous, arguably the worst events of human history; we can't just ignore that because we lack the perfect solution. Doing nothing is not the null hypothesis, it's an alternative with clearly worse results.
* Subjective judgments are less desirable than objective measures, but that's life; the world is just too complicated and in almost every case we don't have time for scientific accuracy. It's a theoretical argument to require objectivity; reality, as everyone can't help but observe, requires and uses endless judgment. That doesn't make all judgments good or equal (another theoretical argument). Note, for example, that courts have a complicated system designed to output good subjective judgments by judge and jury; they expect and accept subjectivity. But to the extent a rule requires subjective judgment (which is every rule, as every one has edge cases), I agree that it would be better to do it objectively, we should do that where possible, and that we have to be careful.