&gt; Free speech does not give you the right to hate speech.<p>I would argue that&#x27;s exactly what it does.<p>I&#x27;d further argue that hate speech and the threat of violence should be separated into two distinct categories for clarity. Clarity is extremely, extremely important when you&#x27;re dealing with the edges of acceptable speech. It&#x27;s dangerous to load them both into one concept that can be wielded by politicians and the media for control purposes over speech and free expression.<p>It&#x27;s also important to clarify that the threat of violence is not a form of speech, it&#x27;s a threat (of violence). That&#x27;s another obvious reason why &quot;hate speech&quot; should not cover threats of violence to begin with, it intentionally muddles the concepts. Just like smashing someone in the face should not fall under free expression: it&#x27;s an act of violence. Free speech ends at the point of violence, putting violence and speech together generates a contradiction of terms that can only benefit people looking for levers of control.<p>The concept &quot;hate speech&quot; is already a broken, frequently abused tool for controlling people. It&#x27;s clearly going to get much worse in the coming years given the rise of extreme political correctness, the &#x27;protect my feelings&#x27; movement. &quot;Hate speech&quot; is by default devoid of nearly all meaning, and nearly anything can be claimed to be hate speech, because &quot;hate&quot; is a generic term that can vary wildly and is inherently subjective. It was of course used for that exact reason: you can&#x27;t legislate control over speech, therefore create empty jargon to do the same thing, and then load anything you want into it. A method frequently employed by totalitarian regimes.<p>Are my posts, which openly express my dislike of elves, hate speech? You bet. Why? Because I say so. You can never successfully refute that.