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In reply to the discussion: Pam Geller lashes out at critics: You’re saying the ‘pretty girl caused her own rape’ [View all]Tommy_Carcetti
(43,232 posts)Don't be so shocked about that. That's par for the course in human behavior.
But you fail to understand that what Pam Geller was not doing was asking Muslims to take a long, hard look at themselves and tackle some of those problems and reform themselves, no matter how hard that might be.
What Pam Geller was doing was being a bigot. Plain and simple. She's on record as claiming all of Islam is evil and its practice should be banned in this country. And that's before this event. Then she holds this event because she knows the subject matter has gotten a violent reaction in the past. And the event does get a violent reaction, and it gives her cause to go on television and say the exact same things she said leading up to the event.
What Ms. Geller does is engage in hate speech. Hate speech is protected in this country only for the benefit of infinitely more valuable speech that doesn't seek to divide but rather legitimately generate productive discussion. Since not all productive, valuable speech is in agreement, we don't want to have people demanding some of that speech be banned merely because they don't agree with it. So we basically say all of it can be protected regardless of content, even the non-productive, divisive, worthless hate speech.
But people like Ms. Geller aren't engaging in speech for the purposes of valuable discussion. They're engaging in speech for the purposes of hate.
What she is doing is not laudable or valuable, even if it is technically protected.