You don't have to be a racist to be accused of racism.

"said something racist" is what OP said

Indeed, but I inferred the meaning of "something racist [in the judgement of the authorities]".

Racists deserve free speech, and our society is better for it. When racists are silenced, anti-racists become complacent, stupid, and ironically, racist because they lose the ability to recognize racism.

Defend everyone's free speech. Don't require the necessity of unfair accusations. The destruction of people's lives over unfair accusations is simply a failure of due process and the desire of people to join a mob for safety. You should hate that no matter what you think about the right to free expression and belief. Anyone who would earnestly defend mob justice led by demagogues and supported by people afraid to be targeted next has a particular demagogue who they back.

> Racists deserve free speech, and our society is better for it.

To the extent that our society is better for extending free speech to racists it has nothing to do with them deserving anything, but with the costs of empowering any fallible human institution to deny anyone things that that particular group of people do not deserve, and the cost of failing to make that distinction is being susceptible to being convinced that some other group truly does not deserve it and therefore some institution should be empowered to identify members of that group and deny it to them.

Wild how you're weaving a tale about mob justice when someone says something against racists.

Also, it's logically incoherent how you're portraying mob justice as a bad thing while rejecting governmental regulation. The entire idea of the state having a monopoly on violence is to prevent mob justice, or individuals taking the law into their own hands. Basic civics.

I'm generally in favor of free speech, but there are thorny issues associated with it that "free speech absolutists" aren't interrogating because they stop at "racists should be able to say what they want".

There are a lot of definitions of what that entails. Some people have landed in hot water for making comments about what's happened in Gaza and accused of that.

Free speech is a circular right.

One is free to say racist things. Others are free to mock them in return.

Racists are not free from consequences. If they don't like others freely expressing themselves in return, at the rhetorical and emotional expense of the racist, racists can freely express themselves in their home.

You're advocating a very reductive approach to free speech.

Because in a free country you have the right to be a climate skeptic and a racist?

Being a racist is mostly useless and self-serving, but if you make any particular scientific position illegal, it's identical to having state defined science. That's how we got people passing bills to define pi and Lysenkoism. It's how we institutionalized chattel slavery and sometimes teaching black people to read punishable by death.

The goal of government isn't to promote your "correct" opinions. The goal of government should be summarize the beliefs of a fully-informed public in order to act on their behalf.

>The goal of government should be summarize the beliefs of a fully-informed public in order to act on their behalf.

I fully agree with your position here, but do you think the government has a roll in making sure the public is not misled or believes things that "experts" consider to be false? Do you think expert opinions should carry more weight that the average Joe?

I think my position is that the government is a tool we, the taxpayer, should use to investigate things and educate us of its findings. That this should be done in an open and transparent way so that we can trust the results. I don't think for profit companies should responsible for educating people. (sorry for the tangent)

It is the most unpopular speech which is at the greatest risk of being censored, and so there is it also the best place to hold the line on free speech. If you don't defend the right to say racist things, then you've already conceded the fight for free speech and are now just negotiating your surrender.

Again, missing my point.

I'm generally in favor of free speech, so your argument is not new to me. It's also not relevant to what I said, since you missed the point.

Also, you think racism is unpopular?

Racism will get you fired from virtually any company in America, thrown out of virtually any business or school, etc. If you don't think it's deeply unpopular then I don't know what to tell you. It is the speech which is closest to being outright banned everywhere. It already is in most developed countries, probably most of the developing ones too (at least on paper), America stands out as one place it remains technically legal even though it will get you blacklisted from almost everywhere. The only reason it's still legal here is because the first ammendment is unusually strong. Chip away at it, and I guarantee you'll lose more than you're bargaining for.

Racist thought and language is everywhere. People supporting racist institutions and language are everywhere.

These days, bigots are getting their teachers thrown out of school. It just happened at OU.

Universities are dropping DEI because Trump asked them to. Many companies are acting similarly, obviously in some sectors more than others.

Ask minorities if racism and other forms of bigotry are unpopular. You'll probably get a different perspective than the one you gave me. That is unless the only minority folks you know are Clarence Thomas and Vivek Ramaswamy.

The problem is in the definition. The British Government has accused Pro-Palestine protestors of it in the last few months.

That example supports my position.