Ben Carson Calls for Prohibiting Religious Hate Speech, Irony Meter Goes Wild
In an obvious attempt to push back against recent reports that he’s appallingly clueless in issues of foreign policy, Ben Carson (or someone in his campaign) has penned an opinion piece for the Washington Post titled: My plan to defeat the Islamic State.
And one of his prime directives is to ban “hate-based propaganda disguised as religious teaching.” Without a hint of understanding that right wing religious speech is often every bit as hateful as ISIS propaganda.
We have in place both the technical and legal capabilities to prohibit the widespread dissemination of hate-based propaganda disguised as religious teaching. We can monitor social media by expanding the search algorithms already in place to safeguard against inappropriate behavior, including religious hate speech. Once flagged, we can notify platform providers and encourage them to censor communications (and block users) that violate the terms of constructive discourse.
Oh, really now? So does that mean Carson would also support banning the dissemination of groups like Kevin Swanson’s “National Religious Liberties Conference,” which was attended by presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz, at which host Kevin Swanson openly called for the execution of homosexuals?
Does that count as “hate-based propaganda disguised as religious teaching” in Ben Carson’s weird world? I’m guessing it doesn’t. But in truth, the kind of extremist propaganda regularly circulated by groups like Swanson’s, with the support of top GOP politicians, is amazingly similar to the hate speech spread by ISIS and other radical Islamists.