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[quote=Anonymous]For me its about appropriate response. Someone uses words to say/write something that you find offensive, then you use words to say/write your criticism, disgust, etc. That would be an appropriate response because it's words vs. words.

What's not appropriate is to murder someone because they used words to offend you or your beliefs.

It's can be a very fine distinction. When is speech/press so hateful that it goes "too far?"  Interestingly, international courts have been wrangling with this for years. Some of the Nazi officials who produced propaganda were put on trial postwar. Some were not convicted, because although they made antisemitic statements, they did not explicitly call for people to kill Jews.

Other defendants, including Julius Streicher (publisher of the antisemitic newspaper Der Sturmer) were found guilty because there was clear and convincing evidence that he was calling for the murder of Jews at a time when he knew that the Final Solution was being carried out. Therefore, his propaganda moved out of the realm of hate speech and into incitement for genocide.

This legal precedent was what was used to convict some Rwandas who were making radio broadcasts during the Rwandan genocide. It was another case of incitement to genocide. The broadcasters knew what was happening out in the streets, and they were explicitly telling Hutus to go out and kill their Tutsi neighbors.

To be clear, I'm don't think that Charlie Hebdo falls under the definition of "hate speech". Hate speech generally has a very specific ideological intent/bias behind it. The fact that Charlie Hebdo has published provocative cartoons/articles about multiple religions indicates they are really about satire--an equal opportunity offender.

I'm just explaining why it's possible to support the concept of allowing offensive material to be published, while still agreeing that there are lines that can be crossed that go beyond hate speech.

In this instance the only individuals/groups that have crossed that line are the radical "Islamists" (air quote intentional because they don't represent all of Islam) that explicitly command its followers to commit murder.[/quote]

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