Commentary

Legally speaking (in Canada at least), hate speech is a public utterance, publication, or symbolic representation that promotes the vilification and detestation of an identifiable group.

In recent months, I have witnessed the proliferation of lawn signs stating, “Hate has no home here.” Those displaying these signs are by and large well-meaning folk who feel that their message telegraphs support to those who might otherwise feel marginalized. A more effective message would state, “We welcome all kinds; we love YOU!” Instead, the signage implies that there’s a certain kind of person who is not welcome. These deplorables are being vilified and detested. In other words, the anti-hate movement is itself promoting hate.

In the process, anti-haters seem to have lost their ability to identify hate, since certain species are deemed healthy. The movement is so caught up with lawn signs that when confronted with actual hate speech—for instance when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says, “You need to condemn those people,” or, “They are putting at risk our kids”—it evades their radar. Hate has found a back door into their hearts.

With the advent of the COVID era, due to the efforts of some, there has been an effort to characterize those who oppose lockdowns and various other misguided forms of government overreach as “haters.” A very tenuous claim circulated widely in 2020, for example, suggesting that criticism of lockdowns was hateful of certain minority groups at greater risk of infection. The giveaway that this absurd argument was merely a form of political rhetoric is that now that vaccine passports are top of the agenda, the observation that marginalized minorities are disproportionately impacted by the measure is receiving little attention and is almost never called hateful.

Prior to COVID, the “My Body, My Choice” slogan was ubiquitous in the fight for abortion rights. And up until yesterday, one couldn’t argue against it without being deemed a hateful misogynist. Enter COVID and overnight, the “My Body, My Choice” ideal was quashed. The reasoning? Legalistically speaking, our “bodily autonomy is not absolute.” Recently, lawyers representing the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) came out saying precisely that, using the anti-abortion perspective to support vaccine mandates.

As Glen Greenwald points out, this position is a complete about-face for the ACLU, which, in reports from 2008 and 2020, warned against vaccine mandates and coercive state behavior, demonstrating how statist overreach has done more harm than good during past health crises. In contrast, educational approaches have proven exceptionally efficacious at bringing disease outbreaks under control. Not only the ACLU, but also close to 60,000 medical professionals and doctors worldwide have demonstrated their agreement with this level-headed assessment by signing the Great Barrington Declaration.

Anyone who wants to make a claim of exceptionalism when it comes to COVID need only observe those regions that have rejected lockdowns and segregation. In the face of all manner of international pressures, Sweden, for instance, upheld its constitution and the rule of law. Consequently, the Swedes are thriving and have not suffered the immense collateral damage brought about by the coup d’etat effected elsewhere.

No doubt, hating Nazis or the KKK may be a good thing. For argument’s sake, I will grant the problematic and circular argument to those who feel it is right to hate haters. I will also tentatively grant the anti-abortionist reasoning that our “bodily autonomy is not absolute.”

However, here’s the trouble with that position when applied to COVID vaccines. The unvaccinated do not represent a greater risk to others than the vaccinated. The vaccinated pose at least as much of a risk as those who are unvaccinated. As the case in Israel has made clear, the vaccinated are still vulnerable to the disease. In fact, according to a recent study (pdf), the vaccinated are up to 13 times more likely to become infected with COVID and 27 times more likely to become ill than unvaccinated folk who have recovered from the illness and acquired natural immunity.

The vaccines in play are non-sterilizing: this means that they do not stop a vaccinated person from carrying and transmitting the virus. There is, in short, no argument that justifies mandating them. And it is irrational to segregate the unvaccinated.

According to professor Christina Parks from the University of Michigan Medical School, a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology who testified before the Michigan State Legislature in August 2021, a large proportion of vaccine hesitant are Ph.D.s. Why do Ph.D.s hesitate?—(a) the historical record of rushed vaccines is full of dangerous duds, (b) pharmaceutical companies have paid out billions of dollars in damages, and (c) Ph.D.s are familiar with how corruption operates within faculties and institutions, especially within the medical sphere.

Visit VAERS—the U.S. Adverse Event Reporting System—and look at the death signal for the present run of vaccines. (Or you can visit openvaers.com.) It dwarfs these past death signals by orders of magnitude. The USA has well over 7,000 reports of post-vaccine deaths (as of Sept. 13, 2021), and the number is rising. Keep in mind that bulk counts make no distinction between those who die with COVID and those who die of COVID, whereas VAERS reports of those who die with or of the vaccine are going unaddressed.

Ph.D.s are aware of these facts and are, therefore, hesitant.

When it came to light that the Nazis had been engaged in scientific experimentation on humans, including sterilization of the “unclean,” world leaders came together to ensure this horrific side of science would never again rear its ugly head. The result was the Nuremberg Code, which made informed consent the ethical cornerstone that would guide pharmaceutical developers when entering any phase of human testing. Essential to this concept: Consent cannot be coerced. Telling people, for instance, that they will lose their job or their rights if they do not consent to a medical procedure is the purview of the worst sort of haters.

In short, the anti-hate movement is asleep at the wheel. Our watchdogs are gazing at lawn signs while segregationist policies and hate speech abound. It’s time the anti-hate movement performed an internal audit to investigate how it’s contributing to rather than diminishing hate in the world.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Asa Boxer

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Asa Boxer is an award winning writer, and a founder of the Montreal International Poetry Prize, now run by McGill University. He presently edits The Secular Heretic, an online magazine for the arts and sciences. Boxer has published several books of poetry, and he also produces a weekly cultural video series called Daymakers.