{"id":3083,"date":"2019-04-24T11:21:42","date_gmt":"2019-04-24T01:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.midlandexpress.com.au\/?p=3083"},"modified":"2019-04-24T11:22:01","modified_gmt":"2019-04-24T01:22:01","slug":"drowned-out-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centralvic.com\/midlandexpress.com.au\/opinion\/2019\/04\/24\/drowned-out-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Drowned out speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Sandra Caddy, Castlemaine <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I agree with Dean Bridgfoot that &#8216;hate speech incites and normalises violence and is a threat to our democracy&#8217; (&#8216;A shared humanity&#8217;, <i>Opinions<\/i>, April 9).<br \/>\nUnfortunately the term hate speech is deceptively used to drown out any speech, facts, statistics etc. that a certain section of our demography hate to hear and refuse to acknowledge.<br \/>\nSadly it appears that extremism now refers to unwanted discussions surrounding the reality of mounting daily atrocities and the demise of our society rather than the atrocities themselves.<br \/>\nLike you Dean, I feel it is important to name hate speech and its destructive impact on our democracy and also, like you Dean, I am putting effort and hope into building a peaceful and just future for our children; may we succeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sandra Caddy, Castlemaine I agree with Dean Bridgfoot that &#8216;hate speech incites and normalises violence and is a threat to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,13],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[5234],"class_list":["post-3083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ 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