> unless it doesn't result in real discrimination?

It's incredibly naive to think that "hav[ing] a racist point of view" wouldn't result in "real discrimination" out in the world.

Here's something relevant from William Cliffor'd "Ethics of Belief":

> I shall surround myself with a thick atmosphere of falsehood and fraud, and in that I must live. It may matter little to me, in my cloud-castle of sweet illusions and darling lies; but it matters much to Man that I have made my neighbours ready to deceive. No belief held by one man, however seemingly trivial the belief, and however obscure the believer, is ever actually insignificant or without its effect on the fate of mankind, we have no choice but to extend our judgment to all cases of belief whatever. Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions of our will, and knits into harmonious working all the compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves, but for humanity.

Sorry, I don't think a misused quote can justify a thought crime. It would be funny and educative if we could temporarily reanimate Mr. Clifford to give him a chance to appreciate some twisted logic that is required to apply this particular quote in this particular context. But we can't, so I suggest we leave dead in peace.

I never said that such point of view don't have consequences. But there is a law and means to enforce it when discrimination is realised. And you can indeed define some reasonable limitations on a limit on speech. But as soon as you go after personal opinions, you do more harm than good.

By doing so, we steal from people a chance to make their own minds and actions. It's an important part of human experience for many. And when that freedom is threatened, they often resist as it were almost an existential threat to them.

We know for a fact now, that humans are evolutionary wired in favour of tribalism and prejudices and overcoming our own nature is a hard and delicate process. And slow, conflicts can last for hundreds and thousand of years. History says that even if you manage to keep them dormant using state force, it's not forever. State will eventually fail and people will continue on killing each other with same amount of enthusiasm if not more. Just have look at pogroms that took place the moment USSR collapsed in brand-new national states, an excellent illustration.

There must be a solution to those problems that relies on force as little as possible, otherwise it's not very sustainable. But instead I see justification of mob justice, thought policing and global censorship. The last one is especially infuriating. Tools that are required to implement such censorship should not exists and will certainly be exploited.

After all, people we disagree with are just regular people, not monsters. Likely, troubled, needing a group they can identify with, lost in rapidly changing world, unneeded, susceptible to human flaws we all have to a certain degree. And yet it's not uncommon to believe that it's a good idea to just dismiss and alienate them and at the same time somehow pretend to hold a higher moral ground. I like those opinions no more than you do. But I see hate, arrogance and cruelty just shapeshifting and nothing good coming out of it.