"There are definitely times when people can enable each other. For example, when Ugly Cheat Of became President, how much violence and hate crimes just skyrocketed..."
This unexamined claim crops up regularly. I think it's important to point out that correlation is not causation. In the absence of evidence that A caused B, it's just as likely that the upswing in violent bigotry caused the election of Agent Orange, as vice-versa.
What seems more likely to me is that both phenomena shared a cause, really a set of underlying causes. That the upswing in bigot violence would have happened anyway - might even have been worse - if Agent Orange lost the 2016 election.
One way to give an indication of causation would be to look at whether there's been a reduction in hate crimes (using the same definition) since Agent Orange lost in 2020. Then look at whether they go up or down after the next Presidential election.
Why does any of this matter? Because if we believe that the statements of public figures (comedians, politicians, etc) cause bigots to be more violent, the logical target for activists is to find ways to constrain the freedom of expression of public figures.
But what if we see the prominence of people expressing bigoted views as a symptom? Then we're going to look for the underlying causes of both the prominence and the violence, and focus on those. Which is harder, but arguably better.
"If some online media outlet were to [publish a headline]; 'Ricky Gervais jokes about Hitler', nobody's going to click on that. They're going to be like 'OK, I joke about Hitler too'. But the moment that they take that little sentence and they're like; 'Ricky Gervais transphobic', everyone's going to be all over it."
"I think it also has to do with the cancel culture craze as well. It's just kind of drama-fueling, and he does point that out where he's like; 'I'm making fun if 50 other things but this is the one that you're going to pick, and... demonise me for'."
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