Remember when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg was caught on a hot mic telling German Chancellor (and Person of the Year) Angela Merkel that he was going to censor the internet for her? Apparently Google and Twitter are going to censor it as well, because criticizing immigration policy is now considered "hate speech."

“When the limits of free speech are trespassed, when it is about criminal expressions, sedition, incitement to carry out criminal offences that threaten people, such content has to be deleted from the net,” German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said. According to Maas, each of the three companies will use internal “specialist teams” to assess reports of hate speech and delete it when appropriate, in accordance with German law.

Ah. I know many of you SJW liberals are thinking "Hell yeah! Down with hate speech!" But what constitutes hate speech? Well...

It’s unclear how sweeping the tech sites’ crackdown on hate speech will be, or how it will affect comments made outside Germany that can still be read by German users. If the implementation is similar to Europe’s “right to be forgotten,” which lets Internet users request articles about themselves be removed from Google search results, then content flagged as hate speech would be removed from the German versions of these sites but still be viewable on foreign versions of the platforms.

You're probably saying to yourself, "But Crowder, this is in Germany." Right. But we live in a country where leftists already think that anyone opinion they don't like is "hate speech," and where the Attorney General wants to arrest anyone who is mean to Muslims. Yes really, click that hyperlink and learn.

"Hate speech" doesn't exist. It's a silly, made-up term designed to be a foot in the door to full-blown speech legislation. Some speech is hateful, sure. So? That speech is still entirely defensible under the First Amendment. A concept with which leftists seem perpetually confused.

"...Free speech, Peter?"

Can somebody say "I hate white people!" Yes. Can somebody legally say "Asians are slightly annoying, albeit successful in their professional endeavors!" Yes. You may not like it, but all of it is permissable, and needs to be permissable.

Speech is merely a reflection of thought. Sometimes we don't like the thoughts of others. That doesn't give us the right to legislate their thoughts. It really is that simple. And given the track record that leftists have with censorship of speech (see Hitler, Stalin, Mao, #BlackLivesMatter, feminism or Angela Merkel herself), the "slipper slope" argument is entirely reasonable. Today, racist speech is banned. Tomorrow, sexist speech. Next week, posts on Facebook that are even slightly critical of the current German government (yes really, read our piece on Zuckerberg and Merkel working together to silence voices of dissent online).

If you think they can't and won't try this here, you're crazy.

If you think the "slippery slope" argument is mere fear-mongering... keep it mind what's happened with the "trans" movement. Watch below. This is 2015.