Today's class: what are hate crimes and hate speech?

Watch what you say on the internet. That's not because you could be wrong, mocked or humiliated by a detailed fisking. It's not even because you could just say something plain dumb. Those faults are sub-priority these days: the real danger is the ubiquitous screams, threats and howls of the self-proclaimed "hate speech" monitors.

Now I was always taught "hate" was a strong word and that both "hate" and "bad" were as they did. If you perform a hateful act against someone such as causing them deliberate physical harm, that was self-evident hate. If you lied to someone - for example by sending an email claiming to be a deposed African president in order to scam a few hundred dollars from your gullible victim - that was bad.

But it appears my notions are outdated by progressive definitions of "hate". Nowadays my former example would only qualify as a "hate crime" if the victim was of a different ethnicity or sexuality or perhaps transgender (regardless of the orientation of the assailant) and the latter does not qualify as "bad" , only as an "offence".

The modernised versions of "hate speech" are being flagged across Twitter in their thousands. Take  the example of Katie Hopkins - a person I'd never heard of until about a month ago and already I'm sick of her - who commented on the news of a migrant boat sinking and nine-hundred passengers dying by saying we should burn African boats. The left-wing Twittersphere responded with furious indignation: not because of the deaths of innocents or even Katie's stupidity, you understand, but because Katie's comments were deemed anti-immigration and directed against a different race. The outpouring of anger and screams of "hate speech" followed by the customary demands of censorship following her comments was exponentially greater than the sympathy for the women and children who died in terror.

That was two days ago. Yesterday, when a nobody from a government-funded group that fights "fascism" (aka anyone who disagrees with them) stuck his cellphone in a septuagenarian's face, the pensioner slapped his hand away. Said phone-wielder immediately checked the non-incident was caught on camera before crying "assault" to the world via his Twitter page, mainly because the elderly man supported a political group that disagreed with the nobody. When this cowardly action was mocked, derided and verbally spat upon by other Twitter users, the young man recovered from the "assault" to scream "homophobia" backed up by claims of "hate crime" , "report to police" (the tweets, not the non-assault) and "the face of hate", etc. from supporters. The pensioner was cautioned by police, no doubt conscious of the watchful eye of the politically correct.  Suggestions the young man's  actions and outcry were politically motivated continue to be swatted away with screams of "hate speech".

It gets better. Did you know that singing the national anthem is a greater act of hate than, say, rape? It's true. We know this because London's Metro newspaper gleefully published a letter this week in response to outpourings of letters confirming various local acts of "racism" and "hate speech" in its pages. The letter opened with the line: "I have also been the victim of hate speech.". This shocking revelation went as such: a man got on the tube train, looked at the letter writer and her child...and sung the British national anthem.

If you're confused, the writer explains where the crime occurred and if you've been paying attention, you can already guess: yes, the letter writer was non-white and the singer was white. It's just as well she informed us of this to clarify exactly when singing a song becomes a greater crime than stabbing a person of the same race. The writer also mentioned: "Perhaps I should have sung along [with the national anthem], I know every word, I'm not sure he did." I'm not sure the singer knew every word of 'the national anthem' either, since we don't have a British national anthem.

Now, Is it possible the man on the train was being obnoxious and cruel? Yes. I've felt that when a Vietnamese boy told me: "Get out of my country", when a barman in Hong Kong called me and my friends "ghosts" or when a prejudiced slur was said to my two-year-old son in South-East Asia. We all survived, nobody was mentally scarred, no police time was used and the word "hate" was never invoked.

The list of hate crimes is endless, but luckily we have an equally infinite number of self-appointed thought police bringing them to justice. Just peruse any political disagreement on Twitter and it won't be long before someone whistles for the hate police. Along with ';racism', the word 'hate' stands to be the most exploited, overused and abused term in cyberspace and political discourse, it has become a real-life form of Newspeak, protecting the intellectually lazy, insecure and downright stupid while belittling true victims of hate by relegating them to tools of propaganda.

Perhaps you disagree with me on all of this. Just make sure you are of the same ethnic group and sexuality before sending me threats. Hate crimes are sure to gather a greater punishment.