Canterbury Mornings

Chris Lynch spoke to Melissa Derby a University of Canterbury academic and spokesperson for the Free Speech Coalition following the news that far right Canadian speakers Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux have been granted visas. Melissa says that while she personally doesn't agree with their views and finds them repugnant we need to be really careful about what we refer to as hate speech as it isn't simply speech we don't like or that we find offensive, the threshold has to be really high so it protects our free speech.Melissa went on to say it’s crazy how some on the extreme left say they’re against racism while making extraordinarily racist comments against people based on their ethnicity and it seems to be acceptable if it’s against white people. She says this is dangerous, and evidence of a real lack of critical thinking in our society.