Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Character and intent is what matters. This. I recently ran up against a filter on Reddit where I used a phrase that I was completely unaware of. My account was flagged for hate speech. The comment had no ill-intent. The problem with language is that we want individual words to have inherent meaning but as people adopt phrases to identify a movement, those meanings get carried along for the ride. eg: until recently,…
I find it highly unlikely that Scott Adams is a "dark dog whistle" kinda guy. At best the most I'd believe would be that "some people who Scott Adams pissed off now like to say that when he says X he actually means Y".
Suppose for the sake of argument the poll is legitimate, and suppose he wasn't aware that the phrase is a 4chan propaganda slogan.. I think he still grievously erred when he decided to judge all black people by the opinions of only a portion of black people, as though black were a political affiliation that people can enter or leave at will. But it's not a political affiliation, it's an ethnic group. You legitimately can't claim that an entire ethnic group is a "hate group" because whatever% of them believe hateful things, even if that statistic is true. It's not as though the remaining% can disassociate themselves from the ethnic group, it isn't a voluntary association. I think his failure to distinguish an ethnic classification (involuntary association) from an ideological classification (voluntary association) is where he really went off the rails with no plausible deniability.
I interpret this whole affair as: he's rich, wants to retire, and decided now is as good a time as any to finally speak his mind. He lost his inhibitions.