Rocker Ted Nugent defends himself and the comments he made about the passing of Foo Fighter’s Taylor Hawkins, saying that he was being compassionate and empathetic, and what he said a few days ago was nothing about hate speech, but love speech, after he paid tribute to the late drummer on April 1st.
Here’s what Nugent said once again:
“When the great drummer, and I understand he was a great, fun guy and a loving husband and a loving father, Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters, when he died, we did a tribute to him here on ‘The Nightly Nuge’, and I played a very emotional love song that had come out of me for my brother John when I lost him, showing great compassion, showing great empathy for the band, for his family, for his fans, showing nothing but love but identifying the intentional abuse of substances as being selfish.
”Well, the tsunami of attacks against me for being compassionate and empathetic and supportive and identifying a booger in someone’s nose, labeled as ‘hate speech,’ it’s unbelievable. If that speech wasn’t ‘love speech,’ I don’t know what would be love speech.
”But love speech sincerely and genuinely critiquing or even identifying something you disagree with or that is glar[ing]ly dangerous and irresponsible as hate speech, that’s a manifestation of total cultural abandonment of the good will and decency and genuine support for your fellow man that you and I were raised in.
“So everybody out there, speak your mind, be a critical thinker, articulate yourself honestly, and if they call it ‘hate speech,’ they’re the haters. Those who accuse us of hate speech are the real haters. And I couldn’t be more confident of that.”