Why Hate Speech Laws Backfire

Here's a brutal irony about regulating hate speech: Such laws often end up hurting the very people they are supposed to protect.
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That's one of the central lessons in Jacob Mchangama's important new book, Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media. Mchangama heads up the Danish think tank Justitia. He's worried about a proposal that would make hate speech a crime under European Union (EU) law and give bureaucrats in Brussels sweeping powers to prosecute people spewing venom at religious and ethnic minorities, members of the LGBT+ community, women, and others. 

Europe's history with such laws argues against them. In the 1920s, Germany's Weimar Republic strictly regulated the press and invoked emergency powers to crack down on Nazi speech. It censored and prosecuted the editor of the anti-Semitic Nazi paper Der Stürmer, Julius Streicher, who used his trial as a platform for spreading his views and his imprisonment as a way of turning himself into a martyr and his cause into a crusade. When the Nazis took power in the early '30s, Mchangama stresses, they expanded existing laws and precedents to shut down dissent and freedom of assembly.

Contemporary scholarship suggests that there can be a "backlash effect" when governments shut down speech, leading otherwise moderate people to embrace fringe beliefs. Mchangama points to a 2017 study published in the European Journal of Political Research that concluded extremism in Western Europe was fueled in part by "extensive public repression of radical right actors and opinions."

In 1965, the United Kingdom passed a law banning "incitement to racial hatred," but one of the very first people prosecuted under it was a black Briton who called whites "vicious and nasty people" in a speech. More recently, Mchangama notes that radical feminists in England "have been charged with offending LGBT+ people because they insist there are biological differences between the sexes. In France, 'an LGBT+ rights organization was fined for calling an opponent of same-sex marriage a 'homophobe.'" 

"Once the principle of free speech is abandoned," warns Mchangama, "any minority can end up being targeted rather than protected by laws against hatred and offense."

That's what happened in Canada in the 1990s after the Supreme Court there ruled that words and images that "degrade" women should be banned. The decision was based in part on the legal theories of feminist author Andrea Dworkin, whose books on why pornography should be banned were briefly seized by Canadian customs agents under the laws she helped to inspire.

First Amendment rights are still popular in the United States, with 91 percent of us in a recent survey agreeing that "protecting free speech is an important part of American democracy." But 60 percent of us also said that the government should prohibit people from sharing a racist or bigoted idea.

Hearing hateful words and ideas outrages and discomforts most of us, but Mchangama's history of free speech underscores that state suppression can grant those words and ideas more power and influence. And that the best antidote to hate in a free and open society is not to hide from it but to openly—and persuasively—confront it.

Written by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Regan Taylor.

[marcusmoonstein]

The worst thing about censorship is [REDACTED] because it leads to [REDACTED] and [REDACTED].

[johnl]

The idea of making emotions and beliefs illegal is horrid. The idea of making expression of attitudes illegal is horrid (and common in Europe, Canada, N Zealand, Australia)

[HardcoreFourSix]

Hateful speech, ideas, images are disturbing, but should not be banned by law. "Hate crimes" are another foolish attempt to address the motivation of the perpetrator. Law should focus on the harm done or attempted, not on the mindset of the person doing the bad act.

[fearthehoneybadger]

The people in power change and it's they who decide what constitutes hate speech. In other words, your decision to ban "hate speech" can come back to bite you.

[christianborgelt]

The iron law of prohibition also applies to speech: as speech is regulated more intensely, the potency of prohibited speech increases.

[canisblack]

The thing about Hate Speech is that it's not about hateful speech, it's about giving the government the power to regulate and decide what their people can say. That's it. It's all about power.

[NooneStaar]

If something can't be stated, it can't be debunked.

[rolandserna]

If you give the government the power to ban "hate speech" or whatever, then there's no incentive for them to stop there. Our feelings getting hurt is the price to pay for being able to say whatever we want.

[catinbeanie]

It reminds me of a great quote whom I cant recall who said it off the top of my head.

"Freedom of speech protects the ideas we abhor, for without it we would lose the ideas we cherish"

[MA-naconitor]

Criminalizing (and even stigmatizing) speech ends up prohibiting the possibility of ever talking about controversial (be they important) subjects. A person being offended by speech, doesn't validate censorship, due to the nature of offence, it being subjective. Censorship has, and always will be enforced by the cultural- or ruling elite.

*Hate speech is free speech.*

[Dragon-Lady]

I prefer it when bigots (of all stripes) speak their mind. Makes it easier to know who to avoid being around. Don't want to rent me an apartment because I'm bisexual? Put up a sign on your office door saying so. Don't want to do business with me because I'm Christian or because I'm white? Say it out loud. You're not somebody I want to give my hard-earned dollars to. Don't want to hire me because I'm a woman? Say so in your want ad. You're not somebody I want to profit from my labor. So shout it out, loud and clear. I don't want you to suffer because of your views; I just want to know who to avoid associating with.

[agrameroldoctane_]

Ask anybody from former communist run countries. All those countries had laws about "verbal crimes".

[Fred_Bender]

Hate is human .Speech is human .You can't stop it with laws . Speech is not violence no matter how unpleasant it may seem to different people .

[droptozro]

Ignore "hate" speech or engage with it critically. Banning it(if "it" can be defined) will only cause death in the end because it all comes at the cost of a government with a gun in your face in the end.

[jebremocampo]

Hate speech is just another way of saying I don't like what your opinion

[runlevelone]

When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say. Also, forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest so the more Gov cracks down on an idea the more people are interested in it that otherwise wouldn't want anything to do with it.

[dravenlee]

It's OK to hate things. It's not OK to act upon them. Think of all the countless tweets that went out saying the most vile things possible about Donald Trump. If you had hate speech laws, all of those people would be silenced. I think in general, you have emotional problems if you truly hate something or someone but I don't want it to be illegal. If you make hate speech laws only around say race, you just send those people underground where they can't be confronted and opposed. Fight speech with speech.

[auntywoke]

If I hate most governments and say so is that hate speech?

[chapdogb]

Not enough of the new adults were taught about 'The Friends of Voltaire' authored by Steven Tallentyre aka Evalyn Hall in 1906. Her famous quotes should be an epiphany and golden rule for any people of a democratic nation to live by.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

[Person-rouh]

'That's not hate speech, Michael.'

'Well /I/ hated it!'

The Office satire hits hard.