Free Speech and Hate Speech

Abstract

Should hate speech be banned? This article contends that the debate on this question must be disaggregated into discrete analytical stages, lest its participants continue to talk past one another. The first concerns the scope of the moral right to freedom of expression, and whether hate speech falls within the right's protective ambit. If it does, hate speech bans are necessarily unjust. If not, we turn to the second stage, which assesses whether speakers have moral duties to refrain from hate speech. The article canvasses several possible duties from which such a duty could be derived, including duties not to threaten, harass, offend, defame, or incite. If there is a duty to refrain from hate speech, it is yet a further question whether the duty should actually be enforced. This third stage depends on pragmatic concerns involving epistemic fallibility, the abuse of state power, and the benefits of counter-speech over coercion.

The Joint Ministerial Decree (SKB) of Islamic Defenders Front (FPI): Quo Vadis The Rule of Law and Human Rights?

“…Thus, this doctrine has the potential to insure the right to assembly and association of mass organizations. This is also reinforced by the view that no matter how good and noble the goals of the government are, the government is still a political institution whose policies and decisions cannot be separated from the social, political, economic, and power circles around them (Howard, 2019). Therefore, no matter how good the intentions and actions of the government are in implementing the militant democracy doctrine; the government still has the potential to make majoritarian decisions that have the potential to use militant democracy doctrine as a means to "kill" various parties who are against the government.…”

Online Xenophobic Behavior Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Consider the Criminal Code of Canada: there are three separate hatred-related offenses [5]: section 318 (advocating genocide), section 319(1) (publicly inciting hatred likely to lead to a breach of the peace), and section 319(2) (willfully promoting hatred). Although the details differ, the legislation of this sort exists in the preponderance of developed democracies, including Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, South Africa, Sweden, and New Zealand [13]. Yet such legislation would be struck down as unconstitutional in the United States, as an attack on free speech.…”

Introducing the Gab Hate Corpus: Defining and applying hate-based rhetoric to social media posts at scale

“…Historically, hate groups and hate crime have primarily been discussed within the legal domain, centering on discussions of whether acts of hate, including violence, intimidation, and defamation, are protected as free speech or ought to be criminalized (J. W. Howard, 2019;Sellars, 2016). The term "hate speech" was coined fairly recently in reference to a particular set of offenses under the law: Matsuda (1989) argued that "the active dissemination of racist propaganda means that citizens are denied personal security and liberty as they go about their daily lives" (p. 2321).…”

“…Online hate speech, which possesses marked differences from offline hate speech in terms of legal precedent (Gagliardone et al, 2015), has begun to be policed not by countries, but by technology companies, in part due to inconsistent free speech protections with regards to hateful or offensive language. In the U.S., which prides itself on its freedoms, particularly those of speech (J. W. Howard, 2019), the "lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous and the insulting or 'fighting' words" (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 1942) are prohibited, but what is commonly referred to as hate speech is viewed as the expression of a political idea (RAV v. St. Paul, 1992). In contrast, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, and others (see J. W. Howard, 2019) protect fewer classes of prejudicial expression.…”

“…In the U.S., which prides itself on its freedoms, particularly those of speech (J. W. Howard, 2019), the "lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous and the insulting or 'fighting' words" (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 1942) are prohibited, but what is commonly referred to as hate speech is viewed as the expression of a political idea (RAV v. St. Paul, 1992). In contrast, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, and others (see J. W. Howard, 2019) protect fewer classes of prejudicial expression. For example, Germany's "Volksverhetzung" ("incitement to hatred") law prohibits "Assaults [on] the human dignity of others", including "den [ying] or downplay [ing] an act committed under the rule of National Socialism" and "violat [ing] the dignity of the victims by approving of, glorifying, or justifying National Socialist rule of arbitrary force" (German Criminal Code, 1998, Sec.…”