Jump to content

Hate speech: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
Line 44: Line 44:
However, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech freedom of speech] has crucial limitations under the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_principle Harm Principle] due to fostering societal disorder and psychological damage. Under the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_principle Harm Principle], freedom of speech can be limited if speech causes provable harm to others or oneself, delineating between language that only causes mere offense.
However, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech freedom of speech] has crucial limitations under the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_principle Harm Principle] due to fostering societal disorder and psychological damage. Under the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_principle Harm Principle], freedom of speech can be limited if speech causes provable harm to others or oneself, delineating between language that only causes mere offense.


Forms of speech that can evolve into hate speech are not limited to spoken word and include any nature of “attacks [that are] printed, published, pasted up, or posted on the Internet — expressions that become a permanent or semipermanent part of the visible environment in which our lives, and the lives of members of vulnerable minorities, have to be lived" Waldron, Jeremy. The Harm in Hate Speech. Harvard University Press, 2014.
Forms of speech that can evolve into hate speech are not limited to spoken word and include any nature of “attacks [that are] printed, published, pasted up, or posted on the Internet — expressions that become a permanent or semipermanent part of the visible environment in which our lives, and the lives of members of vulnerable minorities, have to be lived" <ref> Waldron, Jeremy. The Harm in Hate Speech. Harvard University Press, 2014. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674416864&content=reviews</ref>. Under this definition, it follows that any such manifestations of hatred that become an entrenched form of violence in daily life are types of hate speech. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Waldron Jeremy Waldron]’s work on defining the overlap between free speech and hate speech summarizes this violence as involving “a characterization that denigrates people" <ref> Waldron, Jeremy. The Harm in Hate Speech. Harvard University Press, 2014.
<ref>https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674416864&content=reviews</ref>. Under this definition, it follows that any such manifestations of hatred that become an entrenched form of violence in daily life are types of hate speech. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Waldron Jeremy Waldron]’s work on defining the overlap between free speech and hate speech summarizes this violence as involving “a characterization that denigrates people" <ref> Waldron, Jeremy. The Harm in Hate Speech. Harvard University Press, 2014.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674416864&content=reviews</ref> and makes explicitly those who fall within historically marginalized groups increasingly vulnerable. Essentially, free speech violates the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution First Amendment] and transcends into the specially defined category of hate speech when it has aspects that infringe upon [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill John Stuart Mill]’s [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_principle Harm Principle].
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674416864&content=reviews</ref> and makes explicitly those who fall within historically marginalized groups increasingly vulnerable. Essentially, free speech violates the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution First Amendment] and transcends into the specially defined category of hate speech when it has aspects that infringe upon [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill John Stuart Mill]’s [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_principle Harm Principle].


Revision as of 01:54, 7 December 2021

Part of a series on
Discrimination
Forms
Attributes
Social
Religious
Ethnic/national
Manifestations
Policies
Countermeasures
Related topics

Hate speech is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation".[1] Hate speech is "usually thought to include communications of animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, colour, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation".[2] A legal definition of hate speech varies from country to country.

There has been much debate over freedom of speech, hate speech and hate speech legislation.[3] The laws of some countries describe hate speech as speech, gestures, conduct, writing, or displays that incite violence or prejudicial actions against a group or individuals on the basis of their membership in the group, or that disparage or intimidate a group or individuals on the basis of their membership in the group. The law may identify a group based on certain characteristics.[4][5][6] In some countries, hate speech is not a legal term.[7] Additionally, in some countries, including the United States, much of what falls under the category of "hate speech" is constitutionally protected.[8][9] In other countries, a victim of hate speech may seek redress under civil law, criminal law, or both.

Hate speech laws

Main article: Hate speech laws by country

A majority of developed democracies have laws that restrict hate speech, including Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, India, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.[10] The United States does not have hate speech laws, since the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that laws criminalizing hate speech violate the guarantee to freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[9]

Laws against hate speech can be divided into two types: those intended to preserve public order and those intended to protect human dignity. The laws designed to protect public order require that a higher threshold be violated, so they are not often enforced. For example, a 1992 study found that only one person was prosecuted in Northern Ireland in the preceding 21 years for violating a law against incitement to religious violence. The laws meant to protect human dignity have a much lower threshold for violation, so those in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands tend to be more frequently enforced.[11]

The global nature of the internet makes it difficult to set limits or boundaries to cyberspace.[12] The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states that "any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence shall be prohibited by law".[13] The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) prohibits all incitement to racism.[14] Concerning the debate over how freedom of speech applies to the Internet, conferences concerning such sites have been sponsored by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.[15] "Direct and public incitement to commit genocide" is prohibited by the 1948 Genocide Convention.[16]

Pornography as Hate Speech

The link between pornography and hate speech features a debate about the freedom of expression and regulating those freedoms for the sake of preventing harm to women. Many feminist theorists have argued that pornography must be regulated by the government, a central feature of the Feminist sex wars of the 1970's, citing the idea that pornography constitutes harm for both the women participating in the filming of material and other women who are indirectly affected by widespread pornography consumption. Conversely, the U.S. Supreme Court declares pornography to be a legal form of free speech that is protected by the First Amendment. A narrow class of pornography is prohibited under the Obscenity law and is not protected by the First Amendment, specifically pornography that does not offer serious political, social, literary, or artistic value for society as a whole[17]. However, the application of the obscenity law has been ambiguous and sporadically varies as seen in cases such as Rosen v. the United States, Roth v. the United States, and Miller v. California. Currently, the Miller test is the primary legal test used to determine whether court-presented material is obscene.

Indianapolis Ordinance

The Indianapolis anti-pornography ordinance was created by feminist theorist and law professor Catherine Mackinnon and Andrea Dworkin, a fellow feminist author and activist.[18] The ordinance defined a very specific form of pornography that depicted graphic sexual subordination of women and portrayed them as sexual objects that were pleasured by abuse, mutilation, rape, and humiliation in addition to other features of pornography that further power disparities between the sexes. Mackinnon and Dworkin strongly advocated for the passage of this civil rights law based on the Fourteenth Amendment which guarantees equal protection. In her book Feminism Unmodified, Mackinnon in particular cites the laxness of the obscenity law and its prior ambiguous uses to further her point regarding mainstream pornography. Even if stereotypical pornography does not fit the definition of obscene as defined by the law, it can still convey the message of male dominance and female objectification that sustains and creates gender inequality therfore qualifying prohibition under the Fourteenth Amendment.[19]

The ordinance was in effect for less than seven months because of the law case imposed by American Booksellers Association v. Hudnut which led to the declaration of pornography as a protected form of free speech by the Supreme Court.[20] The American Booksellers Association distributed pornographic books and films which were outlawed by the ordinance, resulting in the challenging of the law based on its constitutionality as related to the First Amendment.

State-sanctioned hate speech

Main article: Hate speech actions by country

A few states, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Rwanda Hutu factions, actors in the Yugoslav Wars and Ethiopia have been described as spreading official hate speech or incitement to genocide.[21][22][23]

Internet

Main article: Online hate speech
Virgin SIM card in Poland with the slogan of the campaign against hate speech "Words have power, use them wisely"

On 31 May 2016, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, jointly agreed to a European Union code of conduct obligating them to review "[the] majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech" posted on their services within 24 hours.[24]

Prior to this in 2013, Facebook, with pressure from over 100 advocacy groups including the Everyday Sexism Project, agreed to change their hate speech policies after data released regarding content that promoted domestic and sexual violence against women led to the withdrawal of advertising by 15 large companies.[25][26]

Companies that have hate speech policies include Facebook and YouTube. In 2018 a post containing a section of the United States Declaration of Independence that labels Native Americans "merciless Indian savages" was labeled hate speech by Facebook and removed from its site.[27] In 2019, video-sharing platform YouTube demonetized channels, such as U.S. radio host Jesse Lee Peterson, under their hate speech policy.[28]

Hate Speech versus Free Speech

The concept of freedom of speech encapsulates the principle that individuals can vocalize varying ideas without the potential of censorship or retaliation. This concept is often supported by liberal constitutionalists who argue that the First Amendment protects freedom of speech in the U.S. Constitution and limitations on speech are unconstitutional [29]. This belief is supported by liberal constitutionalists’ insistence that freedom of speech fosters a marketplace of ideas, in which individuals can articulate their opinions and ideas freely. Under this viewpoint, freedom of speech without limitations is justified due to the Millian marketplace of ideas fostering a society that values consensus through analyzing statements with differing veracity [30].

However, freedom of speech has crucial limitations under the Harm Principle due to fostering societal disorder and psychological damage. Under the Harm Principle, freedom of speech can be limited if speech causes provable harm to others or oneself, delineating between language that only causes mere offense.

Forms of speech that can evolve into hate speech are not limited to spoken word and include any nature of “attacks [that are] printed, published, pasted up, or posted on the Internet — expressions that become a permanent or semipermanent part of the visible environment in which our lives, and the lives of members of vulnerable minorities, have to be lived" [31]. Under this definition, it follows that any such manifestations of hatred that become an entrenched form of violence in daily life are types of hate speech. Jeremy Waldron’s work on defining the overlap between free speech and hate speech summarizes this violence as involving “a characterization that denigrates people" [32] and makes explicitly those who fall within historically marginalized groups increasingly vulnerable. Essentially, free speech violates the First Amendment and transcends into the specially defined category of hate speech when it has aspects that infringe upon John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle.

Renowned philosopher and feminist professor Rae Langton discussed J.L. Austin’s ideas of Speech Act Theory to further the claim that a silencing speech act is a form of hate speech, as it compromises someone else’s personal right to free speech. This is especially relevant in personal autonomy or civic duty, where a silenced or silencing speech act is harmful, consequently making it a form of hate speech.

See also

References

  1. ^ "hate speech". dictionary.cambridge.org.
  2. ^ Brown-Sica, Margaret; Beall, Jeffrey (2008). "Library 2.0 and the Problem of Hate Speech". Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship. 9 (2). Retrieved 22 June 2021.
  3. ^ "Herz, Michael and Peter Molnar, eds. 2012. The content and context of hate speech. Cambridge University Press" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 July 2018. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  4. ^ "Criminal Justice Act 2003". www.legislation.gov.uk. Retrieved 3 January 2017.
  5. ^ An Activist's Guide to The Yogyakarta Principles (PDF) (Report). 14 November 2010. p. 125. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 January 2017.
  6. ^ Kinney, Terry A. (5 June 2008). "Hate Speech and Ethnophaulisms". The International Encyclopedia of Communication. doi:10.1002/9781405186407.wbiech004. ISBN 9781405186407.
  7. ^ "CNN's Chris Cuomo: First Amendment doesn't cover hate speech". Archived from the original on 24 July 2019. Retrieved 12 April 2016.
  8. ^ Stone, Geoffrey R. (1994). "Hate Speech and the U.S. Constitution." Archived 27 April 2018 at the Wayback Machine East European Constitutional Review, vol. 3, pp. 78-82.
  9. ^ a b Volokh, Eugene (5 May 2015). "No, there's no "hate speech" exception to the First Amendment". The Washington Post. Retrieved 25 June 2017.
  10. ^ Howard, Jeffrey W. (2019). "Free Speech and Hate Speech". Annual Review of Political Science. 22: 93–109. doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-051517-012343.
  11. ^ Bell, Jeannine (Summer 2009). "Restraining the heartless: racist speech and minority rights". Indiana Law Journal. 84: 963–79. SSRN 1618848. Retrieved 21 February 2021.
  12. ^ Laub, Zachary. "Hate Speech on Social Media: Global Comparisons". The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  13. ^ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 20
  14. ^ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Article 4
  15. ^ "Report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the use of the Internet for purposes of incitement to racial hatred, racist propaganda and xenophobia, and on ways of promoting international cooperation in this area" (Document). United Nations. 27 April 2001. {{cite document}}: Unknown parameter |access-date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |url= ignored (help)
  16. ^ "Incitement to Genocide in International Law". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  17. ^ "Obscenity". LII / Legal Information Institute. Retrieved 7 December 2021.
  18. ^ Tourek, Mary (4 July 2013). "Indianapolis Anti-Pornography Ordinance Signed". Today in Civil Liberties History. Retrieved 7 December 2021.
  19. ^ MacKinnon, Catharine A. (1987). Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-29874-3.
  20. ^ "American Booksellers Association, Inc. v. Hudnut | Case Brief for Law Students". Retrieved 7 December 2021.
  21. ^ Cotler, Irwin (2012). Herz, Michael; Molnar, Peter (eds.). "State-Sanctioned Incitement to Genocide". The Content and Context of Hate Speech: 430–455. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139042871.030. ISBN 9781139042871.
  22. ^ Dozier, Kimberly (10 February 2020). "Saudi Arabia Rebuffs Trump Administration's Requests to Stop Teaching Hate Speech in Schools". Time.
  23. ^ de Waal, Alex (17 September 2021). "The world watches as Abiy loses it — and risks losing Ethiopia, too". World Peace Foundation. Archived from the original on 21 September 2021. Retrieved 17 November 2021.
  24. ^ Hern, Alex (31 May 2016). "Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft sign EU hate speech code". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 June 2016.
  25. ^ Sara C Nelson (28 May 2013). "#FBrape: Will Facebook Heed Open Letter Protesting 'Endorsement of Rape & Domestic Violence'?". The Huffington Post UK. Retrieved 29 May 2013.
  26. ^ Rory Carroll (29 May 2013). "Facebook gives way to campaign against hate speech on its pages". The Guardian UK. Retrieved 29 May 2013.
  27. ^ "Facebook labels declaration of independence as 'hate speech'". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 March 2021.
  28. ^ Re, Gregg (5 June 2019). "YouTube ends monetization of conservative commentator Steven Crowder's channel, several others after left-wing outrage". Fox News. Retrieved 11 March 2021.
  29. ^ Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. 1859. https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/mill/liberty.pdf
  30. ^ Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. 1859. https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/mill/liberty.pdf
  31. ^ Waldron, Jeremy. The Harm in Hate Speech. Harvard University Press, 2014. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674416864&content=reviews
  32. ^ Waldron, Jeremy. The Harm in Hate Speech. Harvard University Press, 2014. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674416864&content=reviews
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hate_speech&oldid=1059037389"