Combat hate speech with battle of ideas, not laws such as 18C, by Frank Furedi.
Throughout the Western world, laws against hate speech have emerged as the weapon of choice for campaigners demanding recognition for their cause and for moralists determined to regulate the public’s behaviour. Laws such as section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act are designed to protect people’s dignity. It is an expressive law designed to send out a message about how the public should communicate and behave.
The social engineering ambitions of Australia’s hate speech laws were spelled out a few years ago by two of its academic supporters. Luke McNamara and Katharine Gelber noted that hate speech laws were about “setting a standard about what’s not acceptable”. They added that “standards are worth proclaiming no matter how many times we fail to live up to them”.
Unfortunately, such laws do not simply set standards but police people’s opinions. They determine which opinions are legitimate and which are not. They decide what is a legitimate political statement and what is hate speech. These are unusual laws that censor verbal communication and regulate behaviour. Yet experience shows that one individual’s hate speech is another’s political opinion.
The left’s drive to harvest votes by highlighting people’s identities then pushing for extra rights or privileges for those identities — the electoral coalition of the fringes — is behind this. They love group politics, but it merely trivializes everything and tramples over individuals.
The main driver of the crusade against hate speech is identity politics. The politicisation of identity — be it cultural or lifestyle — has fostered a climate where sensitivity to a perceived slight often serves as a prelude to the demand that “something must be done” to punish the harasser.
Sadly, the preoccupation with group injury is one of the most visible features of identity politics. Identity politics perceives such slights as a form of harassment. …
What matters is not the intention of the accused but the sense of injury proclaimed by the accuser. That is why legislation against hate speech constitutes an unprecedented subjective turn in law-making. In previous times, blasphemy laws punished insults to the dignity of God. Hate speech penalises affronts to the dignity of the ordinary mortal being. At least the charge of blasphemy could draw on the written authority of the Bible. The accusation of hate speech is based on the capricious subjectivity of individual feelings and emotions. …
Hate speech laws not only constrain freedom but also treat citizens as immature children who lack the moral resources to hear hateful opinions and not be swayed by them. From the standpoint of an enlightened democracy, the censoring of hate is a far worse evil than the expression of hate. Why? Because it prevents people from judging and evaluating for themselves how to respond to the views — however prejudiced — of their fellow citizens. …
Laws against hate speech violate the true spirit of democracy. Instead of offering genuine protection to individuals and groups targeted by hate, they encourage the illusion that there is an administrative solution to a cultural problem.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
