How to Beat “Hate Speech”?

Tom Slater:

One month on from the Charlie Hebdo massacre, free speech is still under attack. The outpouring of public revulsion at the bloody silencing of ‘blasphemous’ cartoonists after the attack was inspiring. It was a visceral display of support for the right to speak one’s mind – as crudely, offensively and blasphemously as one chooses – that has been absent for some time. But deep-rooted ambivalences have remained – and now these look to be exploited by policymakers looking to institute blasphemy laws of their own.

When it comes to cracking down on aberrant ideas, Europe has long been leading the way. Restrictions on hate speech are in place across Europe. Enshrined in the UK’s Public Order and Racial and Religious Hatred acts, and mirrored across the continent, these are binding, state sanctions on speech and expression that have escaped the recent flurry of support for free speech….

But, more crucially, cracking down on vile speech does nothing to tackle the vile ideas which fuel it. This is particularly true of hate-speech legislation, which, by definition, only concerns itself with the emotional, rather than ideological, content, of what is being said. Instead of tackling backward ideas, hate-speech laws pathologise them, consigning them to the irrational loony bin of political discourse rather than dissecting them and dismantling them in full view.

It’s a sad truth that, today, holding firm on liberal, Western values has become conflated with a blithe complicity with prejudice. The mantra of hate-speech laws is ‘intolerance of intolerance’, and this Orwellian idea has debilitated progressive politics. If we want to tackle the rise of anti-Semitism we need to tolerate speech – no matter how odious – while stiffening our resolve to challenge it. Rather than leave it to the censors of the state, it’s time we got a little angry, and argumentative, ourselves.