February 16, 2008
Is hate speech good for us?
Dan Gardner of the Ottawa Citizen makes a case:
[...]The hate speech debate is at full boil again. To some, the question is whether human rights commissions should be involved, or whether the Criminal Code prohibition is protection enough. For others -- that's me -- the question runs deeper: Whatever the mechanism, should hate speech be banned?
What's curious to me is how abstract this debate tends to be. One side - generally the left - insists hate speech is destructive and worthless and therefore must be forbidden. The other - conservatives, mostly [here's Damian's view] - extols the virtues of free speech and insists that civil liberty must trump other considerations.
What's missing is evidence.
[...]
Which brings me back to gay couples in Kansas.
Why Kansas? Why gay couples? Because the fiercest, loudest, most energetic anti-gay bigot on the planet lives in Kansas. His name is Fred Phelps.
...the primary focus of the Westboro Baptists' boundless energies has always been Kansas. Literally every day of every week of every month and year, Phelps's followers can be found waving disgusting signs and shouting vile slogans somewhere on the streets of Topeka.
For all this the First Amendment is responsible. None of the restrictions on hate speech that exist in Canada would be constitutional in the United States. So Fred Phelps is free to spew hate to his miserable heart's content.
As I wrote in 2004, that makes Kansas a natural experiment in the effects of hate speech.
Has Phelps generated support? Did he poison the climate? Are gays worse off now than before he launched his campaign?
The answer to all these questions is no. Kansas is rock-ribbed conservative country but Kansans despise Fred Phelps. He has virtually no support. He has no converts to show for all his effort and today, as always, his congregation almost exclusively consists of his extended family. Phelps happily acknowledged this to me. "Blessed are you when all men shall revile you and say all manner of evil falsely," he said with a smile.
That's not to say Phelps's hate hasn't had any effect. It certainly has.
The people of Topeka rallied. They organized. They raised awareness. Bigotry toward gays was exposed and talked about for the first time and even conservative Christian churches stepped up to denounce it. Fourteen years after Phelps started his crusade, a lesbian activist personally targeted by Phelps was appointed to fill a vacant seat on Topeka city council.
[...]
One problem with this line of argument: what do you do when you have real evidence that hate speech does lead to violence, injury, even death? As in Germany before and after the Nazis came to power. I suppose separate laws on incitement to illegal action, rather than the hateful content itself of the speech, might deal with the problem. But what if one can clearly demonstrate that hateful content in fact did lead individuals to such illegal actions?
More after the jump.
Mark C.
I've quoted John Stuart Mill on this subject many times before and I'll keep doing it until someone pays attention: "The peculiar evil of silencing an expression of an opinion is that it robs the human race, posterity as well as the existing generation," Mill wrote in On Liberty.
"If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity to exchange error for truth; if wrong, they lose what is almost as great a benefit - the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."
Hate speech is a jarring collision with error; the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth it can provide is of inestimable worth. It should not be banned.
Dan Gardner writes Wednesday, Friday and
Saturday. E-mail:
dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com