Analysis of Hate Speech and Hate Crimes From A Social Psychological Perspective: A Review

Mapping the scientific knowledge and approaches to defining and measuring hate crime, hate speech, and hate incidents: A systematic review.

The overallaim of the review is to map the definitions and measurement tools used to capture the whole spectrum of hate motivated behaviors, including hate crime, hate speech and hate incidents. This will benefit the field of hate studies by providing a baseline that can inform the building of cumulative knowledge and comparative research. The first review objective is to map definitions of hate crime, hate incidents, hate speech, and surrogate terms. Specific research questions underpinning this objective are: (a) How are hate crimes, hate speech and hate incidents defined in the academic, legal, policy, and programming literature?; (b) What are the concepts, parameters and criteria that qualify a behavior as being hate crime, hate incident or hate speech?; and (c) What are the most common concepts, parameters and criteria found across definitions? What are the differences between definitions and the elements they contain? The second review objective is to map the tools used to measure the prevalence of hate crime, hate incidents, hate speech, and surrogate terms. Specific research questions underpinning this objective are: (a) How are definitions operationalised to measure hate crimes, hate speech, and hate incidents?; and (b) How valid and reliable are these measures?

The subject of the research is criminal law rules that provide for criminal liability for hate crimes and the judicial decisions of the European Court of Human Rights on hate crimes. The purpose of the article is to confirm or refute the hypothesis that a unified approach to the definition of the legal concept of hate speech and the limits of its application is nec-essary. This approach must be based on the legal positions of the European Court of Hu-man Rights The research methodology includes analysis and interpretation of court decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, as well as a dialectical approach to the analysis of vari-ous points of view to the definition of extremist activity. The main results and scope of their application. The relevance of the research proposed for publication is due to the lack of uniform practice of applying the articles of the Russian Criminal Code on so-called "hate crimes" by Russian courts and the presence of signifi-cant contradictions in the positions of the European Court of Human Rights and the state position of the Russian Federation in defining key concepts in this area that are extremely important for criminal procedure and administrative activities. The paper considers scien-tific and practical attempts to define "hate crimes" in the global and regional human rights systems, basic recommendations of the UN on countering such crimes, and offers an interpretation of the term hate speech in relation to the related criminological concept of hate crime. The text provides statistical data describing the level of such crime and the practice of the ECHR in this area, mentions a list of criteria according to which "hate crimes" can be motivated by language differences, gender, sexual orientation and other characteristics, as well as criteria that distinguish hate speech from freedom of expres-sion, and suggests decriminalization of part 1 of article 282 of the Russian Criminal Code. Conclusions. It is necessary to unify the concepts of "hate crimes" (and the practice of their application) in the direction of, in particular, reducing the number of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights against the Russian Federation and increasing the level of legal protection of both the individual citizen of the Russian Federation and freedom of speech and expression.

Reviewed by: HATE: Why We Should Resist it with Free Speech, Not Censorship by Nadine Strossen Richard Ashby Wilson (bio) Nadine Strossen, HATE: Why We Should Resist it with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Oxford University Press 2018), ISBN: 9780190859121, 232 pages. Hate is trending. The sitting president of the United States regularly mobilizes his political constituency by vilifying Mexican immigrants as “criminals and rapists” who “infest” America, and by promoting a “zero tolerance” policy at the border that punitively separates children from their parents, including persons applying for asylum. There has been a resurgence in white nationalist ideology globally both in mainstream electoral politics and in ugly scenes on the streets of Charlottesville, Dresden, and Warsaw. In the United Kingdom, hate crimes spiked after the Brexit referendum and in the USA, there has been a steady rise in hate crimes against African-Americans, Muslims, immigrants and members of the LGBT community. Given this current paroxysm of populism, isn’t it high time we re-evaluated our commitment to freedom of expression and start contemplating new legislation to regulate discriminatory speech that targets vulnerable minorities? In HATE: Why We Should Resist it with Free Speech, Not Censorship, Nadine Strossen, former national President of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), offers a resounding defense of free speech and rejects attempts to suppress or ban speech that is constitutionally protected under the First Amendment. Free speech is the lifeblood of democratic deliberation, argues Strossen, and much hate speech in the United States, while offensive, is protected speech and should remain so. Current US law only suppresses speech that intentionally advocates imminent lawless action that is likely to occur, and even then, the regulation of speech must occur in a way that is consistent with the viewpoint (or content) neutrality principle which inhibits the state from disfavoring some opinions simply because they are disagreeable. Strossen starts with the observation that there is no clear and consistent definition of “hate speech,” which she puts in scare quotations throughout the book. Hate speech is not a term of legal art and it is simply wrong to assert, as some liberal politicians have, that “hate speech is not free speech.” In Strossen’s view, “the terms ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate crimes’ are simply deployed to demonize views people find offensive and to call for punishing a broad swathe of expression, including political discourse that is integral to our democracy.”1 Reviewing hate speech laws in the US and globally, Strossen concludes that it is simply not possible to draft hate speech laws that are not unduly vague, overbroad and counter-productive.2 Germany, France, and other European countries convict hundreds of defendants a year for offences as capacious as “incitement to hatred,” and Strossen documents a number of cases that seem disproportionately chilling of political [End Page 213] speech. They include the 2014 arrest of a British politician for publicly reading a Winston Churchill quote from 1899 that denounced the treatment of women in Muslim countries, and the conviction of a Danish man in 2016 who criticized “the ideology of Islam” on Facebook, and posted the statement, “Islam wants to abuse democracy in order to get rid of democracy.”3 She reminds us also of the long and repressive history of government censorship in the United States, including how, in the 1830s, Southern states banned abolitionist speech on the grounds that it had the potential to incite violence and rebellion. She observes that the Republican National Committee and some state legislatures have included the Black Lives Matter movement in resolutions condemning hate speech. HATE addresses the lively and fairly acrimonious campus hate speech debate currently taking place in the United States, and Strossen counsels faculty and students to confront provocative speakers at universities with “counterspeech” and vigorous opposing arguments, rather than to silence them with heckling and censorious campus hate speech codes.4 She points out that all the campus speech codes challenged in the courts by the ACLU have been struck down on First Amendment grounds and recommends that universities permit all speech that the government does not itself censor.5 Strossen does not countenance the view that merely being exposed to denigrating speech is in...

The rights of victims of hate speech and hate crimes are part of the rights in the system of support for victims and witnesses of criminal acts according to domestic legislation and international and European standards. Directive 2012/29/EU foresees an obligation for member states (and candidates) to take measures to establish a protection system. Effective protection implies not only a normative framework but also real protection. The specifics of hate speech and hate crimes also conditioned the adoption of Directive CM/Rec (2022) 16, which foresees measures to combat hate speech. Some expressions of hate speech require a criminal law response, including obligations of a preventive nature on the part of public authorities. That is why encouraging individuals and groups to report hate speech and hate crimes and providing protection is part of an evolving legal culture. Victims should also be supported by the media, which in modern society often has a decisive role, through compliance with legal regulations and reporting in accordance with the rules of the profession. Social networks are an indispensable element in the policy of preventing and fighting against hate speech and hate crimes, and their role is becoming increasingly important.

Previous research has examined prejudice from either a personality or a social psychology perspective. In the present study (N = 182), we combine these perspectives and examine whether ethnic prejudice is best explained by personality (Big-Five factors, social dominance orientation, and right-wing authoritarianism) or social psychology (ethnic group membership and identification) or by a combination of both approaches. Results from causal modeling and multiple regression analyses showed that prejudice was best explained by considering the combined influence of personality and social psychology constructs. The findings imply that it is necessary to combine various approaches to explain prejudice.

This paper aims to examine the evolution of the public discourse on hatred by analysing shifts in media coverage and attention to hate crimes and hate speech over time. The scholarly literature offers varying perspectives, and our study proposes two key frameworks for addressing hate crimes and speech directed at socially vulnerable populations. The first is the prosecutorial approach, which focuses on jurisdiction and the imperative of bringing perpetrators to justice. The second is the regulatory approach, which highlights voluntary regulations by platform companies and the role of online users. Through a topic modelling analysis of 8602 hate-related articles published in The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times between 2000 and 2021, our findings indicate a significant shift from the prosecutorial to the regulatory approach over time. This shift underscores the growing influence of online hate speech and the need for comprehensive strategies to address hate-related incidents. Additionally, we observe an expansion in the range of victims, with women increasingly being targeted by hate crimes and hateful expressions.

Putting the Toothpaste Back in the Tube: Against Online Hate Speech.

Notwithstanding over two decades of 'hate speech' legislation, hate crime regulation in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) is in its infancy, with limited criminal sanctions intro­duced in the last ten years. Across the ten jurisdictions, there are a variety of legislative, policy and practice responses to 'hate speech' (vilification) and prejudice-related violence (hate crime). This chapter will outline the institutional and cultural contexts in which these responses emerge as a criminal justice issue before proceeding to a critical discussion of antipodean hate crime governance. In Australia and New Zealand, as occurs elsewhere, the strategies employed by governments to remedy prejudice, intolerance and hatred occur on a continuum; ranging from global mission statements about multiculturalism/biculturalism, through to the enactment of civil anti-discrimination and anti-vilification legislation. These civil remedies have also been extended in some cases to criminal codes and sentencing legislation, and the enshrinement of individual rights to freedom from violence in human rights charters. A complete survey of all these strategies is not possible within the limits of this chapter. Instead, case studies from throughout the region are presented here as exemplars of the strategies employed, and issues and critical barriers faced, in reducing prejudice-related violence.

Background: Extremism poses a cross-border social problem, lacking a universally accepted definition. In principle, so-called hate crimes are specific types of criminal offences that cut across all types of extremism. We can even talk about their conceptual overlap. A special category of hate crimes is represented by so-called verbal attacks, known as hate speech, which are considered an abuse of freedom of expression from an international perspective as well as in jurisprudence of the European Court on Human Rights. As a result of such a perception, their criminal sanction comes into consideration. In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity of criminal law repression, another method of sanctioning hate crimes and hate speech is also possible, namely by administrative law. The existence of “multiple legal regulations” on extremism as delict caused a dual sanctioning system of extremism. It leads to application problems in legal practice, for example, an unclear understanding of offences from criminal and administrative perspectives or even the weak possibility of investigating such acts by State power. The main objective of the contribution is to point out the dual legal regulation (criminal and administrative) of the sanctioning of extremism, in particular its special category – hate crimes and hate speech. Moreover, the objective of the contribution is to assess its unclear issues in legal understanding and to identify specific application problems caused by its dual system (criminal and administrative). Special attention is focused on applicable sanctions in both the criminal law area and administrative law areas. At the end, suggestions on how to solve indicated problems are introduced. Methods: The primary sources used for the elaboration of the contribution are scholarly sources (books, studies, scientific papers, etc.), legislative instruments (national and international legislation) and case law (of Slovak national courts and the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union). The authors use traditional methods of legal scientific (jurisprudential) research – general scientific methods and special methods of legal science (jurisprudence). The general scientific methods used in the paper are predominantly logical methods, namely, the method of analysis, the method of synthesis, the method of analogy, and the descriptive method. The descriptive method has been used to familiarise the reader with the current legal regulation of extremism. The method of analysis has been used regarding relevant legal provisions and case-laws of courts. The method of synthesis has also been used. The special methods of legal science used here predominantly include methods belonging to a group of interpretative methods, namely, the teleological method, the systematic method and the comparative method. The teleological method has been used to explain the purpose of legislative instruments. The systematic method has been used to classify the relevant applicable law. The comparative method has been used to examine the relationship between legislative perspectives – criminal and administrative. Results and Conclusions: Regarding extremism offences committed in the Slovak Republic, in specific cases, the decision making whether the committed offence is criminal or of an administrative nature depends on the attitude of the person who committed it. In the Slovak Republic, legislative amendments are intended to address the area of extremism offences, but they have not been introduced as final. A new legal regulation of the administrative offences of extremism is envisaged in terms of their definition. A new sanctioning policy of extremism administrative offences by juvenile offenders is also expected. Moreover, the application of probation in case of offences committed by juvenile delinquents in the area of extremism is recommended and preferred. It would highlight the importance of restorative justice, including its strengthening. Probation would allow the court, when sanctioning extremism in the criminal law area, to create a so-called tailor-made sanction, which would strengthen the individualisation of the sanction, the educational purpose of the sanction and the achievement of both the purpose of the sanction and the purpose of the Criminal Code, which is to protect society from criminal offences and their perpetrators. Even the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic partially examined the modification of the elements of criminal offences of extremism.

In 1996, the late Prof JMT Labuschagne wrote an article dealing with the limits of freedom of speech and hate speech (“Menseregtelike en Strafregtelike Bekamping van Groepsidentiteitmatige Krenking en Geweld” 1996 De Jure 23). He discussed freedom of expression and hate speech in the United States of America, various European countries, South Africa and also within the context of international law. He subsequently discussed the idea of updating his thoughts, taking into consideration the influence of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 and the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act (4 of 2000, commonly referred to as the “Discrimination Act”). Sadly, he never got around to doing so. Since his 1996 article, much development has taken place in this field including the introduction of the 2004 Draft Prohibition of Hate Speech Bill. The events of 11 September 2001 in the USA and the 2005 bombings in London (and other similar attacks all over the world) have increased intolerance and suspicion between people from different races and religions manyfold. Immediately following the London bombings, it was reported that religious hate crime (that is, attacks targeting England’s Muslim community) had increased by nearly 600% (“Religious Hate Crime Up 600%” 2005-08-0221:14 SA http://www.news24.com visited 2 Aug 2005). Hate speech is regarded as an exception to freedom of speech/expression. The notion of freedom of expression has been discussed at length by various South African writers (Johannessen “A Critical View of the Constitutional Hate Speech Provision: Section 16” 1997 SAJHR 136; Devenish “Freedom of Expression: The ‘Marketplace’ of Ideas”1995 TSAR 442; Carpenter “Fundamental Rights: Is There a Pecking Order?” 1995 Codicillus 27; Johannessen “Freedom of Expression and Information in the New South African Constitution and Its Compatibility with International Standards” 1995 SAJHR 216; Van Rooyen “Censorship in a Future South Africa: A Legal Perspective” 1994 De Jure 283; Nesser “Hate Speech in the New South Africa: Constitutional Considerations for a Land Recovering from Decades of Racial Repression and Violence” 1994 SAJHR 336; and Marcus “Freedom of Expression Under the Constitution” 1994 SAJHR 140). This note briefly touches on some aspects relating to freedomof expression and hate speech and also explores the (rather newly discovered) notion of hate crime. It asks the question whether there is any connection between hate speech and hate crime.

This paper develops a theoretical analysis of hate crimes in light of some core concepts of legal geography – physical place, discursive space, scale, territory, and citizenship. It argues that bias crimes and reactions to them, including the possibility of state counterviolence, constitute a dynamic and ongoing dialogue that constructs territory and citizenship around marked bodies, buildings, and other physical structures, whose visible presence in specific places is visibly threatened. It introduces the concept of ubiety – having whereness or place – as a characteristic that distinguishes bias crimes from hate speech. Hate crimes engage both physical place and discursive place. So do governmental and community responses to bias crimes. Because bias crimes and the reaction to them always involve competing claims around the safety and security of bodies and things in physical places, the dialogue they engender can occur at different scales. These include the neighborhood, city and country, but also, as feminist theory teaches us, the supposedly “private” space of the home. The discursive aspect of hate crimes is likewise multiscalar, depending in part on the interests of the media that notice and disseminate dialogue about hate crimes. Finally, inasmuch as citizenship often implicates a sense of belonging or exclusion that can involve the physical body, bias crimes and responses to them can be understood as an integral component of the processes of defining citizenship. In considering these related themes, this paper will draw its examples primarily from the world of violence against LGBT folk, where issues of place have been less often examined than in parallel considerations of bias crimes based on race, ethnicity, alienage, religion, and gender.

Modern racism and sexism have been studied to examine the different ways that prejudice can be expressed; yet, little attention has been given to modern heterosexism. This study examined the extent to which modern heterosexism and old-fashioned heterosexism predict acceptance of hate crimes against gays and lesbians and perceptions of hate speech. Male (n= 74) and female (n= 95) heterosexual college students completed a survey consisting of scales that assessed modern and old-fashioned heterosexism, acceptance of violence against gays and lesbians, attitudes toward the harm of hate speech and its offensiveness, and the importance of freedom of speech. Results indicated strong negative relations between both modern and old-fashioned heterosexism and the perceived harm of hate speech. When old-fashioned heterosexism, modern heterosexism, and the importance of freedom of speech were combined to predict hate crime and hate speech attitudes, only old-fashioned heterosexism predicted acceptance of hate crimes. All three predictors contributed to the perception of the harm of hate speech. Gender differences in the role of the importance of freedom of speech in predicting attitudes toward hate crimes and hate speech are noted.

The proliferation of hate speech on social media in recent years has become a public concern. This infodemic not only tears apart intergroup relationships and poses adverse psychological consequences but can also instigate violence and hate crimes. Due to hate speech perplexity and multi-dimensionality across different cultures and languages, researchers have called for worldwide investigations into its cross-language identification and manifestation. Employing a corpus of 536,080 characters and 68,975 tokens in Persian and Pashtu languages, a dataset from Twitter, this study explored the causes and manifestations of hate speech among Twitter users in Afghanistan through a qualitative investigation. The findings showed that real-life conflictual events are the primary source of hate speech among Afghanistan’s Twitter users. Political instability and sectarianism, coupled with the traumatic experience of war, violence, and injustice in the past, resulted in profound public grievances being reflected on social media. The study also noted that hate speech is manifested in four main ways: gender-based, racial/ethnic, political, and religious hate speech. The results highlight the need for governments to tackle the underlying real-world hate-fueling problems to lessen their adverse effects on individuals and society online. The research implications and relevant suggestions are also discussed at the end of the article. Keywords: Afghanistan, hate speech, media affordance, national identity, Twitter.

The relationships between threat on one hand and right-wing attitudes and ethnic prejudice on the other were investigated in a heterogeneous sample (N = 588). Specifically, we considered the perception of economic and terroristic threats in terms of their consequences at the societal and personal levels. Previous studies revealed that societal consequences of threat, rather than personal consequences, are related to right-wing attitudes. However, the present results challenge these findings. More specifically, three important results emerged. First, items probing the distinct threat levels loaded on separate dimensions for economic and terroristic threat, validating the distinction between societal and personal threat consequences. Second, consistent with previous research, this study revealed that perceived societal consequences of threat yield strong and robust relationships with all target variables. However, personal consequences of threat were also associated with higher levels of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO), and ethnic prejudice in particular. Third, societal and personal consequences of threat interacted in explaining the target variables. More specifically, feeling personally threatened by terrorism was only related to higher levels of RWA in the presence of low levels of threat to society, whereas experiencing personal economic threat was only related to higher levels of SDO and ethnic prejudice when high societal economic threat was experienced. In sum, although the perception of societal consequences of threat plays a prominent role in explaining right-wing attitudes and ethnic prejudice, the perception of being personally affected by threat is also associated with higher levels of RWA and SDO, and especially ethnic prejudice.