Engaging with the Media in a Pre and Post Brexit World: Racism, Xenophobia and Regulation: A United Kingdom Perspective

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

Hate crime and hate speech are extreme examples of negative intergroup relations. It is thought that it would be very useful to analyze the variables that lead up to for dealing with hate speech and crimes that have many physical and psychological destructive consequences for the exposed group members. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to address some of the social psychological variables associated with hate speech and hate crimes and to suggest solutions to reduce hate speech and hate crimes in this context. For this purpose, first of all, hate speech and hate crimes were defined and various examples were presented in this direction. Later, hate crimes and hate speech were examined in terms of social identity identification, social dominance orientation, system justification, realistic and symbolic threat perception, frustration and scapegoat concepts. The relationship between hate speech and crimes of this concept has been embodied with research findings and examples from various regions in Turkey and the world. Finally, some solution suggestions have been presented by making use of this theoretical knowledge in terms of combating hate crimes and hate speeches. Keywords: Hate crime, hate speech, intergroup relations, social psychology

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 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.

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

Even though hate speech is an extreme form of intolerance, which contributes to hate crime, the assessment of this particular behavior and its expressions is often problematic, because hate speech is difficult to define and even more difficult to investigate and punish. In the present article, the authors analyze the development of human rights standards (in particular as interpreted in the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights) regarding freedom of expression and hate speech and look at their application in Poland and Slovenia through a comparative analysis of Polish and Slovenian law and practice. We noticed that challenges with fulfilling international obligations to adequately respond to and fight hate speech can be observed and that some room for improvement on the level of lawmaking, policymaking, and their effective implementation is present. The most evident challenge remains in the low rates of prosecution of hate crimes recorded by the police, which need to be addressed by both States. In Slovenia, some positive systemic and regulatory changes have recently been introduced, while in Poland there has been little progress and not all victims of hate speech are adequately protected by law. The authors suggest a focus on educating individuals about the harmful consequences of hate speech and acts, adapting legislation to appropriately punish individuals who spread hate speech, raising awareness and understanding of the rhetoric used in the public sphere, and increasing media support for the aforementioned awareness, keeping in mind that solutions on how to appropriately address or prevent hate speech are by no means simple or straightforward.

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?

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.

Few human rights issues provoke stronger debate than the question of whether, and to what extent, freedom of expression principles protect so-called 'hate speech' Human Rights Watch was prompted to initiate a study of 'hate speech' and freedom i of expression by a number of events, including a resurgence of nationalist and anti-Semitic incidents in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and by an intense i debate in the USA over whether 'hate i speech' provisions in disciplinary codes adopted by a number of colleges and, universities violate constitutional safeguards of free speech. The term 'hate speech' used in its policy paper, excerpted here, encompasses not just oral remarks, but any form of expression regarded as offensive to racial, ethnic and religious groups and other discrete minorities, and to women. The Human Rights Watch policy statement on protection of 'hate speech' that emerged from its study is based on four key principles: A distinction between advocacy and action. Expression should never be punished for its subject matter alone. To punish speech, there must be a direct and immediate connection to illegal action. Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights bars incitement to 'discrimination, hostility or violence'. Human Rights Watch defines those terms as unlawful conduct. Any limitations on expression should be the least restrictive available.

Much mainstream legal comment on human rights law presents an unhelpfully crude picture of disagreement concerning the significance that should be attached to human rights in particular cultural co...

Hate speech is a crime that has been increasing in recent years, not only in person but also online. There are several causes for this. There is tremendous growth in social media that promotes full freedom of expression through anonymity features. Freedom of expression is a human right, but hate speech directed at individuals or groups on the basis of race, caste, religion, ethnicity or nationality, gender, disability, gender identity, etc. is a violation of that sovereignty. Freedom of expression is a human right, but hate speech directed at individuals or groups on the basis of race, caste, religion, ethnicity or nationality, gender, disability, gender identity, etc. is a violation of that sovereignty. It promotes violence and hate crimes, creates social imbalances, and undermines peace, trust and human rights. Revealing hate speech in social media discourse is a very important but complex task. On the one hand, the anonymity provided by the Internet, especially social networks, makes people more likely to engage in hostile behavior. On the other hand, the desire to express one's thoughts on the Internet has increased, leading to the spread of hate speech. Governments and social media platforms can benefit from detection and prevention technologies, as this kind of bigoted language can wreak havoc on society. We help resolve this dilemma by providing a systematic overview of research on this topic in this survey. This project aims to accurately predict various forms by addressing different categories of hate individually and examining a set of text mining functions. Hate speech detection

The Current State of Hate Speech and Related Legislations in Korea

Embracing Diversity

Strategic human rights litigation aims to seek for significant changes in law and policies, or influence public opinion and awareness, through situating individual client interests or human rights within larger social goals, or creating progressive jurisprudence, which advances human rights and rebalances the historic or systematic injustices. However, the law and society debate over litigation and social change sheds light on both the positive and the negative sides of strategic litigation. On the one hand, the positive view emphasizes that strategic litigation can change social understandings and create issues around which to organize a movement by attracting publicity, media attention and participants to a movement. On the other hand, critiques point out the limits of individual litigation as a strategy for social change and even its negative effects, arguing that legal victories bring no real change and individual litigation can narrow issues and atomize collective grievances, undermining broader collective action. In light of this debate over strategic human rights litigation and social movement, this article explores the role of the recent hate speech and hate crime cases in Japan, in which an elementary school for residential Koreans in Kyoto was raid by xenophobic nationalist groups in 2009 and 2010. These Kyoto Korean School incidents were part of the growing racism and ultra-nationalistic campaigns against ethnic minorities in Japan, in particular, against those who reside in Japan with Korean descent. This empirical socio-legal analysis examines the Kyoto Korean School cases in the dynamic process of the anti-hate speech and racism movement in Japan as an example of successful strategic human rights litigation, aiming to propose a broader framework through which we understand strategic litigation, focusing on the interaction between domestic and international laws and advocacy by civil society. This study has shown that the Kyoto Korean School cases had an enormous positive impact on the anti-racism movement in Japan including raising consciousness among the plaintiffs and public awareness without a big backlash and led to the enactment of the very first anti-hate speech law and a municipal ordinance, with the support of increased media attention and public opinion against hate speech. In this case, those effects were not originally pursued, but grew out of not only the judicial decisions but also of the process for seeking justice, thus calling the cases “unintended strategic litigation.” It was a transformative process for both plaintiffs and lawyers, namely iterative and interactive process of human rights norms diffusion, rather than top-down. This paper also analyzes the reasons behind this “success.” The rulings of the Kyoto Korean School case, which condemned hateful demonstrations as “racial discrimination” under the international human rights convention, framed the issue as the matter of universal concern which affects Japanese society as a whole. The rulings were accepted by the majority in Japanese society without inducing the backlash. Unprecedented application of the international human rights convention was highlighted by media, while some extreme characters of this hate crime case against elementary school children also attracted media attention. This brought the long-standing efforts of civil society groups and activists to vernacularize the universal human rights norms into the attention of majorities, which has been spread in Japanese society with the historic effort of civic networks of diverse actors, not only of lawyers but also of civil society organizations, local communities, and a massive number of individuals who joined in counter-movement. It pushed a majority of the society into major actors of the expanding anti-racism movement and also brought the Kyoto Korean School cases, its process of proceedings, and the subsequent results to domestic and international attention, with a help of the Internet media. In this sense, the recent anti-racism movement in Japan is not only a leftist elite or professional activist movement but also involves general public and local community members connected loosely via the Internet. The combination of the bottom-up human rights movement based on the locality and the international and national advocacy of leftist groups engaging lawmakers have provided an impetus in advancing legal development against hate speech. The culmination of activists’ efforts, in collaboration with policymakers and human rights workers with the support of public opinion, came in May 2016, when Japan passed its first law against hate speech. Consequently, this analysis shows the Kyoto Korean School cases were successful as unintended strategic human rights litigation since the multiple stakeholders brought a universal human rights ideology embedded in the rulings into a wide range of communities in society in a dynamic process involving diverse actors including lawyers, civil society organizations, local communities, individual activists, journalists, lawmakers, and even international human rights organizations, where the purpose of social movements is complemented by legal means.