Abstract
This paper aims to fulfill a double objective: on the one hand, to explain how hate speech works as a mechanism of racialization towards the Roma, resulting in a concrete form of symbolic violence. On the other hand, to analyze the most relevant institutional responses to fight against antigypsyism, looking at the new EU Roma Framework 2020–2030 with a special attention on the recent developments in Spain. The paper discusses the fact that a focus on symbolic violence and more concretely on hate speech would produce considerably differing approaches to Roma inclusion policies. The paper is divided into three sections: the first section will conceptually address the notions of “antigypsyism”, “racial discrimination”, “symbolic violence”, and “hate speech”. The second section will present and contextualize a series of illustrative cases of antigypsyist hate speech in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain. The third section will examine the most relevant legislative and policy initiatives adopted to fight against antigypsyism. The paper will wrap up with a discussion and some conclusions on the functioning of hate speech as a symbolic mechanism of racialization; and its capacity to articulate moral hierarchies and social divisions among the Roma and the rest of society.
Highlights
According to Bourdieu, symbolic power establishes a gnoseological order of social divisions, in which logical integration is the precondition of moral integration
Complementary to all the cited studies, this paper aims to explain how hate speech constitutes a core mechanism of racialization directed towards the Roma, which results in a concrete form of antigypsyism that must be combatted by institutional means
It calls for a legal evaluation to include antigypsyism, as a specific category, in the Penal Code following the recommendation of the Council of Europe on October 2020 (Congreso de los Diputados 2021; Council of Europe 2020b)
Summary
Different postcolonial authors have reported that in the post-apartheid period, and in the resulting globalization of anti-racist laws, new processes of racialization became predominantly symbolic, thereby (re)articulating a new hierarchy of peoples, social divisions, and economic inequalities (Bhabha 2011; Mbembe 2017; Carty and Mohanty 2018). In a society where all individuals and communities have no equal access to symbolic power, the unlimited production and distribution of any kind of discourse (including hate speech) will reinforce the vulnerability of certain groups This dilemma is nothing new: in the classical liberal debate on freedom of expression, Mill (1859) advocated for absolute freedom of opinion and feeling on any subject. Those who publicly deny, seriously trivialize or extol the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity or against persons and property protected in the event of armed conflict, or extol their perpetrators, when they have been committed against a group or part of it, or against a person determined by reason of their belonging to it, for racist, anti-Semitic or other reasons related to ideology, religion or beliefs, family situation or the membership of its members to an ethnic group, race or nation, their national origin, their sex, sexual orientation or identity, for reasons of gender, illness or disability, when in this way a climate of violence, hostility, hatred or discrimination against them is promoted or favored (Código Penal 2015)
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