Harm In Hate Speech Research Articles

The Harm in Hate Speech and in Holocaust Denial

The Harm in Hate Speech and in Holocaust Denial

Recognition, Authority Relations, and Rejecting Hate Speech

A key focus in many debates surrounding the harm in hate speech centres on the subordinating impact hate speech has on its victims. Under such a view, and provided there exists a requisite level of speaker authority a particular speech situation, hate speech can be conceived as something which directly impact’s the victim’s status, and can be contrasted to the view that such speech merely expresses hateful ideas. Missing from these conceptions, however, are the ways in which intersubjective, recognition-sensitive relations influence the kind of harm likely to result from such an act. Understanding the central role of first-person experience is crucial, as, while a victim may have little influence in how their social status is impacted by such an act, the possibility for ‘speaking back’ requires that individuals are equipped with the conditions necessary to reject the authority claims of the speaker. On such a view, this paper aims to use this feature of intersubjectivity to explore the potential ways in which an act of hate speech can be ‘robbed’ of some of its harm by having its authority claims rejected by the victim. Utilizing this enhanced understanding, I reflect upon one particular real-world example of hate speech, in which the target rejects the status-undermining claims made upon her. In the last section, I propose a general institutional outlook aimed towards aiding would-be victims of hate speech to respond to such attempts at normative authority exertion.

What Is the Harm of Hate Speech?

In Jeremy Waldron’s book, The Harm in Hate Speech, it is not always clear whether he argues that hate speech causes harm or whether it constitutes harm. This article considers this uncertainty, concluding that the best understanding of Waldron’s argument is that hate speech tends to cause harm - a weak form of the consequentialist case for its proscription. His argument is not advanced by his apparent reliance on speech-act theory.

A recognition-sensitive phenomenology of hate speech

ABSTRACT One particularly prominent strand of hate speech theory conceptualizes the harm in hate speech by considering the immediate illocutionary force of a hate speech ‘act’. What appears to be missing from such a conception, however, is how recognition relations and normative expectations present in a speech situation influence the harm such speech causes to its victims. Utilizing a particular real-world example, this paper illustrates how these defining background conditions and intersubjective relations influence the harm of hate speech as it is experienced from the first-person perspective. This, more nuanced conception of harm, takes note of the effects such speech inflicts on an individual’s recognitive status, and can provide a clearer understanding of the conditions necessary for an act of hate speech to cause the speaker’s desired effect on their targets.

When a ritual murder occurred at Purim. The harm in hate speech

This paper aims to address the problem of hate on the Internet. It is opened with a definition of hate speech. Then it discusses hate speech prior to the Internet, during the Internet’s early days and at present time. The paper explains some of the ways that hate groups utilise the Internet and their purposes in doing so, examining the content and the functions of hate sites as well as the agenda of hate mongers. Under examination are the issues of propaganda, targeting children and youth, incitement and blood libels. The article is based in the main on a close study of dozens of hate websites.

Locke and Hate Speech Law


 
 
 Hate speech is a high profile issue in many liberal democracies today. While commentaries by constitutional experts and jurists abound in the press, and by legal and political philosophers in academia, it is remarkable that there is far less contribution from students of history of political thought and intellectual history, especially of the early modern era, considering how largely the theme of religious toleration and intolerance featured in this period. Jeremy Waldron’s The Harm in Hate Speech, and more specifically Chapter 8 entitled ‘Toleration and Calumny’, helps to break this silence, making a case for how Enlightenment toleration theories from Locke to Voltaire might connect and enrich our discussions about hate speech today.
 
 

The Uses of Hate: On Hate as a Political Category

The Uses of Hate: On Hate as a Political Category

Finding the Harm in Hate Speech: An Argument against Censorship

AbstractThe liberal justification for censorship equates the harm in hate speech with the sort of tangible injury that would justify state intervention under J.S. Mill's harm principle. Recently, Jeremy Waldron has suggested that the real harm perpetuated by hate speech is less tangible, taking it to be a variety of moral pollution which undermines both the public good of inclusiveness and the minority's assurance of personal dignity. This paper scrutinizes Waldron's conception of the harm in hate speech, arguing that it lacks the specificity and gravity Mill's principle requires in order to justify censorship. The paper also questions the categorical distinction between hate speech and speech that is “merely offensive,” arguing that Waldron's reasons for censoring the one also apply to the other. The result is a censorship regime that liberals ought not to accept.

Book Review: The Harm in Hate Speech

Book Review: The Harm in Hate Speech

Hate Speech and the Epistemology of Justice

In ‘The Harm in Hate Speech’ Waldron’s most interesting and ground-breaking contribution lies in a distinctive epistemological role he assigns to hate speech legislation: it is necessary for assurance of justice, and thus for justice itself. He regards public social recognition of what is owed to citizens as a public good, contributing to basic dignity and social standing of citizens. His claim that hate speech in the public social environment damages assurance of justice has wider implications, I argue: for hate speech conducted in private; for pornography; and indeed for any speech that thwarts knowledge of what justice requires.

The Harm in Hate Speech By JEREMY WALDRON

The Harm in Hate Speech By JEREMY WALDRON

Hate Speech Law and Disagreement

In this Constitutional Commentary review piece, Allan considers Jeremy Waldron's arguments for hate speech laws in Waldron's book THE HARM IN HATE SPEECH. Allan finds them all lacking and ultimately unpersuasive. The review is not premised on a parsing of precedents. It considers Waldron's case from first principles.

Understanding and regulating hate speech: A symposium on Jeremy Waldron’s The Harm in Hate Speech

Understanding and regulating hate speech: A symposium on Jeremy Waldron’s The Harm in Hate Speech

Book Review: General Politics: The Harm in Hate Speech

Book Review: General Politics: The Harm in Hate Speech

Equality, Assurance and Criminalization

The criminal law has at least two goals: to provide a degree of protection to a variety of individual and collective interests, and to communicate to those to whom it applies that those interests are protected. The question I consider is whether the criminal law should be used to advance the second goal independently of its use in advancing the first. Drawing on what I refer to as non-comparative egalitarianism, I argue that it should not. After developing a general argument for this claim, I turn to considering its implications for the criminalization of hate speech, focusing specifically on a line of argument found both in the Supreme Court of Canada’s s.2 jurisprudence as well as Jeremy Waldron’s recent book, The Harm in Hate Speech. I also briefly consider a structurally similar, but broader argument – recently defended by Alon Harel – which suggests that there is a constitutional duty to criminalize conduct that would, if engaged in, interfere with a person’s dominion over how her life goes, regardless of whether criminalization would or would not drive down the actual incidence of the targeted conduct. I claim that egalitarians should not recognize any such duty.

The Harm in Hate Speech. By Jeremy Waldron. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012. 292 pp. $26.95 cloth.

The Harm in Hate Speech. By Jeremy Waldron. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012. 292 pp. $26.95 cloth.This well-crafted volume by Jeremy Waldron, who teaches law and philosophy at New York University and Oxford, addresses-in words of title-the harm in speech.Waldron dispatches old saw that we must be especially vigilant to protect speech we (Chapters 1 and 2), instead showing that heaping calumny on a vulnerable minority group damages a public good, namely reasonable belief that one can go for a walk with one's children and not expect to confront an expression of such as a sign telling people of your background that they are unwelcome in this country. He notes that many advanced societies prohibit such expressions (pp. 8, 29) but doubts that United States will anytime soon, even though our checkered racial history would seem to make prohibition in order here as well.The interest he is most concerned with protecting is not offense to feelings, such as that stemming from an epithet hurled from a passing car, but deeper form of alienation that accompanies coming upon a written or tangible expression of contempt, such as graffiti, billboards, or monuments, that endure, communicating their message to all who pass that way (Chapter 5). Defending this form of racial vituperation is not at all valiant or noble, Waldron points out, explaining why it is neither necessary for a vigorous give-and-take of ideas (Chapter 2), a bigot's self-expression (Chapter 6), or legitimacy of our system of liberal politics (Chapter 7).The book is exceptional in a number of respects. Most writers address harm of speech in terms of injury that results from trying to regulate it. Focusing almost exclusively on affront to hate-speaker forced to hold things in or to society at large when it loses an opportunity to ponder supposedly hard truths about black intelligence, Latino personal habits, or Muslim patriotism, these writers imagine themselves courageous defenders of an embattled position. In resisting what they think of as thought reform and political correctness, they believe that in championing the thought we hate they are safeguarding an unpopular but noble cause. Waldron rejects this self-serving characterization, pointing out that a more important issue in hate-speech debate is feelings of black or Muslim father, out for a walk with his family and suddenly confronted with a sign telling people like him and his kids to go back whence they came.Turning to an affirmative argument, Waldron asks what a wellordered society would look like, and with aid of simple prose and heart-rending examples concludes that it is one that provides each citizen with assurance-a form of dignity-that they may lead their lives free from fear of unwanted assaults on their security and wellbeing like those mentioned above (Chapter 4). …

Hate Speech and Democracy

Jeremy Waldron, The Harm in Hate Speech (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 304 pp. The city of St. Paul, Minnesota, enacted a hate speech ordinance: Whoever places on public or privat...

The harm in hate speech

The harm in hate speech

Freedom of Expression and Hate Speech – The Affect of Multiculturalism on Canadian Supreme Court Decisions

This paper explores the balance between freedom of expression, hate speech and multiculturalism through the Supreme Court decisions in Keegstra and Zundel. It is argued that multiculturalism is undervalued when dealing with Supreme Court hate speech Charter decisions. By comparing the Keegstra and Zundel decisions, this paper evaluates the balance drawn by the Supreme Court between the harm in hate speech and the importance of freedom of expression and what role multiculturalism played in this context. It is suggested that section 27 of the Charter should be considered in interpreting section 2(b) of the Charter in order to preserve Multiculturalism.