Greenwald: Why European-style hate speech laws are a bad idea

Glenn Greenwald

Now that the US has overt neo-Nazis walking in the streets and murdering protesters, it’s a predictable and understandable reaction that people start looking for ways to prevent the rise of such a detestable ideology. But what they fail to realize is that any power they give the government to stomp down on speech they don’t like can and will be used against them and their allies in the future. That’s the reason free speech protections exist.

Glenn Greenwald showcases how “hate speech” laws are currently being used in Europe and elsewhere. Here’s a hint: it isn’t only, or even mostly, against far-Right extremist groups.

This is how hate speech laws are used in virtually every country in which they exist: not only to punish the types of right-wing bigotry that many advocates believe will be suppressed, but also a wide range of views that many on the left believe should be permissible, if not outright accepted. Of course that’s true: Ultimately, what constitutes “hate speech” will be decided by majorities, which means that it is minority views that are vulnerable to suppression.

In 2010, a militant atheist was given a six-month suspended sentence for leaving anti-Christian and anti-Islam fliers in a religious room of the Liverpool airport; according to the BBC, “jurors found him guilty of causing religiously aggravated intentional harassment.” In Singapore, “hate speech” laws are routinely used to punish human rights activists who criticize Christianity, or Muslims who have defended or promoted sermons from imams deemed too critical of other religions. Cases in Turkey are common where citizens have been prosecuted under hate speech laws for criticizing government officials or the military. Radical imams are prosecuted in Europe if they are too strident in their support for sharia law or their defense of violence against western aggression.

A leftist activist in France was convicted and fined for insulting former French President Nicolas Sarkozy by holding a sign that said “get lost, jerk”; ironically, those were the exact words Sarkozy himself uttered when a citizen refused to shake his hand at a public fair (the European Court of Human Rights ultimately overturned the Frenchman’s conviction). In 2013, as Salon’s Nico Lang reported, “judges fined Laure Pora, the former head of the Paris chapter of ACT UP, 2,300 euros for using the term [“homophobe”] during a 2013 demonstration against the pro-life group Lejeune Foundation and La Manif Pour Tous.”

A 2015 report from Freedom House documented that “internet freedom around the world has declined for the fifth consecutive year, with more governments censoring information of public interest.” Specifically, “state authorities have also jailed more users for their online writings.” The report documented that free speech protections are declining in roughly half the countries they surveyed. “The most significant declines occurred in Libya, Ukraine, and France,” where “standing declined primarily due to problematic policies adopted in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack, such as restrictions on content that could be seen as ‘apology for terrorism,’ prosecutions of users, and significantly increased surveillance.”

The article is replete with many more examples, and that’s still a tiny fraction of all the censorship being carried out in the name of protecting people’s feelings from hurtful opinions. But maybe that’s a fair price to pay, you might wonder, if it helps prevent the rise of racial supremacists and other bigoted, fascist groups?

In a word: No. Because it doesn’t work. And Greenwald, as a former First Amendment litigator, knows this firsthand:

Even if “hate speech” laws were magically applied by authorities exactly as advocates would wish — whereby only the ideas one hates would be suppressed and punished while the ideas one loves would be allowed to flourish — there would still be very good reasons to oppose such laws. […]

In particular, the assumption that censorship will weaken hateful groups and make them go away is completely backward. Nothing strengthens hate groups more than censoring them, as it turns them into free speech martyrs, feeds their sense of grievance, and forces them to seek out more destructive means of activism.

When I represented the free speech rights of such groups as a lawyer, they loved nothing more than when censorship attempts were directed at them, because they knew that nothing would more effectively strengthen their cause. Conversely, as the aftermath of Charlottesville has proved, nothing exposes the evil of such groups, and thus weakens them, like letting them show their true nature.

Ironically, those advocating that neo-Nazis and other hateful groups be forcibly censored are doing more to empower them than almost anything else could. As [ACLU Legal Director David] Cole wrote: “When white supremacists called a rally the following week in Boston, they mustered only a handful of supporters. They were vastly outnumbered by tens of thousands of counter-protesters who peacefully marched through the streets to condemn white supremacy, racism, and hate. Boston proved yet again that the most powerful response to speech that we hate is not suppression but more speech.”

So censoring “hate speech” doesn’t deter it, and in fact only plays right into hate groups’ hands, making them the attractive underdogs and pushing them to manifest even more. But an even more convincing argument is this: when you give the courts (and thus, the government) the power to suppress any speech you don’t think should be allowed, you inherently grant that power to the people in charge of that government, both present and future.

Would you trust people like Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions to wield the power to suppress any speech they don’t think should be allowed? Not only should your answer be a resounding “oh hell no”, you should run screaming from the very notion.

As has been said before, the best way to prevent the rise of creeping fascism in government, with its goal of restricting acceptable speech, is to keep the power to do so out of the government’s hands. As the historian Alfred Whitney Griswold wrote: “The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.”