Hate Speech and democracy

Hate Speech

Introduction

Freedom of expression (BusinessDictionary.com, 2014) is an integral part of the culture of the modern world. It is the right of expressing your point of view and ideas about a certain issue or a personality. It is one which is being termed as the right of the people in the constitution of different countries. It can be achieved by writing an article, or through speech or through any other process that can express one’s feeling about something. The main idea behind the freedom of expression was to allow people to have their say that will in the end going to be helpful to the community. That will help in generating a consensus at the country level by having different samples of different opinions throughout the country.

Before the World War 2, the world was run by dictators and people never had a right to question their authority.

*Dark Blue – Democracy, Light Blue – Restricted Democratic Practice, Pink – Absolute Monarchy

*Source (Users.erols.com, 2014)

That led to many wars and proved to be a catastrophe for the humanity as it was the main cause of the deaths of millions and millions of human beings in the fight to grab more land. In the world after the World War 2, a normal consensus emerged that democracy is the best way for a country to move forward.

*Dark Blue – Democracy, Light Blue – Restricted Democratic Practice, Yellow – Authoritarian Regime *Source (Users.erols.com, 2014)

The world of democracy and democratic behaviors are all depending on the foundation of the freedom of expression that allows people to express their views about different policies and different issues. It’s democracy that led people to live in a community where people can agree to disagree and it does not seem to be a crime.

Literature

There are primarily two different prospective regarding the freedom of expression that exist (Marl.mb.ca, 2014). One is about restricting it as it is necessary to, one is about upholding it because it have too many positives to restrict it. I am the one who is for upholding it as it can be seen that it have more positives than negatives for sure. However, there are some lines that can never be allowed to cross even in expressing your point of view. As in a movie Spider Man, Paul Parker said “with great power, comes great responsibility” (IMDb, 2014), it truly fits on the responsibility that people have on their shoulders with having the freedom of speech. With freedom of speech, people can get carried away that they can say whatever they want to say, without keeping in mind that there are few lines that they are not allowed to cross because it might seem to them as the freedom of expression, but for others it might seem to be an insult. This kind of behavior can exaggerate into a situation that might get a little out of control and can lead to someone taking an extreme action in response.

A lot of the issues that are concerned with the security of the common man who is in danger because of continues use hate speech in different places of the world. For instance; different terrorist groups use these kind of videos where people from different origins and different religions and cultures using hate speech to express their point of view about a certain individual or certain group of people belonging to a certain religion or race. These people use these videos as a motivational and brain washing tool to use youngsters to achieve their political or extremist goals.

Harms of the Hate Speech

Hate speech is a speech which induces hatred among people by insulting them on the basis of religion or race etc. Hate speech can cause people (Hup.harvard.edu, 2014) who belong to a particular religion or race a great amount of pain and that is equal to inducing someone directly to harm people. There are 2 main harms of the hate speech

1 – Cause pain

2 – Increase Extremism

1 - Cause Pain

Hate speech is something that can cause a lot of pain to people who are from the same community. This can anger people who belong to a same religious or racial group that can put a lot of people’s life at risk. For instance; incident such as a cartoon of a prophet (Theguardian.com, 2014) from a selective religion started a worldwide protest from the Muslims, that leads to increase the risk of all the Christians all over the world and any incident at that time could have sparked a bigger problem that the world will might have to deal with.

2 - Increase Extremism

Hate speech is a speech which can influence the people in the wrong way. On one side of the event, it is something which can feel people humiliated or insulted, but on the other side it can lead to people becoming extremist about something (Sedmak, n.d.). This can increase the danger of violence on the large scale and if it is not controlled properly, it can lead to bigger catastrophe than one could imagine. For instance, the biggest human disaster that happens in the recent past in Rwanda in 1994 (United Human Rights Council, 2014), where about 1 Million people lost their life in a massacre. This primarily happened due to the fact that the use of hate speech against the Tutsi population was reached to a point where the whole community of the attacker (Hutu Population) became extremist and the people who were not extremist in the Hutu population were being eliminated and a mass massacre began.

Considering these kinds of issues that can generate with the use of hate speech, many countries in their laws (Nunziato, 2014) have made amendments that prevent that citizens from using hate speech, and these countries believe that it is a social crime and it has to be deal with upmost seriousness. These countries include Australia, Brazil, Belgium, Chile, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Indonesia, Jordan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, UK and United States.

These countries have different kind of laws in place to deal with issues such as hate speech. For instance; in Australia, it varies from state to state. However, at the federal level, it is a crime under the Racial Hatred Act 1995 (Archive.today, 2014) to humiliate, offend or insult anyone other than in private, which shows the importance of the issue in the eyes of the Government there. In Canada, to speak about the hatred about the individual or a group in a speech is a crime under the section 319 of the Criminal Code of Canada (Laws-lois.justice.gc.ca, 2014). In other countries these kind of laws were taken in place to avoid a confrontation within the society as this can lead to a serious confrontation issue within the community if people start sharing their hatred against each other in speeches.

Argument

As a person who believes in democratic norms and cultures, I believe that freedom of expression should never be allowed to restrict. However, I also believe that freedom of expression does not actually mean that you can say whatever you want using the name of freedom of speech, that can hurt people on the basis of their religion and race. For me, freedom of expression is much more than hate speech, and it have too many positive to let go because of one stupid reason. No sane human being would allow or encourage hate speech in their society, as these kind of speeches can only increase hate and cannot do anything for the well – being of the society.

Freedom of Expression have some great positive’s (Benefitof.net, 2014) that are discussed below to support the argument:

• Brings different ideas
• Decrease frustration in the society
• Let People know the truth
• Help the suffering people

Let’s discuss these advantages one by one;

Bring different ideas

With freedom of expression in place, it gives people the right to discuss their point of view that helps in generating different kind of ideas. People explain what’s in their mind with the best of their ability. That leads to different people gathering in different groups at different levels in the country, who deals in detailed conversations on different topics, both in the favor of the policies of the government and by doing constructive criticism that includes suggestions as well. These kind of reports and suggestions help the authorities to evaluate a generalize sample of what the people of this country is thinking about certain issues and how they can deal with, keeping in mind the core concerns of the general public.

Decrease Frustration in the Society

When the government or the authorities does not allow the freedom of expression, it often generates frustration in the society. People start hating the rulers because they are not permitted to express their feelings about anything. If by chance, they able to express themselves at any level in those societies, they are being punished heavily by different authorities in the form of bans, exiles or even in some cases in the form of life threats. North Korea (Rsf.org, 2014) is a one prime example of it, where a cruel dictator from the same family, one after another is ruling that country, where no one is allowed to share their point of view and many people have been executed due to this reason. This kind of behavior increase frustration in the society and it explodes after a certain time, and that leads to more crisis. Syria (Washington Post, 2014) is a prime example of how societies react and explode, when their right to expression is being restricted by force. It all started with a protest against the regime in 2011, and by now more than 100 thousand people have been killed in this conflict. Therefore, it has to be believed that freedom of expression should be allowed so that society will feel that they can stand up and protest about something they don’t like, and it’s their democratic right as well.

Let people know the truth

With freedom of expression, one thing that cannot be avoided is the fact that it helps the general public in knowing the truth about different events in the country even if the Government or the people with greater authority wants to stop that news from coming forward. With expression of freedom, those kind of events become public and it makes it more difficult for the people who have the authority to use their power for negative influence.

Help the suffering people

With freedom of expression, people in the developing countries especially can come up with different problems at the domestic level which are not so noticeable to the Government. This can help the government authorities of the respective areas to take action against those issues which are not taken care of for a very long time.

There are some disadvantages in freedom of expression as well. Those are:

• Excessive use of power
• Setting agenda
• Discussion beyond the red line

Now we can talk about above mentioned drawbacks of freedom of expression.

Excessive use

Excessive use of freedom of expression can be a nightmare for any society to deal with. Excessive use of anything can be risky. Excessive use of freedom of expression can be dangerous as it might lead to people using it to settle their personal score with someone else because they know how to use the media to good effect. This should be discouraged as freedom of expression does not mean that you can do all you want to settle score with someone else.

Setting the Agenda

Media, under the umbrella of freedom of expression can be used to set the agenda of someone else and misguide the audience of that country. It can be an agenda of the owner of the channel or someone who is being funded by some enemies to use different propaganda against the state. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the authorities to make sure that there are rules and regulations in place to make sure that people should not be able to cross the red line and that if they do, there should be some consequence that they have to deal with.

Discussion beyond the Red Lines

Freedom of expression can lead people to use their power to discuss things which they should not do on national television at least, such as; discussing the role of national security institutions on television. This kind of discussion can be demoralizing as it can cause people who are in that particular show to point on things that are not completely based on facts, or that they have some personal problem with that institution. Therefore, this can cause negativity because people take advantage under the umbrella of freedom of expression and criticize national institutions that should never be allowed at any level.

Conclusion

Above analysis, like every other thing proves that freedom of expression also has positives and negatives as well. As a person who believe that hate speech is damaging for the society overall, it is also the responsibility of the opinion makers who are sitting in media specially to make people aware that hate speech is an act of individual and it should not be taken as a generalized thinking of the people who belong to the same group or same race as the speaker. It should also be emphasized that these kind of activities should not be the reason to put any community on the threat from the others, and therefore the role of the authorities increases even further. It is the responsibility of the society as in whole to discourage any act that can cause pain to any one on the basis of religion or race. As a society, we all need to understand that it is not mandatory that the other person will see the freedom of expression like I do, and what I do as a person won’t hurt them or make them feel insulted. These issues are sensitive and they should never be talked about as openly, as a lot of people have their emotions connect to it and if they get hurt or feel insulted, it can prompt them to take extreme steps which can be dangerous for anyone.

References

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