Dear friends: This is an article written by Kathy Lipscomb, examining the dilemma of hate speech. Kathy is a friend, neighbor and totally committed activist for neighborhood issues and, obviously, broader causes. Heartfelt thanks, Kathy, for examining this very difficult and confusing issue in such a thoughtful way.
Here it is:
"New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, in a historic speech explaining the removal of Civil War statues from his city in May, said, “The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity.” Last week, fierce right-wing forces brandishing Nazi regalia took a life and injured 19 people. They didn’t absorb Landrieu’s message.
Civil libertarians remind us there is almost no hate-speech exemption to the First Amendment. Now, quietly flying under the radar, there is a crackdown on such speech. U.S. social media companies operating in Germany face fines of as much as $58 million if they fail to delete illegal, racist or slanderous comments and posts after a law prohibiting such messaging passed in June.
For months, Facebook, Google, Twitter and others dragged their feet in screening such content, but now have come to their bottom-line senses. They will no longer post Nazi symbols, Holocaust denial commentary, clearly inflammatory speech or incitement to violence.
Facebook announced that it would nearly double to 7,500 the number of employees worldwide devoted to clearing its site of flagged material. Facebook and Google are taking steps even in the United States to limit the spread of extreme messaging. Kudos to Google for having separated an engineer from his employment for having written and disseminated a “manifesto” stating that women don’t have the biological wiring to do coding.
Germany has some of the most stringent antihate laws in the world: Germans apparently have paid attention to their history. Germany’s justice minister said the new rules that apply offline would be equally enforceable online.
Moreover, the European Union ministers approved a plan this spring that will require social media platforms and online video hosts to block and remove from their platforms hate speech, incitement to hatred and content justifying terrorism.
Canada, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws banning hate speech. The U.S. mind-set, deeply rooted in law and culture, has a more individualistic approach. In short: “I’m an American, so I can say what I want.”
Others complain that it would be undemocratic for the government to regulate speech. The Federal Communications Commission for many decades, however, has taken issue with obscene, indecent, profane comments and banned them. How ironic that one’s average swear word is verboten on the airways, but ethnic nastiness is not.
In 1983, a New York judge dismissed a libel case brought by several Puerto Rican groups against a business executive who had called food stamps “basically a Puerto Rican program.” How far have we come in 34 years? The 2016 presidential nominee, Donald Trump, labeled Mexican immigrants a bunch of rapists and went on to win the presidency.
Free speech must be defended. However, given the enormous demographic changes in our country, isn’t it time to rethink the public permissive use of hate speech? Would it help our society to advance to make “my freedom” more important than the hatred and disrespect spewed at “the other”? In other words, what about the victims’ freedom to live without fear and insult?
There is evidence of a cultural shift in how hate speech is viewed. The stunning 3 million-person march led by women in pink pussy hats in January had a visceral connection to Trump’s hate speech. Signs in Bay Area windows reading “Hate-free zone” clearly applied to both acts of violence and speech.
Perhaps our growing rainbow nation will dramatically shake up patterns of behavior once found acceptable, and make them, well, totally unacceptable. Would it not be appropriate for us, given our blighted past, to move in the direction of being a kinder, gentler people by finding ways to eventually vanquish hate speech?"
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