![]() This section will be relatively brief, as it is intended to provide a background to the principal thesis of this article that his argument is sometimes unclear on the nature of the harm of hate speech. This article begins by setting out the central claims in Waldron’s argument and identifying some problems with them (Section 2). It is however far from clear that shortcomings of the traditional case for hate speech proscription – doubts whether there is evidence of its impact strong enough to outweigh freedom of speech – are compensated by resort to the alternative (or additional) claim that it constitutes harm. Waldron’s claim may be both that hate speech is harm-producing speech and that it also amounts to a speech-act constituting harm itself. The usual causation argument requires the production of persuasive evidence about the impact of hate speech if it is to trump freedom of speech, while the alternative claim that such speech constitutes harm is open to challenge for reasons explored in Sections 4 and 5 of this article. In this article I contend that Waldron’s book is not always clear on this fundamental question: does hate speech cause or constitute harm? This uncertainty is troubling. But we do need to enquire whether Waldron’s argument is that hate speech as such constitutes harm and whether that argument is really distinguishable from the more familiar claim that hate speech is likely to produce harmful consequences. If that is Waldron’s argument, we do not need to ask what harm is caused by extreme racist speech – psychological damage to members of the targeted group, a breakdown in harmonious community relations, or the threat to law and order – nor pose hard questions whether there is persuasive evidence that hate speech really does cause harm. If hate speech amounts to harm, it might be equivalent to a harmful act such as an assault or environmental pollution, and in that event it would not even be covered by a freedom of speech principle or constitutional provision (see further Section 5 of this article). This distinction between speech causing harm and speech constituting harm has been drawn in recent writing on hate speech (see Maitra and McGowan 2012, 4–8) and may have significant implications. In other words, the harm is not caused by the speech, but the speech itself constitutes the harm. It can be taken as intimating that the harm for which hate speech is responsible is not so much a result or consequence of speech targeted at, say, racial groups or homosexuals, but rather lies in the speech itself. One of the most notable contributions has been that of Jeremy Waldron in his book, The Harm in Hate Speech ( 2012), a revision of the Holmes lectures he gave at Harvard in 2009. #THE GREAT SOCIETY SPEECH CENTRAL DISAGREEMENT FREE#The recent literature on hate speech is much more voluminous than that on any other area of free speech philosophy or law. Footnote 1 One reason for reluctance to take this step is that hate speech is hard to distinguish from political speech which is strongly protected in liberal democracies indeed, some speech, say, by a politician at a public rally calling for a halt to immigration can be regarded as both political and hate speech. What is the harm of hate speech - the harm for which hate speech is responsible? Is this harm sufficient to justify its proscription or regulation, given the strong protection liberal democracies often give freedom of speech in their constitution? The United States is unusual in affording racist hate speech more or less absolute protection under the First Amendment, but European jurisdictions too, including the United Kingdom, ban extreme speech only in relatively narrowly circumscribed circumstances. ![]()
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