Why Is Hate Speech Necessary

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Is Censorship of “Hate Speech” Necessary? Current Issues: Civil Liberties defines hate speech as speech that degrades “a person’s ethnicity, language, religion, political views, or socioeconomic class” (Roleff, 27). Jeremy Waldron, a professor at New York University, wrote his book, The Harm in Hate Speech, on the thesis that hate speech “undermines the equal dignity of individual members of vulnerable minorities” (Mchangma). Waldron, who wants to see societies ban hate speech, defines hate speech too narrowly, since he defines hate speech as speech that is primarily harmful to minorities. Waldron defends hate speech restrictions by referring to the traumatizing “manifestations of hate speech” that would evoke memories that promise “a return …show more content…

Fighting words are “personal insults” that maliciously intend to provoke an “immediate fight” (Volokh). Valueless bigotry, which advocates of hate speech restrictions primarily address, are hateful words that consist of racial, religious, political, or sexual slurs against minorities. Finally, unorthodox opinions consist of any set of the “good” or “bad” ideas that the status quo do not agree with. In a society that restricts any speech they consider to be “hate speech,” they increase the risk of punishing “individual members” who are neither bullies nor bigots, but aspiring …show more content…

Anti-Semitism, which has recently reached its pinnacle during World War II, “comes from centuries and centuries of repression and stereotypes that have plagued the Jewish community for time immemorial.” The European Union Fundamental Rights Agency conducted a report in 2014 that surveyed 5,000 European Jews. According to the report, “76% of the European Jews surveyed noted an uptick of anti-Semitism in their respective countries.” Despite the “admirable aims” of “hate speech legislation,” the legislation sends a different message to anti-Semitic Europeans: the conspiracy that the Jews have seized control of “the world’s governments”

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