Other countries have laws condemning hate speech

The argument

The argument is comparative: it asks what other jurisdictions have concluded about hate speech and treats the answer as evidence. Hate speech has varying consequences around the world, and that variation is not random — it reflects different settled judgements about where the limits of expression lie. The United States sits at one end of the range. In the United States, hate speech is not considered illegal, but is instead considered freedom of speech. The argument treats this as one option among several rather than as the natural or default arrangement, and the distinction matters, because the rest of the case depends on the American position being a choice that was made rather than an inevitability. Other countries have decided otherwise, and the two examples do different work. In Japan, a relatively peaceful country, there are laws that condemn hate speech. The description is load-bearing: a common objection holds that such laws mark a society already in trouble, or help produce one, and a peaceful country that has adopted them is evidence against that. In the UK, although there are no specific laws against hate speech, according to the Public Order Act in 1986, no one can be discriminated against because of their identity — a different legislative route to a related protection, showing that the choice is not simply between outright prohibition and nothing at all. The inference drawn concerns feasibility as much as desirability. Even though not all countries protect against hate speech, the fact that some do put laws in place should be evidence that hate speech should be illegal: functioning democracies have adopted such measures and have continued to function, which answers the objection that restricting hate speech is unworkable or incompatible with a free society. Where it can be done and has been done, what remains is the question of whether it ought to be done elsewhere too.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Making laws against hate speech would take away the right to free speech. If no one can speak their minds about things and people that bother them, then a country’s population is being kept under too much government control.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Discrimination and hate speech are two different things. Hate speech doesn’t have the goal of preventing anyone from having basic human rights.