- Question
- Should hate speech be illegal?
- Position‹3 of 3
- Hate speech shouldn't concern the law
- Argument1 of 3›
Hate speech will always be a part of history
Unfortunately, hate speech is a part of history. Countries have been fighting each other and conquering each other’s land for centuries. It’s something that can never be avoided because people will always hate something.
The argument
Unfortunately, hate speech will always be a part of our world. The claim is historical rather than merely resigned: proponents of this position argue that hatred between peoples has been among the motive forces of recorded history, not an aberration within it. Nations fought and enslaved each other to further their lands and kingdoms. Conquistadors destroyed Inca and Aztec culture in pursuit of glory and wealth, with disregard for the human lives it cost. The hostility that expresses itself in speech is the same hostility that produced those events, and it has accompanied human societies throughout. The inference drawn concerns what law can accomplish. A statute can prohibit an act; it cannot remove the disposition the act expresses. If hatred is a persistent feature of human affairs, then criminalising its verbal expression addresses a symptom while leaving the cause untouched — and the cause finds other outlets, as it has in every period in which particular expressions were forbidden. Proponents take two further consequences from this. The first is that a prohibition which cannot succeed still carries costs: it creates offences, prosecutions and records, and draws the law into judging speech, without the compensating benefit of eliminating what it targets. The second is that driving such speech out of public view leaves no one able to gauge how widely it is held, whereas speech that remains audible can be answered, argued with and countered. It will never be eradicated, on this account, even if it becomes illegal — and a law that cannot achieve its purpose is not the right instrument for the problem. Since hate speech will always be a part of history, the argument concludes, it shouldn't concern the law.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Even though hate speech has been a part of history and will always be part of society, it should be made illegal to curb the violence associated with it to make society better.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] Although hate speech and violence have been a part of history, it doesn’t make it morally right. The law should be put in place to curb and eradicate violence.