next time someone makes the argument that ayaan hirsi ali’s blatantly anti-muslim bigotry “challenges us” (the words of irshad manji), or that racist cartoons depicting arabs with bombs in their turbans “protect our freedom of speech,” or that racist native american mascots “honor” the people they caricature, pls ask them to google julius stricher:
“On October 16, 1946, a man named Julius Stricher mounted the steps of a gallows. Moments later he was dead, the sentence of an international tribunal composed of representatives of the United States, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union having been imposed. Streicher’s body was then cremated, and – so horrendous were his crimes thought to have been – his ashes dumped into an unspecified German river so that “no one should ever know a particular place to go for reasons of mourning his memory.”
Julius Streicher had been convicted at Nuremberg, Germany of what were termed “Crimes Against Humanity.” The lead prosecutor in his case Justice Robert Jackson of the United States Supreme Court had not argued that the defendant had killed anyone, nor that he had personally committed any especially violent act. Nor was it contended that Streicher had held any particularly important position in the German government during the period in which the so called Third Reich had exterminated some 6,000,000 Jews, as well as several million Gypsies [Romas], Poles, Slavs, homosexuals, and other untermenschen (subhumans).
The sole offense for which the accused was ordered put to death was in having served as publisher/editor of a Bavarian tabloid entitled Der Sturmer during the early-to-mid 1930s, years before the Nazi genocide actually began. In this capacity, he had penned a long series of virulently anti-Semitic editorials and ”news.”
Stories, usually accompanied by cartoons and other images graphically depicting Jews in extraordinarily derogatory fashion. This, the prosecution asserted, had done much to “dehumanize” the targets of his distortion in the mind of the German public. In turn, such dehumanization had made it possible or at least easier for average Germans to later indulge in the outright liquidation of Jewish “vermin.” The tribunal agreed, holding that Streicher was therefore complicit in genocide and deserving of death by hanging.”
(Ward Churchill, “The Nuremberg Precedent”)
…
i think it’s worthwhile to consider whether there are things such as hate speech, bigotry, racism, sexism, anti-semitism, anti-muslim prejudice, etc and what limits to place on civil discourse in view of the existence of social and power structures which enforce inequality. if we are all agreed that it’s not a level playing field, then we have to consider how the already marginalized and institutionally disempowered are being affected by hate speech. it’s always been a bit amusing to me that the “free speech” crowd gets much more agitated about hirsi ali’s right to demand that all muslims be forced to convert but is infinitely more relaxed about severe restrictions placed on political speech (govt attacks on activists for example, who can be beaten up and jailed for expressing dissenting views).
how to differentiate between hate speech and free speech? here’s the definition of hate speech:
Hate speech is speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of race, religion, gender, disability, or sexual orientation. [i would add “culture” to this list. post WWII there has been a shift in how racism is expressed. prejudice based on “race” has become too tawdry and repulsive, so it has been replaced with “culture.” when we talk of “islamic culture” being incompatible with democracy and human rights for example, it’s just a cover-up for racism.]
In law, hate speech is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is forbidden because it may incite violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group. The law may identify a protected individual or a protected group by certain characteristics. In some countries, a victim of hate speech may seek redress under civil law, criminal law, or both. [minorities should certainly be protected groups and so should be people who have been historically colonized, ethnically cleansed, enslaved, persecuted, etc and who are still disenfranchized on account of that history. ideally, i’m all for absolute free speech but that would work only if we were dealing with a level playing field – socially, economically, politically, etc. unfortunately, that is NOT the reality we live in.]
Critics have argued that the term “hate speech” is a contemporary example of Newspeak, used to silence critics of social policies that have been poorly implemented in a rush to appear politically correct. [this is where i like to draw a distinction b/w mocking/offending/dehumanizing groups of people (the danish cartoons for example) and political speech (the right to criticize govt policy, politicians, heads of state, the IMF, the NSA, etc.) if comedians are not allowed to make sexist jokes or brandeis decides not to give an honorary degree to hirsi ali, it doesn’t really upset me much. i don’t think the world is poorer for it. however, when activists protesting drone strikes are arrested and imprisoned (it happened to a close friend of mine), that is extremely disturbing. it undermines the very structure of democracy.]