Hate Speech
What can you do to respond to hate speech and create a respectful atmosphere for discussion in your community?
How do we begin as a community to address the dangers and harm of hate speech? It starts with changing social norms—or the way we speak to each other in public, at school, and in our neighborhoods and workplaces. As the community of Pittsburgh showed, responding to bias, bigotry, and hate in our daily lives starts with all of us.
The Dangers of Hate Speech: Lessons from Pittsburgh
(excerpts from Repairing the World)
Watch the video above with your community and consider questions such as:
Do we speak respectfully to each other? How do our own biases lead to speech that may be harmful to others? Do we resist stereotypes and messaging that portray a group or an individual as inferior, or “less than”? Do we understand the dangers of disinformation and how it is spread? Can we identify the signs of dangerous, dehumanizing speech that leads to violence? How can we make respectful speech the new normal?
Protecting free speech is a challenging but vital part of holding on to a democracy. Countering hate speech is not meant to stifle political disagreements. Labeling the views of your political opponents as “hate” without clear definitions will only lead to further polarization. DO learn how to watch for dehumanization (identifying groups of people as animals or insects), fact-check for misinformation about whole groups of people, and speak up against hate or harmful language.
Hate Speech & Dangerous Speech: Defining the Threat
The Dangerous Speech Project is an independent non-profit research team that gathers and analyzes examples of dangerous speech from around the world to better understand the links between speech and violence. Excerpts from their website are presented below. Learn more Dangerousspeech.org
“In public discourse in the United States, whenever there’s a controversy about speech two opposing sides form up against each other, under the banners “free speech” and “hate speech.” This is a false dichotomy: it’s possible, and in fact essential, to counter hatred while also protecting freedom of expression. Focusing instead on “dangerous speech” allows people of different backgrounds and ideas to start a discussion, since almost everyone agrees that mass violence should be prevented.”
Susan Benesch
Executive Director, Dangerous Speech Project
WHAT IS DANGEROUS SPEECH?
Dangerous speech is any form of expression (e.g. speech, text, or images) that can increase the risk that its audience will condone or participate in violence against members of another group. We have observed striking similarities in the rhetoric that leaders use to provoke violence in completely different countries, cultures, and historical periods. One of these rhetorical ‘hallmarks’ or recurring patterns in dangerous speech is dehumanization, or referring to people in another group as insects, despised or dangerous animals, bacteria, or cancer. More hallmarks are listed below. Rhetoric alone can’t make speech dangerous, though; the context in which it is communicated is just as important. One can capture that context, and analyze speech for dangerousness, by asking about five aspects of the speech:
Speaker: Did the message come from an influential speaker?
Audience: Was the audience susceptible to an inflammatory message, e.g. because they were already fearful or resentful?
Message: Does the speech carry hallmarks of dangerous speech? The hallmarks are: Dehumanization, ‘Accusation in a mirror’, Assertion of attack on women/girls, Coded language, and Impurity/contamination. [see the full FAQ for more on these hallmarks].
Context: Is there a social or historical context that has lowered the barriers to violence or made it more acceptable? Examples of this are competition between groups for resources and previous episodes of violence between the relevant groups.
Medium: How influential is the medium by which the message is delivered? For example, is it the only or primary source of news for the relevant audience?
All five conditions need not be relevant, for speech to be dangerous. For an analytical framework based on these five conditions that is meant for evaluating whether speech is dangerous, and how dangerous, please see Dangerous Speech: A Practical Guide.
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HATE SPEECH AND DANGEROUS SPEECH?
Hate speech is offensive, painful, and even threatening, but it does not, very often, inspire violence by those who are exposed to it. Conversely, dangerous speech isn’t always hateful. It often instills fear, which can be at least as powerful as hatred, in inspiring violence. So the two categories overlap only partly, as this diagram illustrates. Another distinction is this: the most familiar way in which hate speech harms is directly, by hurting the feelings, self-respect, or dignity of people it purports to describe, when they are are exposed to it. By contrast dangerous speech does much of its damage indirectly, by persuading one group of people to fear, hate - and eventually to condone violence against - another group. Hate speech can also harm indirectly, by persuading one group of people to hate another group - here the categories overlap as illustrated.
WHAT ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF DANGEROUS SPEECH?
Before the national elections of 2007, Kenyan political leaders described other ethnic groups in terms that made their own followers despise and fear them. For example, they referred to other Kenyans as madoadoa (‘spots’ or ‘stains’) and kwekwe (‘weeds’).
Influential Buddhist monks in Myanmar vigorously spread violent anti-Muslim speech both in person and online. Muslims in Myanmar have historically been the target of persecution and violence.
After the American Civil War, whites described African-Americans as “noxious insects” and sexual threats to the purity of white women and girls. According to historian Leon Litwack, lynching participants saw themselves as “pest control” and fighters of a virus that would harm their communities.
If you’d like more information on these cases, for Kenya see this report on post-election violence in 2007 and 2008. For Myanmar, this article on how speech fuels hostile attitudes toward Muslims in that country. For the United States, see for example pages 8-34 of Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (2000) and Leon Litwack’s description of individuals who participated in lynchings.
See all Frequently Asked Questions about Dangerous Speech on the Dangerous Speech Project website.
Reframing the Harm of Hate Speech
Interview excerpts from Professor David Danks at Carnegie Melon University in 2020
In the film Repairing the World, David Danks, (now at the University of San Diego) then chair of the Philosophy Department at Carnegie Mellon University, discusses the dangers of hate speech in Repairing the World. In this extended interview, Danks probes at some of the underlying assumptions we have about the impact of unfettered “free speech” as well as hate speech and the harm that it creates.
“We're never going to eliminate aggressive, painful, harmful speech. But I think we need to work to shrink it. And I think we can do that, but only by using a lot of different methods that engage all of us, whether some of us professionally, but all of us personally.”
-David Danks
Understanding Hate Speech
What Up Holmes?
When is the line crossed when individual rights to free speech should not be protected? Our interpretation of free speech has evolved over time. In this Radiolab segment, journalists explore the evolving understanding of free speech by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:
Listen to the Podcast Episode
United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech
“The devastating effect of hatred is sadly nothing new. However, its scale and impact are now amplified by new communications technologies. Hate speech – including online – has become one of the most common ways of spreading divisive rhetoric on a global scale, threatening peace around the world.”
Learn more: Say #NoToHate, The United Nations
From Bad To Worse: Amplification and Auto-Generation of Hate | ADL
A study by the ADL shows how social media and tech companies sometimes directly contribute to the spread of hate speech and extremism and even create this content themselves at times.
Incendiary Speech That Spurs Violence is Rising in US, But Tools Exist to Shrink It
Susan Benesch, the founder and director of the Dangerous Speech Project, wrote an article about the rise of hate speech in the United States and the tools at our disposal to combat it. She focuses on the ability to change people’s minds—both major influencers and everyday individuals.
FIGHTING HATE / SPLC Hate Map
The Southern Poverty Law Center monitors hate groups in the United States and exposes their activities to law enforcement, the media, and the public. They are currently tracking more than 1,300 extremist groups that are operating across the United States.
See where these groups are active on their Hate Map: Fighting Hate
Resources About Hate Speech
Nature.com Scientific Reports: What does Hate Speech Do to Your Brain
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Defusing Hate - A Strategic Guide to Counteract Dangerous Speech
United Nations: Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech (PDF)
Department of Justice: Preventing Hate Crimes in Your Community
The United Nations: The Shocking Link Between Hate Speech and Genocide
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Holocaust Denial and Hate Speech
ADL: Online Hate and Harassment: The American Experience 2021
What You Can Do
How do we begin as a society to counter hate and violence? It starts with changing social norms—the way we speak to each other in public, at school, and in our neighborhoods and workplaces. As the community of Pittsburgh showed, it starts with all of us.
Host a Screening Event In Your Community
Screening events drive home the clear message from the Pittsburgh community that safety, solidarity and resilience start with relationships, collaboration and action. The events are a vehicle to bring diverse residents and community stakeholders together under the rubric of engagement, trust-building, and joint action against antisemitism and all forms of hate and bigotry. Post-screening panel discussions can explore how cities, faith groups, schools, civil rights groups and local businesses can work together to foster inclusion and broader civic participation.
Get our Discussion Guide and other resources for hosting a screening →
Other Ways to Take Action
Get your school involved
Plan a screening and discussion of the film and how to stop hate and antisemitism. Begin now with a Not In Our School campaign to empower students to create safe and inclusive environments: niot.org/nios/about
Share your story
Hundreds of communities came together for vigils and events in response to the attack at Tree of Life synagogue in 2018. Share your own videos, photos, and stories about what happened in your town by sending us a message at info@niot.org. Your town may be featured on this site and on NIOT.org.