In liberal democracies around the world, hate speech is criminalized.  France allows for the prosecution of public insults based on religion, race, ethnicity or national origin. In Germany it is against the law to incite hatred against a national, racial, or religious group.  Also, assault on the human dignity of others by insulting language is against the law in Germany.  Violators are held liable to imprisonment from three months to five years. If the hate speech laws of France and Germany were applied in the United States, millions of Americans on Facebook and Twitter would be facing criminal charges. 

During Pentecost Mass in St. Peter’s Square yesterday, Pope Francis highlighted the “culture of insults” in the world.  In his homily, Francis rightly observed the “the more we use social media, the less social we are becoming”.  This is true today in the United States – perhaps more so than in any other country.  We have become decisively divided while being trivially tribal.  Walls have been built.  The rage found on each of the far sides of the political spectrum is fervent. 

 Those people in the middle, lukewarm or indifferent, are part of the problem too.  You are either with us or against us according to the far-right and far-left.  The temperature of the debate, no matter the topic it seems, has reached the boiling point.  If you support only some of President Trump’s positions, but not all of them, the far-left still hates you because they hate the President.  If you voted for the President you are a racist, homophobic, misogynist.  Nazi-Scum was the chant heard in London during Trump’s recent visit.  A Trump supporter had a milkshake thrown on his head while surrounded by Trump haters.  Throwing milkshakes at Trump supporters is all the rage for the far-left nowadays. 

 The far-right supports the President because of his “America First” approach to domestic and foreign policy.  White Nationalists believe their country is being taken away from them by non-whites.  The fact that the far-left hates the President, and have convinced their followers that the President is a racist, only fuels the far-right fire for the President.  Throw in the MAGA hats, a hat that the left has called equivalent to the Ku Klux Klan hood, and the adoration for Trump from the far-right is complete.  The far-right hates the people that hate the President.

Of the nearly 69 million people that voted for Donald Trump in 2016, only a minuscule number of those voters identify as white nationalists. Regardless, if you wear a MAGA hat, if you voted for Trump, if you plan to vote for Trump again, if you are a Republican, if you are a Christian, white, male living in a ‘red’ state, you are Nazi scum, racist, fascist – hater of brown people / people of color, homosexuals, and women’s rights.

 Both sides, the far-left and the far-right, are the irate, tireless minority.  Samuel Adams said, “It does not take a majority to prevail… but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush-fires of freedom in the minds of men.”  What Adams didn’t envision is how to reason with two irate minorities that, through the advent of social media, have the ability to foster and finance the spread of hatred across the United States in seconds!  Social media provides the sense of distance required for its users to say hateful things to each other – words that most would not dare say to each other face to face.  The instinct to punch someone in the cyber-face is as real as if face to face. 

Unfortunately, the hatred on the far-left and far-right has risen to the point of daily death threats made to both Democrat and Republican members of the United States Congress.  Death threats are illegal and are taken seriously by the Secret Service and Capitol Police.  Death threats are not covered by the 1st Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech.  Throwing punches, milkshakes, rocks, shoes, food, balloons filled with urine or feces, etc., if they hit their target, is assault.  Assault is against the law.  Law enforcement should aggressively root out the far-left and far-right activists when they show up at peaceful protests.

The loud and angry voices of hate found on the left and right today are minimized, trivialized, or denied as hate by the supporters of whatever position is being defended.  Each claims complete justification for the hateful words they catapult towards each other.  Both sides agree that something must be done about this hate – the other side’s hate!  Censorship, silencing the opposition, taking away one side’s voice, reducing their reach on the Internet so they can influence fewer voters – this advantage goes to the liberals because the policies of social media sites skew to the left.  For example, posting pictures or video of aborted babies in opposition to abortion is censored on YouTube.  Google buries pro-life stories, video, and pictures.  Google / YouTube can fairly be described as pro-choice and liberal.  As actions to limit the conservative voice increase, expect lawsuits to follow.  Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube will need to decide if each is platform or a publisher.  Right now each claims to be a platform, but by censoring content, they are behaving like publishers.

There are many voices in the United States that believe there needs to be laws against hate speech.  After all, there have been hate crime laws since 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the first federal hate crime statute. Shouldn’t we be able to define and criminalize hate speech? 

In liberal democracies around the world, hate speech is criminalized.  France allows for the prosecution of public insults based on religion, race, ethnicity or national origin. In Germany it is against the law to incite hatred against a national, racial, or religious group.  Also, assault on the human dignity of others by insulting language is against the law in Germany.  Violators are held liable to imprisonment from three months to five years. If the hate speech laws of France and Germany were applied in the United States, millions of Americans on Facebook and Twitter would be facing criminal charges. 

 Hate speech is not regulated in the United States.  The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that hate speech, offensive speech, even vulgar speech is protected speech under the First Amendment. 

The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America States:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Criminalizing hate is an affront to freedom.  Hate crime laws gives prosecutors extra leverage against the accused.  However, if a person commits a crime against a person based on his or her skin color, there are already laws in which the perpetrator will be charged.  Dylan Roof, the white supremacist that killed nine beautiful people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC on June 17th 2015, was going to be given a death sentence with or without hate crime convictions.  Either the federal government or the great state of South Carolina was going to put this mass murderer to death solely on the nine murder convictions.  The evil and hate were obvious by the crimes committed.  Hate can be found in every violent crime. 

With there being no punishment for hate speech in the United States, cyber-mobs have taken to attacking persons and platforms that broadcast words they find offensive.  Most recently the Steven Crowder / Carlos Maza battle placed YouTube in the position of having to defend why it demonetized Crowder’s channel.  First it was liberals attacking YouTube for allowing Crowder’s channel to even exist.  Now it is conservatives attacking YouTube for taking away Crowder’s revenue stream.  Progressives argue that the far-right spread bigotry and hate online.  They believe more censorship is required…so long as their hateful words are not being censored.  Maybe a better approach is civility.