Nadia Alexander

Homeschooled, South Africa

3rd Prize

HANDLING HATE SPEECH: ‘US AND THEM’

 

WHAT IS HATE SPEECH?

  The question[i] posed implies a conflict between freedom of expression and hate speech. Though the right to freedom of expression is granted by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights[ii], the definition of both terms is widely contested[iii].   Nonetheless, we may seek definitions of the two, so that their potential to conflict may be made clear. Freedom of expression is “the right to speak, to be heard, and to participate in political, artistic, and social life. It also includes the ‘right to know’: the right to seek, receive, and share information through any media”[iv].  Hate speech, on the other hand, is “any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, colour, descent, gender or other identity factor”.[v] When the right to communicate crosses a hazy line into prejudice or incitement to violence, hate speech has reared its’ ugly head.   I agree with Antonio Guterres’ identification of hate speech as “as formidable threat to human rights”. It is exactly that, by itself and especially in its relation to more egregious human rights violations.  

HISTORY, HATE SPEECH AND HUMAN RIGHTS

  South Africa’s Apartheid - one of the greatest crimes against humanity[vi], perpetrated from 1948 to 1994 - was fuelled by hate speech. The ruling National Party of the time spewed discriminatory notions of difference – inferiority and superiority between the so – called ‘races’ to sustain their iniquitous oppression of the working, ‘non-white/black’ population[vii]. Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, the ‘architect of Apartheid’, once proclaimed that: “Natives [blacks] must be taught from an early age that equality with Europeans [whites] is not for them.”[viii] and that “there is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour.... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice”[ix] to try to justify his governments’ discriminatory Bantu Education Act of 1953 (now repealed)[x]. Without this toxic discourse, disguised as valid reasoning, apartheid may have never persisted as it did, for 46 long years. But with it, countless human rights violations were committed by the state, including forced removals[xi] that directly infringed upon the right to “freedom of movement and residence” (UDHR, Article 13)  and the enforcement of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949[xii] such that South African men and women did not “without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family” (UDHR, Article 16).  Indeed, without racist prejudice, cemented in the nations’ mind by state and media[xiii] hate speech, the National Party would likely never have had any ground upon which to exploit and humiliate ‘non whites". This is just one historical example of the symbiotic relationship between hate speech and the violation of human rights, exhibited also in the Holocaust and the 1994 Rwandan genocide[xiv]. Many violations, and thus the threat of state-wide hate speech, persist in their intergenerational reach: my great grandmother was dispossessed of her small holding[xv], in direct violation of our family’s right to not be arbitrarily deprived of our property (Article 17, UDHR), an injustice for which my grandmother received only R600 in reparations.  Descendants of apartheids’ victims thus lack the wealth of their ‘white’ countrymen[xvi] and, with the ruling governments’ preservation of racial classification the right to be ‘born free and equal’ is continually strained[xvii].  

HATE SPEECH TODAY

  It seems that humanity has not yet shirked the threat of hate speech to human rights and there are countless modern – day instances of our failure to do so.   A case – study in hate speeches’ threat may be found in the United States of America. In his recent presidential election campaign, the now president, Donald Trump and his proponents may be quoted spouting numerous tid-bits of hate speech, many xenophobic in nature[xviii]. Of Haitian immigrants, he made the baseless claim that “…they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats, … they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”[xix] Such a claim is arguably in direct infringement of immigrants’ right to have no “attacks upon [their] honour and reputation” (Article 12, UDHR). Such discriminatory rhetoric may also be correlated to the increase in the incidence of hate crimes against immigrants[xx] in the US. Even before 2024, a notable case of a hate crime, catalysed by  anti – immigrant hate speech, is the 2019 El Paso Walmart mass shooting. Threatened by what he believed was a ‘Hispanic invasion of Texas’ and believing in the impending ‘replacement’ of ‘white people’ (by people ‘of colour’), Patrick Crusius shot dead 23 people at a Walmart Superstore, many of whom were Hispanic.[xxi]   The Israeli army’s human rights violations committed in Gaza[xxii] - from the withholding of aid[xxiii] to the bombing of the tents of displaced peoples, both egregiously violating the Palestinians civilians’ right to “life, liberty and security of person” (Article 3, UDHR) - have been intertwined with the divisive hate speech of government officials[xxiv]. It cannot be that former defence minister Yoav Gallants’ reference to Palestinians’ as ‘human animals’[xxv] and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s invocation of Amalek[xxvi] to justify the treatment of civilians in Gaza does not erode the humanity of Palestinians[xxvii] and the rights they are thus entitled to. Such is the way hate speech can threaten human rights.   Anti – Muslim hate speech has pervaded Indian social media[xxviii] and even made its’ way up to a, now removed, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) election campaign video, wherein an apparently Muslim family takes over the home of a Hindu family[xxix], implying that the presence of Muslim Indians threatens the livelihood of other Indians. During an election rally on 21 April 2024, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi referred to Muslim Indians’ as ‘infiltrators’[xxx], further spurring the notion that their presence is a threat to India.  The increase in instances of anti – Muslim hate speech may, unsurprisingly, be associated with increasing hate crimes against Indian Muslims, including the vandalism of Muslim – owned shopfronts and cases of Muslims being physically attacked[xxxi][xxxii].   Returning to my home country, the recent 2024 National Election has passed, with a few campaigners using xenophobic rhetoric in an appeal to the ‘identity’ of South Africans[xxxiii]. The political party who has been most prolifically on the rise[xxxiv], the Patriotic Alliance, has a slogan of ‘Abahambe’, which translates, from IsiZulu, to ‘they [foreign nationals] must leave/go’. The party’s leader, and now Honourable Member of Parliament (MP), Gayton Mckenzie, has continually uttered anti – immigrant sentiments[xxxv]. A criminal complaint was recently made against him for ‘incitement of xenophobic violence, hate speech and intimidation’ because he told eNCA, a major news network, that “If there is a South African, Zimbabwean and Mozambican patient on oxygen and I see a SA [South African] patient born and bred in SA, I will turn the oxygen off so that the South African can live”[xxxvi]. A nation already strained by xenophobia and anti – immigrant attacks[xxxvii] has seen, by what is likely no coincidence, an uptick in displacements of immigrants from South Africa by an almost two-fold increase in reported incidents from 2019 to 2024[xxxviii]. Such displacements may threaten the right of immigrants to not be subjected to ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’ (Article 5, UDHR) and the widely held sentiment that immigrants, particularly African immigrants, are harbingers of criminality and a burden on resources threatens their right to reputation (Article 12, UDHR) as individuals. Considering how clear hate speeches’ threat is to human rights, we must seek solutions with an acute fervour.  

SEEKING SOLUTIONS

THE ROOT OF HATE SPEECH: US AND THEM

  In the case – studies demonstrating hate speech’s threat to human rights, the observant eye notices a common notion, that of difference – white and non -white, immigrant and native, ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘you’ people, ‘our’ people, ‘their’ people. This notion of differences (othering), however arbitrary those differences may be, seems to overtake the similarities we share[xxxix] – in our humanity and the universal needs that thence arise, in our mortality, in our ignorance of what happens after life.   Given this inordinate sense of difference, we can no longer, so acutely, identify our humanity with those that we deem to be ‘other’, and thus, with this alienation, arises fear[xl]. Hate speech, I conjecture, is both bred out of this fear of ‘other’ and feeds on it, particularly in its’ capacity to threaten human rights – the mouth speaks, and the hand, fearful yet wanting to protect its’ own perceived identity, follows, often led to violence.   The Apartheid notion of ‘swartgevaar’ (black danger)[xli] may be evidence to my claim. Believing that they were outnumbered by a majority ‘non – white’ population, ‘white’ South Africans were fearful that the country would be taken over by what they believed was ‘other’; dark – skinned people of a ‘primitive’ disposition[xlii]. It was within this fear that the Apartheid government could carry out the crimes that it did, supported by people who believed they thus were being shielded from ‘black danger’.   Therefore, for us to eradicate hate speech’s threat to human rights, we must neutralise the divisive notion of ‘us and them’, and the threat individuals feel from what they perceive to be ‘other’ groups. We must focus instead on the needs common to all; to eat, to be housed, to be clothed, to not be abused, humiliated and excessively traumatised. We must place unity over division, similarity over difference. In believing we are, together, one organism of humanity; our nose would not so quickly be cut to spite our face.   Governments, in their paternal role[xliii], can play a major part in this transition. In my own country, such a change can manifest itself in the end of racial classification that distinguishes South Africans along the non- scientific, constructed lines of race[xliv][xlv]. Broadly, the threat of hate speech to human rights ought to be dealt with in two ways; by the proper enforcement of legislation against hate speech and, more crucially, by correcting the reception of hate speech via education.  

LEGISLATION AND ENFORCEMENT

  In the US, there are no official laws against hate speech[xlvi]. This could be contributing how widespread hate speech is there, making its’ way up even to the oration of statespeople. To reduce the threat of hate speech, some legislation should be implemented against it -when it poses a ‘real danger’[xlvii] - and enforced by fines. An example may be taken from the way South Africa has punished some instances of hate speech. In 2016, Penny Sparrow produced a grossly racist diatribe on social media – of so- called black people she said: "From now on I shall address the blacks of South Africa as monkeys as I see the cute little wild monkeys do the same, pick and drop litter". She was consequently fined R150 000 by the country’s Equality Court[xlviii]. Such punishment limits the proliferation of hate speech in South African media and the nation has been thus somewhat successful in curbing the threat of post – apartheid racist rhetoric - though has not completely abolished it, the root cause of otherness remains. Therefore, it may be that people are just being more careful as to what they openly say on social media – hate may yet be alive in the consciousness of our nation, though not openly expressed.   Laws against hate speech will likely be subject to due criticism and may be passed under great resistance. One may look at Scotland’s’ new Hate Crime and Public Order Act[xlix] - that makes it an offence to “stir up hatred with threatening or abusive behaviour on the basis of characteristics…”, for which the offender can spend up to 7 years in prison – as an example of hate speech law that has come under great scrutiny.[l]  Duly argued claims might be made that laws infringe on free speech[li] and given the hazy definition of both terms, a careful line must be trod. Therefore, I propose that legislation be not the permanent solution and that it is enforced conservatively, also,, because it does not address (what I think is) the root cause of hate speech.  

THE RECEPTION OF HATE SPEECH AND EDUCATION

  I propose that, to strike hate speech’s threat at the heart, state education must be reformed.[lii] It must be reformed such that greater emphasis is placed on the similarities, not differences, between ‘real and perceived’ groups in society, such that the fallacy in many instances of hate speech[liii] can be identified by the layman, such that hate speech may thus be dismissed as the often divisive hogwash it is and such that individuals are not so easily ‘stirred up’ and brought to violence by hate speech and the fear it thrives upon.   Such reforms may practically manifest themselves in the review and amendment of school curricula – does the language used in history textbooks, for example, ingrain ideas of ‘us and them’ as opposed to ‘we, the human race’? (i.e., if there exists divisive or discriminatory discourse in learning materials and the correction thereof)[liv] In the USA, where the threat of hate speech is a pervading problem, there have been claims that the history curriculum is ‘racially biased’[lv]– these two issues are likely not unrelated. A school curriculum stressing the similarities within humanity, over our differences, would likely stand a better chance at defeating the threat of hate speech. There could also be implementation of programs teaching ‘information literacy’[lvi], so people may more easily identify hate speech, discrimination and misinformation. Non – governmental organisations, like UNESCO, have carried such programs out[lvii], but including information literacy in state education would spread it nation – wide would thus have a greater impact on reducing the threat of hate speech.  Lastly, I propose that the government include critical thinking skills; “thinking about thinking”[lviii], and media literacy in school curricula – if the average person were a critical thinker, they would not so easily let their convictions be swayed by hate speech[lix]. Education in Finland focuses on critical thinking and media literacy[lx] and the nation reported 90% fewer instances of hate crime in 2023 than the USA[lxi], where critical thinking and media literacy education is said to be lacking[lxii].   Though education reformation may take generations to trickle down into an entire population, it deals with what I propose to be the root cause of hate speech, the perceived ‘other’ and the consequent, often irrational, fear of ‘other’.  

CONCLUSION

  Lest the aim be to divide and to rule, governments can play a great role in reducing the formidable threat that hate speech poses to human rights. Though it may not occur in our lifetime, I hope that one day there exists a world of ‘we’, no longer of ‘us and them’, where hate speech can no longer divide our beautiful human race.