Hate speech includes “all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify racial hatred, xenophobia, anti-Semitism or other forms of hatred based on intolerance, including intolerance expressed by aggressive nationalism and ethnocentrism, discrimination and hostility towards minorities, migrants and people of immigrant origin”.
Although the expression “hate speech” gained ground during the 1990s, the observation of the phenomenon and the commitment to contrast it are not new. For many decades, the focus was on racial hatred, antisemitism, and historical revisionism. With the new millennium, awareness on the topic has come to include religious minorities and, more recently, women, LGBT persons, the disabled, and the elderly and finally on the political parties and the people belong to it.
In synthesis, no matter the form (written or oral, verbal or non verbal, explicit or implicit) and juridical status (possible “hate crimes”), hate speech includes any expression of violence and discrimination against other persons or groups. As hate speech targets people on the basis of their personal characteristics and/or conditions, contrasting actions need to be appropriate for the current social, economic, political, and technological context.
Is hate speech on the rise?
Although the debate on incitement to hatred has a long history, the attention paid to hate speech has undoubtedly grown over the last years, following increasing occurrences in the digital space. The expression has become common only over the last 30 years, while most initiatives by authorities and civil society are even more recent.
In terms of hate speech per se, civil society organisations and universities are playing an important role in data gathering, especially as regards social media. Within the framework of the European project Positive Messengers, for example, bodies of seven different countries monitor hate speech against migrants and refugees. According to their report of late 2017, occurrence of hate speech increases in correlation with: increasing broadband access; increasing migration flows; electoral campaigns; national tragedies like terrorist attacks; and worsening economic conditions. Likewise, a study by the University of Warwick on Germany highlighted a correlation between occurrence of racism online and crimes against refugees.
Hate Speech in India
Incidents of hate speech in the past have generally involved politicians. For instance, the Supreme Court sought response from the Uttar Pradesh government while hearing an appeal challenging the Allahabad HC order which dismissed a petition against Yogi Adityanath in a 2007 hate speech case; the petition was filed in the aftermath of a hate speech by Adityanath (at that time the BJP parliamentarian from Gorakhpur) which led to riots in Gorakhpur in January 2007.
When JNU student leader Umar Khalid was attacked in August 2018, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah condemned the attack as a hate campaign using social and mainstream media. Some also attributed the attack to hate speech by the media. As a 2016 article in The Indian Express noted how Khalid was vilified on Times Now where the news anchor called him “more dangerous to this country than Maoist terrorists” and anti-national.
In 2015, civil rights activists, including Vrinda Grover and Kavita Krishnan, wrote an open letter to Arnab Goswami stating their intention to boycott Times Now - the letter stated how Goswami had subjected participants in his programme, News Hour, to hate speech and demonised human rights activists. The letter specifically condemned Goswami’s use of the terms, ‘Naxal’, ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorist sympathiser’, noting that the use of these terms and other forms of hate speech is a “gross misuse of the media’s immense power”.
Hate speech by media
The problem of hate speech is compounded when propagated by members of the press. This is because unlike the situation where the person making the hate speech is a politician or an ordinary citizen/internet user, the media is expected to be comparatively neutral while reporting events. The media being the fourth estate has considerable influence over the society and it is easy for the line, between fact-reporting and the personal or political views of a journalist, to be blurred.
When prominent journalists start branding human rights activists as Maoists and anti-nationals, it becomes hate speech because of its potential to incite members of the public to commit acts of violence/hatred against the activists based on the views held by them. This appears to be true in case of the attacks on Umar Khalid and perhaps, even in case of the activists arrested in relation to the Bhima Koregaon incident.
The media enjoys greater freedom from defamation in order to allow fair comment by the press. However, hate speech is different from defamation as hate speech does not merely tarnish the reputation of the subject of the speech, but can lead to persecution of the person against whom the hate speech has been made. The media has a greater responsibility to not indulge in hate speech merely because of the views held by an individual. Hate speech can amount to trial by media which results in further harassment of those individuals and has a chilling effect on free speech.
Hate Speech by the common people
Today I see lot of hate speech/content spreading via Facebook, Twitter and other social media platform. These are written by common people against the current politician and the parties they belong to. These are instigated by the respective parties IT wing on their opponents. This dilutes the purpose and moreover deviates the original topics and finally diverting the people from the original issue/concern. Now Facebook has come up with a mechanism that whenever you come across a post with hate speech or derogatory comments, fake news, you can provide that as a feedback on the post. Facebook will monitor the same and remove them from the page.
So whenever you come across such a post please mark it in the feedback. Here is the screen shot of the feedback system in FB
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