I have always had concerns about the emergence and consolidation of the concept of ‘hate speech’ in the UK (and indeed elsewhere). It is obvious that it resists easy definition, so let’s start with the current guidelines proffered by the Crown Prosecution Service. ‘Hate crime’ is defined as ‘any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person’s disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.’ A ‘hate incident’ is defined as a non-criminal act that is ‘perceived by the victim, or anybody else, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on the five protected characteristics.’ Apparently ‘non-crime hate incidents’ are recorded when no crime has been committed but offensive speech or behaviour has been investigated by the police. As Andrew Doyle notes in his Free Speech, ‘this can have ramifications for the accused because these records appear on searches by the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), which employers are legally required to undertake. Worryingly, the Hate Crime Operational Guidance issued by the College of Policing instructs officers to record incidents ‘irrespective or whether there is any evidence to identify the hate element’ (p.88).
Well, maybe you can see why I’ve been, and remain, concerned? And this is without factoring in the thoughts of the Scottish Justice Secretary, who called for the criminalisation of speech in private dwellings. This could result in police routinely checking citizens for ‘non-crime’, deploying phrases like ‘we need to check your thinking’.
Doyle’s concerns are that this all suggests – most extremely if the police fail to ‘act in a politically neutral fashion’ – a new and dangerous kind of authoritarianism (p.89).
Those of us active on social media have encountered this issue. Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 criminalises online speech that can be deemed ‘grossly offensive’ by the courts. Doyle: ‘again, the requirement for a prosecutor to prove that there was any intention to cause offence is conspicuously absent.’ His own conclusion is unambiguous:
‘the price we pay for a free society is that bad people will say bad things. We tolerate this, not because we approve of the content of their speech, but because once we have compromised on the principle of free speech we clear the pathway for future tyranny.’
I have personally found that I’ve offended people on Twitter a few times. On the first occasion I discovered – after using the Freedom of Information Act – that I’d been suspended from the Labour Party for using the word ‘Blairite’ in a tweet. It was clear to me that this was a device to cancel my probable vote for Corbyn in his second leadership election, and the suspension was eventually lifted (job done). I later resigned from the Party in disgust at Starmer’s shadow cabinet appointments.
A second occasion was more interesting. It was linked to two blogs, one recording a deeply unsettling, harrowing visit to Auschwitz, and ending with a brief query: how could/can Israeli racist domestic and foreign policy re-Palestinians be reconciled with the terrible events that comprised the holocaust? Had lessons gone unlearned? This was greeted with charges of anti-Semitism by a section of the Jewish community.
In a subsequent tweet I asked whether it would be anti-Semitic for a sociologist to research Jewish representation amongst UK elites. Initially, most people answered that it would not; but then it suddenly changed and I was accused of being anti-Semitic for even asking this question (actually, of course, I was only asking whether it would be considered anti-Semitic for a sociologist to ask such a hypothetical research question). It ended up about 50:50 with 2,000 plus responses. Again, I was accused of racism, which I found ironic for a number of reasons: (a) I had no intention of conducting such research, (b) people who called me racist wrongly assumed that it would disappoint me if the Jewish community was found to be statistically ‘over-represented’ amongst elites, and (c) published research conducted in the USA and in the UK by Jewish sociologists had already shown the Jewish community to be statistically over-represented amongst elite groups. I ended by rebutting charges of anti-Semitism and by insisting that I’ll research whatever I want thanks very much. I was through these interactions introduced to the notion of ‘tropes’, although it seemed at the time that any criticism of the Israeli state involved what were cast as anti-Semitic tropes.
A little later I shared the view on Twitter and Facebook that the problem of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party had been exaggerated in order to help sabotage the prospect of Corbyn, a pro-Palestinian Labour leader, being elected PM. Although there exists a degree of anti-Semitism in Labour, and any is too much, the evidence seemed clear that it is more of a problem in the population as a whole, as well as within the Conservative Party. Predictably I was again harangued as ‘a fucking racist’, if only by a select and largely anonymous few. But I’m a sociologist, and I was and am confident that the evidence supported my position. Am I supposed to accept that I was somehow guilty of ‘hate speech’ because a few people – ‘Israel right or wrong’ – claimed they were offended? Starmer’s Labour Party obviously thinks so: good thing I left before I was thrown out (like Corbyn himself, Ken Loach and many others). Like numerous others who adopted my position, I have been and remain critical of regimes throughout the world, not least the USA and the UK.
Consider for the sake of argument the following ‘expressions of opinion’. I hold none of them though others undoubtedly do.
- The holocaust never happened.
- We are born either male or female and it is morally wrong to ‘change sexes’.
- God created the heaven and the earth.
- Within and between countries there are no compelling answers to what is right or wrong, just differences in cultures.
- We should bring back capital punishment.
- So-called refugees are really economic migrants.
Now, for the sake of argument, let’s note their antitheses:
1b The holocaust was a terrifying genocide that polluted the 20th century.
2b People are first and foremost people and can exercise their choice to ‘change sexes’.
3b There are no gods, just humans and multiple other species.
4b There are compelling transcultural criteria for what is right or wrong.
5b Capital punishment is morally repugnant as well as an ineffective deterrent.
6b Refugees are quite different from economic migrants and should and must be welcomed.
Each statement invites debate of course, but for the record, I would defend 1b-6b.
Is anyone committing hate speech if they espouse either any statement from 1-6, or any statement from 1b-6b? And, if so, who is to decide? The government, the courts, referenda? And what sanctions, punishments? This is Doyle’s point. Insofar as the notion of hate speech has increasing traction, it lends itself to a dangerous state-sanctioned policing of speech, private as well as public, and ultimately of thought. Doubtless some would find this blog offensive (certainly Starmer’s Labour Party)! Remember that laws against ‘incitement’, which is different, have been on the statute books for some time.
Borrowing a phrase from Wittgenstein, hate speech shares ‘family resemblances’ with other aspects of our changing – now more relativistic – culture (as Lyotard argued long ago, ‘grand’ narratives have ceded ground to multiple, pick-and-mix ‘petit’ narratives). ‘Cancel culture’ is an obvious example. Doyle makes the point that cancel culture involves denouncing (via public shaming and boycotting) rather than criticising. Practitioners, he argues, typically engage in ‘gaslighting’:
‘a term which denotes the act of flatly contradicting observable reality. They smear their targets as ‘bullies’ as a means to bully them, or cast themselves in the role of victim while they victimise others. Often, this is achieved by claiming that they have been made to feel ‘unsafe’ or that ‘violence’ has been inflicted, which is usually enough to ensure that the target will lose his or her job. After all, an employer will not fire someone for a simple matter of disagreement, but will be obliged to take action ‘if harm’ can be said to have been caused. Even the denial of cancel culture itself is a form of ‘gaslighting’, because it requires that we ignore the overwhelming evidence of its existence.’ (pp. 25/6)
I was personally threatened by a national columnist, who said he’d contact UCL to expose my ‘anti-Semitic’ insistence that anti-Semitism was being weaponised against Corbyn. I was long since retired and have no idea if he actually did contact UCL.
The point of this blog is: (a) to encourage debate, and (b) to alert people to the authoritarian/repressive potential in the embedding of concepts like hate speech and cancel culture. I end with an additional sociological point. These concepts are part and parcel of a post-1970s ‘postmodernisation’ or ‘relativisation’ of ‘post-truth’ culture. While they should not and cannot be interpreted in determinist fashion as mere products of financialised or rentier capitalism, they are certainly functional for it; as Habermas long ago maintained, this cultural shift represents a ‘new conservatism’.
Be wary I say, be wary! Free speech matters. The Enlightenment, for all its (white, colonial, male) failings, needs to be ‘reconstructed’, not abandoned.