Destructive Messages

How Hate Speech Paves the Way For Harmful Social Movements

Alexander Tsesis

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9780814784136
• Topic: Droit
• Subtopic: Loi sur la discrimination

Destructive Messages argues that hate speech is dangerous not only when it poses an immediate threat of harm. It is also dangerous when it is systematically developed over time, becoming part of a culturally acceptable dialogue which can foster the persecution of minorities.

Tsesis traces a causal link between racist and biased rhetoric and injustices like genocide and slavery. He shows that hate speech and propaganda, when left unregulated, can weave animosity into the social fabric to such a great extent that it can cultivate an environment supportive of the commission of hate crimes. Tsesis uses historical examples to illuminate the central role racist speech played in encouraging attitudes that led to human rights violations against German Jews, Native Americans, and African Americans, and also discusses the dangers posed by hate speech spread on the Internet today. He also offers an examination of the psychology of scapegoating.

Destructive Messages argues that when hate speech is systematically developed over time it poses an even greater threat than when it creates an immediate clear and present danger. Tsesis offers concrete suggestions concerning how to reform current law in order to protect the rights of all citizens.

1

Introduction

Freedom of speech is critical to the growth and maturation of societies and is a much vaunted benefit of living in the United States. However, that freedom has not always led to the collective improvement of all citizens. History is littered with examples of harmful social movements, in various countries and cultures, employing violent racist rhetoric. Such hate-filled ideologies lie at the heart of human tragedies such as the Holocaust, U.S. slavery in the antebellum South, nineteenth-century Indian removal, and present-day slavery in Mauritania.

Propaganda is essential for eliciting widespread cultural acceptance of exclusionary and supremacist ideologies. When hate speech is systematically developed, it sometimes becomes socially acceptable, first, to discriminate and, later, to oppress identifiable groups of people.¹ Racialist rhetoric has been effectively harnessed to formulate and spread racism on national and even international scales. This book focuses on the emergence, elaboration, and reinforcement of stereotypes. It explores the effects of misinformation that is disseminated with the express purpose of persecuting targeted minorities. Specifically, I deal with expressions denigrating members of historically oppressed racial and ethnic groups (“outgroups”). I do not here discuss other forms of verbal abuse that have time and again fueled discrimination against women, gays, and lesbians. Bigots have rationalized all these biases through threads of thought that are subtly woven into the fabric of everyday language.

Speech plays a pivotal role in communicating ideas—both progressive and regressive. Over time, the semantics of a language will mirror the historical development of a people. The context of phrases and the subtle nuances of demonstrative messages can contain the kernels of a cultural worldview. Traditionally accepted perspectives permeate the unconscious and form an often unquestioned social “reality.” Prejudices that reflect collective outlooks gradually find their way into laws.

People intent on maintaining power manipulate stereotypes that echo their followers’ preconceptions. Orators and authors strategically exploit imbedded cultural meanings not just to create grammatical sentences, but also to persuade their audience. They use repeatedly uttered, dogmatic imagery to influence attitudes toward particular groups of people. Large audiences more readily recognize tenets when they draw on deeply held beliefs. This book uses historical examples to demonstrate these concepts.

Hate speech and the prejudice it fosters deny individuals fundamental rights like autonomy and tranquility. I use the term “misethnicity” to describe institutionalized hatred of ethnic groups. “Misethnicity” is divisible into two Greek words. The Greek infinitive “misein” (μισειν) means “to hate.” It appears as the prefix in words such as “misogyny,” meaning the “hatred of women.” Ethnicity is a common English word. Its root “ethnos” (εθνοσ) has a rich origin: it dates back at least to Homer, who used it to refer to a unique nation. In ecclesiastical Latin, ethnicus came to mean “heathen.” Eventually, the term became associated with identifiable groups of peoples who were outside the mainstream: “ethnic minorities.” I use a broad definition of “ethnic group” to refer to people with the same cultural, historical, linguistic, or ancestral backgrounds. “Misethnicity” is sometimes preferable to “racism” and “ethnocentrism.” “Racism” is the diminished respect and unequal treatment of peoples based on their biological particularities. “Ethnocentrism” is the sense of superiority of one’s own ethnic group. “Misethnicity” is more specific in recognizing that ethnic prejudice is a groupwide hatred. I delve into the psychology and sociology of these issues in Part II of this book and give a more refined explanation of the term there.

Misethnicity is deeply nestled within conventional practices. By drawing attention to the centrality of language in perpetuating discrimination, we may be able to dislodge some deep-rooted racist thoughts and behaviors. Charismatic leaders can harness subtle and explicit misethnic statements to instigate active or complicit participation in hate crimes. Expressions such as these create an atmosphere of combustible intolerance: “Most Indians are drunks, but he’s a hard worker”; “He may be a Jew, but he’s not greedy”; “I’m usually careful around blacks, but he can be trusted.” These statements reflect the same animosity as their more flagrant counterparts: “Indians are drunks,” “Jews are greedy,” and “blacks are dangerous.” Studying the linguistic development of misethnicity and its relation to socially destructive conduct is critical to realizing, anticipating, and thwarting its potentially catastrophic consequences.

Scholars like Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic, Mari Matsuda, Charles Lawrence, and Kimberle Crenshaw have exposed connections between misethnic language and political and social hierarchies. Their works show how hate speech is used to stifle minority voices. Destructive Messages goes a step further by illustrating, through empirical examples and sociopsychological analysis, how racist and ethnic slurs become ingrained in conventional language and in herd mentality.

Books about the power and ramifications of unbridled hate speech seldom discuss sociohistorical factors like the ones detailed here. At most, they devote part of a chapter to slavery, segregation, and similar systematic oppressions. A noteworthy exception to this is Gustav Jahoda’s lengthy examination of disparagements about primitive peoples in Images of Savages.

Historic analysis is crucial because it exposes the association between hate propaganda and discriminatory actions. Oppressors justify inequities by making their targets out to be less than human, unworthy of fair treatment or even of the mercy ordinarily shown to animals. Outgroups are portrayed as sexually depraved demons or unruly, childlike savages and the victims themselves are blamed for their own problems or destruction. Negative stereotypes and ideological schemas, designed to rationalize power in the hands of dominant groups, precede crimes against humanity such as genocide. Many lives may be ruined before the views of those who rebuff popular prejudices trickle into the community conscience. Even societies striving for equality, steeped in natural rights theory, and vigilant against intolerant majorities are not wholly immune from becoming havens for supremacists promulgating aggressive ideologies.

Pondering the effectiveness of anti-Semitic and racist messages brings into stark relief the dangers that purveyors of hate pose to representative democracies. Scrutinizing the foundations of genocidal hatred in Germany and of dehumanizing and devaluing dogma in the United States yields abundant information about how, particularly in times of social and economic unrest, hate speech builds upon established ideologies. By understanding the progression from hatred to destruction, we can know better how to prevent misethnicity from being exploited by provocative rhetoricians intent on generating dangerous social movements. Studying how unjust political movements, such as the National Socialist party or the Confederate Nullificationists, manipulated cultural stereotypes is instructive in avoiding future calamities.

In spite of the numerous manifestations of discrimination in the United States, including slavery and Indian removal, most Supreme Court precedents on inciteful speech do not acknowledge its potential to ignite broad-based support for injustices. Instead, the Court maintains that virulent bigotry is protected by the First Amendment so long as it does not call for imminent unlawful actions. The freedom to express even macabre wishes against minorities is thought to add to dialogue, to be cathartic, and to protect minority rights.² Such justifications for the constitutionality of hate speech fail to recognize that for much of American history discrimination existed side by side with the First Amendment. The same Constitution that safeguarded speech also legitimized slavery.³ The drafters of the Constitution did not incorporate any protections for their slaves’ speech rights. Rather, they envisioned the First Amendment as a constraint against the censorship of the “political, scientific, and artistic discourse that they and their class enjoyed.”⁴ Even after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment and the end of slavery, speech continued to play a role in spreading ethnically divisive views.

The Supreme Court has found few exceptions to the constitutional prohibition against legislative restrictions limiting instigative speech. In assuring people the freedom to express their views, the Court has focused on preserving speakers’ liberties while neglecting to consider the negative impact of hate speech on targeted outgroups. Recent events, such as the Littleton, Colorado, shooting spree and Benjamin Smith’s deadly rampage in the Midwest, call for a reevaluation of current free speech doctrine.

The book is divided into four parts. Part I presents an empirical survey of the role that ideology plays in the development and perpetuation of ethnic intolerance. Chapter 2 evaluates the effects of anti-Semitic speech in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Germany. The chapter shows how, through time, anti-Semitism influenced social consciousness until it led to disenfranchisement, imprisonment, forced labor, and attempted genocide. Chapter 3 analyzes how racist speech contributed to the entrenchment of black slavery in the United States. I contend that pro-slavery arguments, made in the context of a prejudiced society, undergirded the conceptual framework that supported hereditary servitude. Chapter 4 contains an account of depictions used to disparage Native Americans. I discuss the dehumanizing effect of rhetoric asserting the cultural inferiority of aboriginal Americans. Popular utterances about native peoples shaped colonists’ views and provided them with rationalizations for the policy of Indian massacres and removal from their native lands.

Chapter 5 focuses on contemporary issues, beginning with some details on a pressing present-day injustice: black slavery in Mauritania, which continues to destroy thousands of lives. Moving on to recent U.S. encounters with hate speech, I first examine the spread of destructive messages over the Internet and the inadequacy of commercial filtering software in checking their proliferation. I then discuss the role that videos and pamphlets played in recent hate crimes such as Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Oklahoma federal office building. I end with some insights into the inroads that white supremacist groups have recently made into U.S. politics.

Part II identifies psychological and sociological issues behind scapegoating. Chapter 6 analyzes the centrality of prejudiced speech in forming misethnic personality traits. It also relates how historical images of the “other” impair character development of both perpetrators and victims. I explain how misethnic invective elicits emotional and motivational responses, thereby easing guilt about groupwide mistreatment and injustice. The primary concern of chapter 7 is with the social forces that give rise to and reinforce outgroup stereotypes. It examines why societies so often resort to discrimination, despite its destructive consequences.

Part III discusses jurisprudence and public policy matters. Chapters 8 and 9 evaluate U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the constitutionality of criminal statutes that penalize the expression of bigoted messages. My critique concentrates on Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s dissent in Abrams v. United States, which created the “marketplace of ideas” concept; Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in R.A.V. v. St. Paul, with its blanket prohibition against content-based regulations; and Brandenburg v. Ohio’s “imminent threat of harm” standard.

Chapter 10 deals with theoretical foundations that, I argue, should be intrinsic to a representative democracy. I approach this topic from a rule consequentialist (deontological consequentialist) perspective. I contend that social contract obligations require governments both to protect fundamental rights and to increase social well-being. I conclude that hate speech, which augments the rights of the majority at the expense of the minority, weakens the sinews of a well-ordered society. If social welfare is measurable by the degree to which society helps maintain its residents’ fundamental rights, speech that is detrimental to achieving that end must be restricted. Chapter 11, then, confronts the conflict between democratic ideals and hate speech.

In chapter 12 we study the laws of several countries that have recognized the harms of hate speech and have enacted criminal laws prohibiting bigoted incitements. Chapter 13 begins with a framework for a public policy checking the propagation of hate speech and ends with two alternative criminal causes of action.

My argument that hate speech should be criminally restricted arises from the injuries provoked by widespread stereotypes and popular prejudices. While hate propagandists defend their own right to free speech, they seek to suppress minority voices from influencing political and social thought, serving the cause of inequality. This is antidemocratic. Oft-repeated, sweeping labels dehumanize victim groups and represent them as deserving of violent action and unworthy of empathic treatment. Orators can more easily sway followers to persecute persons based on their race, national origin, or ethnicity once it becomes socially acceptable to degrade them using these salient characteristics.

Each of us, in our civic capacities, has a responsibility for safeguarding democracy and justice. Our social duty is not only toward our own ethnic or racial groups. We must guard vigilantly against unfair treatment of each individual, for historical examples show that heinous crimes can be committed anywhere misethnicity has donned the raiment of acceptable dialogue. Misethnicity eventually becomes so deeply rooted in cultural thought and folklore that it countenances barbarities even when they are against the perpetrators’ economic and national well-being. Armed with empirical lessons from past injustices and a wellspring of compassion for victims, we can assure that our innate interest in human rights resounds in policy and legislation. Stories of intolerance and suffering can be “interpretive devices” for deciding which social institutions are detrimental to public tranquility.⁵ I conclude that, to prevent crimes against humanity, narrowly tailored laws should be adopted prohibiting the dissemination of misethnic stereotypes that are intended to elicit crimes against outgroups.

I was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated to the United States with my parents. We fled that country because of the systematic anti-Semitic barriers we encountered there. I can clearly remember sitting on my father’s shoulders at the age of four, when we lived in a communal apartment and one of our neighbors repeatedly calling my father a zhyd (a Russian word that is significantly more pejorative and inflammatory than “kike”). My father asked him not to be so callous around a child. Even before I was aware of my Jewishness, I knew that Jews were derided.

In 1974, when we immigrated to the United States, we lived in one of Chicago’s public housing projects among a racially mixed group of people. I soon realized the hardships misethnic speech causes other minorities. Instrumental in this process of sharpening my sense of empathy were Richard Wright’s Black Boy and Robert Berkhofer’s The White Man’s Indian. Throughout my studies, I have been struck by how hate speech aimed at one historically derided group tends to harm society as a whole, not just the victims. This book, I hope, will go some way toward both understanding how hate propaganda instigates active discrimination and providing some useful solutions to avoid those risks.

PART I

Historical Lessons about the Dangers of Hate Speech

History shows that when bigotry develops over an extended period of time, it often leads to crimes against humanity. Hatreds directed against members of a community significantly influence peoples’ perspectives, attitudes, and interpersonal relations. Preconceived notions about vulnerable minorities influence how they are treated. Misethnicity is developed, popularized, and spread by speech that represents outgroup members as symbols and embodiments of evil, rather than as individuals. The persecution and total annihilation of outgroup members are, then, rationalized by the fervent desire to rid society of undesirable and supposedly deleterious groups.

2

The Heart of German Anti-Semitism

The Nazis successfully harnessed a racist ideology that grew out of ancient religious teachings. During the late nineteenth century, these ideas took on a biological aspect supporting racial superiority. The Ger...