R STORY |
the MIRROR
use of free speech ica is not fake news.
t’s the truth
. law and remains open to individual cases. meone’s speech is a solid eech qualifies as hate. r the cultural and historical ase represents, especially as marginalized in society and er and resources. Contextupacts of speech on vulner-
free speech and hate r. Daniel Olmos, an assisSUN, said. “It’s always going on specific, and it’s always ps are being targeted and
s constitutionally protected ich requires the governst distasteful and offensive hers to feel fear, anger or ate speech can only be ites criminal activity or ats of violence targeted or group. ching impacts all across tilized to rally political o harm individuals at a
each year endure bullying, assault, according to the lity Office. In the 2018-19 3 million students ages 12 on the basis of their racial, sexual identity. urvey, 63 percent of stums of hate speech at some
founder of the SoCal Therieves that perpetrators of edom of speech to excuse to others. taking core American valother people,” she said. “Free speak your mind and speak not violate someone else’s My right to do that ends at rights.” tively targeted in an antagotially violent process, hate since there is raw intent os signify that something eone needs to step in and
r best to draw the line h, the complexity of the hether it is truly possible to inging on people’s right to
to have hate speech,” Dr. Olte and identify and regulate ms of hate speech, but it’s
part of the territory of being in a democratic society and there’s no way you can get out of it. I don’t think that we can protect ourselves 100 percent from it, and to do so would really limit our deliberative democratic process.” While hate speech has always been around, its usage has been kicked into high gear during the past few presidential elections. “Quite honestly, Trump, and the way he approached leveraging our differences in order to create a base for himself, has absolutely normalized hate speech in a way that is just horrific,” Dr. Jakubanis said. “I don’t recognize my own country and it makes me very sad. If we look at Jan. 6, Trump fanned the coals of that mob to the point of getting people killed, and he’s going to court and saying it was his right to free speech. He has no right to say things that stirred up that mob to the point of a conspiracy to overthrow the government.” Although Trump’s game of politics failed to get him reelected, it succeeded in polarizing the country. “When somebody in power spews venom, like Trump did beautifully with the many things that he’s done with Twitter, I believe that he did an excellent job normalizing hate speech,” Dr. Guevara said. “Trump has 60 million adoring fans who see him as a powerful man that is for them, fighting for their rights. Hate speech has been here forever, but today, because of the media, you are able to see everything right away. People who have ideological racism inside are now able to verbalize it because they have seen people in power do it.” According to Dr. Olmos, economic disparity is an indirect cause of hate speech. “Politics and social media are grounded in a particular political economy,” he said. “We are living in the conflicts of growing inequality more and more, so increasingly what’s happening is that a small group of the rich are having more of the resources and all the rest of us are fighting for crumbs. Resources in our society are becoming less and less accessible, and the middle class is being eroded. With less economic mobility, folks are more quick to use these social divisions because people are put in this scramble for resources.” Prominent social media platforms have often been used to expand the reach of hate speech. “Glossing over events that have happened in the past few years, social media has provided a platform for hate speech that has caused numerous violent events that I don’t believe would have been mobilized unless you had something to mobilize them with,” Famenia said. It is imperative to explore and define the way in which speech on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is regulated. “We don’t have any rules around something like social media, it’s completely different from any kind of media we’ve ever had before,” Dr. Jakubanis said. “We should not have a media available in which people can bully each other so much that someone is moved to suicide. We should not have an accessible media that people can use to organize the group crimes that we
saw at Nordstroms a couple months back.” Eerily enough, not everyone who spreads hate speech understands the true gravity of what they’re saying. “Be very careful about where you’re getting your ideas from,” Dr. Olmos said. “You need to have some real critical literacy. You always have to think back to the origins of statements that are made about things and people and you need to reverse engineer those statements to their associated ideologies and political interests. If you agree with that stuff, that’s fine, but if you find yourself replicating or reproducing certain ideologies or interests that you do not necessarily agree with, then perhaps you need to step back and rethink what you’re saying.” Generally, hate is often grounded in social categorization. In an effort to understand the world around it, the brain cognitively compartmentalizes information by making stereotyped associations. Intersectionality is the idea that each person’s identity consists of various factors, such as their gender identity, gender expression, ethnicity, race, class, sexual orientation and religious beliefs. The way those components intersect
creates a person’s experience in the world, and each individual’s experience will be unique to them. It is the concept that nobody is one particular thing, and this is what overgeneralization does not account for. “As human beings living in a much different and more complex society, we have to evolve to be able to embrace our differences, to be able to face things that make us uncomfortable,” Dr. Jakubanis said. Free speech should be preserved. But the harmful impacts of hate speech should be minimized. It is beyond necessary to raise awareness about the pivotal role that reducing hate speech can have on the nation. “We need to show the results of minimizing hate speech,” Dr. Guevara said. “Let’s think of a safer space where everybody can thrive. Promoting media literacy, critical thinking skills and empathy can make young human beings become more discerning consumers.”
DOWNFALL OF DEMOCRACY Hate
speech is often masked as free speech by certain individuals. However, this view overlooks potential infringement on other people’s rights.
