Hate (8): Tolerance and Hate Speech

1844, Mormon founder Joseph Smith is murdered in an Illinois prison by a lynch mob; soon after, many of his followers migrate to Utah

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Jeremy Waldron claims that tolerance is more than merely the absence of violent assault on people who have adopted beliefs and practices we don’t like, and more than simply abstaining from persecution and legal sanction. He says that tolerance also implies the absence of hate speech and a legal prohibition of hate speech. Members of minority groups whose beliefs and practices are strongly disapproved of by the rest of society, have a right to go about their lives without the threat of constant hatred, vilification, insult and humiliation. They have a right to visit the shops and restaurants they want to visit, and to generally interact with others without being treated as pariahs.

And, indeed, that sounds quite reasonable. People undoubtedly have and should have such rights. But others have rights as well: hate mongers have a right to free speech, and racist shop keepers and restaurant owners have a right to ban whoever they want from their private property, under certain circumstances.

When the rights of the haters and the rights of despised minorities come into conflict, the different rights have to be balanced. I argued before that the right of private property of racists, or the freedom of association of prejudiced groups wanting to exclude homosexuals for example, should no longer be protected when these racists and bigots have become so numerous and authoritative that the objects of their racism or bigotry no longer have any alternative options and risk having their own rights violated. In the Jim Crow era, for example, it was very difficult for blacks to move around, find decent housing etc. because there were so many transport companies and landowners discriminating against them that their options were seriously diminished. Hence their rights were violated, and violated to such a degree that limitations on the rights of their tormentors were justified.

Similarly, in our current example, hate speech should only be banned and the right to free speech of hate mongers should only be limited when there’s an impact on the rights of their targets. Claiming, as Waldron seems to do, that a tolerant society generally requires such bans and limits will not do. That’s just not enough as a justification. For example, writing blood libel on an obscure blog that nobody reads should probably not be prohibited. On the other hand, burning crosses in the front yards of black people and forcing them to move elsewhere is a violation of their right to freely choose their residence. The same is true if people dare not walk the streets because of the risk of being constantly cursed at. These two cases of expressions of hate speech can and should be banned because they result in rights violations. Other expressions of hate speech should be protected. A general claim that tolerance requires not just constraints on coercion and violent persecution but also a general respect for people’s dignity and a social atmosphere free of hatred, insult and defamation, goes too far. It would be nice if the world was free of hate and if respect for dignity was the normal attitude, but there’s no right to such a world. Nor should there be.

If we were to adopt such a right, we’d run the risk of terminating debate altogether. If tolerance includes a general ban on hate speech it’s likely that it will also imply banning vehement discussion of other people’s supposed errors. You don’t need to engage in hate speech in order to have a vehement and lively discussion and criticism of others, but a lot of such criticism can be readily understood and perceived by its targets as an expression of hate and an insult to dignity. These targets can then use the power of law to shut down the debate, and that’s not something we want. Ideally, specific instances of speech should not be judged as inadmissible instances of hate speech and proper objects of legal sanction simply on the basis of the feelings or perceptions of the targets, but only on the basis of the objective consequences for the rights of the targets. Tolerance that includes a ban on all hate speech is a tolerance that in the end may silence us all.

More on tolerance, hate speech, defamation and insults. More posts in this series are here.

Human Rights Facts (70): Intolerance and Discrimination in America

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In light of the recent Trayvon Martin case, a few historical examples of how fear of the “other” has led many Americans to acts of intolerance and discrimination:

• In 1654, Peter Stuyvesant, director-general of New Netherland, tried to have Jewish refugees expelled, claiming they would “infect” the colony.
• In 1732, founders of the Georgia colony, which was seen as a religious haven, drew up a charter that explicitly bans Catholicism.
• In 1844, Mormon founder Joseph Smith is murdered in an Illinois prison by a lynch mob. Soon after, many of his followers migrated to Utah.
• In 1854-56, nativists formed the Know Nothing Party (yes, that was their name), which called for strict limits on immigration, especially from Catholic countries.
• In 1865-66, following the end of the Civil War, riots erupted during Reconstruction, and African American churches and schools were burned in Memphis and New Orleans.
• In 1882, strong anti-Chinese sentiment in California led to the federal Chinese Exclusion Act, which suspended immigration from the East.
• In 1883, the Department of Interior declared many Native American rituals to be “offenses” punishable by jail sentences of up to 30 years.
• In 1942, FDR signed an executive order establishing “exclusion zones,” which led to the forced internment of some 110,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans. (source)

Needless to say, fear of the other isn’t a exclusively American problem.

Cultural Rights (14): Tolerance, a Model

To be tolerant means to accept the existence of and to avoid interfering coercively with beliefs, actions or practices that you consider wrong and objectionable. It means that you do your best to co-exist with people who are very much different from you, and different in a negative sense. You allow or permit these people to remain who they are and what they are. You consider what they are, what they do and what they believe to be wrong and objectionable, but not wrong enough to be intolerable and subject to prohibition, legal or otherwise. You tolerate them because you believe that what they do or believe should not be prohibited, or perhaps because you believe you’re not in a position to effectively prohibit. However, I would personally prefer to call the latter option “endurance” rather than tolerance and limit tolerance to the voluntary acceptance of things you could prohibit if you wanted to.

“Acceptance” here should of course be understood, not in the sense of a positive moral judgment, approval or agreement, but in the sense of a practical, pragmatical accommodation. The negative judgment remains but isn’t strong enough to warrant repression or prohibition.

We may decide to tolerate something for a variety of reasons:

• We may have a strong general sense of respect for other people and for their identity. We may respect people’s moral standing as agents able to choose their own vision of the good life. We disagree with their choices but we respect them as agents able to choose.
• We may be motivated simply by a general respect for the law, and the law happens to prescribe tolerance.
• We may believe that tolerance is necessary for the preservation of civil peace and public order, and these considerations outweigh our disgust for other lifestyles. In other words, we hate conflict more than we hate other people.
• We may be motivated by an expectation of reciprocity: if we show tolerance we expect to be tolerated. Maybe our own group isn’t in the majority either, or risks not being a majority in the future, and hence we may some day profit from tolerance.
• We may believe, as did John Stuart Mill, that even false opinions lead to social learning.
• Etc.

Those reasons can imply either equal or unequal relationships between those who tolerate and those who are tolerated.

Below I offer my own petty model of tolerance. I situate tolerance on a continuum going from what I call guidance on one side to prohibition on the other. Guidance means the attitude of emulating certain practices which you view as being important enough to guide your life and your fundamental opinions. Prohibition, the other extreme, means the attitude of suppressing certain practices which you view as being so depraved that they should be forbidden and eliminated, if necessary with violence.

One level below guidance I situate the attitude which I call positive acceptance. People accept things in a positive way if they consider them to be moral, but not necessarily moral enough to be the guiding light of life. One level below positive acceptance is indifference, which marks the boundary between things that are moral and things that are immoral.

Below indifference is negative acceptance, which means viewing things as being immoral yet not immoral enough to suppress them using the law or any other violent means. As stated above, I distinguish between two types of negative acceptance, endurance and tolerance, the difference being that tolerance means accepting something and yet having the ability to suppress. Endurance means you tolerate despite not wanting to tolerate: you tolerate because you don’t have a choice. If you had the power to suppress or prohibit, you would. You don’t suppress or prohibit and you tolerate because you don’t have the power to suppress or prohibit. Real tolerance means that you have that power but voluntarily choose not to use it, for any (combination) of the reasons mentioned above.

Some would also call endurance a type of tolerance. Personally, I want to keep it separate. (Which is why it is in light gray rather than dark gray in the image below). I distinguish three types of tolerance: people can tolerate things unconditionally, they can tolerate things if they happen only in private, or they can tolerate things that happen in public but only conditionally.

I also place all these attitude, including tolerance, on a moral scale, assuming that people decide to accept, reject, tolerate or prohibit acts or beliefs according to the moral value they attach to these acts or beliefs.

So, all this gives the following model (click image to enlarge):

model of tolerance

Let’s clarify all this with a couple of examples. First, imagine the case of a moderate American Evangelical. How would he fill in those abstract notions?

• a: the life of Jesus or Scripture, something morally strong enough to serve as a guiding example for his own life
• b: the beliefs of his fellow believers or the beliefs of followers of similar faiths (e.g. Catholics); these are not always strong enough to serve as a guiding example for his own life, but morally very positive nonetheless
• c: the rules of car maintenance, or something else that leaves him morally indifferent
• d: homosexual love, on the wrong side of morality according to him, but not something that he could prohibit; he just endures it, knowing that it’s not something people can prohibit
• e: the use of speech to promote a homosexual lifestyle, something he could prohibit but chooses to tolerate instead, given his attachment to freedom of speech
• f: the use of the public education system to promote a homosexual lifestyle, something he chooses to tolerate selectively and conditionally; for example, when he has the right to remove his children from a certain school
• g: gay sex, something he will tolerate only when it occurs in private
• h: polygamy, something which he chooses to prohibit.

Let’s take another example, say a French secularist who is also an atheist.

• a: he would consider the teachings of Richard Dawkins and other atheists as guiding examples
• b: he would positively accept teaching atheism and secularism in schools
• c: again, car maintenance would leave him morally indifferent
• d: some forms of religious belief he would endure, knowing that he could never suppress them, and since you can only tolerate what you can suppress this is not an example of his tolerance
• e: religious expression he tolerates unconditionally given his attachment to freedom of speech and religious liberty
• f: religious dress, for example, he would only tolerate outside of schools and government buildings
• g: aggressive proselytizing he would only tolerate when it happens in people’s private lives and among adults
• h: violent exorcism he would prohibit.

More on tolerance is here.

Human Rights Cartoon (57): Tolerating Intolerance?

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Should we tolerate intolerance? Find out here.

Political Jokes & Funny Quotes (37): Tolerating Intolerance

This may be a joke, but it raises some interesting philosophical questions. How far does tolerance go, or how far can it go? Do we usually only tolerate what we think is fine or what leaves us indifferent? And the intolerable? Do we usually make an effort to tolerate it, even though we find it intolerable? Or is our tolerance only skin deep?

Not on the level of our actual behavior, but on the level of what we ought to do: does the ideal of tolerance include tolerance of intolerance? Do we have to tolerate those who are intolerant and those who persecute and oppress? Or would that be self-destructive? And if tolerance should indeed stop at tolerance of intolerance, what do we do with the intolerant? We don’t tolerate them, that’s clear, but what do we do? Kick them out? “Re-educate” them?

Find out here, here, here and here.

Religion and Human Rights (11): Religious Hatred and Holy Sites

Kjell Magne Bondevik

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It ought to be possible to … focus on two complementary ways to be able to live in peace with one another. One being to acknowledge the common values shared by the great religions, such as the intrinsic value and dignity of the human being, the commitment to peace and justice, and respect for the sacred. And on the other hand promoting the ability to live side by side with cultural and religious differences. This way culture and religion could become part of the solution to conflicts, rather than being a source. Kjell Magne Bondevik

In many places in the world, the co-existence of different cultures and religions has been, and still is, a source of conflict and even war. Theories about the “clash of civilizations” are increasingly popular, and so is islamophobia, the fear of a return of medieval religious wars (see also here), hate crime and hate speech.

One particular and photogenic aspect of religious conflict and religious hatred is the desecration of an enemy’s holiest shrines or sites. The Samarra mosque in Iraq (see account below), the Buddhist statutes destroyed by the Taliban government, and the destruction of mosques and churches during the Bosnian and Kosovo wars are perhaps the best known examples. A similar problem is the fact that many holy sites are claimed by rival religions: the site of the Ayodhya mosque in India (also destroyed), the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem (in which case we have to congratulate the “occupying force” for its handling of free access; another force would have in all probability destroyed the thing) etc.

An interesting effort to cope with this comes from the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights, headed by Kjell Magne Bondevik. They are working on a Code for Holy Sites. The code would protect the rights of different communities to worship at a site.

However, what are the chances of different religions agreeing to share holy sites? Even the presence of non-believers is not allowed in some holy sites, such as Mecca (see the picture below), probably because this presence would infect or “contaminate” or foul the site. In any religion, non-believers are by definition sinners (perhaps with the exception of Hindus and Buddhists who do worship side-by-side, in the same temple).

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Here’s a newspaper report about the infamous bombing of the Samara mosque in Iraq in 2006:

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The bombing of the al-Askari Mosque in Samarra began at 7 a.m. on February 22, 2006 when insurgents dressed as Iraqi police officers entered the shrine and captured five guards. The attackers then placed two bombs inside the dome and detonated them, collapsing most of the dome and heavily damaging an adjoining wall.

The attack left the shrine’s famous golden dome in ruins. The shrine has enormous significance for Shiites, and its destruction in the midst of growing sectarian violence ignited a nationwide outpouring of rage and panic that sharply underscored Iraq’s religious divide. Following the attack, thousands of demonstrators gathered near the shrine, waving Iraqi flags and calling for justice.

There have been no claims of responsibility, though Sunni extremist groups are suspected. A government statement reported that “several suspects” had been detained. This attack and the violent retribution that followed it seemed to push Iraq closer to civil war. President Talabani was quotes as saying that “we are facing a major conspiracy that is targeting Iraq’s unity. We should all stand hand in hand to prevent the danger of a civil war.” (source)

Cultural Rights (10): Tolerating Intolerance?

Some people urge us to accept and respect other cultures, other practices and beliefs unconditionally and without exceptions. Every cultural practice, whatever its content, is valuable and should be protected, even if this means giving up certain or all human rights. This means that rejecting intolerance in a certain culture is intolerant and rejecting discrimination is discrimination. Diversity should be tolerated, even if elements of this diversity are expressions of intolerance or discrimination. Otherwise, we would show a lack of respect for cultural identities and we would de facto return to the days of colonization and imperialism.

Respect is important, and human rights are created precisely as tools to make different people with different beliefs and practices or habits live together peacefully. But they are not designed to protect practices which violate them. We can never tolerate intolerance and that we must always discriminate discrimination. One cannot force an idea to be self-destructive. A tolerant system tolerating intolerance or failing to discriminate those who discriminate, will never last very long. Those who are tolerant must be intolerant of those who are intolerant (and the latter include those who attack the institutions protecting tolerance, such as human rights).

This has nothing to do with “an eye for an eye”. It is purely a matter of consistency and self-preservation. We must accept and respect diversity, but not in an unlimited way. Some things are just unacceptable. There is a Calvin and Hobbes comic-strip which neatly summarizes this point:

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