On Sunday, April 3rd, 2015, notorious right-wing hatemonger Pamela Geller hosted an anti-Islam event with the sole purpose of inciting racist hatred and violence against Muslims. A vile and grotesque assault on the basic human rights and human dignity of Muslims which clearly has no place in a modern democracy, the event had contestants "draw Muhammad", with the "best" drawing receiving a $10,000 prize. To the cheers of right-wing bigots across the country, two radical Muslim men attempted to shoot up the event before being swiftly shot and killed themselves. This event brings to the forefront one of America's biggest human rights failures: the fact that America is the only country in the world which lacks any kind of legal protections against hate speech. The fact that America values the so-called "right" to spew racist hatred to be more important than basic human rights does a great deal of damage to America's international image. After all, what kind of government values the rights of racist bigots more than it values the rights of the most vulnerable and marginalized minority groups?
Muslims are perhaps the most vulnerable, marginalized, and disenfranchised minority in the United States. For many years, the US government has launched overseas wars against Muslims (killing thousands of innocents) while, on its own shores, persecuting Muslims with a wide range of draconian "anti-terror" legislation. Meanwhile, American media and American politicians continuously paint Muslims as evil, savage, dangerous terrorists that every citizen must be wary of. Muslims in the US have been systematically stripped of their human rights, their human dignity, and their basic humanity itself. So, when right-wing hatemongers like Pamela Geller use their so-called "freedom of speech" to mock and belittle American Muslims - who already face widespread persecution from the government and from society - is it really any surprise that some of them would snap and see violence as their only option? Is it really any surprise that some Muslims would feel like their life in the United States simply isn't worth living any more, and that they have nothing left to lose? And, when vulnerable minorities are denied any kind of legal way to deal with hatred (America is, after all, the only country in the world where hate speech is entirely legal), is it really any surprise that they would feel like they're forced to use violence as their only way to fight back against hate?
For many decades, human rights organizations around the world - from Amnesty International to Human Rights First to the United Nations Human Rights Council - have told the United States that it needs to pass and enforce strong legal protections against hate speech in accordance with international human rights law. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), all nations are required to outlaw all forms of hate speech. These are legally-binding international human rights conventions, and obeying them in the fullest is mandatory - it's not optional. Under international human rights law, the United States is legally required to outlaw hate speech. But that's not the only reason why legal protections against hate speech are so important. As Australian Muslim activist Waleed Aly has pointed out, one of the biggest reasons why strong legal protections against hate speech are so necessary is because there is a strong hierarchy of power and privilege in Western society, with whites firmly at the top, holding the most power and privilege by far. It's easy for privileged white men to say that hate speech is perfectly acceptable and doesn't harm anyone, but privileged white men have never been victims of hate speech and they could never understand the devastating effect that hate speech has on vulnerable and marginalized minorities. Hate speech is itself a form of censorship, as it silences the voices of the most oppressed and disenfranchised minority groups - groups that are already denied a voice in society. The racist government of the United States certainly does not allow minorities to have a voice, as, like all Western governments, the US government is run by privileged white men who, quite frankly, couldn’t care less about the basic human rights of vulnerable minorities.
Before moving to the US to work with human rights organizations here, I grew up in Australia, where I also worked as a human rights activist (in Australia, I worked for Amnesty International Australia, the Human Rights Law Centre, the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, the Human Rights Working Group of the Greens NSW, and the NSW Council for Civil Liberties). Like all civilized countries, Australia has numerous laws against hate speech, and these laws are universally supported by every single facet of Australian society (although journalists, ethnic and religious leaders, and human rights activists are the biggest supporters of Australia’s hate speech laws). In my native Australia, the need to protect vulnerable minorities from hate speech is one of the most universally accepted values, and anyone who even dares to question hate speech laws will receive an extremely hostile reaction. There isn't a single person in Australia who thinks that there should be absolutely no legal protections against hate speech. Even the most dedicated, most hardcore ultra-libertarians and free speech activists in Australia still firmly support having strong legal protections against hate speech. If anyone ever went to Australia and said that there should be absolutely no legal protections against hate speech, they would be physically attacked and told to leave the country for their own safety. No, I'm not exaggerating in the least. Australia has ZERO tolerance for anyone who attacks the basic human rights of vulnerable minorities. In Australia and all other countries, it's simply common knowledge that hate speech is not free speech, and that freedom of speech does not protect hate speech. It's not even something that's up for debate - it's just something that everyone instinctively knows and accepts. For people in more civilized and enlightened countries where people have basic human rights, it’s just absolutely unfathomable to even consider having absolutely no legal protections against hate speech. It would be like having no laws against child abuse, or having no laws against murder. Only in the US do people fail to understand that, like all democratic rights, the right to freedom of speech comes with responsibility. Again, it's easy for privileged white men to refer to events like Geller's as exercises of "freedom", but hate speech is not "freedom" to vulnerable minorities who already face high rates of racist violence. In fact, vulnerable minorities are actually much less free when hate speech is allowed.
For fearful and beleaguered minorities, hate events like Geller's only serve to increase their risk of encountering physical violence. Hate speech is intimately linked to physical violence against minorities and even to genocide, as every genocide in history has started with hate speech. The recent shooting at Pamela Geller's event demonstrates quite well just how quickly hate speech can escalate into physical violence. On top of that, hate speech goes against the very values that underly freedom of speech. To quote prominent Muslim Australian human rights activist Mariam Veiszadeh: "As with any democratic right, freedom of speech should be tempered with responsibility and it is counter productive if those who continously spew hateful and misleading vitriol are the very individuals who continue to thrive from the protection that freedom of speech offers. We should be very afraid when our top law maker seems more passionate about protecting the rights of bigots than the rights of the most marginalised members of our society." Freedom of speech was created to allow the oppressed and marginalized to speak out against the oppression that they face. If freedom of speech is used to perpetuate and encourage systems of oppression and marginalization, then that defeats the entire purpose of freedom of speech. Hate speech is NOT free speech. Hate speech is anything but "free", especially when one considers the extremely high cost that it has on society and on its victims - a cost that privileged white men (like those who currently run the US government) would never be able to understand.
What's most disturbing is how deeply brainwashed the American public has been to believe that hate speech is acceptable, and it would seem that even American so-called "progressives" have bought into it. In Australia, the idea that a "progressive" could oppose laws against hate speech is nothing short of absolutely laughable; not even the most extreme far-right lunatics in Australia believe that there should be NO laws against hate speech. But, in the US, "progressives" actually believe that hate speech and even severe racial vilification should be protected as "free speech". In fact, even minorities in the US still tend to oppose anti-hate speech laws which are designed to protect them. I recently had an African-American tell me that it was "ridiculous" to prosecute people for making racist comments. Vulnerable minorities in the US really don't seem to understand the harmful effects that hate speech has on them and the very real danger that it places them in. To people from more civilized countries like Australia, it’s just terribly sad to see how brainwashed the people of America have become. Americans have been conned into thinking that freedom of speech means the freedom to say anything (especially if you have money). Americans completely misunderstand what freedom of speech is, and they totally fail to make the necessary distinction between freedom of speech and hate speech. Americans genuinely believe that freedom of speech gives people the right to spew hatred, racially vilify vulnerable minorities, argue against the common good, and oppose human rights. Most disgustingly, they actually believe that hate speech is "freedom". Do Americans have any idea how profoundly backwards this makes them look to people in more enlightened and progressive countries?
Whether it's targeting Muslims with draconian "anti-terror" laws, persecuting African-Americans with police brutality and disproportionate incarceration rates, supporting Israeli apartheid in Palestine, or treating Central American asylum-seekers like animals, the United States government seems positively determined to show the rest of the world just how racist and anti-human rights it is. But perhaps the strongest evidence that the United States government is a deeply racist government is the fact that it has yet to institute legal protections against hate speech. The fact that America is the only country in the world with no laws against hate speech - in the year 2015, no less - is a national embarrassment and a strong testament to America's human rights failures. To the rest of the world, America falls FAR behind when it comes to respecting the most basic and fundamental human rights. But it doesn't have to remain that way. What America needs are human rights-based laws that balance freedom of speech with respect and human dignity. Freedom of speech does have limits, and those limits exist to protect the most vulnerable and marginalized members of society. Just as you cannot shout "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, you also cannot incite hatred and violence against vulnerable minorities. America's continued insistence on allowing the unfettered expression of hatred and discrimination as "free speech" not only makes the US look completely backwards and uncivilized to the rest of the world, but it also explicitly violates international human rights law as well.
The United Nations has made it abundantly clear that insulting depictions of Islam and/or Muhammed qualify as incitement to racial hatred. When The Satanic Verses was first published in 1989, human rights experts at the United Nations sharply criticized France for not banning the book, stating that the book clearly qualified as an incitement to racial hatred. The UN's human rights bodies have had similar opinions of the Danish Muhammed cartoons and the vile "Innocence of Muslims" video, and so did human rights organizations around the world. Shortly after the infamous Muhammed cartoons were published in Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Amnesty International issued a statement saying that the cartoons should be prohibited by law since they qualified as incitement to racial hatred and thus violated international human rights law. Geller's event was far more hateful than anything in Jyllends-Posten, and, in a more enlightened country like Australia or the UK, the event would have been banned before it even started, thus preventing the shooting from occurring in the first place. On top of that, Geller herself would have been taken before a Human Rights Commission and subject to criminal prosecution for inciting racist hatred and violence against a vulnerable minority. All democratic countries guarantee freedom of speech, but only in the US does this warped, twisted definition of "freedom of speech" include hatred and intolerance. In all other countries, it's simply common knowledge that freedom of speech does not include hate speech. If the United States had sensible laws against hate speech, then not only would Pamela Geller be prohibited from spreading her hatred, but so would other right-wing bigots like Phil Robertson, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Bill Maher, and Sarah Palin (to name just a few). Civilized societies do not allow right-wing hatemongers to incite hatred, undermine progress, and manipulate public opinion against the common good. The United States is the only society where this kind of right-wing hatred is allowed to thrive with no fear of any legal consequences. The current laws of the US do not promote "freedom of speech". Rather, what they actually promote is right-wing hatred. When right-wingers talk about "freedom of speech", what they're actually talking about is freedom to hate. But guess what? In a civilized society where people have basic human rights, freedom from hatred trumps any so-called "freedom to hate".
Like any sensible person, I have always been a very dedicated proponent of the unalienable right to freedom of speech. But, while it's extremely important to staunchly oppose all forms of censorship and to vigorously protect freedom of speech, hate speech has absolutely nothing to do with freedom of speech. It's not an issue of freedom of speech - it's an issue of protecting the basic human rights of vulnerable minorities. The US needs to strongly protect freedom of speech while aggressively cracking down on all forms of hate speech. The shooting at Pamela Geller's recent hate-a-thon - like the racist chants of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity - demonstrate just how badly America needs a law against hate speech. America will never be up to international human rights standards until it makes protecting the basic human dignity of its citizens - and particularly its vulnerable minorities - a top priority. What America needs more than anything else are anti-hate speech laws that protect the most vulnerable and marginalized segments of society from hatred and intolerance, and from the violence that hate speech causes. Hate speech not only causes violence, but hate speech is itself a form of violence. Verbal violence can be every bit as harmful as physical violence - especially to vulnerable and marginalized groups. Freedom of speech should never be something that hurts people, and hate speech has absolutely no place in a civilized society. The rest of the world recognized that fact many years ago. It's time for America to finally join them. It's time for the US to finally join the civilized world by passing a Human Rights Act to outlaw all forms of hate speech, and by setting up Human Rights Commissions in each state in order to allow victims of hate speech to seek legal justice. This is something that all civilized democracies have already done. Until America starts protecting the basic human rights of its most vulnerable and marginalized groups, it will never be able to call itself a free country, much less an advanced liberal democracy.
Tanya Cohen is an Australian-born human rights activist and writer who has worked for Amnesty International, the Human Rights Law Centre, the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, the Human Rights Working Group of the Greens NSW, and the NSW Council for Civil Liberties.