Fighting Words: What's Wrong with Freedom of Expression?
Sindre Bangstad · Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · 2013
In recent years, Norway has regularly been criticised by international anti-discrimination and anti-racism monitoring bodies for failing to curtail hate speech of a racist and/or discriminatory nature. The so-called ‘racism paragraph’ of the Norwegian General Penal Code, introduced in 1970, made such speech liable to criminal prosecution. Furthermore, the formal legal penalties for such speech, as well as the range of application of the legislation had if anything been increased and extended since 2005. Nonetheless, few prosecutions under the paragraph have been brought in recent years. Racist and/or discriminatory speech on the Internet has hardly been prosecuted, even if it is in these largely unregulated media that the problem is most visible. This article traces the shifting patterns of application of the Norwegian ‘racism paragraph’, and argues that as a result of extra-legal developments, Norway has moved in a more liberal and absolutist direction in relation to freedom of expression and its limits. This article advocates a modest defence of existing hate speech legislation in Norway and in western Europe, along the lines suggested by Jeremy Waldron.