Hate, Politics, Law: Critical Perspectives on Combating Hate (2018). Thomas Brudholm & Birgitte Schepelern Johansen, eds. Oxford University Press
Andrey S. Menshikov · Changing Societies & Personalities · 2019
This volume comprises the essays, which provide critical perspectives on hate.The habitual usage in public discourse places hate in the context of all that opposes the good and links it to violence.The assumption is that violence is caused by hate and, therefore, if we wish to prevent violence it is our duty to counter hate.In turn, this idea justified the extension of state power by limiting freedom of speech and by letting the state to punish not only for criminal actions but also for views and attitudes behind those actions.Thus, the authors claim, combating hate has itself become an ambivalent endeavor.This seemingly provocative thesis is, however, thoroughly substantiated by a wealth of historical and conceptual research on how hate was integrated into modern public discourse and legal system.The more attenuated picture emerges from the very beginning when the stages and national variation are described.Hate's first appearance in law is traced to the International Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965), which decries "racial superiority or hatred", and to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), which calls to penalize "any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence".The international concern with racism across the globe in this period of decolonization, on the one hand, and apartheid, on the other, exerted significant pressure on national legal systems to condemn racial discrimination.In Europe, UK, Germany, and France introduced penalties for "hate speech", "although each of these three 1