Hate speech Regulation in post-communist countries: the case of the Czech Republic and Slovakia
Viera Pejchal · Archive ouverte UNIGE (University of Geneva) · 2019
The spread of hatred and hate speech has intensified in many corners of the world in the last decade and there is more and more political and academic debate about its proper regulation. The study offers a twofold outcome: it approaches the challenges of hate speech regulation by offering an understanding of public goods worthy of protection in a democracy; and it analyzes the rationale, the arguments, and the ideas behind hate speech regulation in two countries that share political, sociological, and legal history, namely the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In this regard, it works with the hypothesis that hate speech, as a political, legal, and social term changes in time. The research involves a normative analysis of international and national legal frameworks, case-law, and pertinent scholarly literature reviews. Understanding the model these young democracies adopted sheds more light on the protection and conception of values such as security and public order, equality and non-discrimination, human dignity, and other interests, which underpin post-communist societies in these countries. The aim of this research is to discover what these values are and their related interests.