Anti-Egalitarian Values Predict Opposition to Hate Speech Restrictions
Jesper Rasmussen · 2023
Why do people oppose hate speech laws? Policymakers and tech platforms face demands to restrict hate speech, yet people across the political spectrum disagree on introducing hate speech restrictions. One account suggests that opposition to regulating hate speech is motivated by group-based dominance attitudes. In this account, hate speech is a tool to derogate minority or historically oppressed groups. Yet another account suggests that people oppose hate speech restrictions because of conservative ideology, including preferences for anti-egalitarian values such as individualism, limited government and a free market of ideas. I test these two competing accounts using observational data and conjoint experiments in Denmark and the United States. I show that anti-egalitarian values are a consistent and overall stronger predictor of restricting free speech and hate speech than than group-based dominance. Thus, people who hold strong anti-egalitarian values are less supportive of regulating hate speech in general, regardless of whom it targets. These findings suggest that support for free speech and opposition towards hate speech laws are shaped by preferences for anti-egalitarian values, rather than group-based dominance motivations.