Why we need to drive the anti-semites into the light.

There was something backward about Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto’s remarks at a vigil to honour the victims of the synagogue shooting in his city. “We will drive antiSemitism and the hate of any people back into the basement, on their computer and away from the open discussions and dialogues around this city, around the state and around the country,” he said.

With due respect to Peduto, who was speaking only a day after the traumatic act of violence that left 11 dead, this is the exact opposite of what he and Pittsburghers should be trying to do.

The instinct to want to push something ugly and hateful away from the light into the shadows is perfectly understandable and natural — and never more so than when that something happens to be a repulsive point of view that has just animated the murder of almost a dozen innocent people in their place of worship.

But it’s important not to confuse vile opinions with vile acts.

It makes sense to shut away someone who has committed a vile act. If suspected gunman Robert Bowers is guilty of what he is alleged to have done, it will, generally speaking, be the right thing to do to put him behind bars where he won’t be able to commit further crimes, holding him responsible for his reprehensible actions.

But it doesn’t make sense to shut away vile opinions. They only fester in dank basements and underground social networks (as appears to have been the case with Bowers’ alleged anti-semitism). It’s open public discussions and dialogues, where healthy counter ideas can be voiced, that have the ability to rob vile opinions of their power, mystique, attraction and surprise.

As United States Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis famously wrote, “Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant; electric light the most efficient policeman.”

This idea has become an old freedom-of-speech saw. But it is worth repeating today because it’s a maxim that is easy enough to stand by in the context of an unpleasant hypothetical — a proposed white supremacist rally, for example — and far harder to stand by in the aftermath of literal bloodshed and killing.

Yet the aftermath of devastating, hate-fuelled violence is not only the most controversial time to hang on to Brandeis’s wisdom, but also the most important. So much is at stake — no less than human lives and functioning free societies. Our emotions will almost invariably cause us to want to recoil from the ideas that we equate with the brutality we’ve just witnessed. Good sense, if it can be maintained, will remind us that openly examining, denouncing and disproving the ideas would be a much more constructive thing to do.

Nadine Strossen, a leftof-centre champion of free speech who served as president of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008, has written an excellent new book called HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship. Strossen makes a convincing case that censoring “hate speech” does not reduce discrimination, psychic injuries, or — most relevant to the current discussion — violence.

That’s because it’s highly questionable that “hate speech” of the sort that is constitutionally protected in the United States (but illegal in Canada and many other countries) actually materially contributes to these harms. And also, because, “hate speech” censorship doesn’t effectively reduce “hate speech” anyway.

Strossen points out a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the court reviewed social science literature on the effects of violent speech — and found that there weren’t any. She also notes the examples of France and Germany, which have enacted muscular “hate speech” laws … and seen the rise of an overtly racist national political party (the National Front party in contemporary France) and the rise of rightwing extremist violence (in contemporary Germany) in return.

Of course, the classic example of the ineffectiveness of “hate speech” censorship is the rise of the Nazis in a Germany that had laws criminalizing hate speech. Here Strossen quotes the late Canadian civil libertarian Alan Borovoy, who noted, “During the 15 years before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on antiSemitic speech.” As we all know, those acts of censorship were useless … except to bolster support and admiration for the “persecuted” Nazis.

The key to preventing the next synagogue shooting is not to drive anti-semitic ideas out of the light and into the basement. It’s to punish and drive murderers out of society — while confronting their ideas in the sort of open discussions and dialogues Mayor Peduto misguidedly wishes to reserve for the virtuous.

IT’S IMPORTANT NOT TO CONFUSE VILE OPINIONS WITH VILE ACTS. — MARNI SOUPCOFF