David Cumin
And
laws did not work.
In fact, some argued that they actually helped the Nazis; presenting them as political martyrs helped rally more public support, much as the use of “health and safety” to ban speakers in New Zealand has propelled their publicity. The gag of Hitler was accompanied with posters of him and the caption “One alone of 2000 million people of the world is forbidden to speak in Germany”.
There is another, less practical and more fundamental, reason for opposing legislation against hate speech. Even if we could define what is and what is not hateful and even if there were real harms caused and even if the laws were effective, giving power to the state to effectively govern speech is a dangerous precedent. Just as the Nazis were persecuted by hate speech laws in the Weimar Republic, they went on to implement their own suppression on expression.
The Third Reich organised a massive propaganda campaign and excluded opposing views in media, forced boycotts on Jewish businesses and burned books they disapproved of. In the words of Holocaust survivor Aryeh Neier, “Those who call for censorship in the name of the oppressed ought to recognise it is never the oppressed who determine the bounds of censorship.”
The response to hate speech is not legislation, but better ideas expressed with more speech. Edmond Burke’s famous quote “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” is a much better summation of the correct response to hateful ideas. Denmark was the only European country that actively supported the Jewish community, en masse, against the Nazi regime’s attempts to exterminate them and it is the only European country where almost all the Jews were saved.
Thus, the rally against the Canadian speakers in Aotea Square is a promising sign that communities are not hiding away from challenging ideas. However, it was concerning that none of the speakers at that event articulated better ideas or addressed the controversy in any substantive manner.
Our political leaders and our media have an important role to play in seeking and sharing comments that challenge the hateful ideas. In this respect, Newshub’s Dan Satherley article, with arguments from Otago Emeritus Professor James Flynn to properly combat the cherrypicked and distorted views of Stefan Molyneux, is an excellent start. The combative and ill-prepared “interview” Patrick Gower conducted with the pair is not a model to emulate, and reclaiming the ‘c’ word is not an argument, either.
We must rise above slogans and epithets to challenge disagreeable ideas with reason and fact. Our leaders must step above megaphone politics and engage with difficult topics maturely.
And we must provide safe spaces for difficult ideas to be challenged. Those who threaten violence must be condemned in the strongest terms and they must not be allowed to control who can speak or who we can listen to any more than a government should have that power.
We must struggle with ideas — challenge them and be challenged — rather than be forced to submit to whoever is in charge or threatens violence.
is an Auckland-based academic and member of the Free Speech Coalition. is a professor of history at the Auckland University of Technology.