Hate speech versus freedom of speech

In the last couple of weeks or so, the acting president, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, found it necessary to repeatedly warn against the obvious dangers of hate speech in our fractured republic. He told the national security seminar on unity in diversity, security and development, organised by the Department of State Service in Abuja last week, that “hate speech precedes genocide, the greatest tragedy in human history.”

It precedes lesser crimes and violence too. History provides us with enough evidence to support the vice-president’s assertion. Hate speeches are inflammatory and jaundiced opinions directed at races, tribes and religions. World War II and the gas chambers remain cruel reminders that the unbridled tongue has enormous capacity for visiting evil and horrors on mankind.

Hate speech had not, until now, been treated as a national problem in our country. Other political and social problems pushed it to the back burner, obviously. It seems to me that we failed to recognise its potential for evil early enough because we have always tended to treat ethnic and religious slurs as bad jokes or benign insults. Except in isolated cases, they did not generally merit the resort to clubs and cudgels to make some heads bleed. After all, every ethnic group in the country engages in ethnic profiling and uses unflattering nick names for other ethnic groups.

But the danger of ethnic slurs or profiling causing offence leading to possible violence in which the offending parties are not usually the only victims, always lurks in the corner of such speeches. The times have changed. Ethnic slurs now excite reprisals in words and deeds. With the drums of ethnic hatred getting louder daily in a country for ever picking its way through and around the minefield of its fault lines, it would be a bad mistake to ignore hate speeches. Our plateful of ugly security challenges is bad enough.

The problem with hate speech is that it is often presented as a legitimate right to hold and express an opinion in pursuit of legitimate personal, ethnic or religious interests and better accommodation in the country. Those who indulge in hate speech can defend their action constitutionally. Section 39 (1) of the constitution provides that “Every person shall be entitled to freedom of expression, including freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference.”

It does not make a distinction between hate speeches intended to offend and other speeches intended to advance reason and push back the frontiers of prejudice and ignorance. But the vice-president said the provision does not cover the right to hate speech. That freedom guaranteed all citizens by the constitution was never intended to be turned into a licence or the liberty to impose on the nation the burden of ethnic or religious hatred.

The mayor of Portland, Oregon, Ted Wheeler, recently strongly argued that “hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment.” But that is not the weighty opinion of his country’s Supreme Court. In three separate cases involving hate speeches or offensive visual representations, the court, in 1969, 1992 and 2011, held that free speech is free speech no matter how bigoted or inflammatory it might be. Yet, the US more than any other country faces the critical challenges of hate speech in name of free speech running riot. Luckily, there are millions of Americans who do not agree with the Supreme Court and are putting up a fight against the bigots and their hate speeches and actions.

Other countries in Europe know the inherent dangers in hate speech and have taken legal steps to chain the rogue. Britain and Wales enacted Public Order Act 1986 in the year tagged to its title. The act forbids “expressions of hatred toward someone on account of that person’s colour, race, disability, nationality (including citizenship, ethnic or national origin, religion, or sexual orientation…”

You risk a seven-year jail term or a fine or both.

In an opinion published by The Huffington Post, UK, on March 23, 2017, the writer argued that “hate speech is not free speech (because) no human being exists in a vacuum where they can speak as they please with no regard for the consequences of what they are saying. Too often we hear of the right to freedom of speech with rarely a mention of the responsibilities. Yet, we do have a responsibility in our speech. We have a responsibility not to harm others, incite hatred against them or to create a society of prejudice and intolerance.”

Back home in Nigeria, we are dealing with some pernicious problems here. Firstly, we do not have specific laws outlawing hate speech. I am sure if the lawyers comb carefully enough through the statutes, they can find laws they can use to punish hate speech-mongers. Still, it amounts to fighting hate speech with bare hands.

Secondly, we all know that hate speech has enormous appeal for both the informed and the uninformed. The more incendiary or inflammatory it is, the greater the crowd it pulls. In addition to sounding macho the hate speechmonger presents himself as someone fighting a worthy ethnic, social or religion cause. He rouses the rabble and instantly becomes the brave little man taking on the giant Nigerian state. This is the case with the instant fame or infamy of Nnamdi Kanu.

What to do? This is as big a challenge as they come. It is not enough for the Nigerian state to warn against hate speeches. It is incumbent on it to fight legal means of fighting and curbing the scourge. The Huffington Post rightly argued that “When we are exposed to hate on regular basis we become desensitised to it and extreme views become ubiquitous. We destigmatise those members of society who spew hatred into our world and we allow views of division and discrimination to become endemic within our communities. If we open the floodgates to hate it will be impossible to turn our backs on it.”

We can yet stop our country from being led down that dangerous slope.