Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:56:31.805Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Terror, Hate and the Demands of Counter-Speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2019

Jeffrey W. Howard Open the ORCID record for Jeffrey W. Howard [Opens in a new window]
Jeffrey W. Howard*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University College London
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

It is a familiar mantra of American politics that the best response to dangerous speech that incites violence and spreads hate is ‘more speech’. Yet the principle obscures at least three crucial questions. Who, in particular, is to undertake the counter-speech that the doctrine recommends? What, exactly, are they required to do? And why is it morally justified to demand that they do it? This article argues that if citizens are to rely on counter-speech to defuse the dangers of dangerous expression, it is not enough to cheerlead its abstract importance and then sit back and hope for the best. Someone needs to do the work, and do it well. The article defends the thesis that all citizens have a moral duty to engage in counter-speech against dangerous expression. Focusing on counter-speech against expression that implicitly or explicitly advocates wrongful criminal violence, it argues that these duties can be derived from a much more basic normative source: the samaritan obligation, held by all moral agents, to rescue others from risks of harm. The specification of these duties' content, however, depends upon interdisciplinary work that integrates normative theory with social scientific research on human communication.

Keywords

free speechhate speechdangerous speechcounter-speechsamaritanismcivic duties
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 924 - 939
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Badano, G and Nuti, A (2018) Under pressure: political liberalism, the rise of unreasonableness, and the complexity of containment. Journal of Political Philosophy 26(2), 145–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Badano, G and Nuti, A (2019) The limits of conjecture: political liberalism, counter-radicalisation and unreasonable religious views. Ethnicities. doi:10.1177/1468796819866356.Google Scholar
Baker, CE (1978) Scope of the first amendment freedom of speech. UCLA Law Review 25, 964–1040.Google Scholar
Bambauer, DE (2006) Shopping badly: cognitive biases, communications, and the fallacy of the marketplace of ideas. University of Colorado Law Review 77, 649–710.Google Scholar
Bay, C (1975) Access to political knowledge as a human right. Human Context 7, 388–398.Google Scholar
Benesch, S (2012) Dangerous speech: A proposal to prevent group violence. World Policy Institute, 12 January. Available from https://worldpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Dangerous-Speech-Guidelines-Benesch-January-2012.pdf.Google Scholar
Benesch, S et al. (2016) Considerations for successful counterspeech. Dangerous Speech Project. Available from https://dangerousspeech.org/considerations-for-successful-counterspeech.Google Scholar
Bjørgo, T and Horgan, J (eds.) (2009) Leaving Terrorism Behind: Individual and Collective Disengagement. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brettschneider, C (2012) When the State Speaks, What Should It Say? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Brietzke, PH (1997) How and why the marketplace of ideas fails. Valparaiso University Law Review 31, 951–969.Google Scholar
Brown, RH (2016) Defusing hate: a strategic communication guide to counteract dangerous speech. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.Google Scholar
Chambers, S (2009) Rhetoric and the public sphere: has deliberative democracy abandoned mass democracy? Political Theory 37, 323–350.Google Scholar
Clayton, M and Stevens, D (2014) When God commands disobedience: political liberalism and unreasonable religions. Res Publica 20, 65–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edwards, K and Von Hippel, W (1995) Hearts and minds: the priority of affective versus cognitive factors in person perception. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 21(10), 996–1011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eagly, A, Wood, W and Chaiken, S (1978). Causal inferences about communicators and their effect on opinion change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36, 424–435.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliott, A (2011) Why Yasir Qadhi wants to talk about jihad. The New York Times Magazine, 17 March.Google Scholar
Fabre, C (2007) Mandatory rescue killings. The Journal of Political Philosophy 15(4), 363–384.Google Scholar
Fricker, M (2007) Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Garsten, B (2009) Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Garsten, B (2011) The rhetoric revival in political theory. Annual Review of Political Science 14, 164–174.Google Scholar
Gelber, K (2012a) ‘Speaking back’: the likely fate of hate speech policy in the United States and Australia. In Maitra, I and McGowan, MK (eds), Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 50–71Google Scholar
Gelber, K (2012b) Reconceptualizing counterspeech in hate speech policy (with a focus on Australia). In Herz, M and Molnar, P (eds), The Content and Context of Hate Speech: Rethinking Regulation and Responses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 198-216.Google Scholar
Glaesar, E and Sunstein, CR (2014) Does more speech correct falsehoods? The Journal of Legal Studies 43(1), 65–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, J (1997) John Stuart Mill and the marketplace of ideas. Social Theory and Practice 23(2), 235–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haidt, J (2001) The emotional dog and its rational tail: a social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review 108(4), 814–834.Google ScholarPubMed
Haidt, J (2012) The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Religion and Politics. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Hay, C (2011) The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42(1), 21–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heinze, E (2016) Hate Speech and Democratic Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hope, S (2014) Kantian imperfect duties and modern debates over human rights. Journal of Political Philosophy 22(4), 396–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard, J (2019a) Free speech and hate speech. Annual Review of Political Science 22, 93–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard, J (2019b) Dangerous speech. Philosophy & Public Affairs 47, 208–254.Google Scholar
Iyengar, S and Hahn, KS (2009) Red media, blue media: evidence of ideological selectivity in media use. Journal of Communication 59, 19–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahan, D et al. (2017) Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government. Behavioral Public Policy 1(1), 54–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, D (2011) Thinking Fast and Slow. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Krause, S (2008) Civil Passions: Moral Sentiment and Democratic Deliberation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Langton, R (2018) Blocking as counter-speech. In Fogal, D, Harris, DW and Moss, M (eds), New Work on Speech Acts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Leader, MJ and Benesch, S (2016) Dangerous speech and dangerous ideology: an integrated model for monitoring and prevention. Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 9(3), 70–95.Google Scholar
Lepoutre, M (2017) Hate speech in public discourse: a pessimistic defense of counter-speech. Social Theory and Practice 43, 851–885.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lepoutre, M (2018) Rage inside the machine: defending the place of anger in democratic speech. Politics, Philosophy & Economics 17, 398–426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maitra, I and McGowan, MK (2012) Introduction. In Maitra, I and McGowan, MK (eds), Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–23.Google Scholar
McGowan, MK (2018) Responding to harmful speech. In Johnson, CR (ed.), Voicing Dissent: The Ethics and Epistemology of Making Disagreement Public. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 182–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McMahan, J (2005) The basis of moral liability to defensive killing. Philosophical Issues 15(1), 386–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mill, JS (1991[1859]) On liberty. In Gray, J (ed.), On Liberty and Other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 5–130.Google Scholar
Moscovici, S (1980) Toward a theory of conversion behavior. In Berkowitz, L (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 13. New York: Academic Press, pp. 209–239.Google Scholar
Myers, D (1975) Discussion-induced attitude polarization. Human Relations 28, 699–715.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickerson, R (1998) Confirmation bias: a ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology 2(2), 175–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyhan, B and Reifler, J (2010) When corrections fail: the persistence of political misperceptions. Political Behavior 32(2), 303–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oswald, M and Grosjean, S (2004) Confirmation bias. In Pohl, R (ed.), Cognitive Illusions: A Handbook on Fallacies and Biases in Thinking, Judgement and Memory. Hove, UK: Psychology Press, pp. 79–96.Google Scholar
Parekh, B (2006) Hate speech: is there a case for banning? Public Policy Research 12, 213–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pew Research Center (2013) Changing attitudes on same sex marriage, gay friends and family. Available from http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/06/changing-attitudes-on-same-sex-marriage-gay-friends-and-family.Google Scholar
Quong, J (2012) Liability to defensive harm. Philosophy & Public Affairs 40(1), 45–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, J (1999[1971]) A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawls, J (2005) Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Rebasa, A et al. (2010) Deradicalizing Islamist Extremists. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.Google Scholar
Sanders, L (1997) Against deliberation. Political Theory 25, 347–376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scanlon, T (1972) A theory of freedom of expression. Philosophy & Public Affairs 1, 204–226.Google Scholar
Schauer, F (1992) Uncoupling free speech. Columbia Law Review 92(6), 1321–1357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schauer, F (2014) Review: ‘When the State Speaks, What Should it Say?’ by Corey Brettschneider. Political Theory 42(4), 498–513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartzman, M (2012) The ethics of reasoning from conjecture. Journal of Moral Philosophy 9, 521–544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shavitt, S (1990) The role of attitude objects in attitude formation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 26(2), 124–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shelby, T (2018) Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Shiffrin, S (2014) Speech Matters. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Silvermint, D (2013) Resistance and well-being. Journal of Political Philosophy 21(4), 405–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singer, P (1972) Famine, affluence, and morality. Philosophy & Public Affairs 1(1), 229–243.Google Scholar
Stern, J (2010) Mind over martyr: how to deradicalize Islamist extremists. Foreign Affairs 89(1), 95–108.Google Scholar
Stone, G (2004) Perilous Times. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Sunstein, C (2009) Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sunstein, C (2018) #Republic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Tadros, V (2016) Permissibility in a world of wrongdoing. Philosophy & Public Affairs 44(2), 101–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vasanthakumar, A (2018) Epistemic privilege and victims’ duties to resist their oppression. Journal of Applied Philosophy 35(3), 465–480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wellman, CH (1996) Liberalism, samaritanism, and political legitimacy. Philosophy & Public Affairs 25(3), 211–237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wellman, CH (2013) Liberal Rights and Responsibilities: Essays on Citizenship and Sovereignty. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wenar, L (2011) Poverty is no pond. In Illingworth, P, Pogge, T and Wenar, L (eds), Giving Well: The Ethics of Philanthropy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 104–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, T and Porter, E (2019) The elusive backfire effect: mass attitudes’ steadfast factual adherence. Political Behavior 41, 136–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar