Self Expression and Hate Speech: The Line

Written by Harsh Mehta

Edited by Jairaj Vij

Illustration by Saranya Bhakuni

Superficially, a governmental state apparatus may appear intimidating and personally incommunicable, in the slightest. You might have ideas for how society should change, but see yourself as too insignificant to make a difference. Those exact feelings are why freedom of speech and demonstration have been some of the most universally applied and upheld rights in liberal democracies.

Loss of freedom of speech is also one of the most clear signifiers of the descent of a nation state into fascism. According to the 14 points of Ur-Fascism, the stage in between a liberal democracy and fascism is called proto-fascism. One of the indicators of proto-fascism is widespread censorship of political demonstration and criticism of the status quo.

Speech is the single, penultimate non-violent tool of the oppressed, and when it starts being infringed, it indicates the existence of a horrific reality for those people. In the modern world, censorship has multiple manifestations. It can be executed by nation states, corporations, organizations, etc. Methods include suppression, de-platforming, legal action, sedition laws, and widespread propaganda mobilizing people against certain speech.

However, censorship is not a black and white issue. It can be a very important tool when used to block hate speech.

While these statements may appear conflicting on the first read-through, considering nuance is important. Hate speech and self expression are most definitely different .

Free speech absolutism is quite tone-deaf and leads socially marginalised communities in the dust as long as the spectre of bigotry floats over society.

Lax hate speech rules have led a multitude of online and offline communities completely inhospitable to people of color, neurodivergent people, queer people, lower caste people, etc. It becomes a festering breeding ground for even more hatred as privileged children and adolescents are sucked into the rabbit-hole of ignorance, coming out the other end as hate-mongers.

This creation of an echo-chamber of privilege also manifests very close-minded people that dig their heels into the ground at the drop of a hat, the pipeline is very simple. They’re lured in with milquetoast critique of social justice, leading to creation of well-established strawmen and stereotypes for people to correlate social justice with. This is the most important step as it allows people to simply wave away legitimate critique as incoherent ramblings. This devolves into the final free-fall, unfiltered bigotry, calls for violent action and fear mongering.

Therefore, to prevent the creation of communities like this on the internet during the massive digitization of the world, censorship is an important tool.

I was also almost a victim of this rabbit-hole, not a proud time period for me. However, I was able to get out at that second stage because I was able to slow down and question what I was listening to, a thing that many people don’t do.

I know that it’s very easy to be an absolutist on either side of the censorship issue, but I also believe that looking at both sides of the issue is important.

Personally, I don’t trust corporations and governments to use this tool effectively, so I believe in balancing the power, something akin to what Reddit has. Implementation of community policing as well as higher intervention after outcry from the community has led the platform as a whole to massively improve.

Definitely, it has shortcomings, but I believe that with some changes like democratization of real people connected with their communities could do a great job handling societal censorship.