The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a UN treaty, calls on governments to prevent hate speech. Article 20(2) of the ICCPR says: “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.”

Hate speech laws are a relatively modern phenomenon that appeared in Europe in the wake of World War II. The idea behind such laws was to curb the kinds of anti-Semitic and racist propaganda that gave rise to the Holocaust. Germany, Poland, Hungary and Austria passed hate legislation decades ago. Many other countries have since followed suit. For example, under Kenyan law, a person commits an offense if they stir up “ethnic hatred”. France goes further. Its laws forbid any communication intended to incite discrimination, hatred or harm regarding ethnicity, nation, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or handicap.

What is dangerous speech?

Definition of Dangerous Speech by Susan Benesch, Dangerous Speech Project:

Dangerous Speech is any form of expression (speech, text, or images) that can increase the risk that its audience will condone or participate in violence against members of another group. We have observed striking similarities in the rhetoric that leaders use to provoke violence in completely different countries, cultures, and historical periods. One of these rhetorical ‘hallmarks’ or recurring patterns in Dangerous Speech is dehumanization, or referring to people in another group as insects, despised or dangerous animals, bacteria, or cancer. More hallmarks are listed below.

Rhetoric alone can’t make speech dangerous, though; the context in which it is communicated is just as important. One can capture that context, and analyze speech for dangerousness, by asking about five aspects of the speech:

• Speaker: Did the message come from an influential speaker?

• Audience: Was the audience susceptible to an inflammatory message, e.g. because they were already fearful or resentful?

• Message: Does the speech carry hallmarks of Dangerous Speech? The hallmarks are:

  • Dehumanization. Describing other people in ways that deny or diminish their humanity, for example by comparing them to disgusting or deadly animals, insects,  bacteria, or demons. Crucially, this makes violence seem acceptable.
  • ‘Accusation in a mirror.’ Asserting that the audience faces serious and often mortal threats from the target group - in other words, reversing reality by suggesting that the victims of a genocide will instead commit it. The term ‘accusation in a mirror’ was found in a guide for making propaganda, discovered in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide. Accusation in a mirror makes violence seem necessary by convincing people that they face a mortal threat, which they can fend off only with violence. This is a very powerful rhetorical move since it is the collective analogue of the one ironclad defense to murder: self-defense. If people feel violence is necessary for defending themselves, their group, and especially their children, it seems not only justified but virtuous.
  • Assertion of attack on women/girls. Suggesting that women or girls of the audience’s group have been threatened, harassed, or defiled by members of a target group. In many cases, the purity of a group’s women is symbolic of the purity of the group itself, or of its identity or way of life.
  • Coded language. Including phrases and words that have a special meaning, shared by the speaker and audience. The speaker is therefore capable of communicating two messages, one understood by those with knowledge of the coded language and one understood by everyone else. This can make the speech more dangerous in a few ways. For example, the coded language could be deeply rooted in the audience members’ sense of identity or shared history and therefore evoke disdain for an opposing group. It can also make the speech harder to identify and counter for those who are not familiar with it.
  • Impurity/contamination. Giving the impression that one or more members of a target group might damage the purity or integrity or cleanliness of the audience group. Members of target groups have been compared to rotten apples that can spoil a whole barrel of good apples, weeds that threaten crops, or stains on a dress.

• Context: Is there a social or historical context that has lowered the barriers to violence or made it more acceptable? Examples of this are competition between groups for resources and previous episodes of violence between the relevant groups.

• Medium: How influential is the medium by which the message is delivered? For example, is it the only or primary source of news for the relevant audience?

All five conditions need not be relevant, for speech to be dangerous. For example, a message can be dangerous even when the speaker is anonymous.  Only two of the conditions are necessary: the message must be inflammatory, and the audience must be susceptible.

Understanding Dangerous Speech FAQ

Countering Dangerous Speech

“Inflammatory public speech rises steadily before outbreaks of mass violence, suggesting that it is a precursor or even a prerequisite for violence, which makes sense: groups of killers do not form spontaneously. In most cases, a few influential speakers gradually incite a group to violence.

Violence may be prevented, then, by interfering with this process in any of several ways: inhibiting the speech, limiting its dissemination, undermining the credibility of the speaker, or ‘inoculating’ the audience against the speech so that it is less influential, or dangerous.”

Counterspeech is responding to Dangerous Speech in a way that undermines it.

Anyone can do this, and (just like Dangerous Speech itself) it is especially effective when done by people who have influence over the relevant audience. For example, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Joachim Gauck have repeatedly responded to Dangerous Speech targeting refugees, Muslims, and immigrants by denouncing the speech and calling for unity and tolerance. In response to anti-refugee protests that drew thousands of audience members, Merkel said, “There is freedom of assembly in Germany but there is no place here for incitement and lies about people who come to us from other countries,” and, “Everyone needs to be careful that they are not taken advantage of by the people who organize such events.” Influence does not need to be political, however, and it can exist at any level - local, regional, national, international, etc.

In 2011, when a pastor from Florida threatened to bring anti-Islam protesters to the Arab International Festival in Dearborn, Michigan, mayor Jack O’Reilly wrote an open letter to residents urging them to “be agents of peace and forgiveness” and “ignore [the protesters] and their empty words”, because “no positive result” could come from confrontation.

Counterspeech can be a spontaneous reaction to Dangerous Speech or a component of an organized counter-messaging campaign. See the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s guide Defusing Hate: A Strategic Communication Guide to Counteract Dangerous Speech for more information.

Excerpt from Understanding Dangerous Speech by the Dangerous Speech Project.