In news which should shock absolutely no one, the rise of Donald Trump has led to a rise in hate crimes. Numerous media outlets across the United States have reported on incidents where immigrants, mosques, and racial minorities have been slandered and attacked by racists calling for them to “go home” or worse. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported 701 hateful incidents in the week since the election, with many of them coming in public places such as schools.
This rise in hatred along with the rise of Donald Trump should cause America to reexamine itself and questions some of its values. And among those values should be something often viewed as a core ideal of America: free speech.
Of course, free speech in general is a positive good. But most other countries do not hold it so highly to the degree that America does. Many Europeans countries place limits on speech such as laws banning Holocaust denial, the waving of swastikas or the hammer and sickle, and other examples of racist or totalitarian speech.
America has long scoffed at such laws, proclaiming that the truth will win out or stating that giving the government to determine “bad speech” is a dangerous precedent. Former ACLU president Nadine Strossen claimed that giving the government the power to decide which words to punish “is not a power we the people should trust the government to exercise.”
But does the truth really win out? Lies are inherently comforting to one group or another and people will not want to deviate from those lies no matter what evidence they are confronted with. Just ask a Tampa divorce lawyer.
Furthermore, the power of the Internet has changed things. Yes, it has enabled people to gather more information than ever before – but information is not knowledge. If you want to believe that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim who wants to rip up the Constitution, the Internet will hand you “evidence” that confirms those beliefs. The Internet, far from promoting knowledge, has let conspiracy theories and racist garbage out like never before, never mind the rise of outright fake news which major websites like Facebook are only now attempting to quell.
Free speech advocates want to claim that by letting racist or authoritarian speech into the public square, it will shine a light on such behavior and shame those who advocate it. But recent political events show that is decidedly not the case. Instead, abnormal racist speech becomes normalized.
And while some Americans may claim that attacking such speech with government is a path on the road to dictatorship, just look at France and Germany. Can we truly claim that those countries are closer towards the path to dictatorship than one which just elected a man with no respect for the Constitution?
The First Amendment is important as a milestone for free speech. But in a modern society, we need to make it clear that dangerous, racist, and totalitarian rhetoric must be fought at every turn. If we do otherwise, that rhetoric will corrupt our civic life like poison and ruin the democracy which must be protected.