How "Hate Laws" Promote Hate

A Turkish national has recently been convicted in Switzerland of the crime of denying that there was a deliberate holocaust of Armenians in Turkey in the early twentieth century. Oddly enough, it is a crime in Turkey to say there was such a holocaust.

The argument in both cases is essentially the same. In Switzerland, it is “Hate Speech” against the Armenians to deny this Holocaust. In Turkey, it is “Hate Speech” against the Turks to accept it.

Surely this demonstrates the insanity of “Hate Laws” generally?

It is illegal in Canada to deny that there was a Nazi holocaust against the Jews, or indeed to claim it was less systematic than generally believed. To do so is considered a “hate crime” against Jews. But isn’t it just as arguably a hate crime against Germans, a promotion of the idea of German “blood guilt,” to insist that the holocaust did happen, and was as systematic as generally believed?

After all, it is considered hateful to say that Jews killed Jesus; Jewish anti-defamation groups attacked Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ on this ground even though it was pretty accurately reflecting the Bible on this point. Why is blood guilt for the goose not blood guilt for the gander?

One might argue that the claim that there was a Nazi holocaust is simply true beyond doubt, while the claim that the Jews killed Jesus is simply false. Perhaps so; but how can we be confident of this, once we have silenced all possible debate or contrary findings? And deliberate holocausts do, in fact, tend to be hard to prove. Understandably, the perpetrators rather prefer to cover their tracks.

It seems to me certain that no “Hate Law” is ever going to be used to prosecute anyone saying anything popular. It will only ever be used to prosecute unpopular speech. Therefore, it is never going to prevent hatred against any group that is generally hated; making it, at best, useless.

Indeed, we do not even tend to see speech criticizing unpopular groups as hateful. Jeff Harmsen has written, in this very blog’s comments section, that “millions have been tortured and slaughtered in his [Jesus’s] name.” Of “millions of examples of torture and massacre predicated by religious righteousness.” Does he face two years’ imprisonment for spreading hate? Even though these claims are fairly certainly historically untrue? Surely not. But had he said this of the Jews? Quite a different matter. Similiarly, nobody faces trouble for saying “men are violent by nature.” But should this be said of blacks or aboriginals? Two years in prison. Yet one claim is about as likely to be true as the other; the same evidence that is commonly used to show that men are “violent,” the number of criminal charges and convictions, would equally show that blacks and aboriginals are.

As a result, Hate Laws will do absolutely nothing, ever, to prevent a real holocaust. Instead, they only become another weapon in the arsenal of those who seek to oppress some group. Had there been “Hate Laws” in Nazi Germany, you can be sure they would have been used to prosecute Jews who said anything against Nazis, never to prosecute Nazis who said anything against Jews.

The people who are currently prosecuted seem, invariably, to be at worst harmless eccentrics, at best the best among us, honest men who dissent from social norms and refuse to be silenced. The very sort of men who would have dissented from the Nazi holocaust at the time