There’s an excellent excerpt from an interview in Spiked Magazine between Brendan O’Neill and the writer Nadine Strossen about the pointless and counterproductive concept of ‘hate speech’. Ms Strossen, is also a fellow of the American freedom group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and is the descendants of a mixed Jewish/non-Jewish family that was oppressed in Nazi Germany. She has pointed out that in some cases, such as in interwar Germany, ‘hate speech’ prosecutions against the nascent National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis) ended up being extremely counterproductive. This was because such prosecutions ended up being useful publicity for the Nazis.

Ms Strossen said:

Take the Weimar Republic, the period in Germany when the Nazis rose to power. It had very strict hate-speech laws which were very strictly enforced. And many Nazis served time in prison – but they loved it. It was a propaganda platform for them, where they attained attention and sympathy that they never would have had otherwise. We see that today when hate-mongers are always seeking the limelight. Organisations that specialise in countering hate are constantly advising people that while it feels morally satisfying to try to silence, shout down and de-platform people, it’s not going to do any good. Whenever you try to suppress a message, your efforts end up amplifying it.

Ms Strossen is absolutely correct here. Those at the political extremes whether they be from the Left of the Right love publicity and take the view that in some situations any publicity is good publicity. Suppressing bad ideas whether those bad ideas be political or social or religious, just gives those who promote those ideas much more kudos. Just look at the Westboro Baptist Church for a more modern example of this than the events of 1930’s Europe. This tiny group attracted the ire of many due to their disgusting habit of turning up at military funerals in the USA with their ‘God Hates Fags’ signs but the ire of the moderates and of decent individuals ended up giving Westboro much more publicity than they could ever afford to buy. Maybe if decent people had left this bunch of lunatics alone and done little more than preventing them from getting too close to funerals then they would not have got the publicity that they craved and needed.

We have examples from our own nation of how going against the demands of censors to prevent speech that the don’t like in the form of the BNP’s Nick Griffin’s appearance on the BBC’s Question Time programme. A lot of people demanded that failed fuhrer Griffin be prevented from speaking but by allowing him to speak it allowed the public to see the paucity of his ideology and the BNP collapsed as a political force shortly afterwards.

If we want to deal correctly and effectively with bad ideas then we need to let those with bad ideas debate them openly in order that such ideas get challenged and hopefully destroyed.