Newsletter

April 2004

Should Hate Speech be a Crime?

Clive Seligman, Gabrielle Giroday

You know a public
lecture is controversial when audience members rise from their seats to
yell at
the speaker giving the address.

On Wednesday
night, the department of Jewish Studies presented the annual Rosen
Lecture at
Grant Hall. This year’s speaker was Edward Greenspan, arguably one of Canada’s
best, and most controversial, criminal lawyers. As a defence lawyer,
some of
Greenspan’s past clients include Robert Latimer and former Nova Scotia
Premier
Gerald Regan.

Greenspan has
hosted television shows about legal justice on the CBC, as well as
given
speeches at the Empire Club of Canada, the zenith of Canadian public
performance. His appearance at Queen’s was heavily hyped and
approximately 400
people filled Grant Hall to hear him speak about hate speech and the
Canadian
legal process. Greenspan was unambiguous in his stance.

“More freedom
of speech is the weapon against hate-mongers, not less,” he said.

Greenspan argued
that the Canadian political climate is increasingly
unable to distinguish between thought and action, and that many
Canadians are
oversensitive and too easily offended by mere words.”

“Somehow,
liberal means nice,” he said. “That impression is, in my view,
totally misguided.” Greenspan denied the validity of the principle,
“Thou shalt not hurt others with words.”

“This
principle is a mess,” he argued.

While hate speech
is despicable and hate-speakers should be shamed and despised,
Greenspan said,
hate speech laws actually prohibit freedom of speech and should be
removed from
the Criminal Code of Canada.

“I would take
the Criminal Code of Canada and squish it down to half its size,” he
said.

Greenspan used
examples from both international law and Canadian history to illustrate
his
point that laws designed to prevent hate speech can actually give the
groups
who perpetrate hate speech a higher profile, thus undermining the
spirit of the
law. By putting on trial figures such as Ernst Zundel, an anti-Semite
and a
Holocaust denier, society is giving them a public platform on which to
stand,
instead of allowing them to languish in obscurity. A central question
Greenspan
sought to address was the process by which society separates fairbeliefs from unfair ones. “How do we
sort fair beliefs from lunatic ones?” he asked.

Greenspan
proposed
five possibilities: the funda-mentalist view, which holds that some
people have
access to absolute truths; the egalitarian view, which holds that
equality
should be elevated above all else; the radical egalitarian view, which
holds
that there should be special treatment for historically disadvantaged
groups;
the humanitarian view, which holds that society should wish above all
else to
do no harm; and the liberal view, which holds that only free and open
debate
should decide what is right.

“I believe
the last view is the only right one,” Greenspan argued. “Hate speech
is antithetical to notions of liberal democracy.”

Greenspan
argued
that verbally causing hurt should not immediately be labeled a crime.
Greenspan
advocated that society adhere to a “moral obligation,” postulating
that individuals in a democracy have to be thick-skinned, and that
individual
liberty should not be sacrificed upon the altar of acceptable speech.

“I think I
know something of the pain that the Zundels of the world have caused,”
Greenspan said, noting that he is Jewish and has several friends who
lost
relatives during the Holocaust.

Greenspan made
clear he totally disagrees with the content of anti-Semitic views,
branding
Zundel as “filth of the lowest order.” However, he lambasted the
concept that by supporting free speech, individuals are also
inadvertently
supporting the views that are expressed by hate-mongering parties.

Instead, his
argument
was that hate speech laws can be too easily abused to harm the people
they are
meant to protect. He cited examples in Canada, such
as a case in Quebec
concerning French Canadians who were prosecuted for publishing
satirical
pamphlets. The pamphlets made fun of their own culture as a response to
the
English majority in the area. The French Canadians were persecuted
because
their beliefs were believed to incite hate. Greenspan endeavoured to
show the
limitations of the
courtroom and trials that focused on proving
whether a
given history occurred were useless as
the resulting verdicts applied only to a given time and space. No one
trial or
guilty verdict will eliminate all hateful speech; the only safe guard
is more
free speech, he said.

Instead, he argued
truth could be found in the faith that freedom will prevail. “Truth
does
not prevail as part of a prosecution of a hate crime,” Greenspan said.
“Truth can only be proven by living it out.”

Using quotations
from John Milton, Greenspan forwarded the idea that truth is not
infallible,
but that given a choice between laws that favour the power of the
majority to
determine what is acceptable or laws that favour freedom of speech for
everyone
─ Greenspan believes we should choose the latter. Greenspan argued
reasoned
people must be allowed to freely expose themselves to hateful or
disagreeable
speech and decide for themselves whether the ideas are worth accepting.

“I read Mein
Kampf; I did not become a Nazi,” he said. “I read Das Kapital; I did
not become a communist.”

Gabrielle Giroday is Editorial Page Editor of the Journal.
Steven Seligman, Journal Features Co-Editor, is a SAFS member.

Friday, January 23, 2004.