Confronting hate speech: We must be intolerant of intolerance

Balancing the right to free speech with the imperative to confront hate speech is a huge challenge. It is less of an issue in uno-duce-una-voce autocracies or countries where a tradition of violent transition is established, if not revered, in the national mythology. In this country, for many years, conflicting interests faced off over Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, which precluded broadcasters from interviewing representatives of terrorists.

That law, lest the car-bombers-as-civil-rights-workers revisionists suggest otherwise, prevented the broadcasting of “any matter that could be calculated to promote the aims or activities of any organisation which engages in, promotes, encourages, or advocates the attaining of any particular objectives by violent means”. Participatory democracy, so long a dream for the great majority of people in this country, was encouraged and defended.