Hate speech v. free speech

By Lauren Thiery
To You Editor, Fused

Despite the common assumption that hate groups are obsolete because of recent civil rights advancements, such groups and their derogatory speech are still prevalent in today’s society.

Though membership in hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, White Aryan Resistance (W.A.R.), Neo-Nazis, Black Separatists and Neo-Confederates used to be larger, more acceptable and “admirable,” such groups and their activities are no longer tolerable in mainstream American culture. But contrary to popular belief, these groups are still abundant and functioning throughout the nation. Although hate group membership is not as high as it once was during its peak, it has not drastically decreased.

Though hate speech supporters argue that hate speech is protected by the First Amendment’s freedom of speech clause, it should be noted that there are times when it is not protected. Hate speech directly initiates violence when the purposefully harmful language employed turns into actions of violence; this is neither protected by the First Amendment nor should be argued to be protected by the First Amendment.

For example, in the late 1980s, Tom Metzger, the founder of W.A.R., was charged with inciting the murder of Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian immigrant residing in the United States. Even though Metzger did not directly murder Seraw, he was indirectly responsible for Seraw’s murder; the men who murdered Seraw were members of W.A.R., received W.A.R.’s literature that depicted singling out minorities and killing them, and had allegedly been verbally instructed on how to provoke minorities using hate speech so that a self-defense plea would excuse them from murder charges.

However, this speech led to actions that caused a murder, one among many. This is why Metzger and his hate group were found guilty of indirectly murdering Seraw. Examples such as this emphasize the fact that the First Amendment neither supports nor protects hate speech that causes violence.