Countering hate speech in context: positive freedom of speech

Abstract

Hate speech analyses commonly evaluate restrictions on speech or the value of speaking back. Free speech’s negative dimensions are used when assessing restrictions, but the freedom’s positive dimensions are less often considered in relation to counterspeech. Even so, negative and positive dimensions of free expression are always relevant for responses to vilification, and the freedom’s positive dimensions have important implications for the communicative structure underlying democratic public speech. The degree to which that structure comes close to being an environment of sustained plural public speech is an important part of the context in which hate speech and counterspeech arise. The com..