Words Behind Closed Doors: The Harm of Private Hate Speech

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Recently, scholars have offered two challenges to the position that free speech is of suchhigh value that it should not be restricted. Waldron (2012) argues that hate speechthreatens accepted principles of justice, while Langton (2009) contends that pornographicspeech constitutes harm. If we care about equality and want to avoid harm, their argumentsimply, these speech acts ought to be restricted. However, the authors do not clarifywhether their arguments cut across the liberal distinction of public and private speech. Theaim of my PhD project is to show that private hate speech fulfils the conditions to threatenequality and constitute harm to at least the same extent as its public counterpart.Consequently, if we take seriously the justification for restrictions of speech that follow,we have to reconsider the political and legal protection of private hate speech.Private hate speech ranges from racist dinner conversations to hateful Facebookgroup chats. Waldron himself offers an argument in favour of restricting public hatespeech yet fails to appreciate its radical conclusions for private life (Langton 2016). Hesuggests that hate speech threatens citizens' knowledge of living in a society whereeveryone subscribes to the principles of justice. But private hate speech can have this effecteven more intensely: a single message can make someone doubt whether others think ofthem as equal. This lack of knowledge is amplified by an actual lack of egalitarian thinkingin society. Even if the victim does not read the messages, hateful private groups chats canreassure their participants that their fantasies of an unequal society are legitimate. Privatehate speech threatens equality in equally significant ways as public hate speech.Feminist theorists (McGowan 2009, Langton 2009) further suggest that somespeech acts constitute harm: speech itself ranks people as inferior. Applying this argumentto private speech may seem less straightforward: the speaker needs a certain authority torank, which private speech can lack. Here, the context of speaking in private becomesimportant. The seclusion of private speech from intervention by others can create the sameauthority-relations between those who utter hate speech and their victims, renderingprivate hate speech directly harmful.Does this radical extension of existing arguments mean that we still ought toprotect private hate speech? The special status of the private realm is often defended onthe grounds that it allows for autonomous development of ideas without the threat ofgovernmental intervention. Okin (1989) and Chambers (2008) have, however, shown that'private' aspects such as culture or family power structures influence the autonomy citizensdisplay in the public realm. We have to ask: whose autonomy counts - that of the hatefulspeaker or that of the victim? In a world where public hate speech is restricted, but privatehate speech rages on, would minority members really be autonomous enough to act ascitizens of equal standing? These considerations, I suggest, provide strong reasons toextend legal restrictions onto private hate speech.