Yes, even that may be said
In the series on censorship and free speech: the case for letting people say awful things in public.
Hate in a quiet village
Somewhere at the end of a road that leads nowhere, there lies a small village. It has just about a thousand souls spread across a few hundred homes. Two ethnic communities live there: farmers and fishers. They follow different religions, and they also look a bit different. Still, they’ve shared the village peacefully for generations. Everyone has their own modest home and a patch of land. Up north, near the sea, you’ll find more fishers. The farmers tend to live further inland. All the children attend the same village school. The local council is evenly split between the two groups.
Until a few years ago, when a fisherman did something to a farmer's daughter that the village would rather not mention out loud. Since then, the village has not been what it used to be. The incident still haunts the village. Old tensions begin to simmer. The farmers are, on average, slightly better off than the fishers. Historically, this was a farming village; the fishers arrived later, well over a century ago, but still “the newcomers,” as some would say. The farmers follow a cheerful, laid-back faith: live and let live, no judging. The fishers, by contrast, are far more devout, and they’ve never quite approved of the farmers’ freewheeling ways.
Slowly but surely, things started to crack along ethnic lines. A shouting match erupted between a farmer and a fisher in the village square. Someone defiled a sacred site belonging to the fishers. A stone sailed through a farmhouse window. A horse went missing. The mood turned nasty. A group of farmers decided they’ve had enough. They never really trusted the fishers anyway, and now they’re asking: what are they even doing here? Let them go back to wherever their ancestors came from, some distant country overseas that none of them have ever seen.
The farmers begin pushing for the fishers to be stripped of their land and booted out of the village. Their leader pens a furious manifesto and plasters it to the village hall. On Saturday market day, he climbs on top of his car and bellows that the fishers should sod off. A scuffle breaks out when a group of fishers confront him. Fists fly. Ugly graffiti appears overnight, on both sides.
In short: the village is in turmoil. The village head, from a family of farmers, desperately tries to hold the place together. She drinks endless cups of tea with all sides, but nothing works. After the fights, police are called in from the nearest town. They confront the farmers’ leader: no more rallies, no more leaflets, no more bigoted slogans in the square. He pushes back: freedom of speech, he says. Sure, his words are blunt, but he means no harm. He doesn’t condone violence. He simply has a view, and he’s entitled to it: the fishers, in his opinion, are untrustworthy interlopers, and the tension is beyond repair. It would be better for everyone, he argues, if they just left.
The police ask you for advice. Should this man be silenced? You think his views are outrageous. One can’t just brand half the village second-class citizens. The fishers have as much right to be here as anyone else. The farmers’ leader disagrees, but that’s not the issue. The real question isn’t whether he’s right. It’s not even whether he’s allowed to hold that opinion. The question is whether the police should stop him from saying it aloud, ban his posters, arrest him if he carries on shouting his xenophobic message in the square. Is there room in public life for views like his?
So, what are we doing in this article?
In the last article, we identified two potentially solid arguments for placing limits on hate speech.
The first is about impact: hate speech can cause real harm. It wounds, it excludes. People withdraw, avoid public spaces, retreat into their own corners. That, in turn, can lead to poorer integration, or worse: radicalisation.
The second argument is more principled: one shouldn’t be allowed to label entire groups as inferior. It’s also partly a democratic point: you can’t go around denying people their right to full participation in society.
In this article, we’ll further examine those concerns, and weigh them against the case for free speech.
Free speech as a heritage
Right then. Should the farmers’ leader be silenced? Time to dive into the great debate on free speech. You begin by brushing up on the classics: centuries of thinking that have shaped how we see freedom of speech. Here’s a shortlist of the big ideas that have stood the test of time:
Open discussion brings us closer to the truth.
(Sokrates, Coornhert, Williams, Milton, Bayle, Locke, Holbach, Mill)No one holds the full truth. So who has the right to silence others?
(Pyrrho, Coornhert, Locke, Bayle)One person being right doesn’t automatically make the other wrong.
(Erasmus, Mill)You can’t force people to change their minds, just to shut up.
(Erasmus, L’Hospital, Castellio, Spinoza, Locke, Milton)Conscience is free.
(Castellio, Albada, Bayle, Spinoza, Locke)If you want to be tolerated, you’ve got to offer it too.
(Castellio, Albada, Locke, Bayle, Rousseau)Free speech also has economic benefits.
(De la Court, Mandeville, Condorcet)Engaging with bad ideas sharpens our minds and our morals.
(Milton, Mill)New truths often get attacked first. It’s not new knowledge that fuels fanaticism, but clinging to outdated dogmas.
(Holbach)
Some of these points help clarify the issue. But many are mainly concerned with the search for truth, born out of debates about religion and freedom of conscience. And yes, we get it: open debate is good for truth-seeking.
But thought hasn’t stood still since the Enlightenment. Two major shifts in the 20th century profoundly shaped how we now think about free speech:
First, public debate used to be a fairly elite affair. The proverbial man on the street had little say, and usually no vote. That changed around 1920, when most European countries introduced universal suffrage.
And then came technology. From around 2010, with the explosion of social media, the floodgates opened. Suddenly, everyone had a megaphone. The result? A louder, rougher public discourse. More extreme views, more radical opinions.
Second, Hitler made philosophers re-evaluate moral scepticism. Especially after the war, when the sheer horror of the Holocaust became fully known, the fact that he had deliberately tried to wipe out an entire people. This dealt a serious blow to Enlightenment-era scepticism: the idea that moral judgements can never be absolutely true, only ever up for debate. In Negative Dialectics (1966), Theodor Adorno argued that Auschwitz revealed the negative absolute of evil, something traditional ethics couldn’t process, but which any future ethics had to confront. Others extended that reasoning to slavery and colonialism.
Why free speech matters
Thanks to universal suffrage, social media, and the horrors of the Holocaust, we’ve become far more aware of the dark sides of free speech. But at the same time, we’ve come to value it more deeply. Where the focus used to be on freedom of conscience and the search for truth (up until the 19th century), attention gradually shifted toward the democratic value of free expression. We also started thinking more in terms of equality. You’ll see those themes come up repeatedly in what follows.
Tolerance and progress
The importance of free speech goes beyond just the pursuit of truth. To explain why, let’s take a short detour.
There are at least four systems where things tend to work best when actors are allowed to compete freely:
Biological evolution: The variants that thrive are the ones best suited to their environment. The ones less suited die out.
The free market: where anyone can enter a transparent market, and compete freely, prices find their natural level, and innovation is rewarded.
Knowledge and science: progresses most when knowledge is public and testable, and when new ideas get a fair hearing. Science thrives with competition, stubbornness and critical contradiction.
Democracy: where ideas and interests clash, but decisions gain legitimacy through broad electoral support.
In all four systems, tolerance plays a key role. No central authority gets to decide in advance which mutations or ideas are allowed. Everything is put to the test in the real world. Some fail. Others thrive. The result is constant change. Without tolerance, that development would grind to a halt. In fact, these systems work best when the competition is fierce: when ideas, interests, or genes really collide.
But is all that change really progress? These systems don’t have a final destination. There’s no pre-set direction, and development is never “complete.” In markets and science, competition clearly drives progress: productivity rises, knowledge expands. (Though yes, we might lose something valuable along the way.) In biology, it’s trickier. But over the long run, evolution does seem to lead, on average, to more efficient use of resources.
So it wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that a well-functioning democracy may also, in some sense, produce progress. That’s debatable, of course. But you could cautiously suggest that healthy democracies tend to boost well-being and prosperity. More on that later, in the upcoming series on toleration and the economy.
But there’s more to it. Progress in biology, markets, science, and democracy is rarely smooth. Setbacks, unintended consequences, and perverse incentives are part of the deal. But these systems usually work best when we resist the urge to interfere. Human meddling often disrupts their self-correcting nature. Reality is so complex that we rarely foresee the full effects of our interventions. And when interventions backfire, they tend to create a need for even more intervention. This insight, we largely owe to Friedrich Hayek. Toleration, in this sense, is the conscious decision not to intervene, even when we don’t like the outcomes, because we trust the system to work things out eventually.
The marketplace of ideas
Free speech plays a vital role in science and in democracy. Both rely on what’s often called “the marketplace of ideas,” which should lead us further towards the truth. But it’s too simplistic to confine public debate to just truth seeking; many functions of public debate have little to do with it.
Public discourse serves many purposes. Here’s a rough list of its key functions:
Truth-seeking: testing ideas through discussion and dissent
Political mobilisation: building support, persuading others
Information-sharing: helping people understand the world
Agenda-setting: pushing ideas into public view
Moral and cultural confrontation: clashing worldviews, contested values
Profiling and mission: winning hearts and minds while affirming and promoting one’s own identity.
Building in-group solidarity, often by contrasting with “outsiders”
Identity and group cohesion: rallying supporters,
Advocacy and influence: via advertising, PR, or lobbying
Entertainment: not just cat videos, blockbusters, and stand-up comedy, but also infotainment and the appeal of recorded arguments or public spats
Of course, these functions often blur together. Satire, for example, isn’t just entertainment. It can also provoke, mobilise, and challenge. A political ad might aim to influence, agitate, and signal identity, all at once.
For the top items in the list, the value of free speech is pretty obvious. It’s hard to argue for heavy restrictions there. But what about the lower-ranking functions? That’s trickier. What’s the harm in restricting never-ending tribalistic arguments, vile personal attacks, dumb gossip or stupid memes?
Back in the 18th century, enlightened monarchs wrestled with the same questions. High-minded debate about science, politics, even religion? No problem. But among the general public, what actually caught on was vulgar comedy, gossip, irreverent jabs, tribalism, and subversion of authority.
You might say: so what? If we have to put up with some rubbish to keep knowledge advancing and democracy ticking, maybe that’s a price worth paying. Because the motives are intertwined, it is also difficult to separate high and low motives. Low motives also count in the democratic process.
But things get uncomfortable when the noise starts drowning everything else out, when public discourse gets so polluted it stalls decision-making and blinds collective judgment. A democracy paralysed by polarisation and triviality. A society where politicians win votes by demonising their opponents, where compromise is seen as weakness. Or worse still: where scapegoating becomes normalised, and minority groups are pushed out of the democratic process altogether.
This is a real challenge posed by free speech. Let everyone speak freely, and ugly things will surface. Polarisation is often rewarded, especially in representative democracies. That’s what this article is really about: the negative consequences of free speech, and whether those consequences justify limits.
Three ways to weigh free speech
The debate around free speech and hate speech plays out across three different “scales”, each with its own logic:
Democracy and the rule of law: Should exclusionary or demeaning speech be banned to ensure all citizens can fully participate? Or does democracy require the freedom to say anything?
Deontology and dignitarianism: Are certain expressions, regardless of consequences, intrinsically wrong and therefore should be banned? Is it ever acceptable to call an entire group inferior, or to say they don’t belong? Or does moral autonomy and freedom of conscience trump that?
Consequentialism: Weighing the harms and benefits of free speech, and judging it by its real-world effects.
Up next, we’ll explore both the consequentialist and the dignitarian arguments. But let’s start with the democratic case for free speech.
Democracy and free speech
In a democracy, the people have the final say. But if certain views aren’t allowed to be voiced in public, then they can’t be put on the political agenda either. Limit the public debate, and you’re quietly deciding in advance that the people won’t make certain choices.
From the perspective of democratic opinion formation, no restrictions should be imposed. Everyone must be free to form and express their own opinion, and every voice should carry equal weight. Any restriction on public debate would violate the democratic principle that every citizen helps steer the course. No one’s participation is just for show, wherever they may want to go.
In a democracy, we’re all at the wheel. Sure, it’s a tiny steering wheel, and you only get to touch it every few years. But still, you’re expected to steer informed. You wouldn’t tape over a driver’s windscreen either — that’s a surefire way to cause an accident. Likewise, if information is withheld from you, or if certain opinions are censored because they might influence your judgment, you’re being manipulated. Even well-intentioned restrictions risk distorting public opinion. Paternalism and political motives often go hand in hand.
Even if the majority considers certain views taboo, they still shouldn’t be banned. Free speech stands above democratic decision making, because democracy itself can’t function without it.
Of course, we all have to obey the law. Break it, and there are consequences. That’s coercion. Nobody loves coercion, but we accept it because the law is made democratically, even if we personally disagree with it. That’s the bargain: if you oppose a law, you can campaign against it. Speak out, rally support, work for change. That’s the only legitimate way to resist unfair laws. But if some topics are off-limits, if there are things you can’t speak about, then you’ve lost that lifeline. You’re stuck. And if there’s no legal route left, the only alternative is to go underground. That’s another reason why nothing should be unspeakable.
On top of that, dissent is vital in a democracy. If the public consists only of yes-men and cheerleaders, the government gets lazy. Policies go unchallenged. Politicians take the easy route, or worse, prioritise their own interests over the public good.
Knowing they’re under scrutiny keeps governments sharp. And voters are aware that there are alternatives: real choices to weigh. The people affected by policy must be able to speak up, so that voters understand that not everyone benefits in the same way.
Limitations
So far, so good. These are the classic democratic arguments for free speech, and they’re powerful. But even these have limits. You still have to ask: should there be no restrictions at all? Is any interference with speech truly off the table in a democracy?
There are, in fact, three democratic counterarguments against an unbounded right to speak:
In reality, free speech is never absolute in a democracy. So any line you draw is, by definition, arbitrary.
We may need to defend both free speech and democracy itself from those who seek to undermine them.
Equality is democracy’s cornerstone. If you attack that foundation, if you claim some people deserve less, then you’re attacking democracy itself, and you may need to be silenced.
We’ll now explore these democracy-based objections.
Even in a perfect democracy, free speech has its limits
Even in the ideal democracy, freedom of speech isn’t without boundaries. You can’t publish classified information. You can’t incite violence. You can’t go around spreading malicious lies about people. And so on.
So, if we agree that even a flawless democracy still places some limits on speech, we need a clear principle to decide which speech must be restricted, and which must remain protected. If we can’t draw that line sensibly, we’re in trouble: people can always come up with reasons to ban speech they dislike: because it’s immoral, harmful, dishonest, false, offensive, against God’s will, you name it.
Here’s a helpful distinction: the content of a statement isn’t the issue. Restrictions exist to protect other legitimate interests without undermining freedom of speech itself. Generally, you can express your views without revealing state secrets, inciting mobs, or slandering innocent people.
For example: it’s right to protect children from content they’re too young for. It’s right to block public demonstrations that clearly violate Feinberg’s offence principle. You can circulate that nasty video, you can hold that spiteful rally, but you’ll need to consider the tender minds of children and the feelings of unsuspecting passers-by. Say a politician is a swine if you must, but don’t threaten them.
That gives us a workable standard: in essence, there are no intrinsic limits to free speech.
Don’t use free speech to undermine democratic values
Those four systems we mentioned earlier (evolution, the market, science, and democracy) share one thing: they’re open. And they can afford to be. History shows these systems are robust. In the long run, they outperform any alternative. Want to challenge them? Be our guest. Got a better idea? Good luck.
But democracy is a bit of an outlier. Historically, democracies are not the balance that every society naturally comes out with. They’re not like rubber ducks that bob to the surface no matter what. That said, solid democracies don’t collapse from within either. A democracy isn’t perfectly stable by definition; opposition is built in — but no country with a solid democracy has ever voted itself into autocracy.
Efforts to “protect” democracy from internal threats can quickly become overzealous. We’d do better to trust the system’s own self-correcting capacity. Would-be autocrats tend to eventually lose in stable democracies. Voters may flirt with extremism, but in the end, common sense usually prevails.
Still, some believe democracy should defend itself against those who would undermine it. Enter the classic paradox of tolerance: should we limit free speech for those who want to destroy the principles that make that speech possible?
But this is dangerous ground. As I’ve written before:
In a democracy, you can’t pre-empt the will of the majority. That’s anti-democratic by definition.
You can’t tell large swathes of voters their views don’t count.
When anti-democratic movements arise, it’s usually a symptom of something going wrong in the system. Banning them won’t solve the problem. It just ignores the warning.
Most so-called “anti-democrats” aren’t plotting a dictatorship. They’re just deeply dissatisfied with how democracy is currently working. Banning them is a missed opportunity to reform the system.
Restrictions can be abused. The establishment may use them to shield itself by labelling critics anti-democratic.
Provisions to protect democracy are easily formulated too widely, with unnecessary protection of legacy: a system can easily be overhauled and still remain a democracy in the core.
You can defend democracy against violent threats without slipping into the tolerance paradox.
And these concerns don’t just apply to banning political parties. They apply equally to banning “anti-democratic” speech.
Democracy’s core
If, despite all this, you still favour banning anti-democratic parties, the restriction must be laser-focused on democracy’s core. In a previous article, we used John Rawls’ overlapping consensus to identify that core:
Free, periodic, secret, integral, and binding elections
Free speech, and nearly unrestricted access to information
An independent judiciary
No discrimination by the state
So, if you want to ban nasty political parties, which I personally don’t, you’d have to prove that it actively seeks to dismantle these four pillars.
But what about private citizens? If political parties can be banned for attacking democracy: does that also mean that citizens can be banned from speaking out against democracy? Should they be barred from voicing opinions that would be illegal for politicians? Surely it would be absurd if someone could publicly call for the expulsion of an ethnic minority, yet not say the same thing in parliament. When someone publicly calls for the expulsion of a minority group, the intent is clear: they want it to actually happen. In that sense, there’s no real difference between a lone person’s tweet and a political party’s manifesto.
And yet… there is a difference. Banning a political party is already skirting (or, in my view, crossing) the democratic line. Banning opinions goes well beyond that. In a democracy, everything must be up for debate, including democracy itself. If someone dreams of a philosopher-king instead of elected government, they’re free to say so. If someone proposes a tax just for non-Muslims, they deserve pushback, not a ban. Otherwise, you’d also have to outlaw Plato, or the Qur’an and the Hadith. There must always be room for opinions.
Why is there a difference between what political parties can say, and private citizens? Because of the threat level. Book bans seem outdated, even if the banned book says exactly what would get a living person convicted. The unspoken logic: dead authors can’t do much more harm. Living ones can. They might act on their beliefs. That’s the only rationale I can think of.
One nostalgic crackpot pining for Napoleon poses no danger for democracy. Neither do the contrarian insights of a Nietzsche. But if a well-supported party enters Parliament aiming to cancel elections, that’s a serious threat.
Even if you back bans on anti-democratic parties, banning opinions is a step too far. Democracy means every voice counts. You can’t dismiss someone’s view just because it’s unpopular, offensive, immoral, or seeks privileges it denies to others. That’s like saying only their opinions should be heard.
Many people want to limit free speech. Think of devout believers who would outlaw blasphemy. Or those who want to ban racist remarks. These calls for a ban are, at heart, anti-democratic. After all, we’ve established that freedom of speech is a core part of democracy.
Still, no one’s suggesting we should ban calls for blasphemy laws, or ban calls to ban racist speech, while both are essentially anti-democratic. They belong in the same category as those who want to deny minorities full participation. Both groups attack democracy’s core. Both deserve a firm response. But both must be able to speak in public.
We must always respect people’s equal dignity
That brings us to an argument we’ve already touched on, one made famously by Bhikhu Parekh and enshrined in the German constitution: you may not depict groups of people as inferior, nor argue against their equal right to belong to the community. Doing so strikes at the heart of democracy, whose foundation is that every individual counts as an equal in their relationship with the state.
As outlined earlier, democracy rests on four core pillars: free elections, free speech, equal treatment, and an independent judiciary. Think of them as the four legs of a table. Remove one leg, and you can’t sit down for a proper meal. You can’t just saw off the leg of free speech in order to protect another leg. The whole structure collapses.
And that applies even more strongly to what we might call “basic hate speech”: discriminatory language about a group without any explicit call to restrict their rights. If someone spreads crude stereotypes about a minority group, they should expect fierce pushback. But unless those statements are coupled with demands to deny that group equal legal standing, there’s no direct assault on democratic principles.
Put simply: there’s a crucial difference between saying, “Left-handers are all wrong ’uns” and “Left-handers should be expelled from the country.” Both deserve criticism, both should be allowed. But only the second clearly violates democratic norms. If you try to ban the first statement as well, you’re making assumptions about the speaker’s intent. Maybe they do want to stir up hostility, hoping left-handers will eventually be pushed out. But maybe not. Maybe they’re just advising caution, like warning to be on your guard with people who call you to put you on a new energy contract.
And here’s the kicker: if you use an anti-democratic measure (a speech ban) to suppress a statement that isn’t clearly anti-democratic itself, you’ve made the situation worse, not better.
Conclusion: democracy requires unrestricted free speech
We’ve now looked at the three democratic arguments against unrestricted free speech, and found all three wanting.
In a healthy democracy, freedom of expression must be substantively unlimited. Yes, there are limits, but not on your ideas. The boundaries only concern how you say it: threats, incitement, etcetera.
Free speech and the principle of equal dignity are two of democracy’s four cornerstones. Trying to protect one by undermining the other is like knocking out one leg of the table to save another. It doesn’t work. Whether someone challenges free speech or equality, both sides must be allowed to speak, and both deserve a sharp rebuttal.
Criticism of a group is not the same as undermining their role in society. And it’s certainly not the same as denying their equal status before the law. The government has no authority to force me to hold every social group in equal regard. If I choose to look down on a particular group, I’m free to say so in public. And even if I want to exclude groups from society, I deserve a reprimand, not a muzzle.
That’s the deal in a democracy. And it’s one worth defending.
Decency and dignity
That last point brings us neatly to the next argument. For some dignitarians, formal legal equality isn’t enough. In a truly civilised society, they argue, we need equal standing: every person must be treated as a full and equal member of the community. Discrimination violates this principle and is therefore unacceptable. So when speech stigmatises, excludes, or degrades entire groups, it must be forbidden.
In this view, hate speech isn’t a matter of personal taste or sensitivity. It’s inherently wrong. It reflects a fundamentally distorted worldview that erodes the moral fabric of society, even if no physical violence follows. That’s why, for those dignitarians, certain expressions are simply out of bounds.
Society means living together. We can and should speak the truth, even bluntly. But there are lines we shouldn’t cross. Basic standards of decency must hold, or shared life becomes impossible. Words that convey contempt or exclusion cross that line when they make people feel unwelcome or second-class. No one should be stripped of their basic dignity. We may not all be the same, but we must treat one another as equals.
Hateful speech drags public debate down. It coarsens our moral sensibilities and erodes a culture of mutual respect. It casts targeted individuals as enemies of society, not as equal citizens. It undermines their social standing. It fuels fear and mistrust, and fractures everyday relationships. Hate speech also flattens people’s individuality, reducing them to faceless tokens of a group.
Dignitarians do value free speech, but they believe human dignity matters even more. The two must be balanced case by case. As Bhikhu Parekh puts it: freedom of speech is important, but it’s not the only value. Human dignity, social cohesion, and the ability to live without harassment deserve protection too.
But dignity can be claimed on both sides
This view is not without its problems. For one, dignity is an ambiguous term. Why, for instance, shouldn’t my dignity mean I can speak freely, even if others find my opinions appalling? You could just as easily argue that my sense of self-worth demands the right to speak the truth as I see it, however ugly.
That idea connects with Kant’s concept of Würde: we must not suppress anyone’s capacity for moral judgment or expression, even when we disagree. Independent thinkers will sometimes reach offensive or misguided conclusions. That’s the price of moral autonomy. If we outlaw opinions simply because we disapprove of them, we’re not treating the speaker as a moral equal; we’re treating them like someone who must yield to our own superior judgment. Silencing someone because you reject their views is, in itself, a form of contempt: you deny them the right to moral agency.
Free speech means you can say things that offend others without fear of punishment. Criticising religion, for instance, may cause deep hurt, but it remains essential to a free society. Even extreme, unsettling views don’t deserve gag orders. They deserve fierce rebuttal. Banning a view is also a kind of exclusion and contempt. A culture of pluralism and respect cuts both ways.
And let’s not forget: people can fight back in the same arena. Suppose I deliver a fiery speech claiming that the Chinese are a menace and should be expelled. I trot out some random stereotypes — about hygiene, trustworthiness, whatever. Naturally, I’ll get pushback. Chinese people (and others) will shout me down: “Shut up, you’re the problem. Chinese people are great. Maybe you should leave.” And that is how it should work. Bad speech should be met with better speech.
By banning my anti-Chinese rant, you also rob my victims — especially the Chinese — of the chance to hit back, to speak for themselves, to dismantle my nonsense in public. My speech doesn’t insult their dignity; denying them the opportunity to answer does.
Some things are too evil to debate — or are they?
Another dignitarian argument is this: some things are so self-evidently evil that no one should be allowed to deny or downplay them. Denying them, in itself, is immoral. Think slavery, genocide, the Holocaust. Even if you make a fool of yourself by denying these atrocities, some people will listen and take you seriously.
But Plato, Aristoteles, Cicero and Seneca — definitely not marginal figures — had no problem with slavery, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Same with the Chinese thinkers Kongzi (Confucius) and Mengzi (Mencius), who raised no objection, even though slavery and genocide were commonplace in their time. Anyone who finds these ideas undeniably bad will have to explain why that judgment is not time-bound.
And if slavery and genocide really are so clearly evil that no debate is possible, what then? Are we still allowed to explore them theoretically? Suppose I write a study on slavery in ancient Rome. I explain how it worked, why it emerged, and even reflect on some of its benefits. Have I already crossed a line?
And if that is still allowed, what if I go further and argue that slavery, in some hypothetical scenario, might not be such a bad idea after all? And if that is allowed, could I use similar logic to examine genocide?
And what about tasteless jokes about the Holocaust? Do they also earn me a ban?
Again, the better answer is not prohibition, but opposition. If I make grotesque claims about slavery’s upsides or mock the Holocaust, put me in my place. Expose my ignorance. Shame me. Show why I’m wrong, and how much hurt my words can cause.
Opinions aren’t acts
There’s also a crucial difference between words and deeds. Making a vile proposal is not the same as committing a crime. Saying that people with learning disabilities should be sterilised is an objectionable opinion, but until someone acts on it, no harm has been done.
The line should be drawn when someone incites actual law-breaking, especially violence. That’s when speech becomes action. That’s when limits are justified.
So what do we do?
Dignity protects both the speaker and those who feel attacked. Instead of censoring, governments should speak up themselves. They should publicly counter toxic claims, promote social cohesion, and address the root causes of tension.
In a civilised society, public debate is the arena where ideas — including hateful, harmful, and plainly wrong ones — are confronted with better ideas. Racist rubbish must be answered, not just by institutions, but by the very people it targets. Because when you ban immoral opinions, you silence their opponents too. You take away the opportunity for open rebuttal. And in doing so, you erode the assumption that all citizens are morally equal, and all are capable of judgment.
Consequentialism: weighing the outcomes
Consequentialism judges moral questions by their outcomes. The most famous version is utilitarianism, which weighs pros and cons based on overall utility. When it comes to free speech, the most compelling consequentialist arguments are found in On Liberty (1859) by John Stuart Mill. To summarise:
There’s always a chance that a controversial opinion is true. Suppress it, and you might be burying the truth.
Even false opinions help refine the truth. They challenge accepted ideas and force us to defend what we believe.
Often, opposing views both contain a portion of the truth. The dominant view is rarely the full picture. Debate helps sharpen our understanding.
Even true beliefs need constant scrutiny, or they turn into dogma instead of living insight.
Earlier, writers like Milton also made largely consequentialist arguments:
By limiting the spread of new ideas and discoveries, censorship slows innovation and progress in society.
Censorship never convinces anyone, it only hardens positions.
But consequentialist arguments don’t all point in the same direction. They’re also used to justify restrictions on speech. In the previous article, we looked at how hate speech might cause real harm: minorities feeling alienated, withdrawing from society, isolating themselves within their own communities. That leads to poorer participation, weaker integration, and psychological damage, too.
The status of minority groups is widely discussed nowadays. Critical messages on social media are everywhere. No wonder those two issues — hate speech and the position of minorities — are increasingly being linked. In Europe especially, there’s a growing push to curb online hate speech. This impulse is backed by a body of research, several dozen studies by now, into the damaging effects of public hate speech.
In general, these studies show that online hate can have negative consequences. But even if that’s true, it doesn’t automatically justify censorship. At least, not the kind of hate speech I’m talking about. If you want to restrict speech on consequentialist grounds, the evidence needs to clear a high bar.
Let me explain.
In the previous article I divided hurtful language into categories. Specifically, the research must isolate hateful expressions in category 2. Of expressions in category 3 (incitement to violence etc.) we know anyway that they cannot get through and that people can rightly be afraid of it. Expressions in category 1 must also be separated. This concerns views that we would rather not hear, but that belong to an open, diverse society. Think of personal criticism, political, scientific or religious views that we may not agree with, generalisations about population groups, ridicule and satire. Research must clearly show that expressions in category 2 lead to substantially greater harm.
Research must also account for context. The targets of hate speech are typically already in a vulnerable position: minorities, outsiders, people with less social or economic power. Harm resulting from that vulnerable position and harm resulting from hate speech should not be lumped together.
Moreover, the studies must be limited to public speech. People say awful things in private all the time, but that’s not usually grounds for legal action.
And finally, the speech in question must target people for immutable traits: race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. Hateful remarks about political views or behaviour — e.g., “meat-eaters are murderers,” or “socialists are traitors” — are nasty, but don’t qualify as hate speech in the strict sense.
And even if all these criteria are met, and the research shows clear harm, it still might not be enough to justify censorship. Because censorship also comes with heavy consequentialist costs.
The hidden costs of censorship
First: there’s little proof that banning hate speech actually works. Take Germany, for example. Its tough approach hasn’t led to a noticeable drop in hatred. If anything, it may have driven it underground. Hateful individuals become more careful, use coded language, and communicate through closed networks where no one can challenge them. They form echo chambers. They radicalise each other. Sometimes they’re even elevated to martyr status among sympathisers.
And hate itself doesn’t vanish with censorship. It just becomes harder to spot. This creates the illusion that the problem is being solved, while the underlying resentment festers. It’s often better to know what’s out there, no matter how vile, than to pretend everything’s fine while the rot spreads quietly beneath the surface.
Besides, even if hate speech causes harm, that still doesn’t automatically mean it should be banned. Many things cause emotional harm. Insults, for example. Bullying. Even the harsh truth can sometimes cause harm. But not every insult triggers a legal response. Only in extreme cases, when someone repeatedly and systematically spreads hate, and all the criteria are met, should intervention even be considered. And we’re nowhere near that threshold.
Therefore, Europe’s current approach to hate speech is, for now, premature, overzealous, and unjustified.
Back to the village
So, let’s return to our remote village, where the police have asked you for advice. The farmers’ leader wants the fishers gone, despite the fact that they’ve lived there for generations. He doesn’t hide his views. He rallies supporters, posts leaflets, and shouts his opinions during the Saturday market. But he stays within legal boundaries: no threats, no violence. He insists everything should go through democratic channels.
Should he be silenced?
If you’ve followed the reasoning in this article, your answer will be: no. However repulsive his views, he must be free to speak. That’s a basic tenet in a democracy.
Silencing him implies his views are morally impossible, that your judgment is morally superior and his is not even worthy of debate. It also robs the fishers of something important: the chance to respond. As if they were helpless, voiceless children. And if you shut the farmers’ leader down, don’t be surprised if the hostility just goes underground. Censorship rarely changes minds. It breeds resentment and makes radicalisation more likely. If people believe they can’t speak openly, they may resort to less democratic methods.
Sure, the fishers won’t enjoy hearing him rant. Many in the village view the fishers with suspicion. Some probably wish they would leave. That’s hurtful. It might cost them sleep, or worse. But silencing the speaker doesn’t mean he or his supporters will fall silent. To justify a speech ban, you’d at least have to prove that it would materially reduce the psychological harm, while tensions remain. And frankly, the academic evidence for that just isn’t there.
It’s a frustrating outcome. We sympathise with the village head, who wants to keep the peace. We’d all prefer harmony. Fortunately, there’s one final twist, a kind of deus ex machina to ease our discomfort.
Because even in a democracy, some decisions should be off-limits, even to a majority. In a decent society, ethnic cleansing should be constitutionally forbidden. It doesn’t matter if most people want it, it must remain illegal. That’s a hard limit. No council vote should ever override it. That’s where democracy draws the line.
And yes, you’re absolutely allowed to oppose that in public.
For further reading
John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)
John Stuart Mill, On liberty (1859)
Friedrich Hayek, Law, legislation and liberty (1973-1979)
Joel Feinberg, The moral limits of the criminal law, vol. 2: Offense to others (1985)
Robert Post, The constitutional concept of public discourse: outrageous opinion, democratic deliberation, and Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, Harvard Law Review (1990)
Jonathan Rauch, Kindly inquisitors : the new attacks on free thought (1993/2013)
Rob Wijnberg, In dubio. Vrijheid van meningsuiting als het recht om te twijfelen (2008)
Bhikhu Parekh, Is there a case for banning hate speech?, in: Michael Herz, Péter Molnár (ed.), The content and context of hate speech: rethinking regulation and responses (2012)
Jeremy Waldron, The harm in hate speech (2012)
Eric Heinze, Hate speech and democratic citizenship (2016)
Luvell Anderson, Michael Barnes, Hate speech, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2022)
Pablo Madriaza et al., Exposure to hate in online and traditional media: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the impact of this exposure on individuals and communities, Campbell Systematic Reviews (2025)
This was the fifth episode in the series on censorship and free speech. The next article will appear in a few weeks, and will discuss polarisation.