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Canada Bill Seeks Action Against Online Hate Speech

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Hate speech is a violent and silencing force. Hate speech drives violence just as shouting fire in a theater drives tramplings. This isn’t theory. Exposure to hate speech online drives hate crimes. We know that hateful attacks online become hateful attacks offline. Knowing this, shouting fire in a theater becomes a good comparison. While the person shouting “Fire!” may not actually tell people to trample and kill those who fall on the ground, but their speech does lead to that. Similarly, dehumanizing hate speech may be something like “Ban all Muslims,” but it inspires a person to carry that hate into action.

Hate speech is not free speech. Hate speech stifles free speech. It forces people to self-censor, silencing their opinions, hiding their identity, all for fear of abuse online and offline. It allows bullies to control a network. Often, these networks become intolerably toxic.

Online hate speech leads to censorship and violence. Canada has finally moved to put an end to it.

Rising Hate

Many articles and think pieces have commented on the increased political polarization of society. Science vs science denial. Bigotry vs acceptance. Spreading disease vs fighting disease. The gaps have become huge in topics that should otherwise not be so dire. This comes from a few sources. You’ve likely seen a small sample of it, stuff like “both sides” reporting. This allows both an extreme position with no basis in fact to be presented next to a factual argument. Climate change deniers with no evidence or education against scientists who have studied climate for decades. Transphobes against doctors. Essential oil salespeople against the entire medical community. You’ve seen it. News stations give these arguments the same air time. In fact, often in cases of transgender and other LGBTQIA rights, only the side against these people, with no basis in fact, gets air time.

It comes down to the core issue: hate attracts people. If you want a reply to a question on the internet, use an alternate account to post a wrong answer first. People are eager to be right, either because they have the facts, or just to have an authority figure, like a “respected” television host pat them on the head and say, “Yes, your biases are all correct.” Hate fuels not only those who believe in those hateful views, but also those who wish to counter them.

Hate Spreading

Online networks have become a haven for this hate. With journalism surviving solely on donations and views, news pieces have gone one of two ways. There’s the clickbait and buzzy articles, and there’s the sites that became dedicated to bigotry. Conservative ideology is based around fear, usually of “the other” or “the unknown.” This can show in fear of progress, as well as discomfort around people perceived as “different.” However, they’re more than capable of understanding that those fears are unfounded… until they have their biases confirmed by a position of authority.

This can come in the form of news websites like Breitbart or the Daily Caller, misinformation sites that confirm and exacerbate bias. It can come from political pundits like Tucker Carlson, cleaning up the language of white supremacists and exaggerating or falsifying liberal standpoints as strawmen, easy to knock down. These tidbits are often shared online. You’ll find relatives and friends sharing the misinformation on Facebook and other social networks. From there, it sinks in. You hear these blatantly false, biased, or propaganda-like discussions from supposed people in positions of authority. That causes hate to grow.

Hate Boils Over

“We have seen that misogyny, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, expressed online doesn’t just stay there. It spreads online and it spills into real life. We have seen that. And this is why we are taking action.”

– Maryam Monsef, Canadian minister of women and gender equality during a virtual press conference and Q&A

Boil something long enough and it’s cooked. Surround a person in confirmation bias, hate speech, and calls to action long enough, and they’ll take action. On June 6th, Nathaniel Veltman put on body armor and a helmet, then sat outside one of Canada’s most popular mosques. He then ran over a family of five in his truck as they left the mosque, killing 4 and injuring the lone survivor, a 9-year-old boy. He’s an orphan now. A premeditated hate crime that likely started from exposure to hate speech online orphaned a child and killed his siblings.

We’ve seen it everywhere. In Germany, a study proved that exposure to hate speech on Facebook lead to an increase in hate crimes against refugees. The U.N. declared the hate speech and misinformation that spread rampantly on Facebook as the primary driver for the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar. The Islamophobic terrorist who killed Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand credited noted Islamophobe Donald Trump as a “symbol of white supremacy” in the manifesto he shared online before killing 49 people. Hate in the U.S. spread to New Zealand.

Hate becomes violence. It is as sure as the fact that dropping a glass leads to broken glass. With hate speech comes hate crimes.

Targets of Hate Silenced

“Hate speech directly contradicts the values underlying freedom of expression and our Charter of Rights. It threatens the safety and well-being of its targets. It silences and intimidates, especially when the target is a vulnerable person or community. When hate speech spreads, its victims lose their freedom to participate in civil society online.”

– Canada’s Attorney General, David Lametti

Canada watched as a female member of the government faced sexist harassment online that grew to offline assault. Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna faced online abuse as a result of her position. McKenna stated, “I will say it is worse for women in climate. Misogyny and climate denial seem to go together.” She’s not wrong. The two ideologies find themselves planted firmly in the disinformation fanatics of the alt-right. Other climate change activists, especially women and girls, like Greta Thunberg, have faced sexist abuse online. In the case of McKenna, after a verbal assault in front of her children and vandalism of her home, it lead to increased security detail.

McKenna has chosen not to run for re-election. The harassment and hate speech won. She was silenced.

“Women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ persons, there’s a great cost associated with them using their free expression online. … The net result of that is that the free expression rights of women, people of colour, and other people who are targeted by hate, get attacked.”

– Evan Balgord, executive directory at the Canadian Anti-Hate Network

This happens everywhere. Female software engineers and game developers kept their heads down during the height of Gamergate. Being outed on Twitter would lead to harassment, offline as well as online. High profile women, like Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian had to find shelter. They were frequently threatened in their homes, were followed by bomb threats, and couldn’t find a moment of peace.

LGBTQ people will often stay closeted online, even on an anonymous platform. Women will be careful not to speak up too loudly about rampant and systematic misogyny due to hate speech and harassment.

These marginalized groups witness hate speech online and self-censor, so they do not become the targets of that hate online or offline. Every single person of color, LGBTQ+ person, or woman has thought twice about posting something online because of the hate they’ll receive. Most choose silence.

Hate silences freedom of speech. Hate speech is an act of violence, not an act of expression.

A Bill to End It

Canada’s Liberal government introduced a new bill to end widespread hate speech online. The proposed legislation would define hate speech as “detestation or vilification of a person or group.” Sharing hate speech online would result in a hefty fine. The proposed law would charge CA$20,000 ($16,250 U.S.) for a first offense and CA$50,000 ($40,600) for a second offense. That might seem quite steep, but these aren’t fines levied at your racist aunt on Facebook. Instead, these fines, and this law, target large-scale dissemination of hate speech. It’s the talk show hosts, the TV personalities, the “journalists,” and the websites that host them. This is about articles and media that spreads to tens of thousands of people.

“These changes are designed to target the most egregious and clear forms of hate speech that can lead to discrimination and violence.”

– David Lametti, Canada’s Attorney General

The goal of the legislation is to stop hate speech at its primary source. It will mostly target large mouthpieces online who start the spread of popular discriminatory media, not social media posts. It seeks to define hate speech in the criminal code with amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Youth Criminal Justice Act. The law will also make the process of reporting hate speech online easier.

Too Late?

“The folks that I represent, the people who are fearful for their lives, need to hear that the government of Canada will be there for them and will do everything it can to protect their safety and security and democratic participation. It’s for them.”

– Maryam Monsef, Canadian minister of women and gender equality

This bill was introduced on the last day of parliamentary session. It hasn’t been voted on prior to the recess. This fall, the liberal government will trigger a new election. An entirely different parliament could decide to not reintroduce this legislation, and not to vote on it at all. So is it too little, too late?

Potentially.

However, liberal representatives in a Q&A session tackled that question. While they stopped short of promising to re-introduce the bill, they did state that they want to assure Canadians that they’re dedicated to protecting people online. Monsef did declare that, speaking for herself and her caucus, they intend to write this into law.

“The short answer on my end, and I speak for the rural caucus of course but of course the women’s caucus, we have every intention of passing this bill.”

– Maryam Monsef

Steven Guilbeault, Canadian Heritage minister, also pointed fingers at tech and presumably news companies for why the legislation was necessary. He also pointed to the problems with misinformation in the U.S., and how hate and, without naming it, white rage, lead to an insurrection.

“Self regulation by these companies on these issues simply doesn’t work. We’ve tried that, we’ve tried that for more than a decade, and what happened on Capitol Hill is probably one of the many examples of why this doesn’t work. Which is why governments, our government here and governments around the world, are saying we need to tackle this. So this is a clear commitment by our government to do this.”

– Steven Guilbeault

So, while it seems like this legislation is going nowhere, there’s a strong push to write this into law. This is likely a signal to voters. If Canada chooses a Liberal government in the fall, they can expect movement on hate speech online.

Defending Liberty, Squashing Hate

This is how governments should react to hate speech. Hate speech is easy to identify and prevent online. It’s speech made to demean a group based on who they are, not their actions or ideologies. It’s dehumanizing, and it leads to violence and self censorship. Threats of violence cannot be protected speech in a successful and peaceful society. Democracy doesn’t work if some people are too afraid to bring their voice forward due to threats of violence.

With Canada making moves, other countries may do the same. Despite causing literal genocide, Facebook refused to make any meaningful progress on hate speech or disinformation. Right-wing terrorists planned their attack on the Capitol largely online, specifically Facebook and Parler, along with others. Hate still flourishes online, and that won’t change until we legislate it out of existence. Canada’s taking the first, very small, steps. Hopefully there are more.

For further information, I highly recommend this Q&A session, which allows these Canadian federal ministers to explain their legislation and goals in their own words:

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