The EU’s hatred of ‘hate’
by
GRANT HAVERS*

At first glance, it may seem reasonable and even necessary to outlaw “hatred,” given the bloody history of Europe in the 20th century. After all, did not totalitarian movements rise because their hateful speech was tolerated by weak democratic regimes? Defenders of hate speech laws occasionally cite the Weimar Republic in Germany (1919-1933) as a prime example of tolerance gone too far: This liberal democracy was allegedly too liberal in permitting the hateful speech of far right and left parties who used their democratic rights to destroy democracy. On a regular basis, defenders of article K.3 insist that these laws are needed to prevent another tragedy. In 1999, Beate Winkler, the director of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, warned of a new “Holocaust” if the EU did not revamp its attempts to combat discrimination and prejudice.

Laws against extremist political movements are a postwar phenomenon in Europe, and no EU nation has gone farther than Germany in giving the state awesome powers to enforce them. After World War II, newly elected democracies moved quickly to “de-Nazify” German society with measures that took out of discussion any idea or party that might threaten the new liberal consensus; for this reason, Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” was banned. Although these laws were originally intended to prevent a resurgence of the far right, the Cold War of the 1950s and the rise of leftist terrorism in the late 1960s led governments to clamp down on the left: In 1956 West Germany banned the Communist Party and in 1969 emergency laws were passed to allow police to spy on and arrest (without habeas corpus) leftists suspected of terrorism.

Since the end of the Cold War, there have been renewed attempts to target the far right for the crime of hate speech. To be sure, the defenders of hate speech laws insist that these measures must be consistent with the rule of law and democratic respect for freedom of speech. In theory, these laws are supposed to apply to all violators across the political spectrum. What actually happens in practice is another question. Apparently, some forms of hatred are more threatening than others.

In January 2000, leftist parties in Italy passed through the House of Deputies a remembrance of “Nazi-fascist” atrocities. Rightist parties insisted that the bill extend remembrance to all victims of “political tyranny,” a demand that the leftist parties rejected as a desperate attempt to divert attention away from the threat of anti-Semitism. Apparently, the crimes of communists (including Stalinists) did not rate as highly as those of fascists and Nazis.

In February 2007, the EU decided to put extra teeth into the criminalization of hate speech on the right by prohibiting not only the “public denial” but even the act of “grossly trivializing” crimes against humanity, war crimes and the Holocaust. When the EU states of Estonia, Poland and Slovenia insisted that the denial and trivialization of all totalitarian crimes, left as well as right, be subject to prosecution, this demand was dismissed in high quarters. Slovak Minister of Justice Stefan Harabin asserted that the crimes of fascism and communism could not be placed “on the same level.”

Why does the EU fear the far right so much and the far left so little, despite the fact that so many ex-communists govern many EU nations in the East? Why is it unlikely that a citizen of the EU who trivializes the horror of the Soviet Gulag will be subject to prosecution for hate speech? The politically charged nature of hate speech laws is not unique to Europe. In my own country, Canada, “Human Rights Commissions,” court-like bodies who penalize practitioners of “hate speech,” have never punished individuals on the left. Instead, Canadians who hold orthodox Christian views on homosexuality are far more likely to be prosecuted than secular leftists who hate Christianity and liberal democracy.

As American political scientist Paul Gottfried has argued, the EU attack on the right has far more to do with hostility to the idea of autonomous nation states than fear of a resurgent fascism on the march. To date, the political parties in the EU who are most worried about the erosion of national sovereignty tend to be on the populist right. The EU’s attempt to forge a new cosmopolitan regime has steadily centralized meaningful political authority in the Brussels parliament. Anyone who complains about the consequent loss of national sovereignty is likely to be portrayed as a dangerous xenophobe.

A problem related to the regulation of hate speech is the challenge of dealing with whole nations, as well as individuals, who resist the EU’s policies. Since the end of World War II, European elites have concluded that the nation-state is a destructive instrument responsible for the conflicts that have plagued the history of the continent. In this context, the enforcement of “universal human rights” has been seen as absolutely essential, even if individual freedom of speech is curtailed in the process. Most significantly, political parties who raise concerns about the loss of national control over welfare, taxation, immigration and borders are subject to isolation. The EU has forced a dualistic choice on nation states: Either become universalistic, or risk becoming a pariah state.

Ironically, the move to combat “hate speech” on the right has origins far beyond Europe’s borders. While most Europeans see the United States as a right-wing nation (especially under the leadership of George W. Bush), postwar American influences on European elites bear some responsibility for the campaign against the right. Although America has a longstanding reputation for traditions of individual liberty and small government, the American “de-Nazification” program in West Germany after World War II provided the template for the regulation and criminalization of speech. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, many prominent postwar American intellectuals worried about the rise of a “radical right” in the United States and elsewhere, unless drastic steps were taken to nip it in the bud. What began as an attempt to prevent the return of Nazism in postwar Germany has spread across all the borders of European nations and encouraged the identification of national pride with right-wing extremism.

Despite the anti-American posturing of the European left, the American love of “universal” credos of liberty and equality has received a favorable hearing on the leftist side of the political spectrum. While EU leftists have opposed the Iraq war, they have enthusiastically supported the postwar American ideal of bringing liberal democracy to all peoples on the continent, even if that means the marginalization of the ideas and influence of the populist right in the process. Few leftists would dispute the view of American neoconservative Francis Fukuyama that the only people who oppose the universalization of liberal democratic credos are on the right today.

Like “hatred,” the term “universal” can mean different things to different people. While European civilization rests in part on the universal morality of Christianity, it is fair to say that this version of universalism is not favored in Brussels; the original preamble to the EU Constitution didn’t even mention Christianity as a central influence in Europe’s history. Rather, the new “universalism” is rooted in the minds of mandarins in Brussels who are bent on opposing any attempt to preserve national sovereignty, whether in Ireland, Holland or Poland. A historically rooted “Christian” universalism, which once respected the rights of nation-states, is presumably an intolerant atavism that must go the way of the dodo bird. Any nation that seeks to preserve its religious identity should be prepared to live with the subordination of its historic faith to an artificial universalism. For this reason, the former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has warned that the EU is gradually becoming a new version of the Soviet Union.

In this wider context of integrating both the economy as well as the consciousness of European peoples, the EU has set itself the task of combating “hatred,” or any attitude that might question the wisdom of surrendering national autonomy to a universalistic ideology. Every nation-state aspiring to join the EU should ask the simple question: Is it worth it?