{"id":14718,"date":"2017-08-23T10:44:11","date_gmt":"2017-08-23T20:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=14718"},"modified":"2017-08-23T10:44:11","modified_gmt":"2017-08-23T20:44:11","slug":"my-japan-times-jbc-108-in-wake-of-charlottesville-u-s-should-follow-japan-and-outlaw-hate-speech-aug-24-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=14718","title":{"rendered":"My Japan Times JBC 108: “In wake of Charlottesville, U.S. should follow Japan and outlaw hate speech”, Aug 24, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

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JUST BE CAUSE
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In wake of Charlottesville, U.S. should follow Japan and outlaw hate speech<\/strong>
\n BY DEBITO ARUDOU<\/strong>
\nTHE JAPAN TIMES\u00a0AUG 23, 2017<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk about Charlottesville.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As you probably heard, two weeks ago there was a protest in a small Virginia town against the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general who defended slavery in the American South. Various hate groups, including white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, assembled there with shields, weapons, fascist flags and anti-Semitic slogans. They were met with counterprotest, and things got violent. A supremacist slammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one and injuring 19.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Charlottesville has shaken hope for a post-racial America to the core. But before readers in Japan breathe a sigh of relief and think, \u201cIt couldn\u2019t happen here, not in peaceful Japan,\u201d remember this:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Japan has also had plenty of hate rallies \u2014 there was about one per day on average in 2013 and 2014<\/a>, according to the Justice Ministry. Rightist xenophobes and government-designated hate groups have assembled and held demos nationwide. Bearing signs calling foreign residents \u201ccockroaches<\/a>,\u201d calling for a Nanking-style massacre of Koreans in an Osaka Koreatown<\/a>, even advocating the extermination of \u201call Koreans, good or bad,\u201d<\/a> Japan\u2019s haters have also used violence (some lethal<\/a>) against the country\u2019s minorities.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As JBC has argued before (\u201cOsaka\u2019s move on hate speech should be just the first step,\u201d Jan. 31, 2016<\/a>), freedom of speech is not an absolute. And hate speech is special: It ultimately and necessarily leads to violence, due to the volatile mix of dehumanization with flared tempers.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Japan decided to do something about it. In 2016 the Diet passed a law against hate speech (albeit limiting it to specifically protect foreign residents<\/a>). And it has had an effect: Japanese media reports fewer rallies and softer invective<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

America, however, hasn\u2019t gotten serious about this. It has no explicit law against hate speech, due to fears about government censorship of freedom of speech. Opponents argue that the only cure is freer speech \u2014 that somehow hate will be balanced out by reasonable and rational counter-hate<\/a>. That persuasion will win out.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But in 2016, it didn\u2019t. Hate speech is precisely how Donald J. Trump got elected president…<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Read the rest at: https:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/community\/2017\/08\/23\/issues\/wake-charlottesville-u-s-follow-japan-outlaw-hate-speech\/<\/a><\/p>\n

===================
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JBC: Let\u2019s talk about Charlottesville.<\/p>\n

As you probably heard, two weeks ago there was a protest in a small Virginia town against the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general who defended slavery in the American South. Various hate groups, including white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, assembled there with shields, weapons, fascist flags and anti-Semitic slogans. They were met with counterprotest, and things got violent. A supremacist slammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one and injuring 19.<\/p>\n

Charlottesville has shaken hope for a post-racial America to the core. But before readers in Japan breathe a sigh of relief and think, \u201cIt couldn\u2019t happen here, not in peaceful Japan,\u201d remember this:<\/p>\n

Japan has also had plenty of hate rallies \u2014 there was about one per day on average in 2013 and 2014, according to the Justice Ministry. Rightist xenophobes and government-designated hate groups have assembled and held demos nationwide. Bearing signs calling foreign residents \u201ccockroaches,\u201d calling for a Nanking-style massacre of Koreans in an Osaka Koreatown, even advocating the extermination of \u201call Koreans, good or bad,\u201d Japan\u2019s haters have also used violence (some lethal) against the country\u2019s minorities.<\/p>\n

As JBC has argued before (\u201cOsaka\u2019s move on hate speech should be just the first step,\u201d Jan. 31, 2016), freedom of speech is not an absolute. And hate speech is special: It ultimately and necessarily leads to violence, due to the volatile mix of dehumanization with flared tempers.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Japan decided to do something about it. In 2016 the Diet passed a law against hate speech (albeit limiting it to specifically protect foreign residents). And it has had an effect: Japanese media reports fewer rallies and softer invective.<\/p>\n

America, however, hasn\u2019t gotten serious about this. It has no explicit law against hate speech, due to fears about government censorship of freedom of speech. Opponents argue that the only cure is freer speech \u2014 that somehow hate will be balanced out by reasonable and rational counter-hate. That persuasion will win out.<\/p>\n

But in 2016, it didn\u2019t. Hate speech is precisely how Donald J. Trump got elected president…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,54,28,18,33,50,52,20,5,12,26,4,10,14,65,48,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embedded-racism","category-pinprick-protests","category-anti-discrimination-templates","category-academia","category-fingerprinting-nj","category-gaiatsu","category-hate-speech","category-history","category-human-rights","category-immigration-assimilation","category-ironies-hypocrisies","category-japanese-government","category-japanese-policeforeign-crime","category-japanese-politics","category-racist-images-in-media","category-shoe-on-the-other-foot-dept","category-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}