Nadine Strossen: Resist hate with free speech

Former longtime ACLU president Nadine Strossen says we must resist hate speech with free speech.

Strossen was president of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991-2008, the first woman and the youngest person ever to lead the ACLU. She is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who barely escaped a concentration camp. Strossen grew up in Hopkins, Minn.

She was invited to speak at this summer's Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado about her new book titled, "Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship."

Nadine Strossen said, "the ACLU's mandate, which I take as my personal goal in life, is to do whatever I can to promote and defend all fundamental freedoms for all people. No matter who you are, no matter what you believe, even if the Constitution itself doesn't apply, we think that you are entitled to certain fundamental rights and we will use whatever legal tools are available, and when legal tools aren't available, we'll use advocacy."

Strossen says she sees a "rising tide of resistance to hateful and hated messages," and says what is sometimes called "counter-speech" is very important. We must "make use of our own free speech rights to raise our voices in ways that will actually counter either the underlying ideas that are conveyed in hateful speech, or their potential adverse impact."

"The Supreme Court never has defined a category of speech based on its hateful or hated content and said for that reason it is excluded from 1st Amendment protection," but she adds, "even though there is no constitutionally accepted concept of punishable hate speech, based on its message, there is an accepted concept of hate crime or bias crime. When you take something that already is a crime, such as assault or vandalism or a threat, where the victim is singled out for a discriminatory reason ... that can be treated as a more serious crime subject to enhanced punishment, on the rationale that it does more harm both to the individual victim and to society as a whole."

The bottom line message of her new book, Strossen said, is highlighted in the title by the use of the verb, "resist." We must "seriously punish violence that is discriminatory in its nature, and we must seriously enforce laws that prohibit actual discrimination in employment, housing and other sectors... The tragic, horrible violence and death that occurred in Charlottesville was not because there was too much free speech, but because there was too little law enforcement."

Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic moderated this discussion on June 26, 2018, at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado.

To listen to the discussion, click the audio player above.