Here’s a brutal irony about regulating hate speech: Such laws often end up hurting the very people they are supposed to protect.
That’s one of the central lessons in Jacob Mchangama’s important new book, Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media. Mchangama heads up the Danish think tank Justitia. He’s worried about a proposal that would make hate speech a crime under European Union (EU) law and give bureaucrats in Brussels sweeping powers to prosecute people spewing venom at religious and ethnic minorities, members of the LGBT+ community, women, and others.