Free Speech and Hate Speech

In January 2015, two gunmen walked into the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo and killed twelve people, including the editor and several of the cartoonists. The magazine had published satirical drawings of the Prophet Muhammad, some of which depicted him as a terrorist. Within days, millions of people were carrying signs reading Je suis Charlie in solidarity. Within weeks, a counter-movement pointed out that Charlie Hebdo had also run cartoons that many people considered straightforwardly racist, and that “I am Charlie” was a strange thing to say if you belonged to one of the communities the magazine had mocked. Both sides had principled positions that were incompatible in practice. Welcome to every free speech debate ever. Every democratic society claims to protect free speech, and every democratic society also restricts some speech. The question is never whether to draw a line but where to draw it and who holds the pen. The US, with its First Amendment tradition, protects speech that…