Hatred, politics, and law | Beruholm and Johansson

Hatred is usually attributed to the other (the criminal, or the enemy, or the stranger, or the extremist), and often describing something as a matter of hatred involves a call to action: new or more detailed statistics, criminalization materials or strengthening penalties, police training, or human rights advocacy, and it may even include a call to wage war. The implication here is that any self-respecting liberal state seeks to instill the values of tolerance and mutual respect, and therefore fights the emotion of hatred, whether expressed in words or actions, through various means, not least of which are legislation that bans hate speech and its crime. In this book, a group of researchers in philosophy, criminology, political science, law, psychology, and sociology explore these questions and present a range of interpretive and normative perspectives on what is at stake in the complex relationship between hatred and liberal democracy. It reveals that although the war on hatred can be noble and serve good intentions, it is fraught with contradictions, paradoxes, unresolved concerns, and open to debate. It concludes that there are intricate and delicate relationships between hatred and politics, and law, and that an insight often associated with those supporting hate legislation is that there is a deep tension between hatred and democratic politics.