No Tolerance for Intolerance

Rudy Giuliani had an op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times that illustrates how easily efforts to combat "hate crime" can become efforts to control speech and thought. The title is "How Europe Can Stop the Hate," and Giuliani seems to mean that literally.

First he talks about anti-Semitic violence (he's against it). Then he says it's important to collect data on the extent of such "hate crimes." Soon he is defending enhanced punishment of "hate crimes":

Yes, some will argue that hate crimes need not be punished more harshly than similar crimes committed for different reasons. But the fact is that extra penalties are used throughout civilized legal systems — in Europe as well as America — as a way to distinguish acts that are particularly heinous. One of the functions of the law is to teach, to draw lines between what's permissible and what's forbidden. Recognizing the special threat that hate crimes pose to a democracy sends a powerful message that these acts will not be tolerated.

If you assume that crimes motivated by animosity toward an ethnic group–as opposed to, say, random murder–are "particularly heinous" and pose a "special threat," it is not hard to conclude that they should be punished more severely than less heinous, less threatening crimes. But the truth of that premise is not obvious.

In any case, Giuliani quickly moves on from "hate crimes" to hate proper, calling for "efforts to address the roots of anti-Semitism." European governments have to make sure "their citizens have an honest understanding of the Holocaust," he says, because "revisionist viewpoints put us at risk of a repetition of race-based genocide."

So now it is viewpoints that the state needs to attack. Giuliani apparently thinks that European governments, which already practice censorship in the name of tolerance, are too squeamish about interfering with freedom of speech.