Conclusion and Recommendations for Future Legal Research

The relationship between hate speech and mass atrocities has been the subject of legal scholarship, with various points of view emitted by both legal scholars and legal practitioners. Even if this relationship were to be thrown into the arena of legal contestation, at least two recent incidents in history lend weight to this view: the use of hate speech in fomenting and executing mass atrocities against the Jews in Nazi Germany and the massacre of Tutsis and Hutu-moderates in Rwanda. The sordid, grotesque, gruesome and shocking revelations curled from soundbites, clips from print media, lyrics of musical compositions, verses and paragraphs in published books, echoes from political rallies, sermons to Christian congregations, and other media, added to the credible and consistent testimonies narrated by witnesses who took the stand in international criminal tribunals unravelled the contribution of hate speech to the mayhem that unfolded. From the conception to execution of such heinous plans, hate speech underwent different stages, including the fomentation of hate through negative stereotyping, dehumanization and degradation of specific groups of individuals, categorization of groups, the identification of victims, the dissemination and consumption of hate propaganda, the involvement of the masses in the perpetration of crimes against identified groups of individuals and the silent responses from senior political elites mandated with the responsibility to protect their people. It must be acknowledged that mass killings that constituted genocide and crimes against humanity did not commence on the ground: they were carefully planned and relied on the dissemination of hate propaganda through different platforms to various audiences in the hope of whipping up their heads and ultimately earning their support in perpetrating such violence. In other words, there were numerous remote actors who bore intellectual responsibility for the crimes. The use of hate speech disseminated through media portals and public platforms was of critical importance to the entire criminal enterprise, hence, the link between hate speech and mass atrocities. This recognised relationship though, the prosecution of hate speech, from a conceptual and actual operation of criminal law, was beleaguered. As argued in this thesis, the complications stem from numerous angles: at a doctrinal level, within the framework of international human rights, the right to freedom of expression and the exclusion of specific categories of speeches. Rendered more complicated within the purview of human rights is the unsettled debate as to whether the exclusion of specific categories of speeches from international legal protection has attained the status of customary international law.