Understanding Tom MacDonald’s Idea of Hate Speech with a Nigerian Mind
On January 29th, Tom MacDonald — a socially conscious Canadian rapper I have come to have a soft spot for in recent times — released a song titled Fake Woke.
In Fake Woke, Tom painted a picture of how disgustingly tyrannical the American public opinion space is. The rap song is packed with so many truisms that are perfectly conveyed in felicitous turns of phrases and an inspiringly creative use of words. After bumping your head to the “flows” and nodding in agreement or shaking it in disagreement to the hundreds of interesting and perhaps controversial points of view he passed across, you could write a tome just by dissecting and analyzing each of the ideas he conveyed.
The idea that revved up my critical mind is his short, almost-unnoticeable line about hate speech. In the second verse of the song Tom rightly said: “there is a difference between hate speech and a speech that you hate.” These are some of the questions I started asking after hearing that line: How does a speech become hate speech? Does a speech become hate speech because some people just don’t like the speech? Is there really anything like hate speech? If there is, what is it? How did it become hate speech? Who defined or labeled it as hate speech? If two or more socio-political groups defined two or more different speeches as hate speeches, which group’s definition stands?
To those who are familiar with the myriad of extensive discussions that abound in hundreds of scholarly books, journals, and other publications on hate speech, Tom’s line on hate speech may not come across as anything spectacular. But what is indeed spectacular is Tom’s ingenuity in subtly smuggling burning ideas in the intellectual culture into the rap culture. He rolls complex social issues that have been discussed extensively in the intellectual circles, into multiple lyrical lines that provoke rap culture consumers to think and ask questions. Such questions could ultimately lead some of them to popular works in the intellectual sphere. You just have to give it to Tom for redefining and saving a rap culture gangrened by the abundance of hedonistic glorification of money, sex, drugs, violence, and a shamelessly, carelessly brave objectification of women.
Tom’s line about hate speech didn’t only provoked me to raise and mull over the questions on hate speech for a while, I also mulled over the controversy generated in Nigeria by The National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speech Bill in late 2019. The fourth section of the Bill prohibits the use, production, publishing, distribution, presentation, or direction of the performance of any visual or written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting or involves the use of such words in order to stir up ethnic hatred or from which ethnic hatred is likely to be stirred up against such person from an ethnic group in Nigeria. It prescribes a punishment of life imprisonment for any person found liable of committing this offence and a penalty of death by hanging where such act causes any loss of life.
There is nothing good about the bill and nothing good can come out of it. The bill attempts to use death and life imprisonment threats as final solutions to the protracted ethnic hatred that has trammeled the country to the edge of volatile inter-ethnic distrusts that usually spark gory inter-ethnic violence across the country. But since it didn’t clearly tell what type of speech can be categorized as hate speech, what we will have in the end is that there would be no difference between hate speech and a speech that we hate. When a speech you don’t like comes from a member of another ethnic group, you are at liberty to define it as hate speech — hate speech becomes an infinitely elastic word that includes any utterance labeled as “hate speech.”
The danger here is that in the end, it would be a fine opportunity for every ethnic group to sentence to death or jail members of other ethnic groups for unsettled scores. What was designed to control ethnic hate would itself become a legal (and therefore, a refined) instrument for vindictive scapegoating among a bitterly polarized people. To understand how that is possible, you only have to take a careful look at the history of the ethno-religious onslaughts that regional and ethnic outfits like OPC (in the Southwest) and Hisbah (in the North), have carried out against ethnic and religious minorities in their parts of the country.
Of course it’s important to situate and analyze the concept of hate speech in the ethno-religiously charged atmosphere of the Nigerian polity. An us-versus-them narrative has been a hallmark of political rhetoric in Nigeria, before independence and till now. The people themselves have now normalized that woeful divisiveness to the point where to be accepted by their ethnic/religious groups as ethno-religiously conscious representatives, politicians compulsorily have to make or at least promote explicit or implicit us-versus-them narratives. Thus, Nigerian politicians themselves are factory outlets and biggest promoters of hate speech.
Now, the question is: if ordinary intolerant citizens are to be sentenced to death and life imprisonment for hate speech, what should be the punishments for politicians who parade themselves as ethno-religious supremacists and make national unity an ignis fatuus through constant ethnic and religiously colored hate speeches made to gin up votes and divide the people?
Sadly, Nigerian politicians are above the law. Citizens who were politically taught to hate each other for ethnic and religious reasons will be hanged or jailed for life, but the politicians who took part in teaching and strengthening the hate will go unpunished. Clearly, this proposed justice for hate speech is unfair. An unfair justice isn’t justice.
Nigeria needs a just solution to the menace of hate speech, and a death-and-life-imprisonment type of solution that lets politicians guilty of hate speech go unpunished, but hang the common man for the same offense isn’t only unjust; it also isn’t a solution.
