The escalation of "hate speech" in the name of freedom of expression

The recent controversy over the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has rekindled the dispute over the right to spread messages that incite hatred. The role of social media in spreading hostility.

The recent attack that took the life of activist Charlie Kirk in the United States once again put on the agenda the debate over so-called "hate speech" and its advance in the name of freedom of expression in North America. The incident, which took place at a public event in broad daylight, became a viral image worldwide and shocked public opinion in the face of the escalation of discursive and ideological violence and its ultimate material effect. At the center of the controversy is, once again, freedom of expression.

This was how U.S. President Donald Trump summed it up when he described Kirk as a martyr "for freedom," a category also embraced by Vice President James David Vance, who additionally hailed the activist as a martyr of the Christian faith. At the massive tribute held in his honor, his widow, Erika Kirk, said that "the answer to hate is not hate." Expressions like these cast the late influencer of the conservative right as yet another victim of intolerance, which, in many cases, has been promoted as a propaganda tool by American conservatism itself.

In response to the reactions unleashed by the Kirk case, media and communication scholar Lilia Chouliaraki referred to the "victimization" of the far right in an essay in which she argues that the idea of making the activist a martyr responds to an effort to construct a "tyranny" of so-called "woke culture." The suspension of comedian Jimmy Kimmel's television show, broadcast by the U.S. network ABC, over his critical comments about an alleged "political capitalization" of Kirk's death also influenced the discussion.

The debate intensified when U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi invoked the fight against hate speech in a statement that was perceived as intimidating toward citizens. It included elements such as prosecutions and trials to punish those who publicly expressed certain political ideas. Bondi's pronouncement resonated in the political sphere and reopened debates on freedom of expression and the law, centered mainly on the First Amendment, the cornerstone of American freedoms.

The dispute between hate speech and freedom of expression has been at the heart of positions taken by bodies such as the United Nations. In 2019, the "United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech" was launched, a document in whose introduction UN Secretary-General António Guterres already made clear that combating such speech did not mean "banning" freedom of expression.

Meanwhile, the controversy placed on the agenda the growth of hate speech in the social, political and cultural spheres, as well as the limits and scope of existing legislation and policies surrounding freedom of expression. It also revived warnings about the role of social media as a symbolic free-for-all zone. 

Hate speech and the battle on social media

In mid-2025 it emerged that hate speech had increased by 50% since tycoon Elon Musk's acquisition of the social network X (formerly Twitter). The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, focused on the period from 2022 to 2023 and the proliferation of aggressive and hostile messages concerning political, religious, ideological and gender groups, among other topics. 

The debate on this point is also taking center stage in Europe. The European Observatory of Online Hate (EOOH), an organization dedicated to monitoring the prevalence of violent messages on social media within the European community, presents a month-by-month overview of the main topics around which hate speech proliferates. As of August 2025, observations of hate messages on social media ranked antisemitism first, followed by anti-LGBTQ messages in second place, anti-Muslim in third and "anti-refugee" in fourth. 

Of the seven digital platforms analyzed by the observatory, the most frequent venues for this type of expression were the aforementioned X, Reddit and TikTok. The organization's analysis is based on a "toxicity" scale ranging from 0 to 1, with 1 being the most extreme. The highest point was detected in April 2025, when it rose to 0.22.

The report "Contrólate en las redes" (Keep yourself in check on social media), released by the Youth Institute (Ijuve) under Spain's Ministry of Youth and Children, already set out in 2017 a series of diagnoses regarding hate messages on social media, linked to political processes such as refugee crises or the growing "Islamophobia" following the recent attacks in Paris and Brussels. In the document, social media platforms are defined as "the first arbiter" when it comes to determining "what can and cannot be said."

Guillermo Whpei

President of Fundación para la Democracia