Hate speech that encourages violence is illegal in the US. General hate speech that doesn't include threats or incitement of illegal activity, on the other hand, seems to be celebrated these days.
> Hate speech that encourages violence is illegal in the US.
In the US, the “direct incitement to violence” exception to freedom of speech has nothing to do with hate speech, except perhaps incidentally. Any direct incitement to violence is not protected speech, whether hateful or not.
>Hate speech that encourages violence is illegal in the US.
That’s not quite right either. “We should violently overthrow the government/eliminate xyz people” is protected by the First Amendment. “Everyone get your guns and storm the federal building/kill these people right now” is not. (The exact line is obviously hard to discern.)
It is actually a criminal offense to call for the violent overthrow of the US government. This was added to the law by the Smith Act, although it has since been found unconstitutional in part. A small number of Nazis were convicted thereunder, and a rather larger (~10x) number of communists and anarchists.
On the other hand, I'm not aware of any laws in the US criminalizing threats of genocide and so on, which is kind of a problem because we have numerous historical examples of such rhetoric being normalized and then actualized when some (as yet undetermined) threshold conditions are met, and once that train leaves the station it's a one-way trip. Defenders of such rhetoric should think twice about whether they really wish to snatch up this monkey's paw.
There is no possible reading of the First Amendment case law that leaves those parts of the Smith Act intact.
Almost any political ideology calls for unsanctioned violence at some point—where society deviates sufficiently from the moral principles of the ideology. For example, it is within the current Western consensus that one can or even should resist at least some kinds of dictatorship through violence. And more fundamentally, political ideology is about violence—how and to what ends society should use violence (e.g. what counts as a crime?—what are the valid bases for civil judgments?—both questions ultimately ask when it is okay to use violence to secure compliance).
Any restriction on political speech because it “encourages violence” is therefore actually a thinly-veiled restriction on particular ideologies for being objectionable. Such a restriction is not viewpoint neutral and almost impossible to legally sustain.
There is no question that free speech can threaten the political status quo, for better or for worse. All political power requires some measure of consent from the governed, and changing ideas can threaten that consent. The principle of free speech is that the ideas upon which such consent is given are not themselves matters for coercion, but for free discussion and debate. That is a radical notion, even a dangerous notion, but one at the heart of the American project.
In the US, the “direct incitement to violence” exception to freedom of speech has nothing to do with hate speech, except perhaps incidentally. Any direct incitement to violence is not protected speech, whether hateful or not.