How ‘hate’ hurts globally1
Paul Iganski and Abe Sweiry
Introduction: The terroristic impact of hate violence
We sat down for dinner with three armed guards defending the restaurant door. That’s when we first
started mentally drafting this chapter. We weren’t in the heat of a war zone. It was a cold March
evening in Brussels. Our dinner companions were two dozen or so colleagues attending the Facing
Facts Forward conference on a victim-centred approach to hate crime in Europe (CEJI 2015). Earlier
in the day we were discussing how to improve the reporting of hate crime. Now, with the guards at the
door, we were mindful that we were a potential target of hate violence ourselves. We pondered on
what our chances of survival would be if what the restaurant owner feared actually came to pass. A
former police officer, he insisted on arranging the guard when he heard that the dinner booking was
made by a Jewish organisation. On seeing that one of us wore a kippa, a Jewish head covering, he
respectfully but forcefully insisted it not be worn in the city, so that we minimise our chances of
becoming the victims of hate violence. Thankfully, we enjoyed our dinner in peace and left the
restaurant and the Belgian capital without incident.
Others have not been so fortunate. In Brussels the previous year, in May 2014, a gunman shot dead
two men and a woman and seriously wounded a fourth person in an attack on the Belgian capital’s
Jewish museum (BBC News 2014). More recently in Denmark, a couple of weeks before our dinner,
a gunman killed one man and injured three others in an attack on a free speech debate in a café in
Copenhagen in February 2015 (BBC News 2015a). In a second shooting near Copenhagen’s main
synagogue some hours later a Jewish man was killed and three police officers wounded (BBC News
2015b). Just over a month before the Copenhagen shootings, twelve people—eight journalists, two
police officers, a caretaker and a visitor—were shot to death in Paris in early January 2015 in an
attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. According to news reports, witnesses
1
Parts of this chapter have been adapted and amended from the book Hate Crime. A Global Perspective, by
Paul Iganski and Jack Levin (New York: Routledge, 2015).
1
said they heard the gunmen shouting ‘We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad’ and ‘God is Great’
in Arabic (BBC News 2015c). Two days later, during a siege of a kosher supermarket at Porte de
Vincennes in the east of Paris, four hostages— all Jewish—were killed (BBC News 2015d).
Occasional high profile incidents of extreme hate violence such as these in Europe have occurred
against a backcloth of rather more frequent routine violence in which prejudice, hate or bigotry plays
some part. Elsewhere in the world, acts of hate violence resulting in many fatalities have had extreme
consequences and profound impacts upon the communities of people afflicted. In this chapter we
unfold the spatial and psycho-social consequences of hate violence—everyday and extreme, local and
global—which, we argue, when viewed from a global perspective provide evidence of a major global
public health problem that requires a paradigm shift away from a narrow criminal justice focus on the
problem of ‘hate crime’. We argue that there needs to be a shift of thinking and focus towards a public
health approach to the problem of ‘hate violence’.2
The spatial impact of hate violence
To date, the spatial and behavioural consequences of hate violence in relatively socially stable nations
have received sparse attention in the scholarly hate crimes literature. From the small amount of
research that has been undertaken, analysis of data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales
concerning defensive and avoidance measures taken by small numbers of crime victims following
victimisation, indicate similar but also different behavioural patterns between hate crime victims and
victims of otherwise motivated crime. In the case of victims of household crime, it is evident that hate
crime victims are more likely to report moving home and being more alert and less trusting of other
people, while victims of otherwise motivated household crime are more likely to report increasing the
security of their vehicles and valuables. In the case of victims of crimes against the person, hate crime
I this chapter e use the ter hate iole ce to refer to iole ce in which the denigratio of a perso s
percei ed ide tit such as their race , their eth icit , nationality, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability
status, or se ual ide tit pla s so e role. We also co cei e of iole ce not only in terms of direct physical
acts but also as iole ce of the ord , such as threats, slurs, epithets and other forms of verbal denigration
and hateful i ecti e Matsuda
:
. The ter hate iole ce is ore i clusi e a d co siste t tha the
ter hate cri e as there is er u e en recognition in the criminal law across nations of prejudice, hate or
bigotry as motivating forces for criminal acts when viewed from a global perspective.
2
2
victims are more likely than victims of otherwise motivated crime to say that they have started to
avoid walking in certain places (Iganski & Lagou 2014). However, much more research is needed of
crime survey data internationally, to explore the particular behavioural impacts of hate violence
beyond these very limited findings.
A small number of qualitative studies of the impacts of hate crime victimisation offer some
explanations for the behavioural impact of hate violence. Some participants in a small qualitative
study of hate crime victims in Latvia published by the Latvian Center for Human Rights (Dzelme
2008) described how their spatial mobility, or their movements around town, were constrained as they
sought to escape potential further victimisation by avoiding seemingly risky places. Given that many
attacks occur in public places —on the street in residential neighbourhoods as well as downtown, in
shopping malls, on public transportation, in places of leisure and recreation such as bars, sport arenas,
cinema complexes—the confinement can be profoundly limiting.
The spatial impacts of hate crime do not only affect those who are direct victims. Others who share
the same identity as the victim and who come to hear about the violence—perhaps family, friends, or
other people in the neighbourhood, or even people elsewhere in the region or the country—can suffer
the same intimidatory impact and likewise take avoidance measures. Members of targeted
communities carry mental maps of ‘no go areas’ in their heads (Rai and Hesse 1992: 177). They will
understand that hate crimes are not personal: victims are attacked not for the individuals they are, but
for what their visible social group identity represents to the attacker. They realise that they could be
next.
In some cases, a whole country can assume the complexion of a ‘no go’ area—as evidence about the
recent migration of Jews out of France shows. The recentspate of recent high profile attacks against
Jews in Europehave occurred in a climate of an apparently increasing occurrence of rather more
frequent and less dramatic instances of anti-Jewish violence. While Jews comprise less than one per
cent of the French population, data from the French Interior Ministry suggest that a disproportionate
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share of recorded racist attacks in the country have been carried out against Jews in recent years. In
2011, 31 per cent (389 of 1256) of racist acts in France were perpetrated against Jews, rising to 40 per
cent (614 of 1539) in 2012, falling to 33 per cent (423 of 1274) in 2013 and then increasing
dramatically to 51 per cent (851 of 1662) in 2014 (Service de Protection de la Communauté Juive
2013, 2015).
The frequency of everyday anti-Jewish incidents in France, along with more high profile incidents
such as the 2015 attack on the Kosher supermarket in Paris, have been associated with an increasing
number of Jews leaving the country in recent years. In 2012—a year when an Islamist extremist killed
three children and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse (BBC News 2012)—1,920 French Jews
emigrated to Israel. In 2013, the year after the Toulouse attack, that number grew to 3,295. In the
following year, 2014, the number of Jews leaving France for Israel more than doubled to 7,230. The
Jewish Agency for Israel, the organisation responsible for immigration to the country, forecasted the
number to continue to grow after the Charlie Hebdo shootings and the accompanying attack on a
kosher supermarket. Based on the figures for the first half of the year, they have predicted 9,000
immigrants from France in 2015 (The Jewish Agency for Israel, 2015). Should that estimate come to
fruition, it would signify the emigration of almost 7 per cent of France’s Jewish population to Israel in
the space of just four years. At the same time, internal migration of French Jews within the EU is
likewise thought to have increased significantly, with a quarter of the estimated 20,000 French Jews
living in Britain in 2015 believed to have arrived in the last four years.
Britain, however, is not a safe haven for Jews fleeing violence elsewhere. It has also been the site of
apparently increasing anti-Jewish violence—leading some Jews to also consider emigration. Data
from a Jewish communal organisation, the Community Security Trust (CST) suggest that during the
last decade and a half, antisemitic incidents in the UK have generally been on an upward trend, with
particular spikes noted at times of conflict in the Middle East. In 2014, the organisation recorded the
highest number of annual hate incidents against Jews in Britain (1,168) since it began recording such
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data in the 1980s, with 542 of those incidents reported in July and August alone, the two months of
conflict in Gaza (Community Security Trust, 2015).
It is now well-known that each time there is an upsurge in the Israel-Palestine conflict there is a rise in
violent and other abusive incidents against Jews around the world (cf. Iganski 2011 & 2013). The
conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has become a global phenomenon spreading from Gaza and
the Occupied Territories of the West Bank into some of Europe’s major cities and other cities around
the world. Jews are seemingly targeted as representatives for the State of Israel and attacked as
proxies for the Israel Defence Force. It is a crude form of political violence. Given the context of the
Gaza war in July and August 2014, the year was one of the worst years on record for antisemitic
incidents globally according to the Tel Aviv University Kantor Centre Antisemitism Worldwide 2014
report (Kantor Center 2015).
As concern about increasing antisemitism in the UK has intensified, so a variety of statistics on those
considering emigration due to fears about antisemitism have also arisen. An online survey carried out
in January 2015 by an ad-hoc communal organisation, the Campaign Against Antisemitism (2015),
suggested that 25 per cent of the 2,230 Jews surveyed had in the previous two years considered
leaving Britain due to antisemitism, and 45 per cent were concerned that Jews may not have a longterm future in Britain. While controversial and criticised for its non-representative nature (Institute for
Jewish Policy Research, 2015), the findings of the survey were deemed sufficiently concerning for
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles to release a response on behalf of the UK Government stating,
‘Jews are an important part of the British community, and we would be diminished without them’
(Department for Communities and Local Government, 2015). A poll of British Jews carried out
shortly afterwards on behalf of the Jewish Chronicle, a UK Jewish newspaper, focusing specifically
on feelings in the aftermath of the shootings in Paris, suggested that the events had led 32 per cent to
feel much more concerned about their safety, and 41 per cent slightly more concerned (Survation,
2015). More specifically, 11 per cent of the sample of 500 British Jews polled suggested that the
events had made them consider leaving Britain. A survey of Jews across Europe carried out by the
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European Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) two years earlier had suggested that 18 per cent of
those surveyed in Britain had considered emigrating in the previous five years because they did not
feel safe as a Jew. The survey had also suggested other behavioural impacts of anti-Jewish hate crime
in Britain, with 21 per cent of those surveyed stating that they always or frequently avoided wearing,
carrying or displaying things that might help people identify them as Jewish in public, with a further
37 per cent suggesting that they occasionally did so (FRA, 2013). The adoption of steps to avoid
identification as Jews was even more pronounced amongst those surveyed in other EU countries, with
60 per cent of Swedish, 51 per cent of French, 45 per cent of Belgian, 38 per cent of Hungarian, 31
per cent of German and 30 per cent of Italian Jewish respondents suggesting that they did so either all
the time or frequently. The survey also found that fear had led many respondents to curtail ‘the extent
to which they take part in Jewish life’ (2013: 35), with almost a quarter (23 per cent) of respondents
across the eight EU countries, and 42 per cent in Belgium, 41 per cent in Hungary and 35 per cent in
France, suggesting that they avoided visiting Jewish events or sites at least occasionally due to
concerns about their safety.
Notably, close to one third (29 per cent) of Jews in the eight European countries covered by the FRA
survey had considered emigrating because they did not feel safe as a Jew in the country they lived
(FRA, 2013). This was most pronounced in Hungary, France and Belgium, where 48 per cent, 46 per
cent and 40 per cent respectively of those surveyed had thought about leaving their country in the past
five years.
Elsewhere in the world beyond the relative social stability of European nations, hate violence has had
even more profound spatial impacts and claimed many lives. The phenomenon has a long history. But
even in recent years there have been numerous episodes of large-scale killings around the world in
which denigration of the victims’ identities and violent mobilisation around ethnic and religious
identity in particular has played a role in the violence. In looking globally beyond Europe, such
violence has led to people fleeing en masse from the areas of victimisation. And when hate violence is
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perpetrated in regions of conflict, the spatial impacts can occur on a massive scale. In all situations of
mass conflict, in wars and civil wars, the impact of violence is not confined to the combatants.
Civilian populations too suffer profoundly as human collateral damage. But in conflicts motivated by
ethnic and religious hatred, or where such hatred plays a role in inter-communal conflicts, civilian
populations are not only collateral damage: they are the deliberate target of violence—
indiscriminately targeted because of their identity. And while numerous types of violence can
constitute crimes against humanity, hatred has featured prominently in such crimes as testified by the
violence in Rwanda, Bosnia and more recently in Iraq and Syria. The targeting of women through
sexual violence has also been characteristic of such conflicts, used to intimidate, inflict terror, and
ethnically cleanse. Wars are often waged because of disputes involving land, markets, or other
resources. Hatred may not be the primary cause of such conflicts, but it is an important aggravating
factor that makes the impact even more egregious and keeps warfare from being resolved.
Most recently, the spotlight of the world’s media has been on the consequences of the atrocities
committed by so-called ‘Islamic State’ extremists in Iraq and Syria. In the summer of 2015 the flight
of refugees into Europe, particularly from Syria and Iraq, has dominated the headlines. Many of the
refugees from Syria and Iraq have fled sectarian violence with atrocities propelled by religious
zealotry. In an early episode of the large scale impact of hate violence in the region widely reported
by the international news media in August 2014, Islamic State extremists allegedly slaughtered
hundreds of Iraq’s Yazidi ethnic and religious minority community in and around the village of
Kocho in northern Iraq. The Islamic State fighters reportedly demanded that the Yazidis convert to
Islam or face death. After refusing to convert, men were shot and women and children abducted. In
the same month, in a gruesome hate murder, an Islamic State fighter, apparently speaking with an
English accent, beheaded American journalist James Foley in an act which clearly belied extreme
hatred of America. By the summer of 2014, fleeing from the advances of Islamic State in northern
Iraq, hundreds of thousands of displaced Iraqis from minority communities were seeking refuge near
the Turkish border. The international news media widely reported the humanitarian crisis facing tens
of thousands of Yazidis trapped in harrowing conditions and exposed to a hostile climate of soaring
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temperatures after fleeing to Mount Sinjar. Air drops of humanitarian aid including water and shelter
were made by U.S., U.K., and Iraqi air forces.
Less well reported by the international news media has been the sectarian violence between ethnic
Arakanese Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Arakan state, Myanmar, in June and October 2012
which claimed the lives of 211 people according to the Myanmar Government. Human Rights Watch
estimated many more (Human Rights Watch 2013). There is a long history of violence between
Buddhists and Muslims in Arakan State stretching back over decades. And while both populations
have faced past oppression by Myanmar governments, the Rohingya population, which is denied
citizenship and considered by many to be an illegal immigrant community, has particularly faced
routine persecution and forcible displacement. The outbreak of violence in June 2012 was triggered in
late May by the rape and murder of an Arakanese woman in Ramri Township by three Muslim men.
Arakanese villagers retaliated by stopping a bus southeast of Ramri and killed 10 Muslim passengers.
Communal violence then escalated between Arakanese Bhuddists and Rohingya and other Muslims.
Allegedly, state security forces initially stood-by without intervening to halt the violence, and later
joined Arakanese mobs in attacking and burning Muslim villages and neighborhoods (Human Rights
Watch 2013: 7). In further violence in October 2012, Muslim villages in nine townships across the
Arakan State were attacked by Arakanese men armed with swords, machetes, home-made firearms,
and Molotov cocktails. Again, security forces allegedly either stood-by or participated in the violence.
Further outbreaks of violence against Muslims in 2013, which spread beyond Arakan State to other
parts of Myanmar, claimed more lives with numerous homes burnt to the ground.
In the two years following the upsurge of intercommunal violence in Myanmar in 2012 the United
Nations Commission for Human Rights estimated that 87,000 people had departed irregularly by sea
from the Bangladesh-Myanmar border region heading for Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia
(UNHCR 2014). Many were transported by smugglers in cramped conditions and subject to verbal
and physical abuse. Hundreds reportedly died from the deprivations of the journey: illness, heat, lack
of food and water and violence by smugglers. Some drowned while trying to escape in desperation
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(UNHCR 2014). Bangladesh closed its borders, returning Rohingya asylum seekers to sea. Thailand
also resisted the influx of asylum seekers (Human Rights Watch 2013: 16).
Elsewhere in South East Asia, in September 2013, communal violence between Hindu Jat and Muslim
communities in the Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts of Uttar Pradesh in India left at least 65 people
dead and many injured. The violence was stoked by hate speech and incitement in print and social
media escalating a number of trigger incidents. The violence occurred in the context of regular
incidents of inter-communal violence and the sowing of communal hostilities by political parties
(Hassan 2014). Numerous homes in villages were burnt to the ground and 50,000 people were
reportedly displaced by the violence (Hassan 2014).
Overall, when viewed from a global perspective, it is obvious that the displacement of people by
violence and conflict, whether in relatively settled regions or regions of conflict, results in multiple
negative impacts for those persons affected. Among them, it is widely recognised that displaced
persons are more prone to mental health and psychosocial problems (Meyer 2013). However, the
impacts for those fleeing hate violence can be even more egregious, as such violence potentially
inflicts significant psychosocial consequences irrespective of any spatial consequences.
The psychosocial impact of hate violence
All violence is hurtful in terms of the emotional and psychological impact. But there is a reason why
there is a particular concern about hate violence. Hate violence can be more harmful than other forms
of violence. Recognition of the particular harms involved has prompted some nation states to enact
hate crime laws which impose higher penalties for convicted offenders compared with non-hate
motivated crimes.
Most victims of violence suffer some post-victimisation impact. Sometimes there is physical injury.
Sometimes, there are behavioural changes as just discussed. More often, there are emotional and
psychological consequences. In the case of hate violence, however, there is evidence to show
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specifically that the emotional and psychological harms inflicted can potentially be greater (cf.
Ehrlich et al., 1994; Herek et al., 1999; Iganski 2008; Iganski & Lagou 2015 & 2016; McDevitt et al.,
2001).
While the pattern of difference is not consistent for every single victim, on average it is clear that hate
violence hurts more when the emotional and psychological injuries are measured in crime surveys for
hate crime victims as a group compared with victims of parallel crimes. Victims in incidents of hate
violence are more likely to report having an emotional or a psychological reaction to the incident and
with a greater intensity, compared with victims of otherwise motivated violence. In terms of specific
symptoms of distress, victims of hate violence are more likely, when compared with victims of other
forms of violence, to report suffering higher levels of depression and withdrawal; anxiety and
nervousness; loss of confidence; anger; increased sleep difficulties; difficulty concentrating; fear and
reduced feelings of safety. In short, victims of hate violence are more likely to suffer post-traumatic
stress type symptoms. Interviews with victims of hate violence indicate that the aftermath of the
victimisation is characterised by a pervasive feeling of fear (McDevitt,et al 2001). Their fear may be
based on threats by the offender or friends of the offender but often it is simply based on the random
nature of the crime which, because it involves an attack targeted against the victim’s social identity,
bespeaks a risk of similar future victimisation. Differences in reported post-victimisation emotional
and psychological impacts between victims of hate violence as a group and victims of other types of
violence even hold when controlling for differences in type of crime experienced (Botcherby et al.,
2011; Iganski & Lagou 2014).
The impact of hate violence can also extend well beyond the person who is on the immediate
receiving-end (although such consequences are methodologically more difficult to scientifically
demonstrate compared with the consequences for individual victims). Hate violence sends a terroristic
message to everyone who shares the victim’s identity: this ‘could be you’.
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Understanding why greater hurts are potentially felt by victims of hate violence and those around
them who share their social identity has been informed by a body of qualitative research which
suggests that such injuries are due to the perception by victims of their victimisation experience as an
attack upon the core of their identity: the very essence of their being (Craig-Henderson and Sloan
2003). The victim carries around with them the reason for their victimisation: their visible appearance
and what it represents to others in the dominant culture. Hate violence can be seen as sending a
message to the victim, and those who share the victim's identity, that they are devalued, unwelcome,
denigrated, despised. As victims of hate violence are attacked because of their social identity, such
crimes are not personal. Because of this they also convey the potential for further victimisation and
therefore have a terroristic impact. Some victims, and potential victims, where possible, will try to
manage their visibility to avoid potential victimisation (Mason 2001). This terroristic impact also
accounts in part for the higher level of post-traumatic stress type symptoms reported by victims of
hate violence.
The emotional and psychological impact of hate violence has also been illuminated in greater depth
than can be achieved by survey research, but with necessarily smaller and generally purposive
samples, by a number of qualitative studies which have focused solely on hate crime victims without
comparison samples of victims of parallel crimes. The study of hate crime victims in Latvia
mentioned earlier in this chapter drew out, in-depth, the profound and long-lasting psychological
impact that can be inflicted (Dzelme 2008). Participants in the research reported that the
psychological trauma suffered by victims of hate violence surpassed any immediate physical injuries
inflicted. Some victims felt that it was the very essence of their being that was attacked. But at the
same time, because it is the victim’s group identity that is attacked, hate crimes are not personal.
Because of this they convey the potential for further victimisation. Consequently, some victims in the
Latvian study said that they felt powerless and a constant sense of insecurity and alertness to the
potential for further attacks marked by suspicion of others, and made constant assessments of their
immediate surroundings with calculations of safety and danger.
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Victims of violence against women have to date not been incorporated into the research exploring the
emotional and psychological injuries of violence explicitly framed as ‘hate violence’ or ‘hate crime’.
However, there is much available evidence. The European Union Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA)
in its recent EU-wide survey of violence against women (2014) assessed the short-term emotional
responses and the long-term psychological consequences of violent victimisation. Overall, the
reported impact of sexual violence was seen to be greater than the impact of physical violence, and
the long-term psychological impact was greater when the perpetrator was a partner. The survey
indicates:
•
Women who experience sexual violence are more likely to report feeling fearful, ashamed,
embarrassed, and guilty. There seems to be little difference between women victims of partner
and non-partner sexual violence in reporting these emotional reactions.
•
Women victims of sexual violence by a partner are less likely to report feelings of shock —
possibly because the violence is part of a continuum of abuse.
•
While the emotional reactions of women victims of physical violence are less pronounced
than victims of sexual violence, victims of physical violence by a partner are more likely to
report feelings of fear, shame, and embarrassment, than victims of non-partner violence.
•
A majority of victims of physical and sexual violence by partners and non-partners report
long-term psychological consequences. For both physical and sexual violence, long-term
psychological impacts are more likely to be reported by victims where the violence is
perpetrated by a partner—possibly as a consequence of repeat victimisation or the ongoing
fear of further violence.
•
The long-term psychological impact of sexual violence is also more pronounced than the
impact of physical violence. Victims of sexual violence by partners and non-partners are more
likely to report long-term psychological impacts and more likely to report experiencing a
combination of impacts.
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Studies of sexual violence used for ‘ethnic cleansing’ in conflict zones indicate the severe long-lasting
mental trauma inflicted on women victims. For instance, a study of 65 women victims of systematic
mass rapes during the 1992 to 1995 war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovena conducted during the
war and in the early post-war period (Lončar 2006) illuminates the profound and enduring mental
health impacts inflicted. A third of the women were raped every day and by different rapists while
held captive and most were physically and sexually tortured in further ways. In a number of cases the
rapists were neighbours. While none of the women had a history of psychiatric disorder before the
rape, approximately a year after the violence a majority suffered from depression, a majority
manifesting ‘social phobia’, and almost a third suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. Seventeen out
of 29 women who fell pregnant as a consequence of rape had an induced abortion, with the decision to
abort their pregnancies precipitated by suicidal thoughts and impulses. Only one of the 12 women
who gave birth kept their baby: the rest were given up for adoption.
Discussion and conclusion: Hate violence—a global public health problem
The harm of hate violence begins with the act: it is intrinsic to the doing of the violence (Perry &
Olsen 2009). All instances of hate violence, whether they involve mass violence amounting to crimes
against humanity—of the type of some of the instances discussed in this chapter—or isolated acts by
individuals, whether they occur in conditions of social turmoil or relative calm, involve some form of
violation. The immediate harm of hate violence fundamentally lies in this violation. While hate
violence in relatively stable societies is rather more routine and everyday compared with the episodic
outbreaks of mass hate violence in areas of communal conflict or war, given the scale of the problem
of hate violence in more peaceful societies the problem also involves numerous violations even in
relatively calm nations. The violation lies in the message sent. Hate crimes are ‘message crimes’. The
message inherent to, and sent by, hate violence is that some persons because of their identity have a
lesser or little worth, and are not entitled to dignity and respect. While all violence is an assault
against a person’s dignity, hate violence is particularly egregious in terms of violation as it is a
discriminatory assault on dignity.
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Beyond the initial violation, hate violence has the potential to inflict serious post-victimisation
impacts as the discussion in this chapter of the spatial and psychosocial impacts of hate violence
shows. When examined globally, given the scale of the problem—which we only partially document
in this chapter—it is evident that hate violence amounts to a major public health problem.
A public health approach to hate violence lays emphasis on prevention, rather than solely trying to
ameliorate the effects of the problem. Prevention involves educative efforts with potential perpetrators
and rehabilitative efforts with actual perpetrators. More broadly, preventative work involves
addressing the cultural and social conditions in which hate violence is nested. Educational and civil
society organisations are best placed to undertake such work. Furthermore, in responding to violence,
a public health approach lays emphasis on support for entire communities rather than just individual
care. This involves strengthening resources for community resilience. Civil society organisations can
be well-placed to help build community resilience against hate violence. A public health approach to
any problem requires collective action (Dahlberg & Krug 2002: 3-4). This is certainly the case for
hate violence where cooperation between civil society, education, social service, health and criminal
justice sectors is needed for addressing what has largely up to now been articulated as a criminal
justice problem. A public health approach therefore requires a shift in the balance of resources away
from a narrow criminal justice response to the problem towards civil society and community action.
Attaining recognition that hate violence is a global public health problem which demands public
health intervention is the challenge that lies ahead.
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