Hate Speech in Political Communication
Political speech is free. At the same time, one should be aware that it transmits powerful messages to people who feel represented. Political correctness prevented the dissemination of racist allegations in the second half of the 20th century, and beyond. In recent decades, this kind of political correctness has been labelled by populistic politicians as the tyranny of a corrupt elite who claim to represent the "real" opinion of the majority. They also suggest that intolerant views have been suppressed through the spiral of silence – even though the contrary: denigrating speech on minorities is known to silence and intimidate those. My hypothesis is that the representation of extremist views by persons in the political power grows the popularity of those views.