Hate Speech Monologues / Say NO to Hate Politics!

“Hate Speech” Monologues – Artistic response to “hate speech”

 Following last year’s premier, Peter Molnar and students of his course "Enabling Policies for Responding to "Hate Speech" in Practice" offered this year by the Gender Studies Department (last year by the Department of Public Policy) will again stage the “Hate Speech” Monologues. A founding researcher of the Center for Media and Communication Studies, Molnar (who co-edited The Content and Context of Hate Speech, published by the Cambridge University Press in 2012), in addition to the text-based discussions in class, he encouraged students to express their views on the topic in form of an artistic response as one of the options in the course for real life responses to “hate speech”. While a final paper, as standard form of assessment is also part of the course, students engage in more experimental ways of catalyzing their new knowledge from the course.  Molnar says that the performers will share personal stories that everybody could do based on her own experiences with “hate speech”. According to Sofaya Hussein, a Gender Sudies student involved in the organization of the event, performances will include monologues, poems, a collection of online “hate speech” comments as well as other formats. She says that due to the course and her participation in the play she has become “more aware of ‘hate speech’ online” and her own responses to witnessing incidents of “hate speech.”

This year’s “Hate Speech” Monologues, will be a new performance, as except Molnar, the cast is entirely new and students develop their pieces based on their own experiences or opinions on occurrences of “hate speech” as well as the debates in the class room. Both Molnar and Hussein see the play as an opportunity for “learning together” and are hopeful that the performance will “contribute to self-reflection” and inspire discussion in the CEU Community on what constitutes “hate speech” and how we should deal with it. While it seems that the performance within the CEU would constitute “preaching to the choir”, it is vital to keep in mind the importance of self-reflective discussion on prejudices and their expressions even in a supposedly open community as CEU. While “nobody wants to be accused of ‘hate speech’”, we are rarely challenged to check our own prejudices. In addition to attending the performance, members of the CEU community were invited to participate as part of the choir that will be included in some monologues and may have its own message (as the chorus in ancient Greek theatre). Monologues and poems will be performed by: Hayk Rasmussen Abrahamyan, Adriana Becerra, Allie T Goodman, Sofaya Hussein, Sebijan Fejzula, Peter Molnar, Ada Nayer, Dinara Podgornova, Maari Põim and Ruth Simister. This year`s performance is supported by the CEU Student Union.

For more information regarding the upcoming performance on Wednesday, March 12th at 7:10 PM in the Auditorium (doors open from 7 PM) search for "Hate Speech" Monologues (Event) on Facebook. A video of last year’s performance can be found on Youtube with the title "Hate Speech" Monologues - Multicultural Theater at CEU.

Julia Michalsky, History, Germany

Say NO to Hate Politics!

 “My family on my father’s side lives in Slovakia, close to the Hungarian border. They belong to the Hungarian ethnic minority there. My grandfather passed away last October, so we travelled from Budapest to Slovakia to attend the funeral. After the service we joined our relatives at the burial-feast in my grandmother’s home. There, I went up to my 7-year old cousin to talk to him a little. I asked how school was going on, how he was – casual things like that. And then, all of a sudden, he said that he hates Slovakians. I was shocked and I asked him why. He said he just hates them because they don’t like Hungarians and because they took away the land of Hungarians.”

What does this story tell us? It points to the fact that the rise of extreme right parties and the spread of hate speech in Europe are everyday phenomena since the 2008 financial crisis. Many people got completely disappointed in politics, which pushed them into the arms of populist parties. Especially young, educated adults join and vote for them. They gain seats in national Parliaments, which provide a legitimate forum to express their ideas. They speak against and generate hate towards immigrants and Roma and Jewish people; depending on which minority lives in their country. Their rhetoric is composed of Euroscepticism, anti-EU feelings and strong nationalism.

European Parliamentary elections will be held this May. According to several news articles and forecasts, it is likely that a substantial number of Parliamentary seats will be taken by radical right wing parties. Even more seats than back in 2009. Their representation in the EP imposes an obstacle on debates over EU enlargement and integration policies. They question the functioning of the EU’s institutional system and criticize the legitimacy of their work. Sometimes they even reject the whole concept of the Union and urge holding a referendum on whether citizens wish their states remain in the EU.

Three students at CEU have recently launched an experimental campaign, a social movement called ‘No to Hate Politics’ as a response to the emergence of extremist European politics. Their aim is to mobilize and encourage students, first at CEU and later outside of it, to share their thoughts and insights about the activity of far right parties in their countries. They would like to generate an open and widespread debate about the issue, because they firmly believe that awareness must be raised about the serious threat which these extreme right elements represent. The goal is to convince as many people as they can to distance themselves from this type of rhetoric and behavior.

‘No to Hate Politics’ asks every CEU student, faculty and staff to visit, like and share their official Facebook page as a first step towards spreading the word. The movement also has a blog, where they regularly post short articles about radical European groups and their functioning.

Europe will be facing huge challenges and changes this May. Even if you, dear reader, are not planning to stay in Europe, you are encouraged to take part in and support the movement, because now, for this particular period in your life, you are part of it. You are in the middle of it. Join ‘No to Hate Politics’, and spread the word across the borders of this continent.

Don’t forget: hate politics and hate speech belong to the past. Europe must go forward, not backward!

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/notohatepolitics

Blog:

http://notohatepolitics.wordpress.com/

Eszter Kajtár,
School of Public Policy,

Hungary