By Natalie Alkiviadou
Hate speech is a real problem. But takedowns and deplatforming are ineffective and carry damaging side effects. A better and more liberal response is to confront hateful speech directly.
Hate speech emerges in concrete moments that reveal how language can hurt, marginalize and affect public participation. One such moment occurred in Brazil when Maria Júlia Coutinho became the first Black weather presenter on the country’s leading national news programme. In response, the NGO Criola launched “Mirrors of Racism”, which reproduced racist online comments verbatim on billboards placed in the neighbourhoods from which they originated. By relocating anonymous digital abuse into physical public space, the campaign made the social consequences of online racism visible and inescapable. The initiative was further extended through widely shared videos documenting public reactions, including moments of acknowledgment, discomfort, and apology.
Hate speech encompasses a wide range of expressions, which may operate alone or in combination, and which relate to characteristics such as race, sex, gender, ethnicity, and religion. What unites these forms is not their specific target, but their reliance on speech as a tool of power and exclusion. It is against this broader backdrop that counterspeech has emerged as a distinct response.
Counterspeech may be understood as “any direct response to hateful or harmful speech which seeks to undermine it.” A direct response can be one-on-one and addressed directly to the original speaker. In other cases, counterspeakers respond directly to the content, but not to the person who posted it, for example, by copying a hateful post in another forum and commenting on it.
Counterspeech seeks to diminish the impact or persuasive force of harmful expression through non-coercive means, ranging from factual rebuttal and moral critique to humour, satire and expressions of solidarity. Whether individual or collective, spontaneous or strategic, its defining feature is persuasion rather than punishment. In this sense, counterspeech is not merely a tactic but an expression of democratic discourse, privileging pluralism, contestation, and moral engagement over silence or suppression. Counterspeech, thus, embodies a liberal understanding of freedom grounded in robust and inclusive discourse, offering a strategic alternative to the continued expansion of hate speech regulation.
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Natalie Alkiviadou is a Senior Research Fellow at The Future of Free Speech. Her research interests lie in the freedom of expression, the far-right, hate speech, hate crime, and non-discrimination.