The Mental and Physical Health Argument Against Hate Speech

Overall, there’s a rich literature on free speech and hate speech. However, there’s been comparatively less discussion on hate speech that brings in empirical psychological and medical evidence on the possible health harms hate speech can have for minorities. I introduce and piece together a set of pre-existing scientific data that’s new to the philosophical literature to help sufficiently establish an argument that governments should ban hate speech. Given the adverse effects hate speech can have on one’s mental and physical health, hate speech causes harm at many times. Since it causes such harm and leads to overridingly negative consequences, the government ought to regulate such speech.