How hate speech laws actually work: an instructive example out of Kenya (and a few from our own backyard).

• Author: Brown, Elizabeth Nolan

THE MOST BAFFLING thing about the people--mostly liberals--who push for laws against "hate speech" is their apparent inability to imagine these bans backfiring. In their zeal to punish those who spread sexist, racist, transphobic, or otherwise unfashionable speech, they too often ignore the ways tools of censorship--including hate speech laws--are used to suppress religious, social, sexual, and political minorities around the world.

Consider Kenya. "There is growing evidence that the government is using prosecution for hate speech as a tool to silence its opposition critics," John Onyando writes in the Nairobi Star. "The norm is incendiary speech by pro-government politicians and online activists going unchecked while law enforcement agencies enthusiastically pounce on the mildest expressions by critics."

Kenya's agency tasked with enforcing laws against hate speech is the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), formed in 2008 to address ethnic conflicts in the nation. In practice, the agency mostly homes in on those who speak out against the Jubilee Alliance, the political coalition associated width President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto. The NCIC has prosecuted Sen. Johnstone Muthama, a leader of the Coahtion for Reform and Democracy, which stands in opposition to the Jubilee Alliance; Allan Wadi Okengo, a student activist who criticized Kenyatta on Twitter; student leader Seth Odongo; and blogger Robert Alai, who called Kenyatta an "adolescent president." Okengo, Alai, and Odongo were all sentenced to time in prison.

Moses Kuria, a Parliament member from Gatundu South--home constituency of President Kenyatta and his father, former President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta--was also arrested. But the NCIC invited Kuria to participate in a reconciliation program in lieu of trial, an option the other men were not offered. Only after Kuria continued to post inflammatory material online during the proceedings did the commission rescind its reconciliation offer. And no action was taken when, on national television, Kuria told a group of young people whom he had given knives to "cut up someone if you feel like it."

"One can't avoid the inference that hate speech is an actionable crime only when perpetrated by opposition leaders and activists," Onyando concludes.

Perhaps you think such a selective use of hate speech laws can happen only in countries with especially corrupt or unstable governments. Think again. Because "hate...