No / Traditional Millian theory posits that free speech is the most important mechanism to achieve a greater tolerance of difference and thus create a dynamic marketplace for truth to flourish. In responding to maledictive hate, theorists such as Gelber (2002) and Butler (1997) have recommended that marginalized speech actors engage with a process of speaking back, of returning the gaze to make perpetrators¿ contributions to the marketplace of ideas marginal and aberrant. However, as will be demonstrated by an analysis of maledictive force and effects, the ideal speech situations of communicative action theory, and the recasting of terms of abuse by ¿speaking back¿, require both rational speech actors ¿something clearly absent in many acts of maledictive hate¿and an institutional validation of the authenticity of marginalized subjects and their speech. Constructing new truths in the marketplace of ideas is both socially and politically contingent. As such, the capacity for marginalized subjects to contribute to the marketplace rests on their ability to be able to speak with authority and to be authorized to speak.

no / This paper analyses the verbal and textual hostility employed by rioters, politicians and the media in Sydney (Australia) in December 2005 in the battle over Sutherland Shire¿s Cronulla Beach. By better understanding the linguistic conventions underlying all forms of maledictive hate, we are better able to address the false antimonies between free speech and the regulation of speech. It is also argued that understanding the harms of hate speech provides us with the tools necessary to create a more responsive framework for criminalising some forms of hate speech as a preliminary process in reducing or eliminating hate violence.