Its purpose is to intimidate, humiliate, assault, and defame, but also, very importantly, to silence. Hate speech can be compared to death threats, libel, or fraud more easily than to the remarks of someone who, for example, dislikes smokers. Hate speech directed toward one black person is an injury to all African Americans. When civil libertarians insist that, although they abhor racist speech, it is private, and protected under the First Amendment, they deny its public harm and its ability to limit the human and civil rights of an entire targeted group. Hate groups use a combination of legitimate and illegal activities to pursue their goals.
Hate speech is one powerful weapon in their arsenal.
Public rallies and demonstrations help them to gain visibility and provoke public controversy, which in turn increases media coverage and attracts recruits. It is common for them to rally peace- fully in public during the day, and then to commit hate crimes under cover of darkness. For example, after a 1993 neo-Nazi concert in Pennsylvania, which attracted over 300 skinheads from around the country, at least five hate crimes occurred, including an incident in which skinheads leaving the concert attempted to run over a black cyclist. The Prejudice Institute recently reported that 27 percent of all racist violence takes place at work because of increased minority representation in the work force, and that 20 percent of minority college students at predominantly white institutions are assaulted or harassed each year. An infrequently mentioned consequence of hate speech is that it encourages those who are not even members of hate groups to commit hate crimes.