Hate Spin: The Manufacture of Religious Offense and Its Threat to Democracy

328 Pages·2016·2.91 MB·English

by  Cherian George

Hate Spin
Information Policy Series
Edited by Sandra Braman
The Information Policy Series publishes research on and analysis of significant prob-
lems in the field of information policy, including decisions and practices that enable
or constrain information, communication, and culture irrespective of the legal siloes
in which they have traditionally been located as well as state-law-society interac-
tions. Defining information policy as all laws, regulations, and decision-making prin-
ciples that affect any form of information creation, processing, flows, and use, the
series includes attention to the formal decisions, decision-making processes, and en-
tities of government; the formal and informal decisions, decision-making processes,
and entities of private and public sector agents capable of constitutive effects on the
nature of society; and the cultural habits and predispositions of governmentality that
support and sustain government and governance. The parametric functions of infor-
mation policy at the boundaries of social, informational, and technological systems
are of global importance because they provide the context for all communications,
interactions, and social processes.
Virtual Economies: Design and Analysis, Vili Lehdonvirta and Edward Castronova
Traversing Digital Babel: Information, e-Government, and Exchange, Alon Peled
Chasing the Tape: Information Law and Policy in Capital Markets, Onnig H. Dombalagian
Regulating the Cloud: Policy for Computing Infrastructure, edited by Christopher S. Yoo
and Jean-François Blanchette
Privacy on the Ground: Driving Corporate Behavior in the United States and Europe, Ken-
neth A. Bamberger and Deirdre K. Mulligan
How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet, Benjamin Peters
Hate Spin: The Manufacture of Religious Offense and Its Threat to Democracy, Cherian
George
Big Data Is Not a Monolith, edited by Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Hamid R. Ekbia, and Mi-
chael Mattioli
Hate Spin
The Manufacture of Religious Offense and Its Threat to Democracy
Cherian George
The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
© 2016 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information
storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.
This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: George, Cherian, author.
Title: Hate spin : the manufacture of religious offense and its threat to democracy /
Cherian George.
Description: Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2016. | Series: Information policy |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016014335 | ISBN 9780262035309 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Offenses against religion—Law and legislation. | Offenses against
religion—Political aspects. | Freedom of speech. | Political persecution. |
Hate speech—Law and legislation
Classification: LCC K5305 .G46 2016 | DDC 345/.0288—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016014335
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the memory of Ibrahim Haji Kader Mustan (1925–1976)

Contents
Series Editor’s Introduction ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
1 Hate Spin as Politics by Other Means 1
2 By What Rules? Human Rights and Religious Authority 25
3 God, Google, and the Globalization of Offendedness 57
4 India: Narendra Modi and the Harnessing of Hate 83
5 Indonesia: Democracy Tested amid Rising Intolerance 111
6 United States: Exceptional Freedoms, Fabricated Fears 139
7 Pushing Back, Through Media and Civil Society 165
8 Assertive Pluralism for a World of Irreducible Diversity 191
Notes 219
References 267
Index 293