Social collapse isn’t born in a roar; it begins with a whisper. A nation doesn’t just fall when its cities are bombed, but when… trust between people erodes, when the word becomes a weapon, the sentence a trench, and language a wall that divides instead of unites. Hatred doesn’t descend from the sky in a sudden storm; it creeps in slowly, growing like a poisonous tree from a tiny seed planted in fragile soil, watered by daily discourse and nurtured by repetition until its roots run deep into the heart of society.
It is a deconstructive process where language transforms from a means of understanding into a tool of violence, from an instrument of awareness to one of alignment. Herein lies the danger of hate speech: it needs no tank to intimidate, nor a law to oppress. It merely needs to spread among people as an opinion, a joke, a comment, or a post to reshape the image of the “other” in the collective imagination. The different then becomes a threat, the dissimilar a danger, and diversity a curse rather than a source of strength.
In societies like Syria and Lebanon, where sectarian, religious, and political pluralism are integral to the national identity, coexistence is not a cosmetic choice but an existential necessity. Stability is not built on similarity, but on the acknowledgment of difference. This is where hate speech begins to erode the foundation, offering people a comforting but false image: that safety lies in sameness, and that the different “other” is the source of all danger.
By this logic, diversity becomes a threat to be isolated, difference a basis for accusation, and citizenship conditional on affiliation. People begin to redefine one another not based on values, work, or ethics, but on sect, denomination, region, or dialect.
From Words to Blood: How Hatred Works in Reality؟
When exclusionary narratives are repeated and entrenched in the collective consciousness, they become fertile ground for physical violence. Weapons are only wielded after language grants permission. Civil wars do not erupt because people suddenly hate each other, but because some discourse, somewhere, has convinced them that hatred is a legitimate right.
In Lebanon, the Tayouneh events (October 2021) were a revealing moment, exposing the fragility of the national fabric in the face of hate speech. Following a flurry of media and political accusations about the identity of the aggressors, social media platforms witnessed an explosion of sectarian incitement and collective insults, followed by armed clashes that left dozens dead and wounded. Reports from the Lebanese Center for Media Studies (2022) indicated that incendiary rhetoric preceded the on-the-ground event by days, through the dissemination of clips and mutual statements that fueled suspicion and hostility between groups.
A nation doesn't just fall when its cities are bombed,
but when trust between people erodes.
In 2024 and 2025, during crackdowns on Syrian refugees in Lebanon, a digital campaign escalated under the hashtag #Occupiers_in_Displaced_Peoples_Clothing, which included inflammatory phrases such as: “Lebanon is for the Lebanese only, go back to your country before we send you back.” Amnesty International (April 2025) and the SKeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom documented an unprecedented surge in hateful posts on Lebanese platforms, warning that verbal incitement against refugees could pave the way for physical attacks—which indeed occurred in several areas that witnessed mass expulsions and both verbal and physical violence.
In Syria, the organization Syrians for Truth and Justice (2023 report) documented that both official Syrian media and some opposition outlets used terms like “terrorist,” “mercenary,” “agent,” and “takfiri” to describe entire groups of citizens or fighters, thereby dehumanizing them and justifying violence against them. The report noted that this exclusionary language played a pivotal role in normalizing the idea of civil war within popular discourse.
Hatred as a Cultural System
Hatred doesn’t need a political platform to survive; it only needs a place in everyday language. It seeps into jokes, folk songs, common proverbs, and a mother’s words to her child when she warns them about others. In this way, everyone becomes a soldier in a battle they don’t know when or by whom it was started, yet they unconsciously perpetuate it.
The Syrian writer Mamdouh Adwan accurately described this phenomenon when he said: “Societies of oppression breed a little dictator inside every individual.” This description applies not only to Syria but also to Lebanon, where this little dictator is reproduced in a sectarian, partisan, or regional form, practicing oppression in the name of identity rather than the state. Thus, everyday language turns into an invisible censorship apparatus that determines what can be said and who is allowed to listen.
Beyond the Individual: The Need for a Legal and Institutional Framework
It is a mistake to think that confronting hatred is the sole responsibility of individuals. Just as its production is an organized effort, its deconstruction requires a superstructure that protects the public sphere from systematic incitement. In Lebanon, Article 317 of the Penal Code criminalizes any act intended to stir up sectarian or racial strife or incite conflict among sects. However, reports by The Legal Agenda (2023) indicate that this article is applied selectively and is often used against journalists and activists instead of punishing actual sectarian instigators.
In Syria, Media Law No. 108 of 2011 prohibits the publication of content that threatens national unity or incites sectarianism. However, the lack of an independent judiciary has turned it into a tool of censorship rather than protection. Similarly, the 2022 Cybercrime Law included provisions against online hate speech, but according to Human Rights Watch (2023), it has been used to silence dissent rather than prosecute real incitement.
The Law Sets Boundaries, but Culture Shapes Behavior
Hence, legal reform becomes a dual necessity: first, to protect freedom of expression, and second, to hold incitement accountable. Distinguishing between legitimate criticism and sectarian incitement is not a luxury but a prerequisite for any sustainable civil peace.
But laws alone are not enough. There must be independent monitoring and civil society institutions that practice oversight and accountability with transparency. In Lebanon, the SKeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom (SKeyes) issues monthly reports on hate speech in the media and on social networking sites—a pioneering experiment that can be developed in collaboration with digital platforms and local research centers.
In Syria, civil society organizations launched an initiative in 2025 to draft a media code of ethics to counter hate speech and promote balanced coverage, despite the political obstacles to its implementation.
Towards an Anti-Hate Culture
The law sets boundaries, but culture shapes behavior. Therefore, combating hate speech cannot be achieved by prohibition alone, but through knowledge and by redefining what a responsible word means. Education in critical thinking begins with small details: the moment of pausing before resharing unverified news, the moment of listening instead of reacting, the moment of choosing a more precise word over an easy insult, the moment of curiosity to understand what is different, rather than judging it.
For these values to become a collective practice, they can be translated into practical, multi-level steps:
- In Education: Integrating the concepts of critical thinking and diversity education into curricula and linking them to real-life contexts, instead of relying solely on theoretical examples.
- In Media: Adopting professional codes of conduct that compel journalists to verify information and refrain from using discriminatory or inflammatory language, alongside establishing independent complaints councils.
- In Civil Society: Launching digital campaigns to monitor and report inflammatory content, and training activists to analyze and deconstruct discourse.
- On Digital Platforms: Fostering collaboration between local monitors and technology companies to develop rapid-response mechanisms for inflammatory content in Arabic, modeled after experiences in the European Union.
- In Public Policy: Formulating a joint national strategy among the ministries of information, education, and culture, and civil society to combat hate speech using legal, educational, and media tools in tandem.
Syria and Lebanon do not just need to rebuild stone; they need to restore the relationship between people. Political handshakes cannot build reconciliation if language remains broken. When hatred spreads, it turns coexistence into a charade and citizenship into a mere slogan.
The same language that creates hatred is also capable of creating peace, but it requires awareness and responsibility because a word is never innocent; it is a seed or a bullet, a bridge or a wall, a life or the beginning of a collapse.
And if the war began with a narrative that excludes and betrays, then the path to peace begins with another narrative—one that listens instead of shouts, questions instead of accuses, and builds instead of destroys. Resisting hate speech is not an intellectual luxury but an existential condition for a shared future. For when language heals, nations heal.
