The Impact of Hate Speech Prosecution of Anti-immigrant Politicians on Citizens’ Political Support

Over the course of their existence, many anti-immigrant parties have encountered resistance. Anti-immigrant parties are often legally prosecuted for spreading hate and violence. Prior research provided some evidence that these parties may electorally benefit from legal prosecution. However, the effects on citizens in the democracies in which they operate remain uncertain. Still, legal prosecution arguably affects citizens’ political attitudes due to its controversial nature. More specifically, the legal prosecution of anti-immigrant politicians for alleged hate speech touches upon a paradox between the human equality principle (protecting the rights of (ethnic) minorities and immigrants) and freedom of speech. In this study, we elaborate this argument and argue that legal prosecution affects an essential building block of democratic stability, namely political support. Via conducting an online survey-embedded experiment in which we expose participants to a television news story, we assess the effects of legal prosecution against anti-immigrant politicians on citizens’ levels of political support. We posit that the specific direction and strength are influenced by two theoretically relevant moderators: attitudes on multiculturalism and party identification. This question is important as sufficient levels of political support are necessary for democracies to survive, and as lacking political support is linked to increasing levels of antisocial behavior. Expectations are that citizens favoring assimilationist policies will show lower levels of political support after being exposed to a news story about hate speech prosecution (H1) than citizens adhering to the principle of multiculturalism (H2), and that a decrease in political support is stronger than an increase, due to the asymmetry bias theory (H3). Furthermore, we expect that the more a citizen identifies with the prosecuted party or politician, the lower the level of political support (H4), and that prosecution decreases political support more for voters of non-ruling parties than for voters of ruling parties (H5).