You can’t fight hate with double standards

Australia is facing a problem it can no longer afford to ignore: not the existence of hate itself, but the way governments choose which forms of it they are prepared to confront.

Over the past year, Australians have watched a sharp rise in anti-Semitic rhetoric, intimidation and violence. Jewish Australians have been harassed, threatened and made to feel unsafe in public spaces. This is not hypothetical, and it is not marginal. It is real, sustained, and serious. The response to that reality should be unequivocal. Anti-Semitism must be cracked down on firmly, consistently and without hesitation.

But that clarity has been missing.

Instead, what has emerged is a troubling double standard in how hate is identified, labelled and policed. Governments have been cautious—often conspicuously so—when confronting openly hateful conduct emerging from sections of the pro-Palestinian protest movement. At the same time, speech or behaviour perceived as Islamophobic is addressed swiftly, decisively and with strong moral language. That imbalance matters, not because one form of hate is worse than another, but because hate cannot be regulated selectively without corroding the legitimacy of the rules themselves.

This is where the danger lies.

Once governments begin deciding which hatred is urgent and which is tolerable, which communities deserve immediate protection and which can wait, the principle underpinning any hate-speech framework collapses. The issue stops being about protecting minorities and starts being about political comfort, risk management and ideological preference.

That is not justice. It is discretion dressed up as morality.

Cracking down on hate is not only justified—it is necessary. No liberal society can function if groups are allowed to intimidate, threaten or dehumanise others with impunity. But the authority to regulate speech and protest carries enormous power, and that power must be exercised consistently or not at all. Otherwise, governments cease to be neutral arbiters and become selective enforcers.

The message this sends is corrosive. It tells Australians that the application of the law depends not on conduct, but on cause. That some forms of extremism will be indulged because confronting them is politically inconvenient. That some communities will be protected loudly, while others are reassured quietly—if at all.

This inconsistency also undermines the broader case for limits on speech. Many Australians instinctively accept that absolute freedom of expression has boundaries, particularly where intimidation or incitement is involved. But that acceptance depends on trust: trust that the boundaries are clear, principled and evenly applied. When that trust erodes, so does public confidence in the legitimacy of the restrictions themselves.

The result is a dangerous dynamic. Governments become more censorious, but less credible. Communities feel simultaneously over-policed and under-protected. Social cohesion weakens, not because hate goes unchallenged, but because enforcement appears arbitrary.

None of this excuses anti-Semitism. On the contrary, it makes confronting it properly even more urgent. Allowing it to fester while hesitating for fear of political backlash has failed Jewish Australians and emboldened those who mistake restraint for tolerance. But addressing that failure by doubling down on selective enforcement only deepens the problem.

If governments are serious about cracking down on hate, they must do so on the basis of conduct, not ideology. Threats are threats. Intimidation is intimidation. Calls for violence are calls for violence—regardless of who makes them or which cause they claim to serve.

A society that picks and chooses which hatred to confront does not end up with less hate. It ends up with less trust.

And without trust, no speech regime, restrictive or permissive, can hold.