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Parallels with the hate speech debate:
Floyd, Rita

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Floyd, R 2017, 'Parallels with the hate speech debate: the pros and cons of criminalising harmful securitising
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1 
 

 

Bio: Dr Rita Floyd is Birmingham Fellow in Conflict and Security at the University of 

Birmingham. Her work on securitization theory has been published widely, most recently in 

The Cambridge Review of International Affairs and in Contesting security: strategies and 

logics (edited by Thierry Balzacq, Routledge, 2015). She has also published widely on 

environmental and climate security, most recently in Conflict, Security & Development. She 

also has an interest in the English school, with her work on the value of solidarism recently 

published in the Journal of International Relations and Development. 

 

Institutional address: Department of Political Science and International Studies, University 

of Birmingham, Muirhead Tower, Edgbaston, B15 2TT, UK  

 

Email address: r.floyd@bham.ac.uk  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mailto:r.floyd@bham.ac.uk


2 
 

Parallels with the hate speech debate: The pros and cons of criminalising harmful 

securitising requests 

Rita Floyd
1
 

Abstract  

 

This article argues that public expressions of Islamophobia are best understood as securitising 

requests (i.e. calls on powerful figures/bodies to treat an issue in security mode so that 

extraordinary measures can be used to combat it), especially in those cases where Muslims 

are feared and disliked because of the perception that Islamic people are prone to violence 

and terrorism. This article argues that harmful and derogatory securitising requests targeting 

racial, ethnic, or religious minorities are on par with hate speech and it highlights the fact that 

many contemporary societies are now seeking legal protections against such security speech 

(expressed most notably in the desire to ban Islamophobia). It is from this perspective that 

this article poses an important research question: With a view to protecting those adversely 

affected, are legal protections against harmful and offensive securitising requests justified? 

The research question can be answered by drawing parallels to the existing hate speech 

debate in legal and political theory. The research reveals that, although the case against legal 

protections of harmful and defamatory security speech is ultimately more convincing, 

security speech alone can be so damaging that it should be informed by a number of ethical 

considerations. This article goes on to suggest three criteria for governing the ethics of 

requesting securitisation. As such this article fills a lacuna in the ‘positive/negative debate’ on 

                                                           
1
 I am grateful to three anonymous reviewers for this journal for their helpful suggestions and 

comments. For written comments or conversations on earlier versions of this article, I would like to 

thank Adam Crawford, Jonathan Floyd, Steven Hutchinson and Mark Webber. I am also grateful to 

Jonathan Herington for discussions on just securitisation.  As ever, all mistakes and oversights are my 

own.  

 



3 
 

the ethics of security that has engaged with securitisation, but that has failed to consider the 

ethics of speaking security.  

 

Keywords 

securitisation, hate speech, PEGIDA, Muhammad cartoon crisis, harm, Islamophobia, 

positive/negative debate, security  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



4 
 

Introduction  

 

One consequence of the terrorist attacks in France, Brussels, Nice, and Germany in 2015 and 

2016 and the ongoing migrant crisis is the rise of populist right-wing movements and parties 

across the European continent. These groups have used the recent terrorist attacks to 

increasingly portray refugees and migrants (especially those of Muslim origin), as threats to 

security. In Germany, the leader of the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland 

or AFD) Frauke Petry, for instance, requests that the German government secures  

Germany’s external border and has recommended that police and border guards should not 

rule out using firearms against illegal refugees if they do not respect the sovereignty of 

territorial borders (Zeit online, 2016). Her suggestion was backed by several high ranking 

AFD politicians, including, initially at least, Petry’s deputy Betrix von Storch and AFD MEP 

Marcus Pretzell (Stern, 2016). In a similar vein, after the initial (and later dismissed as false) 

speculation that the perpetrators of the November 2015 Paris attacks were refugees, and that 

“terrorist-refugees” were planning similar attacks in Munich. Lutz Bachman, leader of the 

PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West), movement spoke (on 

Twitter) of “RefugeISIS” – not refugees (Harding, 2016). Likewise after the 2015 New 

Years’ eve events in Cologne, where approximately eighty women were sexually assaulted 

and/or mugged by up to a thousand young men with migrant backgrounds, and consecutive 

similar incidents in numerous public swimming pools and discotheques, Bachman (during a 

Facebook video post) was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Rapefugees not welcome’, 

seemingly declaring that all refugees are security threats to (German) women wherever they 

go (Die Welt, 2016). Bachman uses these crass expressions to underline PEGIDA’s request 

to German politicians that they secure borders and also German identity. In his own words: 

‘we [PEGIDA] demand here today, the creation of tougher immigration laws […] modelled 



5 
 

on the example of Canada or Switzerland. Deportation […] of Islamists and religious 

fanatics. [….]  More means for national security [Innere Sicherheit] […] to deal with new 

threats and challenges.’ (Bachman, 2015: 3, author translation)  

 The social and political construction – in language and lately also in visual depiction – 

of security threats has been a major concern for critical security studies for many years, 

evinced by the popularity of the Copenhagen school’s securitisation theory (Buzan et al, 

1998). In security studies, securitisation refers to the process by which an issue is removed 

from the ordinary democratic process and placed in the realm of the high politics of security, 

where conventional rules no longer apply and where extraordinary means may be used to 

address the issue (Buzan et al., 1998). For many scholars in the field, a case of successful 

securitisation consists of both a securitising move (a speech act that declares an entity as 

threatening) coupled with audience acceptance and palpable, usually extraordinary, security 

action (Buzan et al., 1998; Balzacq 2011); it does not refer to security measures that 

successfully avert a (perceived) threat. This article argues that Bachmann and Petry’s remarks 

are best understood as securitising requests, which is to say rhetorical moves aimed at 

persuading others (usually more powerful actors) to securitise, but that are not in and of 

themselves successful securitisation. The scholar Juha Vuori puts the logic of these sorts of 

securitising speech acts in more technical terms: 

 

The perlocutionary effect intended by [securitising requests], is to convince 

decision makers of the urgency of a threat, so that they will agree to raise the 

issue onto their agenda and effect the suggested measures. The illocutionary point 

[…] is directive, as the point is to try to get other people to do things, to get the 

hearer to carry out the course of action as represented by the propositional content 

e.g., to do X in order to repel threat Y. (2011:197) 



6 
 

 

The concept of securitising requests is important because it theoretically captures that 

securitising actors and their securitising moves do not exist in a political vacuum; rather they 

are influenced by a variety of actors including political advisors, opposition politicians, 

public intellectuals, newspaper editors and ordinary people. In other words, by actors whose 

intention in speaking security is not to announce, or seek legitimation for, the use of 

potentially extraordinary measures, but rather by actors who seek for others - more powerful 

actors- to securitise. In western liberal democracies, the media (specifically tabloid 

newspapers) serve as perhaps the most important entities in requesting securitisation. In the 

United Kingdom, for example, the Daily Mail has for years requested the securitisation of 

migration (Squire, 2914:85; see also Said,1997), and as such influenced the BREXIT 

referendum; both the initial decision to hold a referendum as well as its outcome (cf. Vultee, 

2011; Croft, 2012:213). Although the logic of securitising requests is implicitly recognised by 

many scholars, it is common practice to refer to all instances of security speech as 

securitising moves. In other words, this paper is also an opportunity to clear up this 

conceptual oversight within securitisation studies. 

 While the concept of securitising requests is important in its own right (notably how 

precisely they influence securitising actors), this article is primarily concerned with ethics of 

speaking security. Securitising requests are important in this context. Not only do they 

highlight that by speaking security actors do distinct things (i.e. advance towards 

securitization or else request that other actors securitise), but also a focus on securitising 

requests enables a focus on a much larger group of people than attention to securitising actors 

and their securitising moves would allow. Nonetheless, since both securitising requests and 

securitising moves are forms of speaking security, any recommendations concerning the 

ethics of security speech following this analysis apply to both forms of security speech.  



7 
 

 In order to probe the ethics of speaking security this article starts by suggesting that 

securitising requests that are harmful and derogatory to racial, ethnic, or religious minorities 

are best understood as expressions tantamount to hate speech. Specifically, it is suggested 

that even in cases where the securitising request is not expressed using overtly offensive 

language; the identification of a minority as threatening simply because of who they are 

changes the minority’s standing in society and its effects are thus on a par with those of hate 

speech. 

 The equation of certain forms of security speech with hate speech is an important one. 

It draws attention to the fact that the existing hate speech debate, which is focused primarily 

on racism, downplays the concept that harmful speech can also be motivated by genuine 

fear.
2
 PEGIDA, for instance fears not only the threat posed from terrorist migrants/refugees 

but also the loss of German identity due to Islamisation (Bachmann, 2014:3). Hence the issue 

is not whether or not one has the right to express racist views, but instead, whether or not one 

may express fear even in the starkest possible terms. The link between security speech and 

hate speech also shows – as will be argued later – that harmful or derogatory security speech 

can cause retaliation by those offended, leading to real insecurity for societies in which the 

security speakers reside, while it can also stimulate hate crimes against minorities.  

 Most importantly – for the purposes of this article – the link between hate speech and 

some forms of security speech highlights the fact that legal protections are increasingly being 

sought against specific kinds of harmful and offensive securitising requests. For the most part 

this takes the form of politicians, organisations, and parties seeking the elevation of public 

expressions of Islamophobia
3
 to a criminal act. Before I can provide details, it is important to 

stress at this point that Islamophobia is ill defined and its meaning contested. (see, for 

                                                           
2
 In the context of the Muhammad Cartoon crisis, for example one popular argument was ‘that equating Islam 

with terrorism, violence, and death is […] racism’ (Bleich, 2006: 17).  
3
 It should be noted that not all expressions of anti-religious or blasphemous speech are hate speech. Tariq 

Modood suggests, for example, that the Danish newspaper’s intention in publishing the cartoon was to ‘bring 

Muslims in line’ and ‘to teach Muslims a lesson’ (2006,5; see also Carens (2006, p.34) 



8 
 

example, Allen, 2010; Sayyid and Vakil 2010; Esposito and Kalin, 2011) The Runneymede 

Report, Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All from 1997, which has been instrumental in 

establishing the term in popular debate, defines Islamophobia as ‘the dread, hatred and 

hostility towards Islam and Muslims perpetrated by a series of closed views that imply and 

attribute negative and derogatory stereotypes and beliefs to Muslims’ (cited in Esposito, 

2011: xxiii). Strictly speaking, and as Chris Allen has convincingly argued, the conceptual 

‘phenomenon’ of Islamophobia
4
  denotes a hatred of Islam, while ‘expressions’ of 

Islamophobia ‘target religious or theological tenants of Islam’ (2010: 15,136).  For the most 

part, however, as Fred Halliday notes ‘expressions of Islamophobia are ‘anti-Muslim’ rather 

than ‘anti-Islamic’. The rhetoric is against people, not religion’ (cited in Allen, 2010:135), 

and the term Islamophobia etymologically incorrect. Consequently many analysts now think 

that what is generally referred to as Islamophobia is really racism, specifically (cultural) 

racism and racialisation (Meer and Modood, 2009; Meer, 2013). In addition to the fact that 

racism here is a problematic label, because ‘Muslims are not a ‘race’’ (Sayyid, 2010:13), an 

exclusive focus on racism obscures that –for all its problems- Islamophobia is also about fear. 

Attributing ‘fear’ and ‘phobia’, however, runs the risk of exonerates the person having the 

phobia because a phobia is an ‘illness’. (Sayyid, 2010: 12; Allen, 2010:136). Consequently, if 

as I do here, one wishes to highlight the fear element in Islamophobia, it is important to 

recognise that some of this might be caused by already existing racism, whilst racism itself 

might also be caused by fear.  

 With this in mind, let me now turn to the empirical examples demonstrating the 

increased desire to criminalise Islamophobia.  In the United Kingdom for example, the 

former Labour leader Ed Miliband – in the run up to the 2015 election – vowed to make 

Islamophobia illegal (Chapman, 2015). Meanwhile the Subcommittee on the Constitution and 

                                                           
4
 The threshold for what sort of thing counts as Islamophobia is different for different people because –it is 

widely acknowledged – that some people (mainly Muslim leaders) use it to knock down legitimate criticisms of 

Islam. (Allen, 2010:3)  



9 
 

Civil Justice within the United States House of Representatives is currently discussing a bill 

(Resolution 569, sponsored by Donald S. Beyer, Jr. of the Democratic party) that seeks to 

condemn ‘violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric against Muslims in the United States’ 

(https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-resolution/569/all-info), even though 

the U.S. constitution does not include hate speech protections. In Germany, section 130 of the 

German criminal Code ‘incitement to hatred’, which has its origin in Germany’s holocaust, 

has been amended twice in recent years and the law now prohibits ‘defaming segments of the 

population’ in speech and/or written materials. (German Criminal Code, 2015, §130)
5
 

Moreover, since the fatal shooting at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the 

terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015, non-state actors and individuals are urging the 

European Union (E.U.) to consider a Europe-wide ban on Islamophobia (Cerulus, 2016), as 

such events – like the London 7/7 bombings and similarly motivated terror attacks – have led 

to an increase in hate speech and hate crimes against Muslims.  Finally, in response to the 

Danish cartoon crisis, the United Nations General Assembly and its Human Rights 

Commission (UNHRC) passed a special resolution (on 26 March 2009) ‘condemning the 

“defamation of religion” as a human rights violation’ (Waldron, 2012: 124).  

In light of these empirical developments, the principal research question addressed in 

this article is this: With a view to protecting those adversely affected, are legal protections 

against specific kinds of harmful and offensive securitising requests justified? In order to 

answer the research question, this article draws parallels to the longstanding debate on hate 

speech protections in legal and political theory that arose in the context of such provisions in 

some states (most European states) but not others (notably the United States). The key issue 

                                                           
5
 Bachman was charged for ‘Volksverhetzung’ for ‘Rapefugees not welcome’ under this amended law in Mai 

2016. Petry,who had separately been reported to the authorities for firearm remark, were not followed up by the 

prosecutor in Mannheim in February 2016 as they were deemed in line with freedom of speech. Noteworthy is 

that Petry had done much to downplay and ameliorate the remark immediately after it was made. 

 

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-resolution/569/all-info


10 
 

is whether utterers of securitising requests should be allowed to ‘say’
6
 what they like in line 

with the right to free speech as is (most prominently) stated in the U.S. Constitution’s first 

amendment, or should the language and visuals of such securitising requests be curtailed in 

the way hate speech is in many European countries under various statutes, most commonly 

criminal codes (The Legal Project, 2015).  

Analysing security requests using this lens, reveals that security speech, as opposed to 

securitisation (here: successful/satisfied only after policy change has occurred), merely 

causes indirect harm (i.e. it leaves people feeling insecure and/or offended), while 

criminalisation is a proportionate response only to direct harm. Instead of advocating 

criminalisation, this article suggests that people ought to act in a socially and politically 

responsible manner and consequently, request securitisation ethically.   

This article sketches out three substantive criteria governing the ethics of requesting 

securitisation. The criteria advanced concern when to request securitisation and how to do so, 

and utilise existing research on ‘just securitisation’ (Floyd, 2011, 2015, 2016a). As such this 

article also seeks to be an important contribution to the ‘positive-negative’ debate on 

security/securitisation featured primarily in this journal (e.g. Floyd, 2007, Roe, 2008a, 2012 

Hoogensen Gjørv, 2012; Nyman, 2016), that has made much of the ethics of securitisation, 

but that hitherto failed to engage with the ethics of speaking security.  

 This article is structured as follows: Section I advances the concept of securitising 

requests as distinct from securitising moves and securitisation. Section II examines the case 

for advocating legal protections against harmful security speech utilising key insights from 

the hate speech debate found in legal and political theory. Section III outlines the case against 

such protections following the same method. Section IV sets forth three criteria governing the 

ethics of requesting securitisation. The conclusion summarises the argument advanced.  

                                                           
6
 In inverted commas here, because it technically also includes visuals.  



11 
 

 

I. What are securitising requests, how are they distinct from securitising moves 

and successful securitisation? 

 

The concept of securitisation originates from the work of the Copenhagen school, and 

specifically from that of one of its key members, Ole Wæver. After the Cold War, security 

policy both widened and deepened to include non-traditional security issues (e.g. 

environmental degradation, economic decline, migration) and referent objects of security 

policy other than the state (e.g. the environment, large banks) (Buzan and Hansen, 2009). 

Securitisation theory is able to capture analytically many of these new forms of security 

because it holds that security is a social and political construction, whereby issues become 

security threats only when they are considered to be that by relevant actors. In other words, it 

does not matter as such whether threats are objectively present (i.e. real).  

 Today, securitisation scholarship comprises a number of competing strands of 

securitisation, many of which have extended, refined, and clarified important aspects of the 

Copenhagen school’s original theory (see, for example, various in Balzacq, 2010; Williams, 

2003; and Hansen, 2000). In part, this theoretical work is driven by numerous inconsistencies 

and even contradictions in the Copenhagen school and/or Wæver’s work. For purposes of this 

article, it is important to note that there is some confusion over when securitisation 

‘succeeds’. The Copenhagen school appears to vacillate between tying the success of 

securitisation to the acceptance of the securitising move by an audience (for example, in the 

case of terrorism in the United Kingdom, when the general public has accepted that there is a 

terrorist threat) and the adoption of extraordinary measures and/or exceptional means (e.g. in 

the U.K. terrorism case when exceptional policy change occurred). Thus, on the one hand, 

they argue that securitisation is defined by ‘three components (or steps): existential threats, 



12 
 

emergency action, and effects on interunit relations by breaking free of rules’ (Buzan et al., 

1998: 26), suggesting that extraordinary emergency measures are a necessary part of 

securitisation because rules are tantamount to ‘the normal way’ (ibid.). On the other hand, 

some passages of the seminal Security: A New Framework for Analysis suggest that 

securitisation is not decided by the use of extraordinary emergency measures in that same 

way. Instead, it argues that ‘we do not push the demand so high as to say that an emergency 

measure has to be adopted, only that the existential threat has to be argued…’ (ibid, 25); 

while in his single authored work, Wæver has repeatedly stated that ‘security is a speech act’ 

(Wæver, 1995).  

 As a consequence, some scholars have argued that if the linguistic speech act element, 

which is seemingly so central to original securitisation theory is taken seriously, then 

securitisation succeeds at the point of audience acceptance (for example, in the case of the 

securitisation of terrorism in the United Kingdom, securitisation succeeds when the general 

public accepts arguments put forward by the executive that there is a terrorist threat), and 

adoption of security measures does not come into it. Vuori, for example, writes that ‘security 

measures and their public securitisation are theoretically and at times even practically 

separate from each other, and thereby the application of security practices cannot be a 

sufficient criterion for the success of securitisation’ (Vuori, 2011: n98). In this vein he goes 

on to identify five types of ‘securitisation’: ‘(1) securitisation for raising an issue on the 

agenda, (2) securitisation for deterrence, (3) securitisation for legitimating past acts or for 

reproducing the security status of an issue, and (4) securitisation for control’ in addition to (5) 

‘securitisation for legitimating future acts’, which he attributes to Wæver (Vuori, 2008: 76). 

While Vuori seems to offer an elegant way out of the extensive debate that has ensued on 

whether or not security measures have to be exceptional to qualify as such, he overlooks that 

the Copenhagen school actually differentiates between securitisations that, we may say 



13 
 

(merely) exist (i.e. at the point of audience acceptance) and those that are successful (i.e. 

when, in addition to a relevant audience accepting a securitising request, security measures 

are adopted (Collins, 2005). In the case of U.K, terrorism, for example, this refers to the 

various new laws and police powers that came after. The reason why the school draws this 

distinction is that the former leaves one unable to sort the ‘important cases [of securitisation] 

from the less important ones’, because ‘many actions can take [the securitisation form] on a 

small scale’ (Buzan et al., 1998: 25).  

 In successful securitisation, then, at least for the Copenhagen school, securitisation 

and security measures are not separate processes at all, while the securitising move is a part 

of securitisation (successful or otherwise). Moreover, in successful securitisations, utterers of 

securitising moves and securitising actors are one and the same; indeed, securitising actors 

use language to – in Vuori’s terms – legitimate past or present action, to deter and to control, 

in ways that they then act on. Or, as I have argued elsewhere, bona fide securitising actors
7
 

use language either to warn off an “aggressor” (loosely: any agent at the source of a threat) or 

to promise protection to a referent object, or, in some cases, to do both (Floyd 2010, 2016b). 

This said, however, it is possible for other actors to speak security. Securitising actors 

(mostly) speak security in order to move or advance further in the direction of securitisation
8
, 

for example, by seeking acceptance from a designated audience for the necessary policy 

change (Roe, 2008). Other speakers of security, however, have neither the intention nor the 

capabilities to perform securitisation
9
. Instead, their purpose in speaking security is to request 

securitisation from another – usually more powerful – entity.
10

 Vuori refers to this as agenda-

                                                           
7
 Without going into excessive detail, it can be argued that securitisation scholarship ought to be more consistent 

with regards to terminology. It is misleading to label anyone who can utter a securitising speech act a 

securitising actor; instead the securitising actor is the one who either acts on the threat, or who is in a position of 

power to instruct others to act (but of course this holds only if one believes that successful securitisation 

involves policy change). 
8
 This qualifier mostly is necessary because securitising actors may not be truthful in their intention (cf Floyd 

2010)  
9
 Notably the Copenhagen school denies individual persons the capability to securitise outright. 

10
 Often but not necessarily the state  



14 
 

setting ‘securitisation’, but he is an exception, most other scholars indiscriminately use the 

term securitising move for all instances of speaking security, even if many, at least implicitly, 

recognise different logics informing security speech.
11

 It is reasonable to suggest that this 

conceptual oversight stems from the fact that for many scholars securitisation is 

satisfied/succeeds at the point of audience acceptance, regardless what follows on from this. 

If, however, we accept that successful securitisation involves policy change we can see that 

security speech serves different purposes. Securitising requests are separate from securitising 

moves because they are not uttered with the intention to legitimate, explain, or announce 

behaviour that will follow or that has gone before; instead, they are addressed to those in a 

position to conduct successful securitisation (e.g. to those that can enact policy change).
12

  

 It is difficult to say at what point a securitising request succeeds. At least three options 

present themselves, one is at the point of audience acceptance (i.e. when the request has been 

heard), arguably, however, the request is only granted when the designated securitising actor 

securitises, ergo securitising requests succeed at the point of securitisation. This logic, 

however, implies that only securitisation could remedy the problem identified in the initial 

securitising request, when it is possible that politicisation by the targeted actor might solve 

the problem. All the same, securitising requests and the conceptual separation off from 

securitising move, enables us to see that securitising moves can be influenced by these 

primary speech acts. Indeed, an important issue to observe is that while securitising actors 

                                                           
11

 Take for example, Claire (now Cai) Wilkinson’s work on securitisation in Kyrgyzstan prior to the ousting of 

President Akaev, which has done much to question the linear logic of process in securitisation. In the article, 

Wilkinson identifies ‘an initial securitizing move [….] at the local level by a number of candidates’ (2007:17) 

opposing the ruling government, aiming to organise the fractured opposition from its supporters. She further 

argues that this same initial securitising move together with counter-securitisation by the ruling government 

informed, indeed constructed the securitising actor, insofar as opposition leaders came together, and began 

echoing the initial securitizing move in their own rhetoric. (ibid: 19) Given this, Wilkinson observes: 

‘securitizing moves do not exist in isolation and may be simultaneously or subsequently linked to other 

securitizing moves that in total contribute to a securitization even if they are individually unsuccessful’ 

(2007:20). My point here is not that Wilkinson is incorrect, but simply that conceptually it makes more sense to 

describe Wilkinson’s initial securitising move as a securitising request, while the Opposition’s speech act was 

the securitizing move. 
12

 Who this is precisely varies for different theorists as it depends on one’s understanding of what sort of 

measures count as security measures (i.e. only extraordinary ones, or also more ordinary ones) (cf. Floyd 2016b) 



15 
 

need to be in a position of power to perform successful securitisation, anyone can utter a 

securitising request. That does not mean that everyone has access to the same platforms, or 

that everyone will be heard equally well, but simply that anyone who has a voice, or who can 

write, can in principle utter a securitising request (see van Mill, 2015). Anyone, that is, who 

possesses the physical capability to speak or write and is not silenced by structural 

constraints, including fear (see Hansen, 2000). This inclusiveness is the reason why this study 

on the ethics of speaking security commences from a focus on securitising requests as 

opposed to securitising moves by securitising actors. A holistic ethics of speaking security 

recognises that ordinary people can –in principle- facilitate securitisation. This said, any 

general rules regarding the ethics of speaking security generated by such a study also apply 

for securitising moves, as both securitising requests and securitising moves are forms of 

speaking security, neither do securitising actors have  special rights exempting them from all 

possible ethical standards. 

 This article now turns to the question of whether anything goes; i.e. should people be 

permitted to say or write what they want, or whether there should be protections, that is to say 

legislation that criminalises some kinds of securitising requests, notably those that target or 

single out racial, religious, or ethnic minorities?
13

  In other words, and given the empirical 

context against which this paper is set, are laws banning public expressions of Islamophobia 

justified?  

 Before this article dives into the discussion, a word on the meaning of criminalisation 

is necessary as there is some debate over the proportionality of certain punitive measures 

(especially non-pecuniary ones, such as imprisonment) for using denigrating speech (see, for 

example Baker and Zhao, 2013). Although this article does not start from the premise that 

securitising requests should be criminalised, it does not engage with the debate over what 

                                                           
13

 These speech acts are related to the criminalisation of minorities such as asylum seekers who have been 

identified not only as deviant or criminal but also as threats to the welfare state system in the UK and other 

European Union member states (see, for example, Banks, 2008; Huysmans 2000). 



16 
 

type of punitive measure is most appropriate (despite the fact that this could sway one’s 

thinking either way). Instead, the research starts from the lowest common denominator, 

namely, it considers the issue criminalised if it is written into criminal law regardless of the 

nature of the punitive measures adopted.   

 

II. The case for protections against harmful and offensive securitising requests  

 

Lest there be any doubt, it is important to be clear that when contemplating protections 

against security speech, this article is not concerned with legislating against all possible kinds 

of securitising speech acts but merely against a few select types. Freedom of speech is an 

essential value in liberal democracies; among many other things we can see the value of free 

speech on matters of security in the fact that everyone’s potential ability to put important 

issues on the agenda can have positive consequences. Thus, quite regardless of whether or not 

they result in successful securitisation, once phrased in security terms issues are often more 

likely to be heard, discussed, and acted on. As a case in point, consider the recent warnings 

by scientists that the widespread overuse of antibiotics (especially broad-spectrum ones) is 

considered a threat to global health security, public health and – in some countries (notably 

the United States) – to national security, because it leads to antibiotic and microbial 

resistance. In England these warnings have led to new guidelines for general medical 

practitioners concerning the frequency of prescriptions for antibiotics (NICE, 2015). So, in 

contemplating protections against securitising requests, this article is concerned only with a 

specific type of such requests, namely ones that single out or target racial, ethnic, or religious 

minorities. This article distinguishes between two different ways of doing so: (1) in plain, but 

not offensive securitising language; or (2) in an overtly offensive way, for example, by using 

dehumanising language (e.g. by comparing people to animals or diseases), or by employing 



17 
 

racially or culturally motivated slurs, including ridicule.
14

 An example of the first kind comes 

from the United Kingdom after the 7/7 London bombings, when Muslims were repeatedly 

identified as threatening because they were considered likely to become radicalised and 

engage in terrorist acts (see Pantakis and Pemberton, 2009; Croft, 2012). As Stuart Croft 

notes, the connections between ‘Islam and terrorism; sharia law and barbarism; sharia law, 

Islam and a threat to British values’ were primarily made by ‘powerful social actors [and] 

major media organizations’ (ibid, 212). For example, by polling Londoner’s comfort levels of 

sitting next to Muslims on public transport in case they might blow themselves up (Croft, 

2012: 213). Precisely through such means, the relevant actors requested government to get 

tough on Muslims, and for example, not build a new mosque near the 2012 Olympic Park, to 

disallow Muslim faith based schools, and instead to create a Britain based on British values 

(Croft, 2012). 

 An example of the second way of making security requests was mentioned with 

Bachman’s neologisms of “Rapefugees” and “RefugeISIS” in the introduction, and 

PEGIDA’s request to elected politicians to protect Germany and Germans from such threats. 

For a further example, consider the case of British media personality and Sun newspaper 

columnist Katie Hopkins who, during the ongoing migrant crisis in Europe, called illegal 

migrants ‘cockroaches’, ‘a plague of feral humans’, ‘spreading like norovirus on a cruise 

ship’, and requested that the British government and EU governments need to adopt 

Australian style security measures (Hopkins, 2015). In her own words:  

 

                                                           
14

 At this point it is worthwhile to remind ourselves that within securitisation theory it is not necessary that the 

word security is spoken. Wæver argues as follows: ‘In practice it is not necessary that the word security is 

spoken. There can be occasions where the word is used without this particular logic at play, and situations where 

it is metaphorically at play without being pronounced. We are dealing with a specific logic which usually 

appears under the name security, and this logic constitutes the core meaning of the concept security, a meaning 

which has been found through the study of actual discourse with the use of the word security, but in the further 

investigation, it is the specificity of the rhetorical structure which is the criterion – not the occurrence of a 

particular word.’ (Wæver 1995: 49 FN15) 



18 
 

It’s time to get Australian. Australians are like British people but with balls of 

steel, can-do brains, tiny hearts and whacking great gunships. Their approach 

to migrant boats is the sort of approach we need in the Med. They threaten 

them with violence until they bugger off, throwing cans of Castlemaine in an 

Aussie version of sharia stoning. And their approach is working. Migrant 

boats have halved in number since Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott got 

tough. We don’t need another rescue project. The now defunct £7million-a-

month Mare Nostrum — Italy’s navy search and rescue operation — was paid 

for (in part) by British taxpayers. And we don’t need a campaign from Save 

the Children to encourage more migrants to take the journey. What we need 

are gunships sending these boats back to their own country. (ibid, 2015) 

 

Although the boundaries between these two kinds of securitising requests are somewhat fluid 

– and clearly offence may be taken whatever the language – there are good analytical reasons 

for differentiating between the two. In particular, arguments for permitting securitising 

requests of the first kind do not preclude the need for banning securitising requests of the 

second kind. The primary reason for why one might want to prohibit both kinds of 

securitising requests is because of the probable consequences they may have for those that are 

the subject of security speech (i.e. the minorities in question). Thus, those identified as 

security threats (i.e. the relevant minority) might feel increasingly insecure in society, fearing 

vigilante attacks. In the UK, the Tell MAMA ( Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) project not 

only reports a ‘200 percent’ increase in anti-Muslim hate crime in 2015, but identifies ‘the 

misrepresentation of Muslims in Britain from certain media sources, politicians and public 

figures’ as a primary cause. (Tell MAMA, 2016:6 &11; see also Said, 1997). Although 

securitising requests do not necessarily lead to securitisation or hate crime, they can 

nevertheless instil change in society. In particular, the securitising requests that concern us 

here may render society as a whole more xenophobic and racist. Xenophobia and racism, in 



19 
 

turn, are harmful because they – to use Didier Bigo’s apt phrase – further ‘insecuritise’ 

minorities within society (Bigo, 2000).  

 The linkage between speech and insecurity is also stressed by Jeremy Waldron in his 

2012 book The Harm in Hate Speech on the need for protections against hate speech. 

Waldron argues that hate speech deprives people of security because it erodes what John 

Rawls referred to as ‘well-ordered societies’,
15

 by denying certain groups the fundamentals of 

such societies, namely ‘that all are equally human, and have the dignity of humanity, that all 

have an elementary entitlement to justice, and that all deserve protection from the most 

egregious forms of violence, exclusion, indignity, and subordination’ (Waldron, 2012: 82–

83). In Waldron’s view one important measure in assuring these fundamentals – and thus 

maintaining and even creating well-ordered societies – is by legislating against hate speech 

and defamation (ibid.: 81). ‘[H]ate speech laws aim not only to protect the public good of 

dignity-based assurance, but also to block the construction of this rival public good that the 

racists and Islamophobes are seeking to construct among themselves’ (ibid., 2012: 95).  

 All these are important points; they are relevant here because they show that 

securitising requests of the first kind resemble hate speech closely. Accordingly, while 

securitising requests of the first kind do not use offensive language, the use of the language of 

security (i.e. the identification of a minority as a ‘security threat’ because of who they are) 

alone is degrading. The use of security language changes, indeed reduces, the standing of 

affected minorities in society. Securitising requests of the first kind also reveal that ‘hate 

speech’ can be motivated by something other than hatred, or in other words, by something 

other than racism and xenophobia. Instead ‘hate speech’, or better ‘harmful speech’, can be 

motivated by fear, specifically fear of the minority posing a security risk. Of course, if such 

                                                           
15

 For Rawls a well-ordered society is ‘a formal ideal of a perfectly just society implicit in Rawls’s 

contractarianism. It is a society where (a) all citizens agree on the same conception of justice and this is public 

knowledge; moreover, (b) society enacts this conception in its laws and institutions; and (c) citizens have a 

sense of justice and willingness to comply with these terms’ (Freeman, 2007, 484). For discussion of how this 

idea [i.e. well ordered society] fits in within Rawls' wider commitments, see J. Floyd (2015). 



20 
 

fears are entirely unwarranted (i.e. because no credible empirical precedent involving the 

minority exists) it becomes inseparable from racism, while it is also the case that securitising 

requests motivated by fear often end up producing racism and xenophobia. Nevertheless we 

ought to recognise that expressions of harmful speech, including Islamophobia are based not 

exclusively on hatred but also on fear. 

 It should be obvious that if all of the above reasons on why there should be 

protections against harmful securitising speech hold for securitising requests of the first kind, 

then they also hold for securitising requests of the second kind, as the latter are a more 

serious case of the former. That said, there are additional reasons for curtailing securitising 

requests that use offensive language when they single out or target racial, ethnic, or religious 

minorities. Yet, it is not always easy to know when something is offensive. In hate speech 

legislation, offending is seen as a step down from instilling hate and is not generally 

covered.
16

 One reason for this is the extremely subjective nature of offence. Specifically, 

thresholds for when offence is taken differ widely with age, culture, religion and also with 

who the speaker is. Plus, it is possible to offend without intending to do so.  For example, the 

Caucasian Oscar-nominated actor Benedict Cumberbatch had to apologise profusely for 

causing offence when he referred to black actors as ‘coloured’ in an interview with a U.S. 

broadcaster (Bakare, 2015). The comments were made in the context of Cumberbatch 

bemoaning the absence of equal opportunities in the industry.  

 With offence hard to capture, it is important to recognize that it might be extremely 

difficult to provide legislation criminalising securitising requests that use offensive 

                                                           
16

 However many states’ efforts to widen hate speech legislation means that legislation increasingly includes 
mere offending, especially as states are trying to regulate trolling and expressions of hate speech in social media. 

See for example the above mentioned section 130 of the German criminal Code, or  Section 127 of the 
Communications Act 2003 in England  



21 
 

language.
17

 However, in the interest of (national) security, the case for criminalising these is 

strong, because they are doubly dangerous. Not only do they ‘insecuritise’ minorities, erode 

well-ordered society and potentially lead to hate crime, they also run the risk of rendering the 

general population insecure because offence (especially against religious beliefs) might cause 

retaliation. Conversely, if offending in this way is punishable by law, the offence is less likely 

to cause retaliation and/or to occur in the first place.  

 In recent years we have seen revenge attacks in response to securitising requests of 

the second kind (i.e. those that use offensive language or visuals) in the aftermath of the so-

called Muhammad cartoon crisis. Lene Hansen has argued that especially in the age of the 

internet, images are prolific and influential and ought to be included into a theory of 

securitisation (Hansen, 2011a). This is because ‘to constitute something as a matter of 

security is to make a political intervention’ (ibid., 53) and images (especially iconic images) 

can have political implications (Hansen, 2015, see also Croft, 2012: 104-6). This political 

intervention can take a number of forms. Hansen suggests that images can very readily depict 

‘the Other as demonic, barbaric, evil, and menacing’ while they  can also be used to belittle 

the Other ‘constituting him/her/it as insignificant, weak, small, cowardly, backward, or 

feminine, as someone “to be laughed at rather than hated or feared”’ (Hansen, 2011a: 59). ‘A 

depiction through demonization’, Hansen further argues, ‘constitutes a threat to be conquered 

while a strategy of belittling makes the threat manageable’ (ibid.). Either way, images, like 

words, may thus be utilised to call on powerful actors to securitise any given issue or 

(perceived) threat.  

 Hansen nevertheless holds that images ‘securitise’ usually in conjunction with spoken 

or written words that give a specific meaning to the image. Words are necessary because the 

image itself can convey multiple meanings. For example, ‘the lit turban-bomb, the bushy 

                                                           
17

 Notably some courts (specifically U.S. courts) arbitrate successfully on similar matters with high subjectivity, 

including by using legal tests for establishing what is pornography or the way some courts apply the “reasonable 

person” standard.  



22 
 

eyebrows, and the piercing eyes [of Kurt Westergaard’s (in)famous bomb-turban cartoon] 

evoke on the one hand a violent, possibly terrorist-suicidal subject; on the other this is a 

disembodied face, devoid of spatial and temporal location with no other subjects present’ 

(ibid., 63). She further argues, however, that clear meaning was given to the cartoons, which 

were obviously belittling, in the context of several accompanying editorials in Danish 

newspapers which identified the West as existentially threatened ‘from “Muslim” imams as 

well as from the wider “Islamic worldview”’ and [requested that] “Western society” and 

“Muslims” deter  this threat (Hansen, 2011b: 364). One way of resisting the narrative 

suggested in securitising requests is through counter-securitisation.
18

  

 Many Muslims were greatly offended by the cartoons and how they were being 

contextualised in Denmark and abroad with many media outlets republishing the cartoons. 

Their publication led to widespread violent protests (including in Pakistan, Afghanistan and 

North Africa), terrorist attacks (besides Charlie Hebdo also deadly shootings in Copenhagen 

in February 2015) and arguably a deepening (or indeed the initial creation) of a ‘clash of 

civilisations’ (Burke et al, 2006). Given the climate in which these cartoons were published 

(i.e. during the global war on terror) these consequences were not only probable but also 

foreseeable. Since individual newspapers clearly do not have that foresight and may very well 

be motivated by agendas (especially financial or political) other than one of greater overall 

security, it is reasonable to suggest that legislators should intervene and curtail the spreading 

of unnecessarily offensive securitising requests (in this case offensive images accompanied 

by offensive editorials) by criminalising such security speech. This suggestion is made on the 

basis of empirical evidence. Researchers have found that civil hate speech protections have a 

positive effect on ‘mediated outlets’ because staff are trained to be sensitive to hate speech 

                                                           
18

 In securitisation studies resistance is usually considered a form of desecuritisation (i.e. the act of resisting 

securitisation) (see, for example, Vuori, 2014), but there is no reason why resistance cannot also take the form 

of ‘counter-securitisation’ (i.e. resisting someone else’s security speech through one’s own security speech and 

action ), or indeed we can say that securitisation is motivated by wishing to resist a (perceived) threat. 



23 
 

legislation (Gelber and McNamara, 2015: 649). Indeed, the effects of what Gelber and 

McNamara call ‘the “laws” educative role’ (ibid, 650) is such that it is reasonable to suggest 

that had unduly offensive securitising requests been controlled by legislation (i.e. 

criminalised), it is a serious possibility that the massacre at the French satirical magazine 

Charlie Hebdo in which twelve staff were killed by two Islamist gunmen might have been 

avoided. At a minimum, it is likely that the magazine would have abstained from publishing 

the images and the accompanying editorial. 

 

III. The case against protections of securitising requests whatever their nature 

 

The case against protections of any kind of securitising request starts from the assumption 

that free speech is a fundamental value of liberal democratic societies that ought not to be 

curtailed. Most advocates of free speech believe that hate speech legislation is unwarranted 

and that the only things that ought to be curtailed are pornography involving minors and 

extreme libel (see Waldron, 2012: 145). When it comes to security we can see the value of 

free speech quite clearly; thus in Western liberal democracies anyone is allowed to criticise 

their government for making people (feel) insecure, whether by misguided foreign policy, 

exaggerating the terror threat, monitoring populations through technologies including 

surveillance, or for not providing adequate military hardware for armed forces in combat 

situations. If we start to curtail some kinds of securitising requests by legislation then where 

does it stop? In times of crisis, when unanimity is key and often assured (Neal, 2012), might 

not the legislator be tempted to prohibit criticism of executives’ policies or indeed 

‘desecuritising requests’? In the United States, for example, criticism of the official 

governmental line in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 was considered deeply 

unpatriotic (Evangelista, 2008: 60; Croft, 2006). At the time, the prevailing mood was 



24 
 

captured in George W. Bush’s often used phrase ‘Either you are with us, or you are with the 

terrorists’ (Bush, 2001), while at the same time, the PATRIOT Act and subsequent counter-

terrorist activities, which allowed the extended surveillance of suspected terrorists by the 

newly created Department of Homeland Security were widely regarded as reminiscent of 

McCarthyism (Edwards, 2015: 409). 

 A second deontological argument against protections is that securitisation theory tells 

us that insecurity is a matter of perception and politics (Gad and Petersen, 2011; Taureck, 

2006). Surely if one is scared of something or someone, one should have the right to say it, 

regardless of the consequences. This is particularly important in light of the fact that fear can 

be a direct result of governmental policy. For example, one may believe that the U.K. 

government has with its counter-terrorist policies created a ‘suspect Muslim community’ 

(Pantazis and Pemberton, 2009), and thus driven hitherto moderate Muslims into 

radicalisation with the result that they now pose a concrete threat to oneself and other British 

people. The right to voice one’s opinion in this case is essentially the late Ronald Dworkin’s, 

(2009) legitimacy argument in favour of free speech. Much simplified, he argues that in a 

democracy everyone is forced to live by some laws that they do not agree with (he has in 

mind laws about positive discrimination), because of the consequences of those laws (i.e. 

admittance to jobs, etc.); if one is not allowed to voice one’s discontent against the law in 

question, then the legislator is illegitimate because – in a democracy – legitimacy arises from 

everyone having a voice. In his own words: 

 

Fair democracy requires … that each citizen have not just a vote but a voice: a 

majority decision is not fair unless everyone has had a fair opportunity to 

express his or her attitudes or opinions or fears or tastes or presuppositions or 

prejudices or ideals, not just in the hope of influencing others (though that 

hope is crucially important), but also just to confirm his or her standing as a 



25 
 

responsible agent in, rather than a passive victim of, collective action. 

(Dworkin cited in Waldron, 2012: 175, author emphases) 

 

A third argument against protections of securitising requests – whatever their nature – is that 

securitising requests can fail out in the open.
19

 This is essentially an extrapolation of the 

argument by many opponents of hate speech protections that opinions are better out in the 

open than driven underground (Barendt, 2005a, 2005b). Allowing securitising requests to fail 

democratically would render a stronger well-ordered society. Notably, historical evidence 

suggests that a society whose citizens live according to governing principles that they believe 

in is bound to be stronger than one where universal values are enforced top-down by the 

legislator (cf. Buzan, 2004: 253). Indeed, criminalisation of securitising requests can create 

further resentment against the feared group(s). Instead of being addressed, the issue could 

then be driven underground where it might gain momentum, perhaps in part, out of 

resentment against the legislator (cf. Barendt, 2005b). 

 Finally, it is not clear in what sense securitising requests cause factual, direct harm. In 

a 2013 critical reply to Waldron’s The Harm in Hate Speech, Dennis Baker and Lucy Zhao 

argue that Waldron fails to distinguish between theoretical harm and factual harm. They 

argue that no factual harm is caused when putative victims simply feel that their dignity is 

compromised by denigrating speech (Baker and Zhao, 2013: 625, 637). They also remind us 

of what precisely states seek to prevent by means of hate speech legislation: 

 

Incitement type offenses aim to prevent the harmful riot (as an example) from 

eventuating and thus criminalize the expression (means) used to encourage 

others to consummate the offense of rioting. D is not punished for the 

expression in itself, but for using expression to try to encourage a harmful riot. 

                                                           
19

 Any definition of failure depends, of course, on one’s definition of success. Given the difficulties with that 

(cf.p.14), at a minimum level, however, we can perhaps say securitising requests fail when they are not picked –

up by the designated securitising actor 



26 
 

The harm that the state is trying to prevent with such offenses is the riot, rather 

than the speech in itself. (Baker and Zhao, 2013, 626) 

 

In this context, it is important to recall that unlike with straight forward hate speech, the 

utterer of the securitising requests does not want the ‘audience’ to do abhorrent and harmful 

things (i.e. commit hate crimes). Instead they want the securitising actor (i.e. the audience of 

the securitising request) to securitise the issue; and it is conceivable that – sometimes at least 

– abhorrent language is used primarily to stress the urgency of the matter and to get a 

powerful audience’s attention. In short, even overtly offensive securitising requests are not 

incitement to hatred, but rather requests for protection of valued referent objects driven by 

fear and hatred. This is important because it means that criminalisation is a disproportionate 

response because securitising requests (i.e. security speech) does not in fact cause factual or 

direct harm, but merely theoretical or indirect harm, insofar as targeted groups perceive 

greater levels of insecurity or feel offended. Direct, factual harm is caused only when 

someone in the position to securitise follows up on the requests and securitises the issue. For 

example, it is well established that in the United Kingdom Muslims were not only 

disproportionally affected by new terror legislation following the 7/7 bombing, but some of 

the measures (notably detention without trial) were directly harmful (e.g. Pantakis and 

Pemberton, 2009; Croft, 2012). Arguably, however, the use of security measures that are 

directly harmful is unjustifiable only if the securitisation itself is unjust
20

. At most, we can 

thus debate whether unjust securitisation can or ought to be criminalised, while the 

criminalisation of securitising requests is always unjustified. 

                                                           
20

 With the ethics of security and securitisation only just emerging in security studies (see Nyman and Burke, 

2016; Browning and McDonald, 2013), the precise meaning of unjust securitisation is not set in stone. Judging 

by the well-established literature on the morality of war (security’s closest relative), however, it is to be 

expected that just securitisation will have to involve considerations concerning proportionality, expected 

outcome, right intention and so on (Floyd: 2011, 2015, 2016a). 



27 
 

 Direct harm is also caused when a counter-securitisation is launched (as is the case 

with revenge attacks), but these clearly are an unintended consequence of the initial 

securitising request and most certainly not the intention of those requesting securitisation. 

Finally, direct harm is caused when vigilante commit hate crime against minorities informed 

by the securitising request.  

 It is one thing to argue that we ought to be allowed to say what we want, but may we 

also say it in the way we want? In other words what possible arguments are there for not 

restricting securitising requests of the second kind (those that are overtly offensive to 

minorities)? Existing legislation on hate speech covers some but not all overtly offensive acts 

possible here, in spite of the fact that this legislation is growing. But there are problems with 

legislating against overtly offensive securitising requests. Waldron, for one, argues that 

‘offense is not a proper object of legislative concern … [unlike dignity it is not about] 

objective or social aspects of a person’s standing in society’ but rather, it is about ‘subjective 

aspects of feeling, including hurt, shock, and anger’ (Waldron, 2012: 103, 106). At least three 

more arguments are relevant in this context, and all of them can be exemplified using the 

Charlie Hebdo case. The first is advanced as part of Charlie Hebdo’s editorial supporting 

publication of the cartoons, where it was argued that ‘the suggestion that you can laugh at 

everything, except certain aspects of Islam, because Muslims are much more prickly than the 

rest of the population – what is that, if not discrimination?’ (cited in BBC News, 2015). In 

other words, all faiths are equally ridiculous, fanciful and/or sacred, and if we are allowed to 

laugh at one of them, then by implication, we should be allowed to laugh at all of them (cf. R. 

Hansen, 2006: 12). 

 Second, peace researchers have suggested that humour can not only be a conflict 

generator, but also a tool for peacebuilding (Zelizer, 2010). Recall Lene Hansen’s point that 

the bomb-turban cartoon can be interpreted in different ways. Specifically, ‘the cartoon relies 



28 
 

upon a generic image of “the non-Western” as looking wilder, more rural, and less modern 

than a Western subject, yet with the possible exception of the turban, the imagery is not 

distinctly Muslim’ (Hansen, 2012: 63). Precisely because it is not distinctly Muslim, it could 

have presented those Muslims who consider the views of radicalised ‘Islamists’ un-Islamic 

with a means to distance themselves from such people, and to strengthen a joint French, 

Danish, etc. identity with their fellow countrymen and women. Such togetherness and unity 

could help counteract radicalisation with fewer young Muslims being caught between 

different worlds. Indeed, in the United Kingdom, counter-terrorism police are already 

working together with a Muslim comedian to counter-act radicalisation is secondary schools 

(Talwar, 2015). 

Finally, it is fairly safe to assume that individuals who act in the abhorrent way that 

Saїd and Chérif Kouachi (the Charlie Hebdo gunmen) did in response to offensive and 

belittling cartoons would have done so anyway in revenge against foreign policy choices etc. 

In the aftermath of the shooting it emerged that both individuals had become radicalised over 

a long period of time and one had previously been arrested on his way abroad to commit 

jihad; in other words, the ideological commitment was already there, the cartoons may have 

simply been the catalyst.  

 

IV.  Requesting securitisation ethically   

 

While the arguments on both sides are strong, from the point of view of securitisation, one of 

them carries more weight than the others because it goes right to the heart of the difference 

between simply speaking security and securitisation proper (i.e. security speech plus policy 

change). This is the argument that legal protections against harmful and derogatory security 

speech are a disproportionate response because the harm caused by such speech acts is 



29 
 

indirect/theoretical, and accordingly, that only direct, factual harm, as that caused by 

securitisation may warrant criminalisation.
21

  Yet, even if criminalising harmful securitising 

requests (including banning expressions of Islamophobia) is to be rejected on the grounds of 

proportionality, the analysis also suggests that mere security speech is or should not be free 

from ethical considerations. Not only because indirect harm is hurtful to the minorities in 

question, but also because it detracts from the fundamentals of a well-ordered society.  

 Given that everyone can speak security by requesting securitisation, we can say that 

principles governing the ethics of speaking security ethically apply to all persons, and not 

only to securitising actors when uttering securitising moves. The existing and growing 

literature on ethics and security/securitisation, sometimes known as the ‘positive/negative 

debate on security’, has so far failed to engage with the ethics of security speech. Ethical 

concerns over securitisation and hence the need for moral criteria governing securitisation 

arises largely from the ill-effects of the exceptional measures legitimised by securitisation 

(Floyd, 2011, 2016a). Or, in other words, the very issue of its ethics has arisen because 

securitisation causes direct harm and causing harm can supposedly only be justified if 

securitisation itself is just. Since securitisation theory is very much concerned with security 

speech, a theory of just securitisation is incomplete without considering also the ethics of 

security speech. An ethics of speaking security must start from the concept of securitising 

requests not only because securitising requests are much more inclusive than securitising 

moves, but also because securitising requests can influence securitising moves. This article 

proposes that two issues are important in this regard: when to request security and how to 

request security. In the following each is addressed in turn. 

 By drawing on the ‘just war’ tradition, I have argued elsewhere that the single most 

important criterion for just securitisation is the presence of a just cause, because exceptional 

                                                           
21

 This is not to suggest that unjust securitisation ought to be criminalised, merely that it could – in certain 

circumstances- be warranted   



30 
 

measures can only be justified in the presence of a real threat (Floyd, 2011).
22

 Given that the 

use of exceptional measures is the objective of those requesting securitisation, we can 

reasonably require for persons requesting securitization to be as certain as they can be that the 

issue (including the racial, ethnic, religious minority) presents a real threat before they utter 

security speech. The connection between objectively present or real threats and ethics is made 

by a number of scholars writing on ethics and security, albeit usually not from the perspective 

of securitisation (e.g. Burke, Lee-Koo and McDonald, 2014 and various in Nyman and 

Burke, 2016). Indeed the invocation of real threats seems antithetical to the very idea of 

security as a social and political construction. This said, it needs to be remembered that the 

Copenhagen school, or at least Ole Wæver, does not hold that there are no such thing as 

objective existential threats, but rather that ‘security threats’ are socially and politically 

constructed. In his own words: ‘Lots of real threats exist, but they do not come with the 

security label attached’ (Wæver, 2011: 472). With some notable exceptions (Balzacq, 2010), 

securitisation scholars tend to be only interested in how issues achieve security threat status; 

and some might deny the possibility of ascertaining threat status as it is impossible to know 

all the morally relevant facts about a situation. This assumption is not disputed here. 

Consequently, instead of requiring that relevant persons need to establish the objective 

presence of threats in a ‘fact-relative sense’ (Parfit, 2011: 162), a judgement about the status 

of a threat needs to be true in an evidence-relative sense. Evidence-relativity ‘refers to the 

situation when the available evidence suggests decisive reasons that the beliefs people hold 

about a given situation are true’ (ibid.). In practice this means that persons intent on 

requesting securitisation must aim to gather evidence of the threat level of someone/-thing 

approximating the actual facts before requesting securitisation. In the case of the suspected 

link between refugees and migrants and terrorism, for example, the PEGIDA leadership 

                                                           
22

 Wæver (2009) reasons along similar lines when he argues that securitisation requires existential threats. 



31 
 

should have checked the facts on migrant and refugee involvement in the Paris terror attacks, 

which was dismissed as false soon after the attacks. 

  Persons requesting securitisation intent to bring about securitising moves and 

securitisation. If this is so, then requesting securitisation ethically also means that persons 

requesting securitisation need to be as sure as they can be that the issue in question is ideally 

treated as a matter of security and not simply as a political matter. This requires them not 

only to anticipate the probable consequences of an ensuing successful securitisation, but to 

measure – as best as possible - these consequences against not securitising. The securitisation 

of terrorism and the resulting treatment of Muslims in the United Kingdom after the 7/7 

bombings, for example, led to an increase in home-grown radicalisation and recently the 

issue of the return of foreign fighters, throwing doubt onto the initial decision to securitise or 

– at least –  about the way it was done (Fierke, 2007). Importantly, even if there is a real 

threat, securitisation as opposed to politicisation is not always the best solution. 

 Moving on to the issue of how to request security ethically, it is helpful to consider 

Tariq Modood’s argument (made in the context of the Muhammad cartoon): ‘One relies on 

the sensitivity and responsibility of individuals and institutions to refrain from what is legal 

but unacceptable. Where these qualities are missing one relies on public debate and censure 

to provide standards and restraints’ (2006:6).  That Modood is correct in identifying, what we 

might call ‘a collective standard of communication’ is apparent from the fact that the above 

cited securitising requests by a Petry, Bachmann, and Hopkins require little in the way of 

explanation as being unacceptable; instead they rather speak for themselves. A decisive 

feature about securitisation is that it legitimises the use of exceptional measures, yet the 

examples suggest that requesting securitisation ethically means to observe the collective 

standard of communication. In other words, even a real threat does not legitimise 

exceptionally derogatory and defamatory speech. 



32 
 

 Moreover, the examples discussed above also show that in the interest of peace and 

security it is not always wise to say or publish anything and everything at all times. The 

Muhammad cartoon crisis, for example, was made worse by newspaper and magazine 

editors’ decision to exacerbate a sensitive issue by re-publishing the initial offending cartoons 

and by commissioning new, equally offensive ones. Waldron has a valid point when he 

argues: ‘Often, the best that [newspaper editors] could say for [re-publishing the cartoons] 

was that they were upholding their right to publish them. But a right does not give a right-

bearer a reason to exercise the right one way or another’ (Waldron, 2012: 126). However, 

given that many politicians and security organisations (the police, border agencies, etc.) 

benefit from a politics of fear that often involves singling out minorities, it must be 

acknowledged that self-censorship faces many obstacles (see, for example, Wacquant, 2014; 

Huysmans, 2006; Simon 2001).  

 Although the principles of the ethics of speaking security have here been developed in 

the context of securitising requests, it goes without saying that these apply also to securitising 

actors and their securitising moves. There is simply no reason why securitising actors should 

be exempt from these basic rules of engagement. Rules that, if obeyed, could reduce the level 

of harm caused in society considerably. 

 In summary, we can now say that just security speech has three components: 1) there 

is a threat that is real in an evidence-relative sense and 2) when securitisation is likely to be a 

better solution than politicisation, whereby ‘better’ is measured in terms of the least amount 

of overall greater insecurity caused. Finally, when speaking security 3) observe existing 

collective standard of communication, and – in the interest of peace and security –  exercise a 

degree of self-censorship. 

 

 



33 
 

Conclusion  

In contemporary Europe and elsewhere there is a discernible trend towards either tightening 

existing hate speech legislation or introducing new legislation in order to curtail the 

defamation of migrants and refugees as security threats and/or terrorists. For the time being, 

this is most clearly expressed by an increased willingness to ban Islamophobia. In the context 

of these developments, this article has critically engaged with the justifiability of 

criminalising requests to securitise that are harmful or derogatory to racial, ethnic, or 

religious minorities in order to protect those adversely affected. It has done so by drawing 

parallels to the existing hate speech debate in legal and political theory. As part of the 

analysis offered, this paper developed the novel analytical concept securitising requests, 

which captures security speech uttered not by securitising actors intent on securitisation, but 

rather security speech expressed by ordinary people intent on persuading powerful actors to 

securitise.  

 It was argued that even securitising requests that do not use overtly offensive 

language, but simply single out racial, ethnic, or religious minorities as security threats are 

tantamount to expressions of hate speech because the link to security due to who these groups 

are is in and of itself degrading. It was further argued that the recognition of securitising 

requests as expressions of hate speech reveals the important insight that harmful speech is 

based not only on hate, but also on fear. Conceived as such – from the point of view of 

security – the case against protections is more convincing. In part because one positive of 

liberal democracies is that citizens are allowed to express their security fears, including of 

government policy. 

 The analysis further revealed that, although criminalising harmful and offensive 

securitising speech can lead to an increase in security for affected groups and that it can pre-

empt violent counter-securitisation, punitive measures are a disproportionate response 



34 
 

because even offensive and derogatory security speech causes only indirect harm (i.e. they 

leave members of minorities feel insecure, or they offend members of religious etc. groups). 

This is in line with the rationale behind many state’s longstanding hate speech legislation 

which seeks to prevent primarily the consequences of hate speech (i.e. hate crime, terrorism), 

and which recognises the adverse consequences for democratic process if offensive speech is 

criminalised. On the basis of these arguments this article concluded that laws banning public 

expressions of Islamophobia - at least in those cases where Muslims are feared and disliked  

because of the perception that Islamic people are prone to violence and terrorism, as well as 

similar securitising requests - are not justified.  

 Far from negating the significance of indirect harm, however, this article went on to 

suggest that all persons ought to request security ethically. This article then outlined where 

the focus should be: when to request security and how to do so. In so doing, this article filled 

a lacuna in the research on ethics and securitisation, which has hitherto failed to engage with 

the ethics of speaking security.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



35 
 

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