ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 describes the context and the particularities of the Czech and Slovak Republics through the analysis of their shared and briefly separated political and legal history. The communist regime which ruled for more than 40 years in Czechoslovakia left a unique footprint on the appreciation of the right to free speech, understanding protection of (mainly ethnic and national) minorities and defying public goods in relation to hate speech regulation. In this chapter a brief historical study of speech regulation shows that the origins of hate speech regulation can be found in the defamation clauses and more recent extremism regulation because of the harm it produces. The extremist framework is used to combat ‘the enemies of democracy.’ However, this chapter narrates that in order to do that a proper understanding of democracy and the rule of law is needed. In Slovakia, this process has been hampered by the authoritarian regime in the first years of democracy whereas in the Czech Republic the democratic institutions adopted a more militant approach to defend democracy and its values, including human rights.
