Hate and religious symbols: insulting by provocation as a new social problem

Abstract

Summary The main purpose of this article is to analyse the medial discourse connected with new ways of presenting religious symbols and social reactions to this. Religious symbols are used by communities that want to stand out in society. The research questions consider whether these events, treated by Catholics as scandalous and offensive, could be examples of a new form of hate speech in the Polish public sphere. If so, this would involve an evolution from the language sphere to the visual sphere and, therefore, would be a crucial shift in a cultural war in our society. The diagnosis of phenomena related to events perceived as “provocations” indicates that we are dealing with a new social problem. This problem involves people asso-ciated with the Catholic Church, the police, the court, and the prosecutor’s office because the authors of initiatives are accused of offending religious feelings, which, according to Art. 196 of the Criminal Code is a crime in Poland.