Learning from violence. Hate Literacy as a core competence for contemporary citizenship

Public debates on hate speech are often framed in terms of regulation, moderation, or prevention, positioning hostile content primarily as a pathological deviation to be removed from digital environments. This article proposes a different perspective, arguing that hate speech can be approached as a critical object of analysis for contemporary citizenship education. Building on the concept of hate literacy, the paper conceptualizes hostile online discourses as pedagogically relevant artifacts that both reflect and actively shape models of citizenship, participation, and belonging. Rather than interpreting online hostility as an automatic outcome of digital technologies, the article situates hate speech within a dynamic interplay between intentional political actors, platform infrastructures, and hegemonic cultural narratives. From this perspective, hate speech functions as a form of informal civic education, contributing to a hidden curriculum through which norms, hierarchies, and exclusions are learned and normalized. The paper outlines hate literacy as a core civic competence, understood as the ability to critically read, contextualize, and deconstruct hostile discourses by examining their discursive, technological, and political dimensions. By reframing violence and hostility as lenses through which power relations and civic subjectivities can be analyzed, the article advances a pedagogical framework that moves beyond moral condemnation toward critical engagement. The contribution concludes by discussing the implications of this approach for citizenship education in platformed societies.