36 No. 59 JUSTICE terrorism, takes antisemitism as the first step, as one of the deepest-rooted collective forms of hate, in order to gradually expand to hatred towards the entirety of what is today generally called Western civilization. However, the system's adjustment requires the ability to ask and analyze the following additional questions: Is the system's response severe enough and are the incriminations contained in Croatian legislation adequate? In light of the circumstances, would it not be necessary to prescribe stricter sanctions, thus making the system's response to offenses more effective, and to extend the scope of behavior incriminated under misdemeanor and criminal law? Would it not be preferable to classify and separately regulate certain hate categories (e.g. Nazism, antisemitism, Islamic fundamentalism, etc.), thus establishing them individually in the public conscience as particularly undesirable and dangerous? Such analysis exceeds the limits of this article. It is noteworthy that non-sanctioning or inadequate sanctioning of hate speech potentially creates a social climate in which racism and xenophobia are normal and ordinary occurrences. Such circumstances can, and regularly do, have grave consequences. One of the ways to prevent this is to ensure the rule of law through an adequate and efficient response of the legal system. n Daniel Benko is the managing partner and co-founder of the law firmBenko and Partners Ltd. in Zagreb. Ana Vargek is attorney at law in the law firm Benko and Partners Ltd. in Zagreb. She is a PhD student at the University of Zagreb – Faculty of Law, specializing in European Law.
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