Wilson Burgess in his timely letter (“Let’s not chant our way to authoritarianism,” June 23rd) responsibly identifies the current threats to liberal democracy. He identifies the nature of these threats.There is an additional threat to liberal democracy. It is the use of digital social media platforms to disseminate extreme hate speech or harm speech as distinct from legitimate free speech. There is now a politically driven weaponisation of such hate speech against vulnerable minorities, such as immigrants, promoting a toxic form of new right US-style politics in many European countries, all of the island of Ireland included.Proper debate, robustly but civilly conducted, based on fact, evidence and rational consideration, is always to be welcomed as healthy and necessary for liberal democracy, but the polemical narrative of extreme hate, of denigrating contempt and of direct or implicit incitement to lawbreaking and to civil disorder should be anathema to all responsible citizens in liberal democracies worthy of the name. Regulation needs to be suitably adapted to protect the quality of liberal democracy.The obvious concern is that European counties, in the absence of effective regulatory frameworks for the digital space, are now permitting extreme toxicity to enter into the body politic and public arena, with the obvious adverse and destructive consequences for liberal democracy when expression of extreme hate is permitted to overwhelm rationality. – Yours, etc,ANTHONY LAYNG,Ringsend Road,Dublin 4.