The notion of ‘hate crime’ is well-known across North America, Europe, and other parts of the Western World. Hate crimes are offenses recognised to be related to a particular aspect of the victim’s identity—her ‘race’, skin color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, sexual identity, gender, or a disability she might have. Hate crime laws have been established which enhance the penalties of convicted offenders compared with otherwise motivated. This chapter focuses on the significance of social movement activism in framing hate crime as a specific social problem needing to be recognised under criminal law. The significance of hate crime laws for a cultural politics—the construction of a counternarrative against the attitudes and values in which hate crime is predicated—is also considered.