the first hint the free speech crisis is actually an absolute speech crisis is the issues it focuses on. On university campuses, it is overwhelmingly around race and gender. On social media, the free speech axe is wielded by trolls, Islamophobes and misogynists, leading to an abuse epidemic that platforms have failed to curb. This free speech crisis movement has managed to stigmatise reasonable protest, which has existed for years without being branded as ‘silencing’, in itself an assault on free expression.
