Free Speech And Why It Matters

by Andrew Doyle

We are left facing that confusing and rare phenomenon: the well-intentioned authoritarian. When those who long for a fairer society are also calling for censorship, we find ourselves stranded on unfamiliar terrain. How are we meant to respond when the people who wish to deprive us of our rights sincerely believe that they are doing so for our own good?

History does not look fondly on the hubris of those who, like Galileo’s inquisitors, appoint themselves as arbiters of permissible speech and thought. Their authority is only ever contingent on the wisdom of their time. Today’s free speech sceptics are characterised by a similar tendency to mistake self-satisfaction for infallibility. If nothing else, the story of Galileo is a potent reminder of the importance of freedom of speech, and how none of us can ever be sure which heresies of today will become the certainties of tomorrow.

In my view, free speech is a principle that transcends notions of ‘left’ and ‘right’ because all forms of political discourse depend upon its existence. Yes, unpleasant people are bound to use their speech to advance reactionary ideas, but the human right that enables them to do so is precisely the same right that allows us to counter them.

Free speech is the marrow of democracy. Without it, no other liberties exist. It is detested by tyrants because it empowers their captive subjects. It is mistrusted by puritans because it is the wellspring of subversion. Unless we are able to speak our minds, we cannot innovate, or even begin to make sense of the world. As Thomas Hobbes noted, the Greeks had ‘but one word, logos, for both speech and reason; not that they thought there was no speech without reason, but no reasoning without speech’.

If our fear of free speech is that it facilitates the dissemination of bad ideas, then we have pre-emptively decided which ideas are beyond the pale. By doing so, we limit our own capacity to be challenged, and inadvertently reveal our existing prejudices.

The act of refusing to engage in discussion is often similarly misinterpreted. Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay call this ‘the fallacy of demanding to be heard’. Just as freedom of religion incorporates freedom from religion, the right to speak and listen also entails the right not to speak and listen.

Defending free speech means defending the rights of those whose speech we despise. Uncontroversial ideas require no such protection.

The majority of those who oppose the criminalisation of racist speech do so precisely because they abhor racism. They would prefer such individuals to be challenged and, if possible, shown how their prejudice is fundamentally irrational.

‘He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.’

The question we must ask ourselves is not whether we should support the speech rights of neo-Nazis, but whether we wish to entrust the state to put such strictures in place. The authoritarian regimes of the past show us that once such powers are granted, they can be injudiciously applied in ways that were never anticipated.

There is no contradiction in holding individuals in contempt for their repugnant views and simultaneously defending their right to express them.

The crowded theatre analogy is misleading because the scenario it describes is unrelated to the issue of free speech.

‘Cancel culture’ is a shorthand metaphor for a retributive method of public shaming and boycotting, often for relatively minor mistakes or unfashionable opinions, which is typically driven by social media.

The practitioners of cancel culture habitually engage in what is known as ‘gaslighting’, a term which denotes the act of flatly contradicting observable reality. They smear their targets as ‘bullies’ as a means to bully them, or cast themselves in the role of victim while they victimise others.

To set limits on speech in order to improve tolerance is like attempting to extinguish a fire with gasoline. It infantilises those who are singled out as requiring insulation from distressing ideas, undermines the principle of equality under the law, and frustrates the means by which injustices in society can be effectively overcome.

The notion that an individual’s privilege can be reasonably quantified and allotted into some kind of hierarchy is essentially unsound. There are too many variables to take on board, many of which cannot possibly be known without a comprehensive understanding of each person’s background and circumstances. Even if such a feat were possible, would there be any merit in dismissing an argument on the basis of the person who made it?

An important aspect of freedom of speech is the right not to listen. To claim that using the block function on social media is a form of censorship is akin to saying that one violates Stephen King’s free speech by not reading his novels.

An overdiagnostic culture has reframed distress and emotional pain as forms of mental illness, rather than aspects of a healthy human existence. To feel upset is not an aberration; it is a sign that we are alive.

There is nothing wrong with being offended, and it can often spur us into action when it comes to redressing injustice as we see it. That said, if the source of our offence is a general discomfort that others do not behave or speak in accordance with our own specific values, we are engaging in a kind of solipsism that is best avoided, not least because there is no end to the endeavour.

to make the leap from the natural revulsion we experience at certain alternative worldviews to actively silencing them is to surrender to the authoritarian tendency. By doing so, we degrade ourselves by subordinating our reason to baser instincts.

Without humility, we are prone to misconstruing the fallibilities of others as signifiers of an intrinsic moral deficiency, what the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks described as a ‘pathological dualism’ that divides humanity into ‘the unimpeachably good’ and ‘the irredeemably bad’

We are far better placed to know and overcome evil if we are acquainted with its essence, and the best way to achieve this is to listen and to read

the stifling of speech can have the unintended consequence of making martyrs out of those who have been silenced and enabling them to portray themselves as oppressed tellers of uncomfortable truths. It has a glamourising effect that, if anything, enhances their appeal

The protesters have effectively acted in loco parentis, infantilising their peers by judging on their behalf what forms of speech would be hurtful for them to hear.

There is considerable evidence of the ways in which various terms – e.g., ‘fascist’, ‘Nazi’, ‘racist’, ‘homophobe’, ‘transphobe’, ‘misogynist’ – have become so nebulous that their potency has been irredeemably reduced. This not only provides shelter for the very people such words would accurately describe, it also hinders our efforts to identify them in a meaningful way.

It is a great irony that the strategy of smearing people as racist without cause is only successful because we live in a country that no longer considers racism in any way valid.

Progress is only ever made when the dissenters are heard. ‘If liberty means anything at all’, wrote Orwell, ‘it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’ This is not to suggest that all forms of dissent are inherently progressive, but if we only ever expose ourselves to the received wisdom of the present, we condemn ourselves to eternal stasis.

Once artists begin tailoring their work in accordance with how they sense it will be received, their craft is bound to deteriorate.