But the threats to free speech are always changing. Today, free speech is not threatened by jackbooted state censorship. The more insidious threat comes from cultural crusaders for conformism, whose slogan is ‘You Can’t Say That!’
We are witnessing a loss of faith in freedom of speech and the ability of people to handle uncomfortable words or images. It has become the fashion not only to declare yourself offended by what somebody else says, but also to use the ‘offence card’ to demand that they be prevented from – and possibly punished for – saying it.
Free speech is under siege from three main enemies in the modern age.
First, there are the official censors in government and the courts who want to control offensive and inflammatory speech. In the UK and Europe they are using hate speech laws to convict thousands every year of speech crimes. In Britain, where the police seem happier patrolling tweets than the streets, more people are now being arrested and prosecuted for what they say or think than at any time since the 18th century.
Second, there are the increasingly influential unofficial censors, the witch-hunting twittermobs and online petitioners pursuing everybody whose views are not to their taste. Often foremost among them have been the student officials and activists seeking to ‘No Platform’ anybody, feminist or funnyman, who might make a student feel ‘uncomfortable’.
The third enemy is self-censorship. Unsure of which opinions are now acceptable or even which words they are permitted to use, many fight shy of expressing views that might fall outside the mainstream. Those whose words stray from the straight and increasingly narrow are often quick to apologise at the first sign of a wagging finger.
This new alliance against free speech is not only active in the traditional political sphere. It is invading areas which might once have been thought of as off-limits for censorship, from the internet to the university campus, football stadium and comedy clubs.
The notion of defending free speech for, say, tabloid hacks, vulgar internet ‘trolls’ or uncouth sports fans would horrify many a British civil liberties lobbyist (emphasis on ‘civil’, as in well-mannered, rather than liberties, as in free-for-all).
Yet there are important reasons in principle and practice why we need to defend free speech for all. A universal liberty cannot be divided. Once we allow free speech to be questioned for some then what should be a right instead becomes a privilege, to be doled out from above like charity to those deemed deserving.
And when it comes to ‘selective’ censorship, one thing always leads to another.
One person’s ‘hate speech’ is another’s passionate belief. As some university campaigners have discovered to their consternation, if you seek to No Platform those whose views you find offensive, don’t be surprised if somebody does the same thing to you. Those who live by the ban can perish by it, too.
Should there really be no limits? Is it possible to draw a firm line between offensive speech and criminal offences? My answer is yes, once we are clear what we mean by free speech as encompassing all forms of expression from ideas and opinions, through insults and invective, to jokes or mindless jabber.
It might be tempting to imagine we can solve a problem by locking up Islamic extremists such as Anjem Choudary, recently jailed for five years for what he said rather than anything he did. But in practice, such simple authoritarian solutions won’t work. Trying to defend freedom by banning its enemies, to uphold our belief in free speech by censoring those who disagree, is worse than useless and can only add credence to their cause. What we need to do is to fight them on the intellectual and political beaches. Free speech is the potential solution, not the problem.
Defending unfettered free speech often means having to stand up for the rights of some unattractive types whose views we don’t want to hear. But as the author George Orwell put it, in his 1945 preface to Animal Farm: ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’.
In the end, it is only those ideas deemed offensive or extreme that need defending – the mainstream and mundane can look after itself. Nobody ever tried to ban a book for being too boring.
Free speech is not the easy option. But there is always one worse, and that is the opposite. We need more free speech rather than less. Including, like Socrates, the right to say the ‘wrong’ thing.
Mick Hume will discuss the issues he raises in Trigger Warning at the Opera House on 1 October at 6.30 pm, following which there will be a panel discussion chaired by JEP Editor Andy Sibcy and featuring Oliver Bullough, Claire de Than, Simon de Bruxelles, Bram Wanrooij and Gavin Ashenden.
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