How Free Should Speech Be?
In which we tiptoe bold lines and grey areas
Pretty free speech 🎤
On August 12th, 2022, writer Salman Rushdie was stabbed on his way to give a lecture in New York. While the motives of the wannabe killer are not officially known, it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to think that this had something to do with the fatwa called on Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses (good book, by the way).
He is far from the first person being attacked for a critical stance on religions and/or religious doctrines.
Commenters in the West (what an imperialistic, arrogant, and misguided term) were quick to voice their horror - rightfully so - and pronounce that here, in that fabled (hah) West, we have something called free speech. After all, the UN says so:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
- United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Do we have such free speech? Do we really?
On the surface of it, yes, we can say anything. In reality, there are things we can’t say. Depending on which country you’re in (even in that mythical West) insulting a monarch can get you in trouble. Not too long ago, insulting the king of the Netherlands could get you 5 years in prison. Don’t worry, they reduced the sentence to 4 months. 🤦 Or do you deny the Holocaust? You’re in trouble. (Note: this is an example; the Holocaust is a black stain on human history that should never be forgotten.)
Social media made free speech both more expressive and more challenging. Do you have an opinion on a sensitive topic that deviates from the party line? Unleash the horde. That horde can come from both the left and the right, so keep your eyes open. And above all, watch your words.
My personal ideas and convictions align most with the left horde, but anytime group-think takes over, I get worried, no matter which direction the horde comes from. At that point, the group-think stage, people start to parrot unfounded or factually wrong statements and leave reason at the door. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for emotion; I think the role and relevance of emotions in our daily lives and experiences are both downplayed and underestimated. However, when someone kicks reason to the curb, jams their fingers in their ears, and runs at you while chanting some inane slogan, it’s hard to have a meaningful conversation.
Yes, we have free speech, but don’t talk about [insert list of exceptions]. Perhaps it’s more accurate to call it ‘pretty’ free speech.
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
- George Orwell
Hate speech & mis-/disinformation 🗯️
While I consider myself a proponent of unfettered free speech, there are problem cases that give me pause.
I draw a firm, bold line at physical violence. The issue is that I don’t really know where that line intersects with the free speech line.
Consider hate speech, or, per the Cambridge Dictionary:
Public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.
Should someone be able to express their opinion, no matter how distasteful? Free speech me is inclined to say yes. But what if words lead to violence? Especially populists are good at manipulating the anger and fear of a group of people and (implicitly) pointing it at their chosen target. All it takes is one twisted mind to pick up a gun or knife or baseball bat and do something stupid.
Problem 1: we can only know after the fact whether or not a speech/opinion has led to physical violence. Even then, the causal effect can be hard to ascertain. Unless they’re stupid enough to explicitly call for violence, speakers can often wash their hands in feigned innocence.
Problem 2: people can use anyone’s words to justify their violence. Our all-too-human homicidal streak is simply too good at coming up with rationalizations for our ways, no matter how despicable they are.
Also, physical violence is far from the only form of violence people can face. If, even without someone lifting a finger at you, you are constantly belittled, made to feel worthless, stigmatized, and so on, the cost can be heavy.
Where do we draw the line then? I don’t know. Let me know what you think.
Another situation that makes me wonder about the limits to free speech is unintentional misinformation, or, even worse, intentional disinformation.
Vaccines are mind-control devices from a cabal of evil billionaires. Juicing cures cancer. I’m sure you can come up with countless other examples.
People have the right to say those things. Free speech doesn’t have to mean smart speech.
“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.”
- Oscar Wilde
But what if those words convince others to forego a vaccine, get infected, infect other people, and cause major illness in a vulnerable person? Or what if someone chooses not to have conventional cancer therapy but rely on (probably expensive) special juices and healing crystals (probably peddled with a brochure that has ‘healing energy’ and ‘quantum something’ in there)? In those cases, free speech-supported spreading of mis-/disinformation has caused a lot of actual physical harm.
Part of this, I think, involves personal responsibility. Think about the stuff you read/hear. Be aware that we all have our biases. Don’t trust random people on the internet. Except me. (Just kidding, be critical of me too.)
Part of it is also a societal responsibility. Why are we not teaching critical thinking in our schools? Why are we not showing kids how to assess the quality of information? These two things are probably some of the most underrated tools for general harm reduction.
“Too many adults wish to 'protect' teenagers when they should be stimulating them to read of life as it is lived.”
- Margaret Edwards
So, I’m a strong proponent of free speech, even when it’s uncomfortable. If only that speech would be more thoughtful in our world of snippets and soundbites, of clicks and likes.
Hey, now that I think about it, like and share this newsletter entry, subscribe if you haven’t - it helps me mess with Substack’s engagement algorithms. 😉
Gail mentioned the slippery slope. But it’s not like we can’t build a berm. Speech with sufficient potential to cause violence should be limited. Yes, those being violent should be persecuted, but those who even accidentally say something that could be reasonably expected to have a sufficient chance of harm as a result should also be on the hook.
It’s hard where we need to balance “safety first” (so, no potential chance at all of violence because of what someone said) with “free speech.” A letter to one’s representative that’s shared with no others might just get a form-letter response, and no consideration otherwise. In that case, you might need to rile up some others to elicit the change you seek. But if it makes sense that someone that heard you would think it appropriate to go camp out in front of a justice’s house, well, you might have to answer for that.
I’m not sure if we can have a “violence is always wrong” rule. Maybe we kinda do, other than in self-defense (and if someone’s not complying with law enforcement)? It’d kinda be a bother to always have to state explicitly when complaining about something that any response of violence is completely out of the question. Aren’t we at least that smart?
Gunnar had an Orwell quote that got me thinking. I do think slander is always wrong. But I also think people should be able to talk about hearsay, about seeing someone where they weren’t expecting them and taking a guess at why they were there. But when someone unfairly starts getting discredited, that kind of annoys me, and I think those perpetrating the rumor should at least have to eat some humble pie. Also, while liberty would be to be able to tell anyone anything – and I think our elected officials should have to take all of it – I think if you’re letting someone else have it and they say “stop,” well, if you don’t stop, shouldn’t that be classified as verbal assault or something?
And back to how Gunnar kinda started the article with the story of the attack on Salman Rushdie, yes, our courts sit back quite a bit on what people say, but vigilante justice – violent or otherwise – is real. I would think we as a free-speech-loving society should be less tolerant of the attacks on those sharing than on those sharing. How do we evolve societally without the free expression of opinion?
[I look forward to the feedback to what I just shared. Please help me be less wrong.]
This is a great reflection. Limiting free speech could be a slippery slope. Yet can we not be intelligent enough to distinguish between an opinion we own and aggressively trying to influence others. I was very struck with the personal responsibility bit. For example every one of those involved in the US Capitol riot is personally responsible in my mind. Yes trump incited and invited but each person executed according to their values and beliefs and intentions. Not all of them bad or evil. But their own.