Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Considering Free Speech

There is a subject that has been troubling me. I won't pretend the 21st century is unique in facing illiberal political movements, but I live in this historic moment and feel compelled to note the links between a harder line left and the new right and the difficulty liberal democracies may be facing moving into the future. This post is partially spurred on the German election results, where the AfD gained significantly in the parliament. There have been moments in modern history where polarization in between extremes fractures the polity and wrecks the centre.

In the face of this how do liberal societies defend themselves from those who would use their principles to undermine them?

Today I want to narrow today's topic to the freedom of speech. A liberal, at core, would  not like to limit people's speech. The liberal position says that we need strong justification to curtail anyone's right. Libel laws or harmful speech (fire in the theatre) are obvious restrictions. For classical liberals restrictions are difficult decisions and they prefer to err on the side of speech.

Speech works if we can rely on some basic ground rules. However, the evidence abounds that lies and mischaracterizations spread like wild fire while the truth plods along. Liberal ideals are undone by the most basic human instincts, instincts which are all the easier to embrace in the digital sphere. Enter the era of "fake news." Even beyond the political, lies or misleading headlines stand at equal heights of fact. People are increasingly unable to filter information meaningfully. Look no further than the misinformation on vaccines to see how muddled and mired we are.

As a liberal-minded person I have to concede my discomfort with these sources of "information" or confirmation bias, but I'm not at all comfortable with interfering with these forms of speech.

Then there is hate speech. Here two sides of my thinking war with one another. Speech matters. It shapes thinking and attitudes. Calls for violence are illegal, and I think most can agree are reasonable restrictions for public speech. However, calls for violence are common on the internet and this speech is not curtailed in any substantial way. The debate then goes to what constitutes hate speech. Most people are canny enough to mask their racist rhetoric, or cloak it in policy language. Distrust of Muslims is cloaked in anti-refugee, terrorism, and geopolitics. Anti-black racism is buried in conversations on crime, poverty, and urban culture broadly. the coarse dialog (or rants) of the internet now infect our real world life. Things not uttered in 'polite society' are now bellowed proudly.

Liberalism is a modernist idea and relies on reason, rationalism, and truth. How does it operate in a world where half-truths and lies rule, or at least easily remain on par?

The current debate of free speech is rather odious, in my opinion. Progressive voices seek to silence certain forms of speech deemed inappropriate. It has a streak I find deeply troubling. Protest to disrupt speakers, regulating the use of language, and the bevy of terms to police language seem to belittle real oppression for the sake of bourgeoisie sensitivities of the intelligentsia. To be clear, I am not joining the ranks complaining about all silly university antics.

The right has corrupted free speech as a notion to its own purposes. In reaction to the left they now claim free speech. However, free speech is increasingly used as coded language for expressing racist, bigoted opinions free of consequences.

the last few years has helped to demonstrate to me the power of language. Leaving some to routine abuse by those trying to assert historic dominance makes me uneasy. That said I'm not sure I'd comfortable regulating speech. But speech can be used to undermine a liberal society. Critics may answer the solution is more speech, but I fear there are growing indications that those that seek to distort our polities are fighting with guns while liberals only have knives. This thought is one that worries me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What was intended by you to be a thoughtful discussion on free speech chills me to the bone, quite frankly. OT, you are advocating nothing less than the end of our traditional conception of free speech with these our statements:

- Most people are canny enough to mask their racist rhetoric, or cloak it in policy language.

- Distrust of Muslims is cloaked in anti-refugee, terrorism, and geopolitics.

- Anti-black racism is buried in conversations on crime, poverty, and urban culture broadly.

- [T]he coarse dialog (or rants) of the internet now infect our real world life.

Make no mistake, the AfD is Chancellor Merkel’s Frankenstein monster – by shutting down debate on refugees in German, she empowered a once fringe party. The policy of admitted refugees to Germany was a political policy that it is both legitimate to debate and to legitimate to disagree with.

When the centre eschews debate on issues, marginal parties will be empowered (we learned that over 15 years in Austria).

The question of our age, is how one legitimately disagrees with prevailing orthodoxy on many political issues? Your answer is that we can’t. The Left will decide the boundaries of discourse and delegitimise any discussion outside of the boundaries that the Left defines. A canny move, the Left sees the best way to win an argument is prevent the opponent from speaking.

Here is my position, our traditional conception of free speech has as its boundary insult vs incite. I may not incite violent or illegal acts, but it is my right to insult you, your policies, ideologies, religion, beliefs, etc. And vice versa.

Voltaire famously said “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.”

Do you agree?

SJL said...

I would suggest the answer to most of your questions can be found in the text you're commenting on. I'd also ask that you read what I write more carefully before commenting, because unless I'm mistaken, you've attributed several ideas here that I did not argue for.