Western democracies like to think of themselves as bastions of free speech. Armed with constitutions informed by classical liberal philosophies, these countries often browbeat others for their patchy commitment to freedom of expression. Yet we at inkl have been reading stories in the news that suggest a more nuanced reality exists. Even in the western world speech is perhaps less free than we might like it to be. And even more surprisingly, maybe that isn’t such a bad thing.
How does one define free speech?
From the 1948 United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “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”. This declaration, made not long after the Second World War, was designed to create more open societies with a plurality of voices. In most but not all countries this declaration has been incorporated into the constitution and protections afforded by the legal system. But in doing so most nations have also enacted laws which impose limits on the definition of free speech. These laws are in place to protect people from defamatory or hateful speech that causes personal injury (physical, emotional or reputational) and harassment.
By most measures, Western countries do appear to be doing a better job of protecting this right to free speech. The Reporters Without Borders annual World Press Freedom Index is a useful barometer for measuring free expression. According to this index, Scandinavian constitutional monarchies and the ‘Anglosphere’ democracies poll highest, while totalitarian regimes like Saudi Arabia, China, Eritrea and Syria occupy the bottom of the list for freedom of speech. Examples of curtailed speech outside the western world are easily found in the news. For example, Vietnam recently jailed social media figures, Saudi Arabia sentenced a liberal blogger to 10 years jail and 1,000 lashes. And in Bangladesh several bloggers have been killed for expressing contrarian views on politics and religion.
But while these are shocking forms of oppression that require our steadfast attention, decrying the lack of free speech is an easy point to score against such countries. In recent months we’ve noticed a growing trend towards restrictions on free speech in the West as well.
Here are three recent examples.
Losing the debating team
Right now, Britain’s universities are the frontline in a censorship battle. The powerful National Union of Students, with the support of two-thirds of British students, enforces a ‘No Platform’ policy. Under this policy individuals whose views are deemed to be offensive are denied the opportunity to speak on university campuses. Under the guise of “No Platform’, the trailblazing radical feminist Germaine Greer was turned away for her transphobic views. Similarly, the fiery secularist Maryam Namazie was spurned out of fear that she would incite violence against Muslims.The broader idea underpinning ‘No Platform’ is that universities must become ‘safe spaces’ in which people are protected from offensive people and ideas. This ‘fundamental’ right to free speech, it seems, must then be subservient to our sensibilities and sensitivity on various issues.
This is rounded upon by commentators and the media as an attempt to undermine free speech. They contend that universities of all places should be an arena for testing views and philosophies, a marketplace for ideas. According to the free speech advocates, the market imperatives of quality, supply and demand should therefore determine that good ideas triumph over bad ones. Yet, outside of academia, it is difficult guage whether righteous and cogent ideas do in fact rise to the surface.
The law and truth
Nowhere is the working definition of free speech changing faster than in America. Despite the American idealism attached to their First Amendment right, the country’s top legal enforcers are embroiled in a free-speech contest against corporations and individuals. Consider this statement: The scientific community overwhelmingly agrees that humans have caused irreversible climate change. Like it or not, your reaction to the above words is dictated by your education, postcode and political alignment. And there is no place in the world where this is a more contested statement than in the US, in part due to a culture that advocates the unbridled practice of free speech.
In March a new coalition, ‘AGs United for Clean Power’ (comprising several US Attorneys General) declared their intention to clamp down on climate change deniers who receive financial support from corporations that benefit from denying climate change. This position has been lauded as a common sense measure on one hand, and decried as a conspiracy against the constitution on the other. So, should the First Amendment provide leeway for corporations to fund individuals who obfuscate truths about the repercussions of the corporation’s business model?
Facts and opinions
Towards the end of March a controversial film called Vaxxers, was announced on the programme of the Tribeca Film Festival. The film was controversial because it argued that the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) had covered up proof exonerating disgraced British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 claim of having found a link between the Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) vaccine, and the development of childhood autism. In the lead-up to the festival, the medical establishment, assured that the science was settled, launched a scathing attack. Their argument was that the film would spread misinformation which in turn would undermine the benefits of vaccination and lead to grave collective harm for society as a whole. Ultimately, Tribeca pulled the film from the line up, but only to face a new criticism: censorship.
As this last example shows, there is also now a weight of collective response or normative acceptance being applied to this notion of free speech. Social Media has given us all voices with which to express ourselves, and ears with which to hear others. But what we’re starting to see more and more is that voices that are raised in opposition are quickly stifled – not by the state but by our own collective reasoning.
Reading the news it is impossible to miss stories about one group or another being ‘outraged’ by someone’s speech, or of individuals facing a ‘backlash’ for something they’ve said. Often one might agree with this imposition of control but what’s undeniable that within western societies although there are limits imposed by the state, and these limits are constantly being challenged and revisited, that society itself is also starting to regulate free speech. Which leads us ultimately to the question of whether free speech – in an absolutist sense – is something we even want.
Saying too much
Arguments about free speech are so fascinating because they ask us to explore the most basic of rules by which we organise ourselves as a society. Our reactions to these rules are governed in part by which end of the talking stick we find ourselves on, and partly by what we each perceive to be an acceptable tradeoff in individual liberty for the collective benefit of living in harmony.
One could perhaps argue that the plurality of voices and opinions in our society is having a positive effect on the arc of human understanding and that every debate on free speech propels us further down this path. Truth is good but it’s difficult to ascertain. Science is helpful but it can be corrupted. Diversity in views is undeniably crucial for societies to develop, but are all views equally valid? Hitherto we’ve assigned the rule of adjudicating speech to the law, but the law is a slow beast, whereas social pressure is not (though can be as overbearingly prescriptive).
There are no easy answers to the questions that these examples raise, but what is clear is that the ideal of free speech is growing increasingly complicated to practice and protect. So perhaps it falls to each of us as individuals, then, to claim responsibility for our speech and its implications, because without that we will remain stuck with imperfect external forces curtailing it for us.
Thomas Wharton is a freelance journalist and writer at inkl.
