If you haven't read Nick Cohen's excellent book on free speech and censorship, you should. And if you think we live in a golden age of free speech, thanks to social media and the internet, you're mistaken.
Most people claim they are in a favour of free speech in the same way they might be in favour of taking regular exercise, without ever going for a run. It's a nice idea, in theory; in practise there are 101 reasons why you never actually go lace up those trainers. The weather is too hot, too cold, too windy, too muggy, your shorts are in the wash, you don't have any shorts, and you don't have to time to buy some new ones.
The truth is most people's definition of free speech comes with caveats and get-out clauses. Of course there is no such thing as absolute free speech, you don't have the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre even if the show is a new musical by Ben Elton and in many ways you are performing a public service. You also don't have the right to accuse people of serious crimes without evidence, unless your name is Tom Watson although he was slandering the dead.
There are limits, but if you genuinely believe in free speech you ought to favour setting those limits at as generously as possible. John Stuart Mill's proposed that we should allow free speech unless someone was clearly inciting a crime; otherwise anything goes. The American constitution's First Amendment embodies that principle, where a freedom of speech is defined as fundamental right of citizens.
Unfortunately in Britain, thanks to our absurd libel laws and the rise of the offence culture, we no longer seem to care about freedom of speech. Germaine Greer has recently been prevented from speaking at the Cardiff Student Union, because her views may offend transgender people. She joins a long list of individuals prevented from speaking or expressing themselves in public forums because they may offend a minority group. In this case it was transgender people, but a month ago an art exhibition in Central London was forced to remove an exhibit by the Met Police because it might antagonise Islamist groups. The Met said they would have to provide additional security and would bill the gallery for the cost. Unable to meet the costs, the gallery withdrew the piece- this was from an exhibition celebrating Middle Eastern artists, many women, many from brutally repressive states such as Iran.
Now why does all of this matter? Shouldn't we avoid causing unnecessary offence? When the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists were murdered for portraying the Prophet Mohammed it was surprising just how many people blamed the victims. As a friend of mine commented, who knew there could be so many points of view about whether someone deserved to be killed for drawing a cartoon. In Paris, the religious bigots used guns to curtail free expression, in British universities student bigots use the concept of 'no platform', the end result is the same.
There is a clear choice to be made, either you want to live in a free society where people can express themselves or you don't. If you think that the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in some way provoked their deaths, putting to one side that the vast majority of their cartoons depicted Catholics and the National Front, then you don't believe in free speech. If you think that anyone should be prevented from speaking in a debate because their views are deemed by self-appointed moral guardians as 'offensive', then you also don't believe in free speech. Sometimes it really is that simple, pick a side.
I think there's a lot of confusion these days, born of Western liberal guilt, which makes people who do and should know better wary of standing up for a moral principle. The endless diet of Nazi documentaries on television is partially to blame; those who want to take away our freedoms don't always wear a uniform to tell you they are fascist or call themselves such. But anyone who wants to ban someone from speaking, exhibiting a work of art, publishing a book, performing a play, blogging, or writing a newspaper article is an enemy of freedom. Freedom of expression isn't the freedom to agree; it's freedom, no ifs, buts, safe spaces, police-vetted, community leader endorsed, NUS backed, lobby group supported, politician approved, libel lawyer cleared version of freedom. This is censorship.
Every time we give up freedom in favour of censorship, it emboldens the enemies of freedom and there are many enemies of freedom who would rather not be exposed to public scrutiny. The Hacked Off Campaign might have seemed worthy, after all don't celebrities have a right to privacy? But the phone-hacking journalists broke the law and some of the guilty parties faced justice. Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks were as we all know were completely innocent and the mass deletion of millions of News of the World emails during the period phones were hacked was a complete coincidence. Nonetheless, justice however imperfect was done. Hacked Off wasn't satisfied, they wanted state regulation of the press. Take a moment and ask yourself which countries have direct state regulation of the press and which don't. Where would you rather live?
Without free and open debate, how can be sure of anything, how can we improve as a society without the open exchange of ideas? Freedom of an expression may be messy, it may be ugly, it may hurt people's feelings but its benefits vastly outweigh the alternatives. But you should support free speech not just on a calculation of positives and negatives. Even if censorship was conducted by a benign and wise authority who acted only for the public good it would still be wrong. Even if you could prove that national security, social harmony and prosperity were enhanced in such as system it would be wrong because free speech is what elevates us from the role of dumb animals. Freedom is what makes us truly human.
