Trigger Warning: Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?. Mick Hume
attacked for what is said; or ‘YOU-Can’t-Say-That!’ if the attack is on who said it. Or possibly, both.
But no, no, we must understand, those demanding restrictions on what others can say today are not against free speech. They are simply in favour of freedom from words that may upset or do harm. Who could disagree with such humane sentiments or fail to empathise with those facing what they deem offensive, harmful speech?
You don’t have to be a Bambi-shooting bigot to defend unfettered free speech. Quite the opposite. Free speech is the lifeblood of any modern, liberal-minded society. It follows that any attempt to restrict free speech, however worthy the case might sound, imperils a liberty that has helped to make all our other rights possible.
In today’s intellectual climate it can sometimes seem as if offending others is the worst offence of all. What are presented as progressive attempts to protect people from harmful words have become coded ways to insist that there is too much freedom of expression. It might sound a nice idea to live in a warm, womblike world of inoffensive insipidity. The problem is that to demand the right not to be offended is to deny everybody’s freedom to offend against the accepted ethics and opinions of the age. And without that subversive freedom to question the unquestionable – the right to be offensive – society might never have advanced to a point where anti-racism or LGBT rights became acceptable subjects for public debate in the first place.
Never mind the lip service paid to it ‘in principle’ by the free-speech fraudsters today. Underlying attitudes to that freedom have not simply altered in recent times. They have been turned on their head.
We are living in the age of the reverse-Voltaires. The revolutionary writer François-Marie Arouet, known by his pen name Voltaire, was a pioneer of free speech in eighteenth-century Enlightenment France. Voltaire is credited with one of the great historical sayings on the subject: ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ (In fact those words that resound down the years were not written by Voltaire, but by his biographer, Evelyn Beatrice Hall. More than a century after his death, she pithily captured the spirit of his writings for an English-speaking audience.)5
Voltaire’s principle is a clear statement of the attitude to tolerance and free speech that characterised the Enlightenment. Some might prefer the updated version credited to Oscar Wilde – ‘I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself’ – though the spirit remains much the same. It recognises that free speech is something more than a personal possession, something bigger than a personal opinion. Free speech is too important to be restricted, however it might be used and abused. It is a test of any free society that, with Voltaire, we allow open debate and freedom for the thought that we disagree with or even detest.
Now, however, we have the rise of the reverse-Voltaires. The cri de coeur of today’s hardcore offence-takers turns his principle inside out: ‘I know I’ll detest and be offended by what you say, and I will defend to the end of free speech my right to stop you saying it.’ The reverse-Voltaires do not wish to dispute ideas or arguments that offend them. They would deny the other person’s right to say it in the first place.*
For the reverse-Voltaires, nothing can be more important than their personal emotions, nothing is bigger than their ego or identity. The only test of whether something should be allowed is how it makes them feel (and most important, how it makes them feel about themselves). Reverse-Voltaires cannot tolerate having their opinions challenged, prejudices questioned, self-image disrespected or toes stepped on. The result is a demand to limit free speech in the name of their right to be protected from words.
The reverse-Voltaires are as intolerant of dissent as any old-time religionists. But where the priests of yore based their intolerance on the supposedly objective authority of a supreme God above, today’s would-be censors base theirs on the subjective wishes of their personal idol within. They are often self-regarding narcissists; except that where Narcissus fell in love with his placidly beautiful image reflected in a pool of water, they are in love with their angry image of permanently outraged self-righteousness, reflected in the murky pool of social media.
The champion of free speech Voltaire said (in his own words this time): ‘Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.’ The mantra of the reverse-Voltaires is more like: ‘Think of yourself and don’t let others enjoy the privilege of thinking any differently.’
The rise of the reverse-Voltaires, who insist on their right to stop the speech of others, marks a counter-revolution in Western attitudes to free speech.
In the next chapter, we take a whistle-stop tour of the history of how free speech was won in the West. Until a few hundred years ago intolerance was the accepted orthodoxy of the ruling elites in a straitjacketed European society. The belief in free speech first emerged in modern Europe and then America not as an abstract ideal, but as the expression of a newly envisioned freedom in society.
Freedom of speech was conceived as a way for individuals, groups and entire nations to defend their interests against overbearing political or religious authority. It was not only about people having the right to express themselves. It was also about exposing the use and abuse of power, and holding the powerful to account.
That was why the demand for free speech and a free press was at the heart of the movements for democratic government first in England, then in America, then continental Europe. It was why free speech was spoken of in terms of a battlefield defence – as a ‘bulwark’ or a ‘fortress’ in the fight against tyranny. Free speech became the weapon that men (and later, women) would wield to defy and even to help defeat the authoritarian power of states.
That was then. This is now – a time when, rather than embracing the demand for free speech as a defence against the power of the state, many demand that the authorities use their powers to suppress the ‘offensive’ or ‘harmful’ speech of other people. Voltaire the free-speaking revolutionary has been replaced by reverse-Voltaire, the radical crusader against excess of freedom. Where once the danger was seen as the state’s control of speech, now free speech running wild is the threat proclaimed.
How have we come to this? It is not that free speech has really declined in importance. Freedom of expression remains the most important of freedoms, the voice of a free society.
The real change is one of perceptions. Not just in what we think of words, but in what we think of one another. Attitudes to free speech almost always reflect our attitudes to people, and how much freedom we believe they should have. The growing mistrust of free speech partly reflects the declining faith we hold in humanity. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre suggested that hell is other people. To update Sartre for today, some fashionably misanthropic philosopher might declare that hell is other people’s opinions.
These changes in attitude towards words and one another are underpinned by wider cultural shifts that are beyond the scope of an argument about free speech. The consequences, however, should be clear enough. In Anglo-American society today a therapeutic concern with protecting emotions is often seen as more important than a clash of ideas. People are perceived and often perceive themselves as vulnerable, capable of being either harmed or incited to harm others by words alone. The view of humanity as vulnerable, thin-skinned and ultra-sensitive makes free speech appear more dangerous today. In the twenty-first century you can draw moral authority from your status not only as an old-fashioned warrior or a leader, but more often from claiming public recognition as a victim. That elevation of vulnerability into a virtue has clear implications for attitudes towards the liberty of others to indulge in offensive speech.
As people become more wary of one another, free speech has become something to fear, an unpredictable spark that could start a conflagration. The worries about too many words roaming around freely without constraint is really a fear of people being allowed to say and hear what they choose without the guiding hand of a parental figure or policeman.
The reverse-Voltaires are demanding the right to be cocooned against the discomfort caused by other people’s