Thread by @docrussjackson

Free speech hypocrisy #THREAD

The Right on:

Critical Race Theory: 'Has NO place in Universities!'

Anti-Capitalism - 'Has NO place in schools!'

Pro-Palestine - 'Has NO place in Universities!'

Gender Critical feminism - 'These views MUST be heard in Universities!'

#bbcaq

Free speech is obviously extremely important. But it requires intelligence, context & nuance - not culture war rhetoric.

Would *anyone* support giving a public platform to paedophiles promoting child rape? Or terrorists promoting murder? Or neo-Nazis promoting another holocaust?

Please don't assume that I'm saying there isn't a problem with discussion of some issues. The debate around Kathleen Stock makes it crystal clear that there is: some claim she's transphobic & should be sacked, while others passionately disagree & insist her views should be heard.

I've argued previously that some powerful groups, organisations & individuals - under the cover of free speech - have a desire to legitimise dangerously abhorrent & unacceptable views - think of David Starkey & his "the whites have become black" & "so many damn blacks" comments.

I'm broadly against censorship, but legitimate limits to free speech have evolved over centuries, especially in Universities.

Too many people mistakenly believe they have a right to be as divisive, bigoted, hateful & offensive as they like, simply by claiming 'free speech!'

There IS a reticence among many to discuss certain issues, for fear of being branded a bigot. I support trans rights & abhor antisemitism, but as an academic who has read both Stock's & Prof Miller's work, I'm troubled by calls for them to be sacked for their controversial views.

Now, this does NOT mean anyone should be free to say just anything. Decent people do not tolerate explicitly bigoted views.

However, there is a BIG gray area, that requires good faith, hard work, intelligence & nuance - which are all in very short supply in our polarised times.

No doubt some people DO use free speech as an excuse to encourage & amplify deliberately offensive & divisive rhetoric, mainly in order to keep voters divided, demonising decent people as the 'intolerant authoritarian anti-free speech cancel culture mob'.

ducksoap.wordpress.com/2020/06/22/the…

VICTIM-PERPETRATOR REVERSAL:

The powerful verbalise their ‘fear’ of a dangerous ‘Other’, provoking resentment in those demonised, then use their privileged media access to describe how ‘fearful’ they feel as a result, thus encouraging & legitimising the same emotions in others.

VICTIM-PERPETRATOR REVERSAL:

1⃣Claim free speech is under threat from 'woke Leftist snowflakes'

2⃣Say something deliberately offensive

3⃣Decent people say 'don't be deliberately offensive'

4⃣Claim victim status & interpret as 'proof' that free speech IS under threat

5⃣Repeat

Free speech means the state cannot punish or disadvantage individuals for expressing opinions.

Yet a small influential group has attempted to claim the mantle of free speech to justify its opposite: expanding state control over what we can say in public.

politics.co.uk/comment/2021/0…

With the rise of the far-right, these are dangerous times.

Every far-right group across Europe & America deploys divisive rhetoric like this (below) but many with a simplistic binary understanding of free speech think it's acceptable, when in reality, it's extremely dangerous.

It's exhausting, but how we respond to grotesque 'culture war' provocations, victim-blaming, misleading conspiracy theories, or ideas that would not be out of place during the rise of the Nazi regime, requires intelligence & nuance.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1362732915654881296

Anyway, I hope we can agree that British society is already sufficiently polarised, & that with free speech comes great personal responsibility.

We all have a duty to continually interrogate our own views, & to question whether knee-jerk demonisation is an appropriate response.

Read widely & form your own opinions.

Here's a review of Kathleen Stock's controversial book 'Material Girls' by Julian Baggini, co-founder of The Philosophers' Magazine, a patron of Humanists UK, & academic director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

philosophersmag.com/essays/253-mat…

And as if by magic, this appears.

https://twitter.com/joncstone/status/1446763141736636419

Back in January 2020, following Laurence Fox's comments on #bbcqt which propelled him into being a darling of the (far) right, I wrote a short #THREAD about the phrase 'white privilege', which tried to addressed wider issue of how the left might respond.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1218913218720161793