Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD

The level of debate around the controversial issue of “free speech” following the announcement of Elon Musk's intention to buy @Twitter, just reinforces the importance of considered, well-informed, & intelligent opinions, backed up by historical & contemporary evidence.

'Free speech isn’t a norm, but a slogan: a label each of us applies to language & conventions we approve of. People complaining about threats to free speech sometimes don’t like the way new norms & voices are challenging their own.' - Fara Dabhoiwala.

theguardian.com/books/2020/dec…

This thread is edited from Fara Dabhoiwala's (@fdabhoi) review of the book 'The Free Speech Wars: How Did We Get Here and Why Does It Matter?', by Charlotte Lydia Riley, printed in the @Guardian in December 2020 (link above).

manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526151162/

Fara starts by saying that precisely what free speech means has been controversial for about 400 years, & claims our modern concept of it began as a radical Protestant argument around punishing Christians for arguing about dogma & worship, as ultimately only God knew the answers.

After 1700, with the advent of mass politics & mass media, “freedom of speech” & “liberty of the press” turned into political catchphrases, eagerly deployed by muck-raking journalists & government critics. But they were phrases without any settled meaning or legal substance.

Fara points out that early 18th-century politicians who loved to trumpet “free speech” while in opposition invariably found ways of restraining or corrupting the press as soon as they gained power.

Nonetheless it grew to be a supremely popular ideal, which in due course made its way into national & international law. In the hundreds of written constitutions drafted around the world between 1776 & 1850, press liberty became arguably the most commonly enumerated right of all.

Since 1948, freedom of speech & expression have been guaranteed to all the world’s peoples by the UN declaration of human rights.

Though the British have always prided themselves on defending free speech, they have never agreed on its meaning - & still don't.

“I am well acquainted with all the arguments… which claim that it cannot exist, & the arguments which claim it ought not to. I answer simply that they don’t convince me… if liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” - Orwell.

Fara goes on to claim (correctly imho) that in recent years, that sentiment has been championed by many commentators who see themselves, like Orwell, as upholding liberty & 'common sense' against the dangerous tides of fashionable nonsense.

Toby Young's controversial Free Speech Union, for instance, whose leading lights include Douglas Murray & Nigel Biggar, (wrongly imho) believe “free speech is the bedrock on which all our other freedoms rest, yet it is currently in greater peril than at any time since the WWII”.

Thieir claim is that the threat comes not from totalitarianism or Govt censorship, but from “digital outrage mobs on social media”, student “speech codes”, university “no-platforming”, & the “trans orthodoxy”.

Imho, this is unhelpful, simplistic & divisive culture war rhetoric.

Charlotte Lydia Riley begins with a bracing takedown of Orwell’s assertions. It’s “not, strictly, accurate” to claim that “tolerance & decency are deeply rooted in England”, nor that British civilisation had for hundreds of years been “founded on… freedom of thought & speech”.

Apart from anything else “there was no free speech in the British empire for most of its subjects”. As for his rants against people for adopting “right-thinking” orthodoxies & “self-censoring” their speech as a result, “Orwell was frequently antisemitic, racist & misogynistic.”

Though Riley herself contributes only an introduction to the collection, it maps out the book’s main themes & important questions we're still wrestling with: who gets to exercise free speech & who doesn’t? What happens when powerful voices are challenged?

How & why has free speech been “weaponised” in various contemporary debates? What is really happening in universities & on the internet, “the new wild west of free speech”?

The 22 chapters are brief, accessible & fascinating. A good introduction to thinking about free speech.

Most reject the classic liberal presumption that society consists of autonomous individuals, whose beliefs are made up of abstract notions they rationally assemble, choosing freely from a neutral marketplace of ideas where all propositions are always given a fair & equal hearing.

Communication should not always be regarded as distinct from, & less potent than, other behaviours. They explore the messiness, social inequities, & inherent contradictions of how we collectively think about, & clash over, our definitions of speech, action, rules & identities.

But each contributor has a different focus. The book is not an academic treatise, but a guide for the interested general reader who, surveying this cultural minefield, would like “to understand the shape of the terrain, & to defend themselves & aid others where needed”.

Andrew Phemister uses the history of the first “boycott”, in the 1880s, to show that the right to free speech is usually “not a question of who can speak, but who is obeyed”.

Sam Popowich delves into the room-booking policies of US public libraries, to show how their staffs have come to be divided about the notion of “intellectual freedom” and the supposed neutrality of public spaces.

Emma Harvey & Edson Burton, who work in a community arts centre, describe what it’s like to reluctantly arbitrate between “the competing truth claims of equalities groups”.

Omar Khan explains why definitions and challenges to racist speech should not focus primarily on personal intent, but on the structures that perpetuate racial stereotypes and inequalities.

Several authors bravely report back from dank corners of the internet, on “alt-right” ideologies, the Red Pill and “manosphere” communities, the world of online political fandom and the structural biases of social media platforms.

Other essays spotlights University campus speech politics – for example, what it was like to be the archaeologist who suddenly “came under concerted attack” for adding a brief “content warning” to the reading list of his course on the forensics of genocide and modern warfare.

Fara says it’s somewhat surprising to find only a single brief reference to John Stuart Mill, & none at all to contemporary theorists such as Catharine A MacKinnon, Jeremy Waldron or William Davies, whose arguments would buttress many of the claims made in the book.

While particular particular flashpoints change over time, the underlying cultural divisions surrounding free speech go back a very long way.

More than 25 years ago, the brilliant critic Stanley Fish wrote There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech: And It’s a Good Thing, Too (1994).

There is a really important lesson from Fish for everyone on the Left & everyone who considers themselves progressive, who maintained that, though “free speech” was a meaningless catchphrase, it nonetheless remained a supremely powerful rhetorical weapon.

Although speech could never really be free, he urged that one should always claim to stand for it – if not, your political opponents will inevitably grab the rhetorical high ground & say “we’re for free speech & you are for censorship & ideological tyranny”.

Clear?

The Free Speech Wars purveys the same message, simplified & updated for our own time. To understand the culture war & why so many politicians & commentators bang on about “censorship”, “cancel culture”, “no-platforming”, “safe spaces” & the rest, it’s an excellent place to start.

Finally, Historian Professor Fara Dabhoiwala, on whose review this thread is based, made an excellent series for @BBCRadio4 in 2017: The Invention of Free Speech, which explored the origins of freedom of speech, with extracts from key historic flashpoints.
bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/b…

Here's another much more succinct #thread on free speech in the context of the current culture war.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1491047344313307137?t=ZU8yTE1gsVr9jFLly26oSQ&s=19

Earlier, I mentioned John Stuart Mill - here's a very brief primer thread on some of his salient points about free speech.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1363282573791817730?t=ZU8yTE1gsVr9jFLly26oSQ&s=19

While not explicitly about free speech, this #THREAD focuses on another volatile & divisive area too often devoid of nuance: #patriotism & #nationalism - like free speech, hotly contested concepts mobilised in a culture war that imho, the Left is losing.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1516338819208990722?s=20&t=_AhoM_MZ8qkV6lSwa01lVQ

More on free speech:

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1519356885673156608?s=20&t=EM5BbtO3pBfcFvF6HUr5vw