Fenja V Ziegler

Look, here’s the thing about free speech: YES, it’s not “absolute”. Even the most hardcore free speech advocates agree that there are exceptions. Extreme case: telling e.g. Russia about UK military secrets is “just” a speech act, but it is (and should be) illegal in UK law. BUT: the point is not to keep saying “well actually, it’s not absolute!” as if this was a novel argument. This just shows you have a straw-man view of the pro-free speech side. The point is that freedom *should be the default*. We should take on a generally permissive attitude and then think carefully about—and demand strong justification for—any exceptions. That’s as opposed to a generally restrictive attitude, where we just assume that speech is always going to be policed. If you fixate on the “it’s not absolute” part, then it starts to seem normal that the police could arrest someone for telling an “offensive” joke on social media (as has now happened many many times in the UK). After all, free speech isn’t absolute! Maybe that person should’ve thought before posting! You might even find yourself taking to Twitter to defend the actions of the police in making the arrests. But arresting someone for telling a joke is not normal—or, it shouldn’t be normal in a liberal democracy where we accept that people have a wide variety of opinions, tastes, and so on. Automatically jumping to talk about the limitations of free speech (as so many people do whenever the issue is in the news) doesn’t show that you’re a sophisticated person who understands “nuance”. It shows that your thinking is completely backwards. Instead, you should be asking questions like: -“What’s the specific justification for cracking down on this speech act?” -“Is there evidence that this speech act has caused any harm, or could cause any? What would such evidence look like?” -“Is arresting someone for making a joke the start of a slippery slope that could lead to even stronger restrictions? What sort of precedent is this setting?” -“How would I feel if someone was arrested for saying something I agreed with? Do I hold any views that might at any point in future be seen as controversial enough to censor?” Probably because the issue is now seen as an unfashionable right-wing thing, a lot of journalists and academics take the default restrictive attitude rather than the default permissive one. Indeed, they spend a lot of time ridiculing the idea of free speech and those who espouse it. This is extremely unfortunate and goes totally against the fundamental core of those two professions. Good journalism and good research are 100% reliant on freedom of speech. The freedom to say things—especially if those things might upset someone—is very precious! We should ask very serious questions of anyone who wants to take it away.