Freedom of speech and the right of response
Many countries guarantee freedom of speech as core essential parts of their democratic process. We all like to think that we agree with that basic premise, yet when pushed we all have speech that we find problematic and want supressed. Be it far right, far left, radical extremism or just pure hate speech it is hard to argue for the right of people to be allowed to say such things, and it is something which I am constantly grappling with. On the one hand it is very easy, and clear, to see that certain speech is harmful to groups and individuals, and that to vocalise those ideas causes intrinsic harm to people within certain demographics. On the other, there is a slippery slope that if you ban or restrict certain types of speech this was comes repression on all. This is where the law and the right of response come in, and is fundamentally at the heart of the pushback against hate speech.
During my first spell at university the far right responded vocally to 9/11 on campus, and the student union made a decision in conjunction with the university to no platform certain far right parties and radial groups for fear of indoctrination of students. This was in the pre-social media age where the full power of the internet had not yet been unleashed, so these no platforming decisions were far more impactful than they would be today. I agreed with the decision, and would do so again, as there are certain ideas and philosophies that are simply too harmful to be validated by universities and other organisations promoting themselves as places of learning.
The flip side in 2019 was the arrival of Turning Point UK at Nottingham Trent, where they had booked a private space in the main campus building for one of their events. There was uproar from students and staff, yet in the social media age it was impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. No platforming looses its sting when you can simply go on line and look at the seductive videos and content being produced by groups that seek to radicalise and alienate those who already feel disenfranchised by the pace of societal change.
And there comes the rub. The freedom to produce such content is intrinsic in the democratic process, yet at the same time those content creators seek only to carve out a narrow niche of rights for their audience to the exclusion of many others. Hate speech often narrows the definition of rights, seeks to embed and enmesh a halcyon ideal of what rights should be, and that those who have gained rights are in fact tainted and not deserving of them. This is the crux of what makes this freedom of speech so powerful to those on the margins, that they buy into this idea that if only those recently empowered groups were taken down a peg or two then the world would be set to rights and they would be kings once again.
Women, LGBTQI+ folk, people of colour, single mothers, refugees, and many others find themselves on the receiving end of such vitriol because they have sought to break the stranglehold of white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant males on the leavers of power. Privilege is not a cake to be sliced up, rather it is a concept that once broken down opens up the doors to empowering all of society. Those who have been disposed in ages past to entrench certain privileges are only asking for equality and equity, which is seen as such an intrinsic threat by those who cling to it. In such a grasping death hold of privilege hate speech and the use of freedom of speech to toss those who seek rights aside becomes ever more shrill and vitriolic.
Fighting this takes more than laws and the judicial process. It takes a concerted effort to counter lies, misinformation, and outright attacks on civil liberties. The deep irony is that the push back against rights is a many head hydra where by you counter one argument and a dozen more spring forth. Rights defenders only have so much energy and hours in the day, and it is Sisyphean task to counter every person who puts forth hate speech on the internet.
This becomes doubly difficult when the pushback against rights becomes subtle and has a veneer of reasonableness glossed over it. When ideas are couched in a soft velvet glove, when the seductive apple hangs low ready for plucking, why not simply reach out and take it? The allure of certain ideas, that rights groups have gone to far, that society must be a certain way, that the past was infinitely better, are far easier sells than telling someone that their privilege is actively hurting and alienating vast groups of people. No-one wants to be told that they are wrong, far less so if their perceived level of rights is less than those around them. We all want the easy route to peace and personal prosperity that allows us and our own to thrive.
This is why it is critical that we engage with any sources of information in a thoughtful and enquiring manner. No source of information is bias free, indeed virtually every source we find will spin information in a way that is digestible and engaging because that is the way audiences generally like it. Few people have the time to go chasing down rabbit holes looking for the broadest possible picture, and while I personally have the time and professional space to do so, most of you just want information and new that you can read as part of your daily flow. It is the repackaging of ideas that allows for hate speech to slip in, for radical ideas to seem reasonable, and gradually realign our societal perspectives. All sides do it, but the far rights has been particularly astute at rebranding their ideas in palatable ways.
We want simple packaging because few of us have the time or intellectual energy to devote to unravelling what we are passively consuming. The right’s freedom of speech requires critical engagement and responses to that break down their arguments and show them for the canards they actually are — hollow and empty promises. Everyone has the freedom of speech and the obligation to accept responses. You fight hate with hope, spite with an open palm, and heal division by bringing people together. Unity and consensus, however messy, is infinitely preferable to a world where hate and exclusion dominate. In a world where time is our most precious commodity and anxiety about the future consumes us, the push back and fight against hate becomes ever more important not just for us but for the generations to come. Rights a hard won, and must be hard fought to retain. This is why it is essential we use our right to respond to staunch the freedom to speak hate.
