How do we defend free speech from absolutists and others?

Elon Musk has declared himself an absolutist on free speech.  It’s a declaration which defines the enemy as ‘the woke virus’, which is condemned as shutting off criticism of minority opinions and groups and shouting down those who express views outside their permitted consensus.  It’s also a demonstration of how far the concept of ‘free speech’ has been weaponised by the right and twisted in in its meaning.   If we want to defend free speech from those who twist the principle to fit their prejudices, we need to be clear about it meaning and its limits.

Liz Truss has just told the Voice of America that ‘The left-wing media of Britain including the BBC, including organizations like the Times and the Guardian and the Financial Times, do not like free speech, free market policies, and they don’t like the status quo in this country being challenged and I will take them on.’  Mark Zuckerberg has declared that his fact-checking teams were ‘politically biassed’, and moved a reduced team from California to Texas, to encourage them to check ‘facts’ in a more Trump-friendly way. Free speech is being redefined as part of the ‘anti-woke’ culture war – to insist on the right to express uncomfortably reactionary opinions, and to bend facts to suit different types of right-wing narratives.

Free speech is central to democracy and to liberal values.  But the right to free speech is not the right to say anything to anyone, regardless of evidence, context or consequences.   Laws against libel and slander protect reputations – though often misused to protect the rich and powerful against criticism. SLAPPS (strategic litigation against public participation) have allowed media magnates and offshore oligarchs to stifle hostile comments.  Misinformation, or worse deliberate disinformation, is on the line between legal but antisocial and illegal because of its harmful consequences in promoting disorder.  Holocaust denial is banned in some countries; medical disinformation can be prosecuted in others. Language that stirs up disorder or promotes criminal or terrorist acts is, rightly, prosecuted.

We get into the most difficult area when we consider ‘hate speech’ – offensive language intended to denigrate those at whom it is aimed and to stir up others to join in.  There is no absolute right not to be offended: respecting others is a social obligation, not an enforceable duty. We all owe our fellow citizens respect as we interact with them; but we have to recognise that some demands for respect clash with others’ self-respect and understanding of social norms.  What you and I consider hate speech differs from what Nigel Farage or Rupert Murdoch think.  Much of the current argument about free speech and its limits attempts – from different perspectives – to shift social norms: to make it unacceptable to use terms that some regard as derogatory, or to make it acceptable again to use terms that have now become generally unacceptable.

President Trump has just promised to ‘bring back free speech to America…after years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression.’   He, like others on the populist right, see ‘political correctness’ as the enemy, and the language of Fox News as what he wants to restore.  No more careful avoidance of potential offence to minorities, foreigners or immigrants, open prejudice towards Muslims (‘terrorists’) or groups that deviate from their preferred norms, ‘common sense’ against ‘intellectual elites.’

The rise of social media has made the thin line between acceptable and unacceptable speech harder to draw.  Unfiltered posts promote anti-social acts, extending from conspiracy theories to riots and terrorism – as last year’s killings in Southport and their subsequent exploitation showed.  Parliament is struggling with the question of how to regulate social media and their negative impacts, as Musk, Zuckerberg and others relax their filters further.

Liberals are caught in the middle in these culture wars. Intolerant left-wingers want to cancel expression of views they disapprove of, even if widely accepted among the overall population.  Most mass media, in the UK and the USA, are owned by wealthy conglomerates with illiberal leadership.  The settlement of Prince Harry’s longstanding suit against the Murdoch press has demonstrated again its ruthlessness and amorality.  In the USA Murdoch’s Fox News has succeeded in shifting acceptable public discourse sharply to the right, polarising political debate.  Paul Marshall’s GB News is attempting to achieve the same polarization in Britain.

The populists have the shortest slogans.  Social media favour short messages and simple assertions.  Liberals want citizens to accept that government is more complicated, that democracy depends on dialogue, respect for evidence and the search for agreement among different views.  For that we need media which welcome debate among differing opinions and with concern for evidence – which is why all Liberals should be defending Britain’s public service broadcaster, the BBC, from efforts to cut it further.  Free speech is betrayed by those who let all comments, theories, mythical stories, threats and deliberate falsehoods float across the internet and into public debate.  Liberals have no choice but to defend the idea of free speech as informed discussion and constructive dialogue, against the absolutists who want to let misinformation, prejudice and fantasy poison the wells of democratic societies.

* William Wallace is Liberal Democrat spokesman on constitutional issues in the Lords.

Read more by or more about or .
This entry was posted in Op-eds.
Advert

15 Comments

  • Steve Trevethan 23rd Jan '25 - 4:09pm

    Thank you for an important article.

    Liberals, not least Liberal-Democrats havé a positive and pressing duty to protect “Positive Free Speech!

    Without such we shall be further afflicted with verbal bullying, deceit, anti-social communication, increasing socio-economic harms and advancing, controlling ignorance.

    Despite being up against plutocratically influenced to controlled main stream media, state education which encourages individual, group and national submissive passivity, and an effective lack of political choice, there is the alternative media and, if we choose to use it, our commitment, initiative and drive.

    Might we consider the use of a range of language styles thus?

    1) Headline/attention grabbers such as: “What are the big differences between the previous ConLab government and the current LabCon government?*

    2) Political small talk such as: “If H M G tax back what they spend, where’s any money for you and me?”

    3) Discussion encouraging political deep talk which might suit not so obvious/immediate questions such as: “How do we address the suggestion of the lands and/or resources of Western allies being appropriated by the U S A?

  • Daniel Stylianou 23rd Jan '25 - 5:00pm

    If Musk is an absolutist on free speech, he should recognise that includes the right to call him out on his nonsense. Instead, he blocks people who criticise him, ostracises and publicly insults them, and tries to limit their voice. What he means is that he’s an absolutist for words that match his own views.

  • Mary Fulton 23rd Jan '25 - 7:08pm

    I do think we need to be very careful about restricting free speech on the basis of preventing offence’. We have laws against incitement to violence and laws against stirring up hatred against groups with protected characteristics. That is sufficient – we do not need laws to restrict speech on the basis that some may claim to be offended by what may be said. As my dad used to say, “offence is taken, not given”.
    The danger that people may be offended is a price we all pay to live in a free society.

  • Daniel Stylianou 23rd Jan '25 - 7:58pm

    @Mary Fulton I’m afraid you’re behind on this. We already have those offences – section 4, 4A and 5 public order act offences include words which are intended to cause harassment, alarm or distress, which many would say encompass the idea of “hurt feelings”.

  • I think there’s a difference between (a) saying things with the specific intention of causing harassment, alarm or distress, and (b) expressing your genuine beliefs without any intention to cause harm, but then someone else takes offence and claims distress. In principle I don’t have any objection to (a) being illegal but (b) being legal for the person expressing the views, since (a) is clearly unethical but expressing your genuine opinions is clearly a normal part of democracy. Having said that, trying to decide which category something falls into is not clear cut and I’d worry about attempts to outlaw (a) inadvertently criminalising instances of (b). I’m not sure how well UK law gets the balance here.

  • Nigel Jones 24th Jan '25 - 1:09am

    A great piece on the right wingers’ twisted use of the term ‘free speech’. One element in all this is what when someone expresses a view that needs challenging, that challenge is not easily achieved. I agree that the BBC needs supporting and is better than most other channels, but on Brexit, they too often assumed they had done their job by briefly quoting opposite views. There was rarely proper debate between those views; without such debate most people do not get to know who is closest to the truth. I welcome fact checking sites but few people bother to use them and very often the truth is discovered by other evidence, not just simple facts.

  • Craig Levene 24th Jan '25 - 5:56am

    I think it needs reminding that it’s taken a judge and court proceedings to reiterate the right to free speach. Those in the dock from universities to political parties, have too often forgot that fundamental freedom. The guilty sadly, have been the progressive left.

  • Nick Hopkinson 24th Jan '25 - 8:29am

    An important and excellent article from William
    and many valuable comments afterwards. This matter and discourse deserves a higher profile.

  • Following from Craig’s comments, sadly I don’t think Liberal/Progressive parties and organisations can be trusted to police free speech. To often they abuse what power they have to try shut down debates that they consider to be uncomfortable under the pretext of “causing offence”.

  • William Wallace 24th Jan '25 - 9:44am

    It’s a sign of how far some right-wing politicians have drifted that Liz Truss calls the Times a ‘left-wing’ paper!

  • Can I say that I am heartened by the comments above, especially @Mary Fulton, @Mohammed Amin. Within the law, their should always be a presumption in favour of speakers right to express a viewpoint.
    William refers to “intolerant left wingers (who) want to cancel expression of views they disapprove of”. Can we be vigilant to ensure that such censorship never happens in this party ?

  • Peter Hirst 3rd Feb '25 - 1:52pm

    The first step on this endless road is to clearly distinguish verifiable fact from opinion. Everyone is entitled to an opinion as long as it is stated with clarity and respect. Both need to recognise that words can result in actions and in this regard be answerable in a court of law. So it is conceivable that some facts should not be stated.

Post a Comment

Lib Dem Voice welcomes comments from everyone but we ask you to be polite, to be on topic and to be who you say you are. You can read our comments policy in full here. Please respect it and all readers of the site.

To have your photo next to your comment please signup your email address with Gravatar.

Your email is never published. Required fields are marked *

*
*
Please complete the name of this site, Liberal Democrat ...?

Advert

Recent Comments

  • Joe Bourke
    Trump is by no means unique in American society. Many US businessmen, large and small, will recognise and welcome the hardball transactional business approach t...
  • Steve Trevethan
    Might it be more accurate to describe thé referred to group as the “Neo-Liberal elite”? As Michael Hudson points out, there are three basic power groups...
  • Jack Nicholls
    I would accept the basic thrust of this argument but for one thing - the problematic creed you identify is not liberalism, though I agree it gets mislabelled as...
  • nigel hunter
    If we have to turn away from US protection those 2 aircraft carriers MUST be fully active as an umbrella for all of Europe.The effort to make them fully service...
  • Christopher Haigh
    @SimonR, quite agree with you. China is undemocratic and a massive polluter with its obsession with coal mining. Vince however, seems to be obsessed with tradin...