ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST FREE Speech
Arguments for Free Speech
Belief in Free speech means supporting the concept itself - not just speech you agree with
Being for free speech isn’t the same as being a free speech absolutist. There are lines beyond which certain speech shouldn’t be allowed–notably speech that explicitly encourages imminent violence. But it is essential to set the bar for suppressing speech as high as possible. Hateful, unpleasant or even bigoted speech must be protected because no person or group has the ultimate objectivity to decide for everyone what should be allowed and what should be censored. Power to do this will always be abused to the detriment of the least powerful, most marginalized groups in society.
marginalized groups and minorities benefit the most from free speech protections
The argument is often made by people on the left that free speech is supported by conservatives only when it favors the dominant elements of society. This is not an argument against free speech but just a reminder that support for free speech needs to be separate from the content of the speech. When speech is regulated or censored by the state, it most often impacts marginalized groups, dissidents, and whistleblowers, and limits their abilities to communicate and share their own beliefs and information. The state will always use its power to maintain or support the status quo. Critics or challengers of power will disproportionately be the targets of censorship campaigns by the state. As Ira Glasser, former head of the ACLU stated, “The only protection minorities have and dissenters have is a rule which doesn’t allow the government to decide which speech is okay because it won’t be theirs…”
Successful Challenges to power always have to start on a foundation of free speech
It has become common on the liberal-left to think of controlling speech as a way of conferring power on and protecting the marginalized. This view misidentifies the real nature of power and offers up a tool for the dominant elites to maintain the status quo.
If power is identified in terms of class struggle and the domination of the super wealthy, it becomes clear who actually benefits from controlling speech. Censorship may first be instituted for what are perceived to be desirable goals of social justice, but once the authority to censor is established it will always be wielded by power to protect itself. The state typically takes new powers by first seizing on specific situations that are uncontroversial and will be widely accepted. Generally this means targeting an uncontroversial issue or villain. We see this at play with the current Assange prosecution–target an unsympathetic villain that few find worth defending and thereby establish precedent that can later be used against others. Once acquired, this sort of power is never relinquished. People on the left who want to see real change should understand that these repressive powers they cheer on today will one day be used to silence them if they ever become a genuine threat to the status quo.
Pro free speech doesn't mean absolutist support for all speech
Context is critical, and yes, you can yell fire in a crowded theater if there really is a fire. At the same time one person’s misinformation is another person’s prescient warning. The problem is always: who decides?
In the U.S. we don’t allow speech that directly leads to imminent violence. We have defamation laws that constrain speech to limit individuals from knowingly making false or untrue statements.
The specific application of speech limits will always be subject to debate, as it should be. The lines may be clear in some cases and not at all clear in others.
Analogous to the criminal justice system, which in theory prefers to allow a guilty individual to go free rather than to convict an innocent, it is essential that we set the bar on restricting speech very high.
Our ideas are fragile if they can't withstand challenge
If we believe in our own ideas, we don’t need totalitarian means to force their acceptance. Ideas that need to be forced on people are impoverished from the start.
Free thought depends on free speech; censorship leads to a culture of fear where people learn to hide their real opinions
This pressure to conform can come in many forms. It may be enforced through externally applied rewards or punishments or through more subtle internalized adjustments that we make as individuals to align how we think with how we know the group wants us to think.
Expressing approved opinions is rewarded by the group with attention and respect, and materially, with jobs and other concrete benefits.
Expressing opinions which diverge from the group leads to punishments which mirror the rewards–derision, mockery, cancellation and worst of all, ostracism.
As a result we have a strong tendency to adjust personal thoughts to match our public pronouncements.
To stay in line with the group we develop a number of strategies. We learn to self-censor. We submit to rituals of thinly disguised compelled speech such as forced apologies. We parrot blatantly compelled speech. And we join our own voices with the mob or the state in supporting explicit suppression of unwanted speech.
The more this split between private thought and public expression grows, the more difficult it is to know what people actually think. Then it becomes more and more difficult to develop ideas that challenge or stray from the consensus.
This vicious cycle that reinforces conformity can probably never be eliminated. But to the extent that we recognize its existence, we can strive to resist and minimize its power. That is why the free exchange of ideas is so closely and intrinsically related to freedom of thought and to broader issues of political freedom.
Blasphemy–a notion that crystallizes so many of the issues around free speech
The struggle against the power of the church in the West has an important place in the history of the left. Without a commitment to free speech, the unlimited authority of the medieval church could never have been challenged. Blasphemy may not be high on the list of liberal-left concerns, but it is one of the clearest examples of how restricting free speech serves the powerful interests of the status quo.
The other point about blasphemy is less obvious but every bit as important and relevant today. One person’s most dearly held beliefs are ALWAYS someone else’s blasphemy. How many historical examples do we need before we feel a little humility over our ability to absolutely distinguish between what is righteous and what is heinous, what should be published and shared versus what should be forbidden and suppressed?
Speech is not violence, it’s an alternative to violence
Physical violence does not make any distinction of this sort. A hammer doesn’t care who’s head it strikes. To conflate speech with violence takes away from our ability to think clearly about them both.
It is also true that words, even the most harsh and cruel words, are preferable to violence. They are society’s substitute for violence. They allow us the possibility to organize ourselves in forms of cooperation and equality that go beyond brute domination by force.
Speech can be powerful and hurtful, but in the context of political struggle it is a preferable replacement for physical violence.
It is through discourse and debate that we exchange ideas, dialogue, innovate, and progress. Once we conflate speech with violence, we run the risk of creating a culture of punishing some people for certain speech, ultimately creating a tiered system of allowable speech versus prohibited speech. When we say speech equals violence, the responsibility no longer falls on the offended party to manage their emotional response, it falls to the offender who must preemptively regulate their own speech to avoid giving offense.
Equating speech with violence is often simply a way to shut down debate. Calling speech ‘literal violence’ is similar to carelessly calling everyone you disagree with a fascist. It blurs the meaning of words and takes away our ability to make the real distinctions that we need to understand our world. When you’ve been calling everyone you disagree with a fascist, what words do you have left to designate a real fascist when they appear? If you carelessly equate speech with physical violence you have crippled your own ability not just to describe but to even recognize the difference.
One corollary of the belief that speech is violence is a belief that we have somehow reached the end of history where the lessons of the past no longer apply; everything has changed. This justification for ignoring the past reminds us of the dot com era of the 90s when it was widely believed that the old rules of business and capitalism no longer applied–until it became clear that the old rules were still very much in force and it was only the wealth of society that had changed hands on an unprecedented scale.
We should recognize the progress we have made as humans when we succeed in using words, even hateful or hurtful ones, rather than actual violence. Blurring this distinction between words and violence is an Orwellian idea that masks rather than reveals basic truths.
Free Speech protection for all is inherently anti-authoritarian
Common arguments against free speech
Free speech isn’t free, someone always pays the price
Ibram X Kendi explains how he went from being a defender of free speech to his current position that certain speech should be banned. In this article, When Free Speech Becomes Unfree Speech, he makes this case: “I thought I was defending..free speech… when, in fact, I was merely defending unfree speech. Just like we should not have the freedom to enslave people, we should not have the freedom to publish untruths about people.” He goes on to make a distinction between ‘factual’ and ‘unfactual, lying’ speech’.
Kendi starts from the premise that there is a known ‘truthful’ speech that should be allowed. He is saying that this good speech can be differentiated from ‘wrong’ speech which should be forbidden.
Kendi is recycling one of the oldest anti-free speech arguments. Although Kendi’s position comes wrapped in the protective gloss of genuinely righteous causes of antiracism and social justice, his argument is no more than a restatement of ‘free speech is speech I approve of..’.
To invest any person or group of people with the power to decide what everyone else is allowed to think and say, even if initially done in support of a good cause, is to support thinly disguised authoritarianism.
This argument should be rejected by everyone, and particularly by those on the left who genuinely yearn for a world not based on raw power and hierarchy.
Speech is Literal Violence
The basis for many of the arguments against free speech spring from the idea that speech is literal violence. Some, like Northeastern University professor Lisa Barret, make the case that speech can cause actual neurological damage: “It can have a metabolic effect on the neurons, potentially leading to depression and even heart disease… scientific evidence shows that verbal aggression causes stress similar to that triggered by physical aggression and some forms of sexual abuse.”
Most supporters of free speech do not reject the idea that speech can be hurtful. Undeniably, in some circumstances speech can cause damage and psychological trauma. This doesn’t make it the same thing as physical violence. Former ACLU president Nadine Strossen makes the important point that unlike physical violence, the effect of speech depends on how it is perceived by the listener. The same words can literally have the opposite effect depending on who is hearing or reading them. Many religions consider blasphemy to be the most dangerous of all speech, and historically it has even been worthy of the death penalty. But one person’s blasphemy will be another person’s expression of their most heartfelt beliefs.
Physical violence does not make any distinction of this sort. A hammer doesn’t care who’s head it strikes. To conflate speech with violence takes away from our ability to think clearly about them both.
It is also true that words, even the most harsh and cruel words, are preferable to violence. They are society’s substitute for violence. They allow us the possibility to organize ourselves in forms of cooperation and equality that go beyond brute domination by force.
Speech can be powerful and hurtful, but in the context of political struggle it is a preferable replacement for physical violence.
It is through discourse and debate that we exchange ideas, dialogue, innovate, and progress. Once we conflate speech with violence, we run the risk of creating a culture of punishing some people for certain speech, ultimately creating a tiered system of allowable speech versus prohibited speech. When we say speech equals violence, the responsibility no longer falls on the offended party to manage their emotional response, it falls to the offender who must preemptively regulate their own speech to avoid giving offense.
Equating speech with violence is often simply a way to shut down debate. Calling speech ‘literal violence’ is similar to carelessly calling everyone you disagree with a fascist. It blurs the meaning of words and takes away our ability to make the real distinctions that we need to understand our world. When you’ve been calling everyone you disagree with a fascist, what words do you have left to designate a real fascist when they appear? If you carelessly equate speech with physical violence you have crippled your own ability not just to describe but to even recognize the difference.
One corollary of the belief that speech is violence is a belief that we have somehow reached the end of history where the lessons of the past no longer apply; everything has changed. This justification for ignoring the past reminds us of the dot com era of the 90s when it was widely believed that the old rules of business and capitalism no longer applied–until it became clear that the old rules were still very much in force and it was only the wealth of society that had changed hands on an unprecedented scale.
We should recognize the progress we have made as humans when we succeed in using words, even hateful or hurtful ones, rather than actual violence. Blurring this distinction between words and violence is an Orwellian idea that masks rather than reveals basic truths.
Free Speech is actually just license for racists and bigots to spew hate
Racists and bigots disingenuously use the free speech concept as a bad-faith cover for doing what they really want to do; spew their hatred. They are simply weaponizing the free speech argument for political, financial, or perhaps monetary gain. And it follows, therefore, that racists and bigots don’t actually deserve to be heard and should certainly not be given a platform to spread their harmful ideas.
It is critical to be alert to the misuse of free speech advocacy as a cover for partisanship.
The fact that right wing conservatives of various stripes may be insincere or hypocritical in their expressed support for free speech, and that it can even provide a cover for other motives, doesn’t argue against the value of free speech itself.
No one wants to allow an opposing ideology to decide what speech is ‘legitimate’ and what is harmful. That is why genuine free speech advocacy means supporting everyone’s right to free speech–even speech that you don’t agree with. The ideal of free speech can be misused by people on any portion of the political spectrum to serve partisan interests. But genuine free speech protections need to go beyond partisan considerations and be fashioned to stay relevant over time and in different circumstances where power may have changed hands.
Strong protections of free speech, even if imperfect, are still the best long term bet for any progressive movement that seeks to resist totalitarianism and domination of the many by the few.
Banning certain speech prevents harm, is for a good cause, and therefore the ends justify the means
We have woken up to the many injustices of our society and its history of racism and oppression, this argument goes, and we find ourselves in a place where we can clearly see the damage that is inflicted by certain speech and the ways in which it perpetuates the larger harms of society. Given that we understand the sources of the brutality and injustice that surrounds us, we’re wrong to not use every tool possible to make things better. Certain speech perpetuates these wrongs. Therefore, it is not only right for us to do everything possible to suppress this speech but is morally necessary. To allow this hurtful speech is to be complicit in the harms which it causes.
Banning hate speech, according to the argument that the ends justify the means, would not only be good but essential. But a look at the real world, past and present, tells us that outlawing speech, even hate speech, does not eliminate or reduce hatred and intolerance. The Weimar Republic had strict hate speech laws that included prohibition of antisemitic speech. Present day Germany and France have hate speech laws, yet the far right is growing stronger and draws closer to the levers of power every year.
Suppressing speech never eliminates the ideas behind the speech. In many cases this suppression lends these ideas a forbidden aura that makes them even more powerful and attractive.
And as to the ends justifying the means, we have enough historical examples to know that it never works out this way. If a social cause or a revolution adopts authoritarian, totalitarian means, the end result will always be more injustice and authoritarianism.
Free speech is a tool of oppression by the powerful and a gateway to fascism
Proponents of so-called free speech fail to see that it’s the powerful who have, and have always had, the platform to express their views. What they call ‘cancel culture’ is really the marginalized and most oppressed of society finally able to speak up and make their own voices heard. What they perceive as suppressing ‘free speech’ is just the voice of regular people finally being heard. This makes those in power uncomfortable–particularly on social media, where what they see as an unruly mob is really just voices speaking up against racism and bigotry. They hide this discomfort and their fear under the guise of supporting free speech, when what they really mean is favoring the speech of those who already have all the power.
Cancel culture is real and it has ruined the lives of regular people time and time again. The liberal-left finds comfort in the belief that cancel culture is just the fevered imagination of right wing conservatives. But they ignore the actual stories of real people whose lives have been damaged.
It is very sad that people who consider themselves ‘leftists’ and devoted to social justice are able to ignore how the reality of cancel culture strikes the most vulnerable and weakest. They ignore, as well, the glaring fact that the most powerful, the giant corporations, the arms manufacturers, the financial institutions, the tech giants, the military, the security agencies, all of the very most powerful of our society pledge full allegiance to every aspect of oppression politics. When Goldman Sachs, Raytheon and Google are all on your side, can you really believe that you are challenging power?
In fact, speech protections favor minority interests the most. As Ira Glasser, former head of the ACLU has repeatedly argued:
“If you give the government the power to ban speech, your speech is gonna be the first speech banned. The only protection minorities have and dissenters have is a rule which doesn’t allow the government to decide which speech is okay because it won’t be theirs. … “
Nadine Strossen also points out: “Observation and international human rights organizations reveal that there is a pattern of disproportionately enforcing any restriction on speech, including hate speech restrictions which do exist in the laws of most other countries, disproportionately against speech by and on behalf of minority groups. This includes demographic minorities — racial, religious, ethnic minorities, and so forth, and political minorities like dissident protesters. And that is true regardless of who is doing the enforcement. Whether it is the government, a private university, or a private sector media company.”
From a leftist point of view that looks at class differences as the central power divide, these campaigns against ‘hate speech’ have successfully divided and diverted the left. Policing harmful speech is not a challenge to power. On the contrary, it has been successfully adopted and co-opted by power and serves to divert us from uniting in ways that genuinely challenge injustice.
Laws against hate speech reduce intolerance and prevent the rise of fascism
If we ban obvious hate speech and don’t allow certain groups or individuals to have a platform to spread their ideas, those ideas will fade away. Conversely if we allow them a platform, if we keep their books on the shelves, allow them to speak at our universities and say hateful things, those ideas will spread. We’re just making the world safer by not allowing hateful, bigoted speech, for example antisemitic speech which we know leads to violence. Many countries have strong hate speech laws for that reason–they know from their historical experiences what allowing this kind of speech leads to.
This claim that hate speech laws work is not supported by history or current events. The Weimar Republic had laws forbidding hate speech including expressions of antisemitism. Modern day Germany and France have hate speech laws and routinely prosecute people for expressing forbidden ideas. This does not slow down the spread of these ideas. Exactly the opposite is true. The far right has made enormous gains in recent years in Europe. Specifically in France and Germany it keeps growing and getting closer and closer to power. If there is some way to stop their progress and prevent them from taking the levers of power, it’s patently not by trying to limit their ability to express their ideas, as heinous as we may find them. Focusing on root causes of the disaffection that makes the far right so popular–for example, financial inequality, lack of healthcare, endless debt, and job insecurity–would be more effective than banning speech.
There is no Truth but My Truth ('stay in your lane')
We all have different lived experiences; it is impossible for you to judge mine or for me to judge yours. Performative privilege is a manipulation tactic rooted in narcissism whereby a member of a dominant group attempts to center themselves ahead of marginalized groups in order to make themselves feel better and ease their guilt.
Some seek not to identify with the oppressed, but to deny their very existence. Defense of ‘free speech’ is no more than a hypocritical laundering of hateful views, including racism, homophobia, and transphobia. These hateful views are violent and incompatible with constitutional mandates that guarantee protections to citizens. At what point do we undermine these values in the name of free speech?
There is nothing inherent in this ideology of identity politics that places it above public debate. All ideas need to stand on their own, and no ideas are above question. For example, conflating disagreements on the relative importance of identity versus class with hate and violence is a tactic used to shut down conversation and dilutes the meaning of what it is to be violent.
History is full of examples where a particular dogma held itself to be above questioning. We can look at Soviet Russia or the Catholic Church. When it comes to any closely held dogma, especially religious beliefs, one person’s expression of their deepest held creeds will always be another person’s hateful blasphemy. No one is the keeper of absolute truth, and therefore no one has absolute moral authority to decide which speech is permissible and which must be suppressed. We haven’t reached an ‘end to history’ where old lessons no longer apply.
The first amendment is protection against state censorship but is irrelevant to social media
Most of the debate around free speech in the U.S. mistakenly focuses on the First Amendment. But the First Amendment has nothing to do with the private sector or with social media in particular. When social media companies block accounts, that is not censorship, it’s just the opposite–it’s the private company exercising their own right to free expression. They have the right to decide what is allowed on their own platforms. The First Amendment and protection of speech are only relevant where the government directly acts to censor freedom of expression.
This is true up until the point that the government pressures technology platforms to institute censorship policies. When this happens, the tech platforms are acting as the agent of the government and representatives of state interests. This brings the First Amendment back into relevance.
It is also true that boundaries between corporate power and government authority are not what they were when the First Amendment was written. We exist in a system where the largest corporations exert power over politicians and not the reverse. Arguing that free speech protection is only the responsibility of the government and not the corporations who own the government is a form of legalistic denial that ignores the reality of actual power relationships.
There is a global context as well that should be a central part of leftist concerns over free speech but which tends to get left out of the conversation. Big Tech and governments have been collaborating for many years. The US government, military, law enforcement, and other agencies have ongoing contracts with various tech companies, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Dell, etc. While their contracts are largely secretive, we do know that together they have carried out widespread surveillance campaigns, targeting civilians, wiretapping communications, and amassing swaths of data under the guise of “security.”
Elsewhere, Apple has worked with foreign governments (and continues to do so) to censor political content around the world, notably in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Zoom worked with the Chinese government to terminate accounts of US-based users and interrupt video calls mentioning keywords like the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
At what point, then, is it acceptable to say “It’s a private company, tech companies can do whatever they want” considering their close relationship with governments all around the world?
Tech companies serve as the new digital town square — our laws are simply too outdated to reflect life in the digital age. The boundaries between corporations and governments have become so blurred that in these crossover relationships a revolving door has been created between tech giants and governments. Despite this, proponents of government regulation still extol the ‘private company’ argument to justify online censorship.
Concerns around free speech are not just legal issues based on the First Amendment. The boundaries regarding speech are not always clear, and they certainly should always be open to debate.
Read the Paradox of Tolerance to understand why some speech needs to be suppressed
The fascist right knows that our society’s permissiveness, diversity, and freedom of expression can be used against us. It can be the perfect trojan horse to spread their hateful ideology, grow powerful and ultimately take control. The paradox is that to protect our tolerant society we need to be intolerant of these ideologies. – The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper
The phrase ‘the paradox of tolerance’ comes from a 1946 book written by an Austrian Jew named Karl Popper.Popper’s grandparents converted to Christianity, no doubt to escape the millenia long tradition of intolerance to which they would have been subject as Jews. His book was called The Open Society and Its Enemies, and his idea of the paradox of tolerance has gained considerable popularity among the liberal-left. What did he say exactly?
Popper’s discussion of the paradox of tolerance is limited to a one paragraph footnote in his 700 page book. Here is the paragraph in full: here.
Popper makes clear just what he considers unacceptable ‘intolerance.’ He points to groups whose ideologies reject engaging in ‘rational argument’ and who ‘begin by denouncing all argument’ and who even ‘may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument.’ Popper is urging intolerance for groups who refuse to engage in debate, who scorn free speech, and who are afraid to even allow their followers to listen to critical arguments.
Popper wrote this in 1945 when the ashes of the Holocaust were still warm. He was almost certainly referring to actual, murderous Nazis when he wrote those words. Ironically, his description applies to today’s liberal-left who ‘scorn debate’ and ‘are afraid to even allow their followers to listen to critical arguments.’
Popper made a case for drawing a line around certain forms of speech, but he carefully placed the bar extremely high–so high that it has little or no relevance to our present conversations about identity politics.
Nonetheless, the fact is that there were hate speech laws in place during the Weimar Republic before Hitler and the Nazis came to power. These laws were used against prominent Nazis numerous times. They didn’t work, assuming the purpose was to prevent the spread of hatred and intolerance. The same is the case today in Germany and France where the far right is growing in influence in spite of hate speech laws which are regularly implemented.
Popper’s words on the paradox of tolerance have been misrepresented and used as a hammer by the liberal-left to shut down debate on certain topics–exactly the opposite of their intended meaning.
Other Free speech resources
Ira Glasser: “the right to free speech is not the right to sit in the closet by yourself and mutter.”
https://publicpolicylegal.com/2017/05/08/ira-glasser-the-right-to-free-speech-is-not-the-right-to-sit-in-the-closet-by-yourself-and-mutter/
Former ACLU president says censoring hate speech can backfire – just like it did in Nazi Germany
https://www.jta.org/2020/09/03/opinion/former-aclu-president-says-censoring-hate-speech-can-backfire-just-like-it-did-in-nazi-germany
Former ACLU Head Ira Glasser explains why there’s no such thing as “hate speech”
https://reclaimthenet.org/former-aclu-head-ira-glasser-explains-why-you-cant-ban-hate-speech/
Free Speech–Former ACLU Leader Ira Glasser Tells Us It’s Not What You Think
https://www.villagevoice.com/2022/04/07/free-speech-former-aclu-leader-ira-glasser-tells-us-its-not-what-you-think/
Free speech does not equal violence: Part 1 of answers to bad arguments against free speech from Nadine Strossen and Greg Lukianoff
https://www.thefire.org/free-speech-does-not-equal-violence-part-1-of-answers-to-bad-arguments-against-free-speech-from-nadine-strossen/
Would censorship have stopped the rise of the Nazis? Part 16 of answers to arguments against free speech from Nadine Strossen and Greg Lukianoff
https://www.thefire.org/would-censorship-have-stopped-the-rise-of-the-nazis-part-16-of-answers-to-arguments-against-free-speech-from-nadine-strossen-and-greg-lukianoff/
The Left Needs Free Speech
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-left-needs-free-speech
The Importance of Free Speech
https://www.doubledown.news/watch/2020/9/july/the-importance-of-free-speech-problem-with-cancel-culture-ayishat-akanbi
Karl Popper, Free Speech and the Paradox of Tolerance
https://www.plebity.org/article/twitter-warriors-of-the-woke-a-letter-from-the-left/