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The classical doctrine of free speech is under strain in the West

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  • The classical doctrine of free speech is under strain in the West

    The Daily Star (Lebanon)
    July 1, 2011 Friday


    The classical doctrine of free speech is under strain in the West

    by Robert Skidelsky



    Recently, at a literary festival in the United Kingdom, I found myself
    on a panel discussing free speech. For liberals, free speech is a key
    index of freedom. Democracies stand for free speech; dictatorships
    suppress it.

    When we in the West look outward, this remains our view. We condemn
    governments that silence, imprison and even kill writers and
    journalists. Reporters Sans Frontières keeps a list: 24 journalists
    have been killed, and 148 imprisoned, just this year. Part of the
    promise we see in the "Arab Spring" is the liberation of media from
    the dictator's grasp.

    Yet freedom of speech in the West is under strain. Traditionally,
    British law imposed two main limitations on the "right to free
    speech." The first prohibited the use of words or expressions likely
    to disrupt public order; the second was the law against libel. There
    are good grounds for both - to preserve the peace, and to protect
    individuals' reputations from lies. Most free societies accept such
    limits as reasonable.

    But the law has recently become more restrictive. "Incitement to
    religious and racial hatred" and "incitement to hatred on the basis of
    sexual orientation" are now illegal in most European countries,
    independent of any threat to public order. The law has shifted from
    proscribing language likely to cause violence to prohibiting language
    intended to give offense.

    A blatant example of this is the law against Holocaust denial. To deny
    or minimize the Holocaust is a crime in 15 European countries and
    Israel. It may be argued that the Holocaust was a crime so uniquely
    abhorrent as to qualify as a special case. But special cases have a
    habit of multiplying.

    France has made it illegal to deny any "internationally recognized
    crimes against humanity." Whereas in Muslim countries it is illegal to
    call the Armenian massacres of 1915-1917 "genocide," in some Western
    countries it is illegal to say that they were not. Some East European
    countries specifically prohibit the denial of communist "genocides."

    The censorship of memory, which we once fondly imagined to be the mark
    of dictatorship, is now a major growth industry in the "free" West.
    Indeed, official censorship is only the tip of an iceberg of cultural
    censorship. A public person must be on constant guard against causing
    offense, whether intentionally or not.

    Breaking the cultural code damages a person's reputation, and perhaps
    one's career. British Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke recently had to
    apologize for saying that some rapes were less serious than others,
    implying the need for legal discrimination. The parade of gaffes and
    subsequent groveling apologies has become a regular feature of public
    life.

    In his classic essay "On Liberty," John Stuart Mill defended free
    speech on the ground that free inquiry was necessary to advance
    knowledge. Restrictions on certain areas of historical inquiry are
    based on the opposite premise: the truth is known, and it is impious
    to question it. This is absurd; every historian knows that there is no
    such thing as final historical truth.

    It is not the task of history to defend public order or morals, but to
    establish what happened. Legally protected history ensures that
    historians will play safe. To be sure, living by Mill's principle
    often requires protecting the rights of unsavory characters. David
    Irving writes mendacious history, but his prosecution and imprisonment
    in Austria for "Holocaust denial" would have horrified Mill.

    By contrast, the pressure for "political correctness" rests on the
    argument that the truth is unknowable. Statements about the human
    condition are essentially matters of opinion. Because a statement of
    opinion by some individuals is almost certain to offend others, and
    since such statements make no contribution to the discovery of truth,
    their degree of offensiveness becomes the sole criterion for judging
    their admissibility. Hence the taboo on certain words, phrases and
    arguments that imply that certain individuals, groups, or practices
    are superior or inferior, normal or abnormal; hence the search for
    ever more neutral ways to label social phenomena, thereby draining
    language of its vigor and interest.

    A classic example is the way that "family" has replaced "marriage" in
    public discourse, with the implication that all "lifestyles" are
    equally valuable, despite the fact that most people persist in wanting
    to get married. It has become taboo to describe homosexuality as a
    "perversion," though this was precisely the word used in the 1960s by
    the radical philosopher Herbert Marcuse (who was praising
    homosexuality as an expression of dissent). In today's atmosphere of
    what Marcuse would call "repressive tolerance," such language would be
    considered "stigmatizing."

    The sociological imperative behind the spread of "political
    correctness" is the fact that we no longer live in patriarchal,
    hierarchical, mono-cultural societies, which exhibit general, if
    unreflective, agreement on basic values. The pathetic efforts to
    inculcate a common sense of "Britishness" or "Dutchness" in
    multi-cultural societies attest to the breakdown of a common identity.

    Public language has thus become the common currency of cultural
    exchange, and everyone is on notice to mind one's manners. The result
    is a multiplication of weasel words that chill political and moral
    debate, and that create a widening gap between public language and
    what many ordinary people think.

    The defense of free speech is made no easier by the abuses of the
    popular press. We need free media to expose abuses of power. But
    investigative journalism becomes discredited when it is suborned to
    "expose" the private lives of the famous when no issue of public
    interest is involved. Entertaining gossip has mutated into an assault
    on privacy, with newspapers claiming that any attempt to keep them out
    of people's bedrooms is an assault on free speech.

    You know that a doctrine is in trouble when not even those claiming to
    defend it understand what it means. By that standard, the classical
    doctrine of free speech is in crisis. We had better sort it out
    quickly - legally, morally and culturally - if we are to retain a
    proper sense of what it means to live in a free society.

    Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is professor
    emeritus of political economy at Warwick University. THE DAILY STAR
    publishes this commentary in collaboration with Project Syndicate

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