Support
There is one complication about this free expression march, at least to my mind. I suppose that’s why I didn’t flag it up beforehand as much as I could have. I flagged it up some, but not as much as I could have. That’s because it wasn’t specific enough – and that I suppose relates to why I wish Peter hadn’t caved in on the cartoon issue. I didn’t particularly want to cheer on a march for free expression in general, I wanted to cheer on a march for free expression as opposed to religious censorship, or as opposed to toonophobia, or instead of bullying by offended taboo-wielders, or as the alternative to charges of blasphemy and apostasy and heresy and violation of the sacred. I wanted to cheer on a particular march for free expression in the context of coercive religious silencing moves – so I found the title inadequate to convey the subject matter. Then once the subject matter became precisely what was given up at the last minute – it all seemed more confused than ever.
You’re wondering what I mean. Here’s what I mean. What if the march had been for free expression for the BNP, or for Hizb ut-Tahrir? Specifically for one (or both) of them, as opposed to free expression in general. I wouldn’t have gone or wanted to go or urged anyone else to go or advertised it, that’s what. Not in a million years. Because I don’t support them, and have no intention of supporting them. I agree that, with the usual (contested) reservations and stipulations, free expression and free speech are basic goods, are as Juan Golblado says part of the infrastructure; but that doesn’t mean that I actively support particular groups I don’t agree with. So my support for the march for free expression was support for it to the extent that it was about a particular issue that I do agree with and do support.
It’s a case where the legal and the moral run together. I think the toonophobes have not only no legal case for making people shut up, but no moral case either; I think Frattini and the pope and Annan and Straw and the State Department and everyone else who says we ought not to offend people’s religious beliefs is wrong, morally wrong, because I think religions cannot, ought not, must not be binding on people who don’t subscribe to them. I actively (and enthusiastically) support the right to mock and criticize Islam (and Christianity and any other religion), I do not actively (let alone enthusiastically) support the right to say a lot of other kinds of things that are and have to be legal. It was the specific context that would have hauled me to Trafalgar Square in the rain on Saturday if I’d been closer than six thousand miles away (well, a lot closer); if it had been just any old generic march for free expression, I wouldn’t have bothered.
Of course, while you don’t want to support the BNP saying anything *nasty*, you presumably do support them in their publication of the cartoons. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4739336.stm
As a matter of curiosity, do you believe that everyone opposed to the publication of these cartoons is a shameless PC censor or a coward in the face of religious extremism? Or do you think that some might oppose the publication out of a genuine distaste (however misguided) at the vilification of a group?
Well… I really wanted a demonstration in support of free speech in the face of claims for a right-not-to-be-offended — freedom of expression without any accompanying responsibility. And I thought that was what we were going to have, which is why I mentioned it several times enthusiastically in several places. And I was severely disappointed when Peter caved in on precisely the point of the demo — or what had certainly seemed to be the point of the demo.
But you know what? What I would most welcome right now is a demonstration for the right of the cartoons to be shown without the police getting involved AND free expression for the BNP AND free expression for HT.
That would be a demonstration in support of free expression in general and in particular. Not some blinkin’ discourse about freedom of expression but the act itself.
Let the BNP use hurtful words. Let HT rattle on about their caliphate, and let the cartoons float freely on a blimp over London. And let the police do their job and keep everybody apart.
Yep, about BNP – although, again, it’s not something I would actively work for. I wouldn’t hinder it, I would agree if asked, but I’m not going to campaign for them.
Sure, I do think some oppose out of genuine distaste for perceived group vilification.
“Let HT rattle on about their caliphate”
Unless/until it gets close to becoming a reality! Then…
(I’m serious. Serbian Radio, Radio Mille Collines – when they rattled on, the result was piles of corpses. Hence my failure to be free speech absolutist.)
“Serbian Radio, Radio Mille Collines “
There was no one around to curb their speech anyhow so our discussion is not applicable in those cases. We are talking about state policy on freedom of expression, aren’t we?
Where it does matter, where the group at issue is not of or with the government — say an Islamist group rattles on about killing kufrs or a white racist group rattles on about killing immigrants, letting them rattle on doesn’t mean you do nothing.
You let them keep on talking but you do the necessary to stop them as well. You infiltrate, eavesdrop, imprison if there’s cause and with due process, but you don’t curb their speech. You also mount your own propaganda war. It seems to me that curbing speech is just a device to make policing easier (and a chickening out of the war of ideas). But it’s an economy measure with vast hidden costs.
Because this is a political storm, and is thus full of shit, devoid of reason, and unconcerned with small matters like verifiable fact, that’s why.
“We are talking about state policy on freedom of expression, aren’t we?”
Are we? In the context of the Danish/Muslim cartoons, has any government actually prohibited their publication? Surely the point here is that Ophelia is arguing not that they shouldn’t be prohibited (because they haven’t been) but that they should *positively* be published. That the consensus (that the cartoons represent hate speech, or that religion shouldn’t be criticised, take your pick) is morally bankrupt.
As for “freedom of expression without any accompanying responsibility”, while I can see the legal right to such a thing, I am far from convinced of the moral strength of such a rallying cry. I surely can’t be alone in that?
Armando, the question about whether we were talking about state policy was wrt Ophelia’s comment that Serbian Radio’s freedom of speech resulted in people getting killed. I was making the point that the problem there was the state as actor not the state as policymaker. If the state is in the position to prohibit people from saying certain things the state is in the position to argue against them instead. And if the state fears certain speech will lead to violence the state is in the position to deal with the violence or even the move toward violence (by infiltrating etc. then arresting etc.) And that restricting freedom of speech is not a useful tool when it comes to keeping the peace. It only looks like one.
The situation here in the UK is not so cut and dried that you can say the state hasn’t prohibited the publishing of the cartoons. The state arguably has a law that would make publishing the cartoons prosecutable. We have seen today that someone is being prosecuted for waving one of the cartoons around at a free speech demonstration.
And as for freedom of expression without reference to responsibility, the moral point is that people are responsible for their own violent actions. If someone reacts violently against someone else’s words, the responsibility is 100% on the shoulders of the one acting violently. Words can always be ignored.
But there’s more. Freedom of expression is required in a society to give it the information it needs to function. Individuals need to be able to say what they think and feel. Civility, like respect, can only be freely given; it can’t be taken by force or by law.
There seems to be some confusion as to why the cartoons need to be reproduced. Here is a clue: at the end of the film “Spartacus” the other slaves didn’t all shout “he’s the guy over there with the cleft chin”.
“You let them keep on talking but you do the necessary to stop them as well. You infiltrate, eavesdrop, imprison if there’s cause and with due process, but you don’t curb their speech.”
Hmm…I don’t know, Juan, are you sure you’re not trying to do a bit of cake having-and-eating here? Are you sure you’re not preserving some sort of (quasimagical) form of words while acknowledging that the substance sometimes has to go? What is the difference between imprisoning and curbing speech?
“There was no one around to curb their speech anyhow so our discussion is not applicable in those cases.”
Well, there were people around, but they were the ones doing the speaking. But if there had been anyone around to curb their speech, it would have been a good thing if their speech had been curbed – no matter who did the dang curbing.
That’s why I just can’t, no matter how hard I try, see free speech as an absolute good. Radio Mille Colline’s continued operation was not a good thing; there is just no way to see it as such.
“Freedom of expression is required in a society to give it the information it needs to function. Individuals need to be able to say what they think and feel.”
I understand all that. But it doesn’t deal with the objection. Once individuals ‘think and feel’ that I need to be murdered or put under house arrest for life, and are in a position to put that into practice, I am no longer interested in their right or need or ability to say what they think and feel, I’m interested in my rights instead.
Yes, of course. If you think they are a threat you go after them and eliminate the threat if you can. But I thought we were talking about government policy. They were the government, or near enough, so there is nothing to talk about. We could talk about the government’s policy wrt free speech before things got heavy, but I would be willing to bet that the Serbian and Rwandan governments had policies in place which prohibited what they were in fact doing. Freedom of expression is not an issue there, unless you want to talk about how the situation developed from a law-abiding one to the genocidal one. I don’t have the knowledge about their laws or politics to have that discussion.
But coming into those situations at the end, where they are actually going on the warpath and shooting guns, I don’t see any relevance in those cases to a discussion about the UK government’s policy wrt freedom of expression today.
As for having my cake and eating it, well I think good solutions are often like that to a certain extent.
A strong point of a policy that says “infiltrate, eavesdrop, and charge them, but don’t gag them” is that you have to take the threat, and your action, seriously when you act, whereas gagging someone is something you can do to solve an annoying problem. If you bring charges against them it won’t be for saying nasty things, it will be for doing, aiding or planning nasty things that actually hurt people in a physical sense.
In other words, when it gets physical you act. Until then, you listen. For that you need freedom of expression.
Okay – I agree with all that!
Infiltration is a fine thing. I’ve become a real fan of spying and intelligence-gathering – and infiltration. The more of it the better. Go, Mata Hari.
I have this funny feeling there is more to come… :))