Slow down
Not so fast. Harvey Silverglate, a civil liberties lawyer, disagrees with Anthony Lewis’s suggestion that some speech is genuinely dangerous even if it doesn’t imminently threaten anyone. (I agree with that, in case you’re wondering. I don’t think there is no danger until one says ‘Here, kill this person right here, now, hurry up.’ I wish it were that simple, but I don’t think it is.)
“Free speech matters because it works,” Mr. Silverglate continued. Scrutiny and debate are more effective ways of combating hate speech than censorship, he said, and all the more so in the post-Sept. 11 era. “The world didn’t suffer because too many people read ‘Mein Kampf,’ ” Mr. Silverglate said. “Sending Hitler on a speaking tour of the United States would have been quite a good idea.”
Not so fast. What do you mean ‘free speech works’? Free speech works in the sense of never issuing in violence? You’re kidding, right? And what do you mean the world didn’t suffer because too many people read Mein Kampf? How the hell do you know that, and is it even true? I’m not a bit sure it is true. It’s not as if the Nazis took power through some kind of magic, after all – they took power because there were Nazis, it wasn’t just Hitler and a book that had no effect on anyone. Anyway even if that very dubious claim were true, it wouldn’t necessarily be extendable to all other books and speech acts. Even if it is true that the world didn’t suffer because too many people read Mein Kampf, the world (at least a part of it) certainly suffered because too many people listened to Serbian State Radio or Radio Mille Collines. In other words if the Mein Kampf point is supposed to stand for all kinds of speech and writing – well, it can’t. It just isn’t the case that violence is never set off by people hearing or reading people saying things. It would be tremendously helpful if that were the case, but it isn’t.
With things like Serbian radio dont they just feed a hatred that is already there rather than create that hatred O.B.
Certain kinds of ‘speech’ can help to set up the preconditions whereby more direct incitement will be acted upon. Calls to ‘kill all Xs’ are unlikely to lead to violence unless Xs have already been dehumanised – at least in the eyes of the persons being incited. Note I say ‘can help’ – ‘hateful’ free speech does not have to be the only factor.
The trick, for society and legislators, is to stymie the above development (a very real one) whilst allowing the maximum clash of opinions with consequent offended sensibilities and disjointed noses. Thus, some regulation of ‘speech’ is required, but the devil as always is in the detail.
Incidentally, free speech fundamentalists always remind me of advertisers, who if you believe them spend a great deal of money on material which has no influence whatsoever on whether or not anyone buys their products, esp if it’s cigarettes!
Richard, sure; I didn’t say they created the hatred. But feeding it (with enough intensity for a long enough time) is what can lead to genocide.
Exactly, about advertisers. Their favorite line is “the public isn’t stupid” – which then moves on to the claim that everyone is media savvy now and everyone knows how to recognize advertising for what it is. Why do you bother then? I always wonder.
There is no doubt that speech which urges violence (without there being a clear and present danger) may be potentially dangerous at times, but how can you know that beforehand? Let’s say I call upon the working class to rise up and to seize the factories and kill the bosses in an internet site that few people read. Should I be censored because there may be potential readers in the future?
I can’t. I’m not saying I know what the solution is, or even that there is one. I’m just saying there’s a problem. It’s way too easy and glib to say what Silverglate said.
I think that you are right that speech can cause harm O.B but the difficulty is I think there are only two alternatives, one you have like the U.S, first amendment protected free speech or the other way that inevitably leads to speech laws like we have in the U.K.
I agree, Ophelia. Free speech advocates (of which I am one, a near-absolutist on the First Amendment) aren’t going to get anywhere by basically arguing that speech is weak and has no consequences. Of course speech results in violence. That’s because speech is powerful. Which is all the more reason it should be free, to my way of thinking.
I would also say free speech is like all freedoms there is always a price to pay,if people can speak freely they will say ugly hurtfull things that can lead to violence. For the presumtion of inocence you will have guilty people escaping justice. For freedom to worship you will get the f.l.d.s. and so on.
Richard, no, I don’t think there are only two alternatives. There’s a continuum rather than a pair of stark alternatives. As is often pointed out, even in the US free speech isn’t absolute, even in First Amendment jurisprudence.
And yes, if you have absolute freedom of ‘worship’ (or rather, actually, exercise) you get the FLDS, and that’s why I don’t believe in absolute free exercise. I don’t think the free exercise clause should protect everything the FLDS does inside the compound.
“The United States’ distinctive approach to free speech, legal scholars say, has many causes. It is partly rooted in an individualistic view of the world. Fear of allowing the government to decide what speech is acceptable plays a role. So does history.”
Oh, of course. It must be individualism that creates all this distrust of government and commitment to civil liberties. I can see neo-conservative apologists for suspension of habeas corpus basing their criticism of their detractors on the latter’s excessive “individualism”.
As for offense, isn’t that one of the strongest reasons to defend free speech emphatically? I’m quite sure Voltaire, for instance, very much had in mind deliberate provocation.
Yeah – I worried about The Turner Diaries a lot after OK City – and blanched to see it prominently displayed at Barnes and Noble. Very good counter-example.
The thing is that in current age, you can find like-minded individuals over this here interweb. So the likes of the Turner Diaries are available to anyone interested, not just those wandering through bookshops. So where does this leave free-speech? Do we monitor the likes of Blood and Honour websites? (Perhaps hack them?)
I dont see it O.B surely once you depart from the U.S model doesnt that automaticly lead you to well meaning people passing laws to regulate speech,because you would have to decide the limits of speech to restrict. I do see that the free exersise clause has problems although how could you fix them without making things worse,I think the figure is about 90% of Americans are religious so wouldnt any atempt to change the clause probably result in an expansion rather than a limitation.
OB: I think that Richard’s point about there being a price to pay for each of the freedoms is broadly correct even if one thinks of a continuum; there will always be something one can’t ban under current laws that one might want to have out of circulation, and conversely there’s always something that is banned which wouldn’t be *that* bad to have available.
DFG: I once argued at a science cafe that the Internet was a huge step backwards for science, as now anyone can find like-minded lunatics online and publish their “work” there.
I don’t think the argument is necessarily about censorship (i.e., creating new categories of prohibited/regulated speech) so much as it is about where incitement – already prohibited and punishable by law – begins and ends. Anthony Lewis essentially advocates expanding the current definition of incitement to “speech that urges terrorist violence to an audience, some of whose members are ready to act on the urging.”
I think this is probably the right approach, as it would cover the examples OB lists (Serbia, Rwanda)without restricting other speech, however bigoted. That speech will just have to be countered with rational argument, since it doesn’t advocate violence.
I think what I’m arguing is not that anything in particular should be censored, much less that I know where lines should be drawn; I’m mostly arguing that people shouldn’t make the argument: censorship is bad therefore no speech can ever be dangerous. That’s a crappy, crappy argument. The trouble is, censorship is bad and some speech can be very dangerous, in fact lethal. It drives me nuts when people in order to claim the first simply sweep away the second.
Sooner or later you come around to the point that the Constitution is not a suicide pact [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suicide_pact for history]. It doesn’t matter how ‘absolutist’ your interpretation of the First Amendment is in theory, in practice sooner or later free speech will lose out to salus populi. You just have to hope that the people with the power to draw the line think more or less as you do…
Very fair point O.B of course some speech is dangerous and it is a crappy argument to claim it isnt, far better to make the argument that some speech is harmfull but it is a price that is worth paying.
Richard – yes – provided one is ready to admit at least the possibility that the price is not always worth paying.
In other words I think it’s still a crappy argument to claim as an exceptionless generality that some speech is harmful but the harm is [always] a price worth paying.
I could sign on to that O.B with rare exeptions it is a price worth paying.