Dogma
A more troubling reading, however, is that Nazi speech is worth protecting even if a consequence of that protection is that someone gets hurt or killed. ‘I will defend your right to say it, even if your saying it makes violence more likely against the people attacked in your pamphlets.’ Is that what is meant? Defenders of free speech squirm on this point…they assure us dogmatically that there is no clear evidence of any causal connection between, say, racist posters and incidents of racial violence…
Yeah. The assurance often seems very dogmatic to me – it just somehow has to be true that there is no causal connection between racist speech and racial violence, and hence no clear evidence of same either. It has to be true because defenders of free speech want it to be true because – um – otherwise they find themselves defending free speech that could get people killed and they’d rather not but they’d also rather not think in detail, rather than in dogmatic generalities, about free speech? That’s what I often suspect, anyway.
…in other contexts, American civil liberties scholars have no difficulty at all in seeing a connection between speech and the possibility of violence. They point to it all the time as a way of justifying restrictions on citizens’ interventions at political gatherings. If Donald Rumsfeld comes to give a speech and someone in the audience shouts out that he is a war criminal, the heckler is quickly and forcibly removed. When I came to America, I was amazed that nobody thought this was a violation of the First Amendment…So there is an odd combination of tolerance for the most hateful speech imaginable, on the one hand, and obsequious deference, on the other, to the choreography which our rulers judge essential for their occasional public appearances. The Nazis can disrupt the streets of Skokie, but those who disrupt Rumsfeld’s message will be carried away with the hands of secret service agents clamped over their mouths. I have given up trying to make sense of any of this.
I still sometimes try, but I get lost quickly, like those people who set out to get a PhD in political science and accidentally end up in the English department.
Shouldn’t it perhaps be the reverse (of course). Power (and the sycophants gathered to listen in awe to the great men) needs to HEAR opposing speech. Jewish Holocaust survivors, maybe not. Is that too lefty/incoherent a definition for when freedom of speech should be defended?
D. G. Paz found that Victorian anti-Catholic rioting often correlated, logically enough, with encouragement from anti-Catholic speakers (although, as Paz notes, the underlying causes were not that simple–the speakers were usually the straw that broke the camel’s back). One of the reasons why I’ve never understood the “no, no connection between speech and action, can’t be” line.
Stopping hecklers is not necessarily a violation of free speech. It is odd to think that it is.
Someone does NOT have the right to come into my classroom, for instance, and disturb my class, freespeech or no. In general, people should be able to go peacably about their business (if legal) and not be heckled or harassed.
Therefore I have no problem with hecklers being carted out of a function, if they are disrupting the proper proceedings of that function. In the case cited, most people were probably present to listen to, or question, Rumsfeld. The heckler could stand with a placard but as soon as they start to shout abuse they are disrupting the proceedings. By their actions, they are infringing on the rights of others.
I think Jeremy Waldron may be confusing freedom of speech with freedom of action. You may have the former but you certainly don’t have the latter.
Heckling at public meetings is an old tradition in democractic politics. There’s a lovely old story about Teddy Roosevelt (Republican) on a campaign. Fed up with being continually heckled by one man, he finally interrupted his speech and asked him his allegiance. “Democrat” came the answer.
Roosevelt: “Why?”
Heckler: “My father was a Democrat before me so that makes me a Democrat”.
Roosevelt : “If you father were a donkey what would that make you?”
Heckler: “A Republican”.
(Note: this is from memory. Please do not take the quotes as exact/true)
Keith is right that throwing a heckler out of a meeting is not a denial of constitutionally protected freedom of expression. You could throw someone out for making any sort of noise loudly and persistently enough that it disrupted the meeting. It is not related to _what_ is being said. Jeremy’s confusion strikes me as oddly naive.
But Paul’s anecdote reminds us that Rumsfeld’s minders may not be acting in the best of traditions by throwing hecklers out as a matter of course.
As for the main point, about speech which “causes” people to get hurt, it is a different sort of confusion that leads one to call for the suppression of speech that “causes” people to get hurt. Advocacy of violence or of any crime is antisocial behaviour and ought to bring its practitioner to the attention of the police. But in a free and open society we all need to know what each other thinks and desires and the only way to preserve that is to preserve absolute freedom of speech per se, and the state needs to look at other options for reacting to the person whose exercise of freedom of speech seems to be leading toward illegal behaviour. Perhaps the most obvious in this case might be to put the person under surveillance. This type of response would carry different costs than a response that prohibited people from saying certain things but it might not be a higher cost, and even if the cost were higher it might be worth it.
Waldron’s example, however, isn’t even that strong. He’s comparing the disruption of a meeting — which certain people have gone to certain efforts and expense to make happen and whose efforts and expense merits some protection — with someone who is making use of legal space specifically created for the expression of ideas — a protest march.
Thanks, Miriam, that’s interesting.
“As for the main point, about speech which “causes” people to get hurt”
Juan, what are you quoting there? Nobody said that, so what are you quoting?
I’ve just been reading the latest deranged comments on Scott’s article which all seem to depend on a gross misquotation of Scott’s point stuck in quotation marks as if he’d said it. People do that a lot here too. That’s a bad habit.
OB, the quotes were “scare” quotes to indicate that I did not necessarily accept the alleged causality. As whether Jeremy alleged that speech caused violence, I need go no further than the quote you gave us,
“even if your saying it makes violence more likely” and “they assure us dogmatically that there is no clear evidence of any causal connection between racist posters and racial violence”. If he is not alleging that speech can cause violence, he is roundly implying it.
And I noticed that the “Dogma” of your title came from the “dogmatically” in one of those phrases, which I took as an endorsement of what he said.
Oh, and in fact you said “it just somehow has to be true that there is no causal connection between racist speech and racial violence” so you are taking on board the alleged causal connection and agreeing that it’s there.
Please just remove my scare quotes and take my comment as it would stand without them because it was a minor point with me to challenge the alleged causality. I’m willing to acknowledge, for the sake of argument, that some speech incites or causes violence and I’m suggesting that we look at other alternatives than banning said speech.
OK. I’ve read his whole piece, albeit quickly.
fwiw I wouldn’t have let the Nazis march in Skokie. They could march in their own neighbourhood but they couldn’t choose a neighbourhood for their free expression just for the hurt it would cause. That is not necessary to their free expression. They don’t have a right to get the _effect_ they want out of their speech, merely to speak. Nor do they have the right to grab people’s attention in intrusive ways, in my view, which puts pretty severe limits on how far marches can go anyhow.
But this abyss-redemption is both odd and interesting. I don’t know that it builds character to view depravity but I think we need to know it’s there when it exists. We should be able to gaze upon it but not be forced to gaze upon it.
Why do we need to know it’s there? Simply as part of knowing the environment in which we live.
‘They don’t have a right to get the ‘effect’ they want out of their speech,…’
Very true, they may have the right to speak, but not the right to compel others to hear.
To take an extreme example, person A might conceive that person B would be well served if his infant children were abducted and murdered. I suppose he might have a right to express that opinion, but were he to parade outside person B’s house with a megaphone proclaiming it then both the law and natural justice would be right to step in.
Hire a hall. Assemble in a field. Circulate your members. But getting in someone’s face is another matter.
Hmm, I don’t think the principle of incitement to violence is very difficult to justify at all; it’s when laws start to apply to principles of hatred that the difficulties start (and as far as I can tell, Waldron is defending both). Firstly, what constitutes hatred? How can society decide what speech to regulate? Secondly, what identities should be protected? How are such laws distinct from earlier forms of taboo prohibition on obscentity (where it was also argued that such things were a danger to society).
Not really sure why you seen so keen on Waldron; have you changed your mind on religious hatred laws?
Juan, why are you calling Waldron ‘Jeremy’? Do you know him? It looks very odd.
“As whether Jeremy alleged that speech caused violence, I need go no further than the quote you gave us,”
That’s exactly wrong. The quotation I gave does not allege that speech causes violence. Read it again. He is saying that defenders assure us dogmatically that there is no clear evidence of any causal connection, which is not the same thing as saying that there is a causal connection or that there is evidence of a causal connection.
“so you are taking on board the alleged causal connection and agreeing that it’s there.” No I’m not! For exactly the same reason. There is an important difference between querying dogmatic assurances that there is no evidence of X, and asserting that X.
“Not really sure why you seen so keen on Waldron; have you changed your mind on religious hatred laws?”
Where do I say I’m so keen on Waldron?! I just thought it was interesting, that’s all! Plus I agree with the bit about the dogmatic way free speech absolutists sometimes declare there is and can be no causal connection between speech and violence. I’ve heard lots of people offer up just such dogmatic (argument-free evidence-free) flat assertions, so I liked seeing that oddity pointed out. That’s all! And no I have emphatically not changed my mind on religious hatred laws.
Well, you’ve got me, OB. I guess Waldron (I simply couldn’t remember his surname, didn’t like the sound of ‘the author’ or whatever, and didn’t want to take the time to look it up, but now that you mention it it did feel odd to call him that) doesn’t assert that causal relationship, he merely assumes it.
I was in too big a hurry to get to the free-speech “meat” of the discussion.
I find the above to be hair-splitting. But I’m glad you asked about those scare quotes because I think now I just put them on there because I didn’t want to give up that point and for no good reason, i.e. only because of the disagreement that I went on to talk about.
Ah. That’s where we differ then. I find the above to be not hair-splitting at all; I think it’s crucial. Look, Waldron is a philosopher, for one thing; philosophers (unless they’be being tricksy) tend not to say one thing when they mean another; at least it’s fair to say that’s expected of them, so they probably take care not to in order not to look incompetent. And for another thing, the distinction is not hair-splitting, it’s of the essence. I’ve talked about this what feels like several million times. It’s a leap that journalists make all the time, and it’s a huge mistake: they hear ‘we have been able to find no evidence that [there are WMD in Iraq, say – or just fill in the blank]’ and they return the serve with ‘so you’re saying you definitely have proof that there are no WMD in Iraq?’ No! The two are not, not, not the same, and the difference is not hair-splitting. Suppose you can’t find your keys, you look for them, you still can’t find them – does that mean that they are not there to be found? Not necessarily!
So, your haste to get what you took to be the free-speech ‘meat’ of the discussion led you into a cognitive distortion. I wasn’t, in this particular post, talking about free speech meat, I was talking about exactly what I said: what Waldron said: the dogmatic assurance that ‘there is no clear evidence of any causal connection between, say, racist posters and incidents of racial violence…’ I was talking about that because that is what interests me: excessive dogmatism and certainty. You made two leaps – from that to a very positive assertion that speech causes people to get hurt (an assertion which no one made) and then that Waldron and/or I was urging that such speech be banned.
See…maybe what isn’t clear is that I am genuinely interested in these epistemic issues. I’m probably a good deal more interested in them than I am in what you take to be the meat of the subject. I’m interested in the way people see imaginary certainty when they want to make a case for something. So that really is what I was talking about, I wasn’t pretending to talk about that in order to talk about free speech by stealth.
OK, OB. I was drawn to what seemed like your arrival point, which is that these people you are criticising “find themselves defending free speech that could get people killed”.
But you’re saying the point was not that, but instead it was, what, that those people would rather “talk in dogmatic generalities”? I can certainly see that you were criticising that. I just thought you were criticising it because it was being used to defend an interpretation of freedom of expression that you disagreed with.
I was led further in that direction by your second extract from Waldron, which is where he compares the free speech of a heckler who is disrupting a meeting that has been organised, paid for and worked for by other people, with the free speech of people who are making use of public space to express themselves in accord with specific laws of Skokie, Illinois. And this quote by Waldron has nothing to do with dogmatic certainty, as far as I can see. But it wouldn’t surprise me if I missed that, too. I would be the first to admit that I can be rather tunnel-visioned, especially when it comes to the question of free speech. Still, I don’t see it now. It looks to me like Waldron’s second extract is all about what he considers free speech that should be protected and what he considers free speech that doesn’t deserve protection.
Anyhow, I suppose that impression was part of what led me to think that your post was about freedom of expression and that it brought in the discussion of dogmatic certainty as it appeared in arguments in defence of freedom of expression.
I will keep in mind that you are more interested in epistemic issues than in freedom of expression. But I would like to assure you that it never occurred to me that you were pretending to talk about one thing in order to talk about something else by stealth or that any interest you showed in anything was less than genuine.
‘but instead it was, what, that those people would rather “talk in dogmatic generalities”?’
Well, no. You’re right, it does interest me more because of the free speech angle. But I was focusing on that particular aspect.
But I didn’t think you thought (wait, where are we?) I was being sneaky. No no. That last clause sounds as if I thought that, but I didn’t. I don’t even remember why I phrased it that way now. I just meant – I didn’t have a subtext or an agenda.
Yeah, you were focusing on that particular angle for a purpose, and I didn’t realize that. Due at least in part no doubt to my tunnel vision when it comes to freedom of expression. But I might have done because I think there have been similar occasions in the past where you have focused on “certainty” or a similar theme, pulling it out of a perhipheral position to comment on it.
My thinking on free speech got stimulated last February and March and I continue to think about it so any opportunity is likely to catch me with some thought going through my head about it. :)