The new threats against free speech
In the first few days of the new year, before public life reawakens and presents a fresh crop of outrage demanding instant denunciation, it seems customary for commentators to attempt a foray into thinking Big Thoughts. Hence earnest pleas for greater compassion, or musings about the Future of Democracy.
Why buck tradition? And what greater canvas for big thoughts can one have than the vital importance of the first “fundamental freedom” — freedom of speech — as analyzed by one of the most influential writers of our time?
The Nigerian novelist and essayist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tackled the subject late last year as part of the BBC’s prestigious Reith Lectures — Britain’s equivalent of our Massey Lectures.
If you don’t know Adichie’s work, you should. She’s won or been nominated for just about every global literary award there is (including a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant”) and is widely credited for attracting a new generation of readers to African writing in English.
More than that, she’s an outspoken feminist and a no-nonsense thinker on many subjects, including, as it turns out, the importance of upholding the value of free speech at a time when the very concept is under attack from all sides.
The far right has always resorted to censorship; witness the current wave of attempts to ban books from schools in the United States.
But there are new threats from what Adichie calls the “punitive moral stridency” of online mobs determined to shame and banish anyone who strays from the “ideological tribe” they are deemed to belong to.
“It is a virtual vigilante action whose aim is not just to silence the person who has spoken, but to create a vengeful atmosphere that deters others from speaking,” she says.
“This new social censure demands consensus while being wilfully blind to its own tyranny. I think it portends the death of curiosity, the death of learning and the death of creativity.”
This is the point, of course, when many on the far reaches of the left stop applauding this celebrated African thinker and sit on their hands. As Adichie points out, for these self-styled progressives the very idea of free speech is just for the “bad people” who want it “as a cover to say bad things.”
That may be true for a few, but if ever there was a throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater moment, this is it.
Adichie makes a powerful argument in favour of upholding the basic right to speak your mind without facing either official censorship or an online mob out to enforce ideological conformity.
Of course, as everyone acknowledges, there are limits. But the fundamental principle holds: it’s always best to preserve as great an area as possible for free debate. Narrowing the scope of what’s permissible to say should be done only with great care, even if that means allowing offensive and even harmful speech.
This is all on a rather theoretical level. The debate comes down to earth when, for example, governments propose to regulate what can be said, or the kinds of content that can be created, in various media.
That’s happening in Canada right now with the ongoing debate over Bill C-11 (the Online Streaming Act), and it’s set to heat up in 2023. The Trudeau government promises to introduce legislation to curb socalled online harms, including most notably hate speech.
Exactly where to draw the line between legitimate but offensive speech, and genuine hate speech that should be illegal, is bound to be contentious.
If we follow Adichie’s thinking, we’ll preserve maximum space for people to speak their minds even, indeed especially, when we’re outraged by what they say.