On free speech and democracy
Events in the US, such as the Trump presidency and Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, have made people very much aware of misinformation and disinformation and the difficulty of discovering the truth. As a part of studying climate change, I have had to wade through tonnes of disinformation put out by the media to support the oil and coal industries and so it has made me very suspicious of any media outlet.
There have been calls to try and control the digital social media who do very well from the more outrageous conspiracies such as the alternative “facts” concerning Covid but there are loads of similar factions who believe some theory or cult which have a few nuggets of truth on which a whole conspiracy is built.
In my view there have been five events that have made dramatic advances in free speech which have broken the power of the establishment and driven big changes to improvements in democracy. If you draw a graph on the advance of the freedom of people and democracy from Henry the eighth to today, we have moved from when the king had absolute power and could execute people he distrusted to today, when most civilised countries do not allow the government to execute anyone at all and the people elect a government to run the county for the benefit of the population.
The first big advance was the invention of the movable typeface by Johannes Gutenberg in 1450 which enabled books and publications to be published cheaply and quickly and spread the skill of reading and writing through the population and displaced the sole source of the written word away from the church.
Henry the eighth’s part in this was to break the power of the Catholic church, which owned most of the major cities and best land in England, by starting his own Protestant church and gaining for himself the taxes and wealth of the country instead of it going to the Roman church.
Industrialisation caused people to move to the cities and this made communication and organisation of the people easier and more effective, which enabled organisation like the Chartists movement to flourish.
The next big technological surge in information was the transmission of radio and television news and entertainment. Although there are examples of government and media barons’ manipulation, on balance, free information and democracy flourished.
It’s possible that the spread of the English language helped spread information simply because it is a barstadised language formed from four or five European languages with all the grammar forms mixed up that makes it easier to communicate.
The big change that we are going through now is the internet and this wave of information format has yet to play out but there are huge benefits in information provision.
Controlling dictators such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao have come and gone but democracy has steadily improved so we must have faith in humanity to see the truth through the mess.