Free speech divides us.
Sounds crazy doesn’t it, but it’s the way the world is going.
We all seem to profess how important free speech is, but the moment someone says something that just doesn’t sit right with us, there’s a big pile on to cancel whoever had the nerve to say something so appalling.
Whatever happened to “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”?1
The reality is that we don’t want to hear opposing opinions. They unsettle us and make us feel uneasy. What if we discover we’re wrong in our beliefs?
It’s a subject to look at in more depth later when we consider the lies that divide us and how we can try to better recognise lies when they come calling.
What is free speech though?
That’s part of the problem. Should we be able to say literally anything?
Some people try to twist the idea of free speech in that way, even claiming that we should be able to make racist statements or death threats with gay abandon. [[GAAAARGGGGHH, HE SAID GAY!!!!! SHOOT HIM!!]]2
Should I be able to phone a ransom demand for a kidnap victim and be protected by free speech?
I think the use of the word speech is a large part of the problem.
Do you think a better phrase would be “free debate”?
We should protect the right of people to put forward ideas freely, even if they make us uncomfortable. We should encourage free debate to consider all possibilities and find the best solutions to all problems.
Not just support the right of people to stand on street corners shouting “flange” square in the face of everyone passing by.
But, regardless of what people might say, actions show us that free speech isn’t really that popular a concept.
Book Bans
Banning books feels like a big step away from democracy. Is it possible for someone to support free speech and also support book bans? Aren’t they polar opposites? It’s a common approach in autocracies to prevent dissent against the leadership.
It’s been reported that during the pandemic, The White House pressured Amazon to stop promoting a range of books that contained negative information about vaccines among other things, totalling 43 books in total. I’ve picked up this story from the Daily Mail website, which isn’t what I would consider a politically neutral site by any stretch of the imagination. That may explain the clickbait-style headline that doesn’t match their story (the headline says the White House censored books, but their story shows that any censoring was done by Amazon).3
Despite that, the story is important as it does seem to show that Amazon at least made it harder for customers to find some books. I’ve not read the two books the Mail chose to highlight, but both were published many years before the Covid 19 pandemic and both authors claim they’re offering objectively presented information on vaccines to help people make their own decisions on having vaccines.
Speaking as someone who has been vaccinated multiple times during my life, I can see no justification for effectively censoring books just because some people disagree with the message. In the case of books where the information is clearly false, then there may be such an argument if it may lead to harm for readers. However, it should be a high bar that needs to be passed and I’m not sure that’s the case with those two specific books.
Don’t you think everyone should have the opportunity to read information from all sides of a debate so they’re in the best position possible to make informed decisions? Granted, it’s more problematic when people limit themselves to evidence from just one side of an argument, which we all often do, but isn’t it down to individuals to make that choice?
I kind of understand the motivation of Amazon staff in this case, but it does seem like a worrying outcome.
I also kind of understand the motivation, at least in some cases, for parents and staff to want to block some books from school libraries.
This can be a very subjective issue, with the argument that books in schools should be considered for their appropriateness being a reasonable one. Of course, who decides what is appropriate and what isn’t?
It’s not an easy or straightforward debate to have, so I’m not going to get into that. I’m just going to pick one example of a ban that I think is quite chilling.
The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country by Amanda Gorman is a relatively short book at 26 pages, according to Amazon. It’s a poem that preaches love and unity.4 It’s a wholly positive text that aspires to a brighter future for all Americans, yet despite that, it’s banned from the libraries of Miami-Dade Public Schools.5
Could it be that having Oprah Winfrey writing the foreword was the problem? Or that the poem obliquely references the Capitol Riots? Or that Gorman has the nerve to suggest a black female can dream of becoming president of the USA?
There is nothing in that poem that can be considered inappropriate for any age.
So why do you think it was banned?
Doesn’t it concern you that some people are so intent on sowing division, that they won’t even tolerate a poem that champions unity?
Celebrity Jeopardy
I only flirt occasionally with popular culture, so I haven’t got a clue who Danny Masterson is other than he’s an actor found guilty of two counts of rape.
He’s not who I want us to consider.
You may recall that there was quite a hoo-hah when the actors Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher were revealed to have written letters of support to the judge in the case. Two actors I am familiar with which makes me feel all hip and cool and down with the kids. The Spy Who Dumped Me was a cracking film and Bad Moms and its Christmas sequel were hilarious, and I saw him in something where he played a spy or a hitman or something and another where he played a fella who did…some…things…there was a woman in it too.
Anyway, what was your reaction to them writing letters of support?
Have you read the letters they wrote?6
The rapes Masterson carried out occurred in the period 2001-2003. Neither Kutcher or Kunis were present at the rapes nor were they aware of them before Masterson’s arrest in 2017. For clarity, they wouldn’t have been aware of the rapes at that time either, just the allegations of rape.
Their letters were about a friend they’d known for decades and didn’t offer any comment or opinion on the legal process, verdict or the victims.
Letters of support are a long-established part of US court cases, intended to offer judges a fuller picture and understanding of offenders before sentencing. Judges aren’t stupid, they’ll disregard anything they feel is irrelevant.
Having read the letters, do you think it was fair and reasonable for them to be subjected to the backlash they faced for writing those letters? Letters that described the friend they knew, not a rapist they didn’t.
Stupid Students
When I was five or six, definitely no older than seven, I received an autograph book as a gift from Santa one year. He obviously didn’t appreciate the lowly circles I moved in and that I’d have little need for it, though I did once get the autographs of four Bristol Rovers players in one fell swoop. The first autograph in the book though was my granddad.
Young men think old men are fools,
But old men know young men are fools.
After he handed me back my new book, I remember looking at that and thinking “what a complete and utter bottom granddad is”. Recall I’m probably less than seven years old – I’d only acquired a very limited vocabulary of profanity at this stage in my life. The problem was I’d merely required him to sign his name, surely that’s what an autograph is, but no, he’s gone and bottomed-up my brand new autograph book by going off script. And worse, he’s calling me a fool.
It took me almost five more decades to realise the young fool he was talking about was himself.
When we’re young, we do stupid stuff. When we’re emotional, we do stupid stuff. Mix young and emotional, and you can be pretty sure that the train now arriving at Platform One is the Big Stupid Express.
And so I present exhibit number one, a letter written by young Harvard students following Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. Well, truth be told, I’m not presenting it as I believe it was originally a Google Doc that’s since been deleted. I found a copy of it republished by the Institute for Palestine Studies.7
Whatever your views on this Israel/Palestine situation, put them aside for now so we can just consider the letter and the reactions. The subject will come up later in Hans, Are We The Baddies? so let’s both of us keep it buttoned up for then.
To state that Israel was entirely responsible for the violence, as the letter did, is ridiculous and obscene. The Hamas terrorists who carried out the attacks had complete free will and are fully responsible for the inhuman atrocities committed that day. There’s no room for debate on that.
In addition, whatever your views on the actions, past and present, of the Israeli government, not condemning the actions of Hamas outright shows a distinct lack of human empathy.
As much as Hamas’ actions did not occur in a vacuum, Israel’s response has also not occurred in a vacuum.
However, if we believe in free speech, don’t the authors have a right to release the letter they wrote?
Move beyond the absurd first sentence and a later sentence also blaming Israel for Hamas’ attack and the opinions shared aren’t new or unique.
You can find other individuals and organisations that have said similar things about the actions of the Israeli government towards the Palestinian people8, even including an ex-head of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.
The letter prompted quite a backlash, but was it all fair?
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said “So when you look at what’s happening at places like Harvard and these other places where students are signing these letters, supporting Hamas terrorists, you know, something is really, really wrong with our education system.”9
Granted, DeSantis also refers to letters written in other places from Harvard, but as this comment was made within four days of the Harvard letter, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume it is his primary target, particularly as I’ve not found the publishing of any other student letter during those days that fits his description.
His comment illustrates a common sleight of hand as he claims the letter supported Hamas terrorists.
Based on the letter linked in the footnotes, it makes no mention of Hamas and doesn’t suggest any support for their actions on October 7. The lack of condemnation of Hamas is disturbing, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to infer support for the action from that omission. Based on the quote I’ve seen, DeSantis appears to be condemning people for something they haven’t said.
So why did DeSantis make the statement he made, when it doesn’t appear to be true? Surely he must have read the letter. Or maybe he didn’t.
Another criticism came from Harvard Hillel, which is the Jewish centre at Harvard, which described the letter as “further hatred and anti-Semitism”.10
The first Google search result defines anti-semitism as “hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people”.
You can be Jewish without being Israeli.
Wikipedia suggests that of the world’s 15.7 million Jews, 7.2 million live in Israel.11 It’s possible that there are more than 7.2 million Jews who have Israeli passports, but this illustrates not all Jews are Israeli.
You can be Israeli without being Jewish.
Again from Wikipedia, based on stats from the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, 73.2% of Israel’s population is Jewish.12 So some simple mathematics tells us that 26.8% of Israeli citizens aren’t Jewish.
The letter never uses the words Jew, Jews or Jewish. It refers only to the actions of Israel.
How can the letter be anti-semitic if it doesn’t reference Jews?
We shouldn’t be surprised when social media turns into a big pile-on and it seems that was the case here. What added a twist is some of the participants, apparently some at the pinnacle of society.
I’ve seen Bill Ackman described as a billionaire hedge fund manager and he appears to have been prominent among those who called for Harvard to publish the names of all the signatories to the letter.13 Despite retweeting a tweet that included the text of the letter, he also misrepresented the content.
The purpose of the call for the names to be released was so that CEOs like Ackman could be sure to never hire any of these people. I get that it’s an emotional subject, but I’d expect those in such elevated positions as Ackman to be able to operate at a more objective level than the horde of villagers with their flaming torches and pitchforks. At least, shouldn’t he and his peers take the time to understand what was said, rather than acting on what they think was said?
Yet, the irony is that they’re acting in the same over-emotional way as the students, failing to allow themselves the time to objectively understand the situation and act accordingly.
I guess hate is just too powerful an emotion for any of us to control.
If I was Jewish, I’d surely believe the letter was born from hatred. With the benefit of greater detachment, I think it was driven by emotion, far removed from the constraints of objectivity and reason. Could we argue much the same as the Israeli government’s reaction to the Hamas atrocity? A knee jerk rather than a considered movement.
Understandable in the circumstances. Would either of us have acted differently?
But turning back to the signatories, is it human to clamour to effectively end the careers of young people for one thoughtless and emotional act in the years when they’re meant to be making mistakes?
Isn’t the act of making mistakes part of an ongoing learning process that’s meant to make us better and more valuable members of our societies? I only have to recall what a dicking moron I was in my younger years to know I can’t judge someone else’s stupidity arising from their youth.
Mrs Forclift has made me a better person. I fear I’ve made her worse. Rather than elevating myself all the way to her level, I worry that I’ve dragged her down so that we could meet somewhere in the middle. Anyway, that’s not to debate right now.
One of the big lessons she taught me very early on is that when one finger points forward, three fingers point back. It’s easy to point the finger of blame at others, less so to look honestly at ourselves.
As a kid, the British media largely taught us what a monster Bobby Sands14 was. To Irish Republicans he was a hero. To the British he was an IRA terrorist. Worse than an animal and, during his incarceration, literally treated so. Some of his writing from that time can be read in The Writings of Bobby Sands.15 It’s a mercifully short book as I couldn’t argue it’s a great piece of literature, though perhaps worth a read to see how conflict has the power to drive the angels out of all sides. The following are his words.
“I think of the only break in the monotony, the forty minutes I spend at Mass each Sunday – ‘turn the other cheek’, ‘love thy neighbour’ – and I wonder, because over the months I know that bitterness has grown inside me. A hatred so intensive that it frightens me.
“I see it also in the faces of my comrades at Mass: the hatred in their eyes. One day these young men will be fathers and these attitudes will inevitably be passed on to their children.“
Hate wins no prizes for any of us. It grows easily and persists far beyond those who originally birth it
It’s destructive enough when it’s let loose within peacetime societies, attacking each other for daring to embrace the privilege of free speech or free debate as it would be better termed.
Let loose to poison any kind of relationship between Israelis and Palestinians and it’s an infinite vicious circle. Like a drill that won’t stop turning, as too many on both sides embrace their dark emotion and keep driving the drill ever further down to release even greater reserves of hatred.
Right now, it’s hard to imagine how the hatred running free in the Middle East can be contained again, but it should be easier to control it within our societies, shouldn’t it?
We live in democracies where people at all points of the political spectrum proclaim the importance of free speech and how it must be protected. Then with their next breath, they attack and condemn others for exercising that exact freedom because they don’t agree with what was said.
Listening to what others have to say, even if we don’t agree with them, will help us better understand each other and potentially make us develop more robust opinions. Just responding with bile when we disagree with something that’s been said just leads to greater division and weakens our societies.
If someone says something that’s not legal, then the law can and should deal with them.
But are you comfortable with people being effectively cancelled for exercising their legal right to free speech?
And doesn’t trying to cancel people for things that they didn’t say feel like an attempt to undermine the core freedoms afforded by democracy?
- Ah, Voltaire of course. No, I thought he said it too, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Beatrice_Hall and serves as an example of something we’ll consider later as to how repeating something turns it into truth ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WHSkbM9zAU ↩︎
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13564581/authors-joe-biden-administration-book-censorship-amazon.html ↩︎
- You can read the poem in full yourself here – https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/a35279603/amanda-gorman-inauguration-poem-the-hill-we-climb-transcript/ ↩︎
- https://pen.org/2023-banned-book-list/ – the ban has been challenged, so it is possible it could have been rescinded by the time you read this ↩︎
- This page apparently has images of the letters – https://radaronline.com/p/read-mila-kunis-ashton-kutcher-full-letters-of-support-danny-masterson/ ↩︎
- https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1654370 ↩︎
- You just need to search for terms like “Israel Palestinians apartheid” or other phrases from the letter, but here’s an article to get you started – https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/12/05/does-israels-treatment-palestinians-rise-level-apartheid ↩︎
- https://thehill.com/policy/international/4256153-desantis-denounces-harvard-students-hamas-support/ ↩︎
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67067565 ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_population_by_country ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel ↩︎
- https://web.archive.org/web/20231026034902/http://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1711788747086233661 ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Sands ↩︎
- https://collections.mun.ca/digital/collection/radical/id/6431 ↩︎