Mick Hume - Trigger Warning - Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?

‘Hate speech’ just means moral views you object to, and one person’s hate speech is another’s passionate belief. As some university campaigners have discovered to their consternation, if you seek to No Platform those you find offensive, don’t be surprised if somebody does the same thing to you. Those who live by the ban can perish by it, too.

It might be tempting to imagine going along with attempts to crack down on ‘radicalisation’ and censor Islamist or Islamophobic extremists. But in practice, such simple authoritarian solutions won’t work. Trying to defend freedom by banning its enemies, to uphold our belief in free speech by censoring those who disagree, is worse than useless and can only add credence to their cause. What we need to do is to fight them on the intellectual and political beaches, not try to bury the issues in the sand. Free speech is the potential solution, not the problem.

I first wrote in defence of ‘the Right to be Offensive’ more than twenty-five years ago, when I was the editor of long-deceased Living Marxism magazine. Our slogan then – ‘Ban Nothing – Question Everything’ – has informed my attitude ever since. In the intervening years, free speech has fallen further from favour. The first edition of Trigger Warning was published shortly after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, to highlight the pressing need to defend free speech. That has become a more urgent problem since. We have also, however, witnessed the prospects of turning the tide and winning more vocal support for free speech, especially on campus.

So this is a call-to-arms to fight for free speech before it’s too late. It might seem hard to make a stand when unfettered free speech is so out of fashion. It often means having to stand up for the rights of some unattractive types whose views we don’t want to hear. But that is what makes it so important today.

The fact that many feel there are now few principles worth fighting for in political life makes it all the more imperative that we should stand for free speech for all. Because free speech is the indispensible midwife of new ideas. If our society is ever to find a way out of its current malaise, we need an open, no-holds-barred debate about everything. We need, in short, more free speech rather than less. Including, like Socrates, the right to say the ‘wrong’ thing.

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