Perilous times for free speech by @BloggersRUs

Perilous times for free speech

by Tom Sullivan

I have long said that loss of the ability to laugh at yourself is the first warning sign of fundamentalism. That applies whether the fundamentalist is a jihadist of the right or from the fringe left. Plus a lot in between. A priest I know once said it was a healthy thing, now and then, to spit on your idols. That is, if you can still recognize when beliefs have become idols.

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, even Ross Douthat argues that the right to blaspheme is "essential to the liberal order." And although shock for shock's sake adds little to public debate, "If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something, then it’s something that almost certainly needs to be said." We will see, after the transient outpouring of support for France, how well some of our compatriots (and Douthat) warm to defending that idea when their own sacred cows are gored.

Time's Bruce Crumley responded to the firebombing of Charlie Hebdo in 2012:

It’s obvious free societies cannot simply give in to hysterical demands made by members of any beyond-the-pale group. And it’s just as clear that intimidation and violence must be condemned and combated for whatever reason they’re committed — especially if their goal is to undermine freedoms and liberties of open societies. But it’s just evident members of those same free societies have to exercise a minimum of intelligence, calculation, civility and decency in practicing their rights and liberties—and that isn’t happening when a newspaper decides to mock an entire faith on the logic that it can claim to make a politically noble statement by gratuitously pissing people off.

Perhaps, but Jonathan Chait counters how in the current environment a double-mindedness prevails, even as it did at the White House then. As Chait deconstructs it:

On the one hand, religious extremists should not threaten people who offend their beliefs. On the other hand, nobody should offend their beliefs. The right to blasphemy should exist but only in theory. They do not believe religious extremists should be able to impose censorship by issuing threats, but given the existence of those threats, the rest of us should have the good sense not to risk triggering them.

The line separating the two, writes Chait, is "perilously thin." Defense of blasphemy in theory is meaningless without defending the practice.

Not to put too fine a point on it, if you make a habit of straddling fences, I strongly suggest you wear a cup.

The attack on free speech by non-state, religious extremists this week (and public outcries) will likely obscure more insidious attacks happening less visibly under the color of law. "Public order" convictions for Facebook posts in England, for example, as Glenn Greenwald reports. If you are a Muslim, that is. And otherwise?

To put it mildly, not all online “hate speech” or advocacy of violence is treated equally. It is, for instance, extremely difficult to imagine that Facebook users who sanction violence by the UK in Iraq and Afghanistan, or who spew anti-Muslim animus, or who call for and celebrate the deaths of Gazans, would be similarly prosecuted. In both the UK and Europe generally, cases are occasionally brought for right-wing “hate speech” (the above warning from Scotland’s police was issued after a polemicist posted repellent jokes on Twitter about Ebola patients). But the proposed punishments for such advocacy are rarely more than symbolic: trivial fines and the like. The real punishment is meted out overwhelmingly against Muslim dissidents and critics of the West.

Not only the UK. The U.S. has "joined, and sometimes led, the trend to monitor and criminalize online political speech." Greenwald cites chilling examples. He concludes:

Like the law generally, criminalizing online speech is reserved only for certain kinds of people (those with the least power) and certain kinds of views (the most marginalized and oppositional). Those who serve the most powerful factions or who endorse their orthodoxies are generally exempt. For that reason, these trends in criminalizing online speech are not so much an abstract attack on free speech generally, but worse, are an attempt to suppress particular ideas and particular kinds of people from engaging in effective persuasion and political activism.

Clowns to the left of me. Jokers to the right. Perilous times indeed.