This “long read” at the Guardian, written by Nesrine Malik (click on screenshot), could easily have been a short read, as much of it is a personalized rant about the online abuse Malike suffered, and a series of misguided claims that a). there is no ‘free speech crisis’, b.) that those advocating free speech and pretending there’s a crisis are really looking for a cover so they can spout racism and Islamophobia, and c.) that we need to “reclaim” free speech by, among other things, banning or disinviting more speakers. In the course of her argument, though, Malik completely mischaracterizes what most reasonable people mean by free speech.
We’ve met Malik twice before, in both cases when she argued that free speech was really a cover to vent Islamophobia (see here and here, with the last piece discussing her ideas about banning “hate speech”). Since she was born in Sudan and spent some of her youth in Saudi Arabia, I suspect she’s a Muslim, which makes her sensitive to anti-Muslim bigotry. But not all criticism of Islam, including some that she mentions, is “Islamophobia” in the bigoted sense.
I’m not going to analyze this in detail, as it makes few points that haven’t been made in “free-speech-is-overrated” pieces before. The new bit is Bret Stephen’s tantrum when a professor called him a “bedbug” in a tweet, and Stephens wrote back to the tweeter as well as to his provost and the director of his division. That was indeed hypocritical, since Stephens has repeatedly called for free speech, but it’s just a bad act by an oversensitive man, and says little about the free-speech movement in general.
Here are some quotes from Malik’s piece. The bold headers are mine, while excerpts from Malik’s piece are indented.
Free speech is a myth confected to allow trolling and, in particular, the demonization of minorities and the promulgation of “Islamophobia”.
. . . it is somehow conventional wisdom that free speech is under assault, that university campuses have succumbed to an epidemic of no-platforming, that social media mobs are ready to raise their pitchforks at the most innocent slip of the tongue or joke, and that Enlightenment values that protected the right to free expression and individual liberty are under threat. The cause of this, it is claimed, is a liberal totalitarianism that is attributable (somehow) simultaneously to intolerance and thin skin. The impulse is allegedly at once both fascist in its brutal inclinations to silence the individual, and protective of the weak, easily wounded and coddled.
This is the myth of the free speech crisis. It is an extension of the political-correctness myth, but is a recent mutation more specifically linked to efforts or impulses to normalise hate speech or shut down legitimate responses to it. The purpose of the myth is not to secure freedom of speech – that is, the right to express one’s opinions without censorship, restraint or legal penalty. The purpose is to secure the licence to speak with impunity; not freedom of expression, but rather freedom from the consequences of that expression.
. . . If anything, speech has never been more free and unregulated. The purpose of the free-speech-crisis myth is to guilt people into giving up their right of response to attacks, and to destigmatise racism and prejudice. It aims to blackmail good people into ceding space to bad ideas, even though they have a legitimate right to refuse. And it is a myth that demands, in turn, its own silencing and undermining of individual freedom. To accept the free-speech-crisis myth is to give up your own right to turn off the comments.
. . . Not only do free speech warriors demand all opinions be heard on all platforms they choose, from college campuses to Twitter, but they also demand that there be no objection or reaction. It became farcical and extremely psychologically taxing for anyone who could see the dangers of hate speech, and how a sharpening tone on immigration could be used to make the lives of immigrants and minorities harder.
. . . Our alleged free speech crisis was never really about free speech. The backdrop to the myth is rising anti-immigration sentiment and Islamophobia. Free-speech-crisis advocates always seem to have an agenda. They overwhelmingly wanted to exercise their freedom of speech in order to agitate against minorities, women, immigrants and Muslims.
No, there is a “crisis” in that speakers are increasingly being deplatformed on campuses and elsewhere (see the FIRE disinvitation database), and that deplatforming is increasingly coming from the Left. Moreover, these deplatformings involve censoring pro-Israel speech far more often than censoring pro-Muslim or pro-Palestinian speech. The reason the Right is more vocal about free speech than is the Left may come in part from the base motives mentioned by Malik, but in general comes from the fact that conservative viewpoints are censored or demonized more often, at least on campuses, than are liberal viewpoints. It is the conservative students, and not the liberals, who feel intimidated on campus to say what they think.
The free-speech movement calls for not only completely unlimited speech everywhere, but the inviting of all speakers as well as the attempt to suppress the opponents of hate speech.
The myth has two components: the first is that all speech should be free; the second is that freedom of speech means freedom from objection.
. . . Free speech had seemingly come to mean that no one had any right to object to what anyone ever said – which not only meant that no one should object to Johnson’s comments but, in turn, that no one should object to their objection. Free speech logic, rather than the pursuit of a lofty Enlightenment value, had become a race to the bottom, where the alternative to being “professionally offended” is never to be offended at all. This logic today demands silence from those who are defending themselves from abuse or hate speech. It is, according to the director of the Institute of Race Relations, “the privileging of freedom of speech over freedom to life”.
This is complete hogwash. Not even in the U.S. is all speech free: the courts have laid out several exceptions: defamatory or harassing speech, false advertisement, speech that constitutes direct and immediate incitement to violence, and so on. However, Malik wants “hate speech” and “fighting words” banned as well, though she doesn’t really define these terms—and that is the omnipresent problem. Who shall decide what speech is “hate speech” that Malik wants banned? One could, for example, say that criticisms of affirmative action, or of Zionism, constitute “hate speech” or even “fighting words.” And they have indeed led to fights. Should these discussions be banned because they cause rancor and bad feeling? I don’t think so.
Further, nobody argues that everyone has a right to say what they want online. While controls should be as lax as possible, even I monitor this site to keep discussions civil, and Malik’s own venue of The Guardian doesn’t even allow comments on threads that, she says, are likely to have discussions that “derail.” The concept of “free speech” in the U.S. is meant to prevent government censorship of public speech, not to force private venues and universities to allow everybody to speak on their dime. (I do think that Universities should give free speech the widest possible latitude, as the Chicago Principles demand.)
As for free-speech advocated demanding that people attacked by speech be silenced and not allowed to defend themselves, that’s just a lie. What we always favor is more speech, and for people to respond when they’re attacked.
The new free-speech movement was started by atheists who wanted to promulgate Islamophobia.
At the same time that new platforms were proliferating on the internet, a rightwing counter-push was also taking place online. It claimed that all speech must be allowed without consequence or moderation, and that liberals were assaulting the premise of free speech. I began to notice it around the late 2000s, alongside the fashionable atheism that sprang up after the publication of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. These new atheists were the first users I spotted using argumentative technicalities (eg “Islam is not a race”) to hide rank prejudice and Islamophobia. If the Guardian published a column of mine but did not open the comment thread, readers would find me on social media and cry censorship, then unleash their invective there instead.
Here again we see the false claim that the free-speech movement says that “all speech must be allowed without consequence or moderation”. That’s a twofold lie: nobody says that all speech should be allowed everywhere: it depends on the time and place. And all of us think that we should bear reasonable consequences for what we say, so long as those consequences are not physical violence or overreaction, like firing someone. Malik beefs at length about how she got criticized on social media, but that will always be the consequence of free speech, and all of us have been attacked in this way. As for Dawkins (by implication) being the source of the new free-speech movement, a movement supposedly meant to legitimize “rank prejudice and Islamophobia,” I deny it. Dawkins criticizes Islam, its tenets, and its oppression of gays, women, and apostates, but who among us would say that such speech should be censored? This is not the same thing as bigotry, but nevertheless is considered “hate speech” by many, and I suspect by Malik.
We need to control free speech because it conflicts with other values: the right of minorities to not be treated differently or oppressed.
But real marketplaces actually require a lot of regulation. There are anti-monopoly rules, there are interest rate fixes and, in many markets, artificial currency pegs. In the press, publishing and the business of ideas dispersal in general, there are players that are deeply entrenched and networked, and so the supply of ideas reflects their power.
Freedom of speech is not a neutral, fixed concept, uncoloured by societal prejudice. The belief that it is some absolute, untainted hallmark of civilisation is linked to self-serving exceptionalism – a delusion that there is a basic template around which there is a consensus uninformed by biases. The recent history of fighting for freedom of speech has gone from something noble – striving for the right to publish works that offend people’s sexual or religious prudery, and speaking up against the values leveraged by the powerful to maintain control – to attacking the weak and persecuted. The effort has evolved from challenging upwards to punching downwards.
Apparently it’s okay to punch upwards, which usually means bigotry against heterosexual white males or those groups lower on the oppression scale. But bigotry is bigotry, and “hate speech” is ill defined. We’ve seen claims that preferring gender balance as an outcome is more important than providing equal opportunities for genders, and that those who promote the latter view are sexists and bigots who should be censored. But these discussions are essential, regardless of whether they’re seen as “punching downwards.”
Finally, and I draw to a close, Malik is demanding more control over speech, including increased deplatforming:
We challenge this instrumentalisation by reclaiming the true meaning of the freedom of speech (which is freedom to speak rather than a right to speak without consequence), challenging hate speech more forcefully, being unafraid to contemplate banning or no-platforming those we think are harmful to the public good, and being tolerant of objection to them when they do speak. Like the political-correctness myth, the free-speech-crisis myth is a call for orthodoxy, for passiveness in the face of assault.
A moral right to express unpopular opinions is not a moral right to express those opinions in a way that silences the voices of others, or puts them in danger of violence. There are those who abuse free speech, who wish others harm, and who roll back efforts to ensure that all citizens are treated with respect. These are facts – and free-speech-crisis mythology is preventing us from confronting them.
Part of this is already part of the free-speech platform: the need to face consequences for what you say, the right to challenge hate speech, and the need to tolerate the give-and-take of speech. What is really the objectionable part here is Malik’s claim that we should “contemplate banning or no-platforming those we think are harmful to the public good.” But who determines what speech is harmful? Apparently it’s Malik, but it’s sure not Trump.
In reality, nobody should be the Decider here—at least not for public speech, and preferably not on campus.
Finally, as we’ve seen, the claim that ‘hate speech’ leads to “silencing the voices of others” is bogus. What hate speech has done on campus has made minorities and those objecting to public speech more vocal. If students have been silenced—beyond right-wing students, of course, who have been silenced via demonization of their speech—I haven’t noticed it.
Let us not pretend that free speech and “diversity and inclusion” will never conflict and that they can always live in harmony. In many cases they can, but if you criticize Palestine or Israel, or affirmative action, or equal gender representation in proportion to the population—those things are often construed as “hate speech” that is palpably inimical to diversity and inclusion. And in cases where the two values conflict, you must choose which gets priority. When you do that, then someone must decide what speech is inimical to diversity and inclusion. Many of those decisions will quash discussions that are important and essential. I would always vote for free speech—at least free speech as defined by the American courts.
The Guardian, of course, is Britain’s equivalent of HuffPost: a soppy and unthoughtful purveyor of all things Woke. This piece is one of those soppy offerings. I wouldn’t say it shouldn’t have been published, but it should have been cut by about 75%.
Quick note, the title seems to misspell the last name, Malik. I don’t know which is correct myself.
Thanks. I was typing madly as the article approached its posting deadline, and simply added an extra “e”. I’ve fixed it now, thanks.
Well written piece/ Although I have some doubts about constitutions cast in stone (or on paper) at least in America you are generally aware of the importance of the right to freedom of speech. Here in the UK this is less well known and those who call themselves progressive are often inclined to view it less as a right and more as a tool for those in the know to inform the populace
This is the bit I liked most:
“These new atheists were the first users I spotted using argumentative technicalities (eg “Islam is not a race”) to hide rank prejudice and Islamophobia.”
Argumentative Technicalities v Actual Facts:
Islam is NOT a race. Unless other religions are races too…
It’s true that it’s a fact, but it’s also true that that particular statement has curdled into a meme that actual racists use to confuse and disorient.
Ah, ‘memes’ and ‘actual racists’ are now a defence against the actual facts? Or, as our host has it:
“Dawkins criticizes Islam, its tenets, and its oppression of gays, women, and apostates, but who among us would say that such speech should be censored?”
Malik would have such criticism silenced by dubbing it ‘racist’. To be clear: if opposing the oppression of gays, women, and apostates, means, in Malik’s view, that I am racist, that is a burden I gladly bear.
But then I regard Malik’s view as worthless.
It’s undeniably true that that phrase is routinely used to spin genuine racism.
I don’t know what the rest of your overheated reply was about since I didn’t accuse you of anything.
For the record I can’t stand Nesrine Malik, she’s comfortably the most awful writer at The Grauniad. But she’s correct on this.
I am not sure I accused you of accusing me of anything, but thanks for the heads up.
On the other hand, in deliberately underheated mode, I am pleased to hear you think NM is ‘awful’. You may want to expand on that.
My version is twofold. First, that accusing someone of Islamophobia is a way silencing criticism of Islam. It is a religion and thus fully open, in an open society, to criticism.
Second, Islam is pernicious, in my view, in dividing humanity into three: Us, Them, (and Those of the Book, Jews and Christians). I don’t believe people should be divided into such.
You may feel differently.
How is any of that relevant to what I said? Where does it contradict anything I’ve said?
That is what I meant when I said I don’t understand what you reply was about.
And why should I expand on Nesrine Malik being awful?
“And why should I expand on Nesrine Malik being awful?”
Why indeed? Other than that in civilised discussion one is often asked for reasons or evidence for one’s opinions…
“My version is twofold. First, that accusing someone of Islamophobia is a way silencing criticism of Islam.”
Sometimes it is. And sometimes it’s because they’ve actually said or done something racist.
I’ve no idea why you react as though I’ve said something surprising when I point this out.
Thanks, once again, for characterising my response for me: ‘surprising’. You are good at this, if I may say so.
Meanwhile I note you ignore my second, far more fundamental point: that Islam is fundamentally ‘othering’: Us, Them (and the others).
It is, isn’t it? Or do I have these fundamental tenets wrong?
” that Islam is fundamentally ‘othering’: Us, Them (and the others).”
And that’s different from every other religion, how?
@sted74 Yes it is, it is broadly an unpleasant, extraordinarily conservative religion that licenses brutality all across the globe. And? What does that have to do with anything I’ve said?
And again, why should I ‘expand’ on what I think of Nesrine Malik? I don’t understand – you want ME to convince YOU that she IS awful, even though you disagree strongly with pretty much everything she’s said and have been arguing against her throughout this thread?
The fact that a phrase or meme may be used by alleged actual undesirables then being used to discredit the actual truth of that notion and the integrity of those who use it with validity is common too. Too common.
Surely an actual racist must say other things that are real evidence of their racism?
Let’s focus on those rather than diluting or negating facts and finding yet another way to call anyone who doesn’t agree with ‘the program’ a racist or whatever.
Nothing I said did that. Nowhere have I said that well-intentioned, entirely decent people don’t use that phrase. I hear all types of people say it, because it’s technically correct.
But Malik is simply correct on this(this ONE SPECIFIC POINT in case anyone thinks I’m endorsing her argument as a whole), and there’s no way around it: that phrase is more and more being used as a cover by racists as a default response when they’re accused of racism.
No, really, she isn’t. Islam isn’t a race and that is a fact, not a technicality.
People do terrible things in the name of Islam. Muslims, even in developed countries tend to have more regressive views on things like gay and women’s rights than the general populace. It is a clear fact that Islam is bad news for people who are gay or women but pointing that out gets you shut down because, allegedly, it is racist.
All of that is true, and none of it contradicts anything I’ve said.
‘Islamophobia’ doesn’t just mean phobia of the religion Islam any more. People might want it to, but words change their definitions, and now it also means genuine racism against Muslims.
Both the phobia(which is reasonable given how horrifyingly extreme and censorious a religion it is) and the racism(which is not reasonable) exist at the same time and are described by the same word. This complicates things, and that complication is not reflected when people claim that ‘Islamophobia’ is some trumped up word that people exclusively use to smear well-intentioned critics of Islam. Because it’s also the word we use when describing genuine racists.
The same can be said of the phrase ‘Islam isn’t a race'(nowhere did I deny that this phrase is true I hope you notice). This phrase is used by both the well-intentioned, but also, increasingly, by outright racists as a cover for their racism.
Malik is right about this, trivially so, and you can find plenty of examples of far-right bigots using precisely that phrase every time someone accuses them of racism.
I would call myself close to an absolutist on this issue. But one thing that people miss about _online_ speech is that it is fundamentally different from any kind of free speech that human beings have had before.
The argument for free-speech is that we should hear all ideas, and people can either stand by those ideas or not. Bad ideas will get criticised and we can choose whether or not we want to associate with the people who propagate them. We can criticise them in return.
If those ideas are sufficiently awful society can choose to turn its back on the people who propose them. That’s how it works: free speech should not be entirely consequence-free, and no-one should expect it to be.
In America I technically have the freedom to walk up to a Jew and tell them the holocaust was a good thing – but if I do so I expect that onlookers would be horrified, and that word would spread about this interaction. I might get ostracised from normal society. I might get fired, I might lose friends. These are the risks that come with free-speech.
But with the internet we have an environment that removes almost all those risks. Where you can repeatedly send images of someone’s children being gassed, where you can even tell them that you’re going to kill them, and you can be reasonably confident that you will experience no blowback or social stigma whatsoever.
There has never been anything like this in the history of human existence, certainly nothing as pervasive and significant.
A space where people can use free speech without any of the normal social reactions and consequences that would usually keep people from abusing and threatening other humans. It’s never existed before.
I don’t think it’s factored in sufficiently when we talk about free-speech: free-speech online is fundamentally different from anything we’ve encountered before. I’ve tried thinking of a period in human history where huge numbers of people have been able to abuse anyone they like anonymously, without any social consequences accruing to them, and I can’t think of a precedent.
I’ve yet to hear anyone on my side of the free-speech argument address this. It is crucial, and the real-world damage done by the general shittiness of online speech is IMO enormous, and subtle too.
Well put, and, as you say, pretty much ignored.
Some excellent points, Saul. I believe I am on your “side” on this (at least in so far as I can tell), so I hope you can say at least one did address it. Still, I am not sure but I’ll bet Dr PCCe and some WEIT denizens – I’m eyeing you Mr. Kukec- HAVE addressed this before, at least in some fashion.
Apart from agreeing with you that with regard to this issue, the intertubes presents a unique and entirely new problem (I too cannot think of an analogy from history), I am not sure what, if anything governments ought to do. I know what (or suspect) what many want to do just as Ms Malik would. I would say that from my probably more absolutist free speech position than yours, that government ought not to regulate the speech policies of private internet media companies, except of course those already prohibited -fraud, child pornography, etc. One small thing that I think can be done is to use the fact that governments are also customers of some of the biggest of these, including Facebook, Google and Twitter. They are often utilized for their distributed computing prowess. Sometimes important customers have significant power over companies and I believe it is possible to influence those companies speech policies and we as a people ought to use that power. This is one example of what we might do to address the issues you brought up and still be true to free speech ideals
Ultimately, I think if we wish to have a less toxic Internet we will have to see a change in our culture(s). This can be done. We have only recently (when compared to our history) come around to the idea that half our population is not the property of the other half. It took an enormous amount of pain and suffering over generations but we have come around. These kinds of changes are hard to predict, difficult to steer and impossible to stop, but they are possible.
We are living in interesting times – which isn’t always a curse.
“O brave new world that has such people in it.”
*sigh*
oops. Sorry tom. Obliviously, that was meant for Saul
I’ve raised this issue once before, a couple of months ago – the reason I brought it up was because I was questioning the idea that online anonymity is some kind of inalienable right – a lot of people online seem to feel it is, but I’ve still not heard a particularly convincing argument as to why.
And I’ve not heard a convincing argument why this right to anonymity self-evidently trumps the right to not have people yell death threats at you/send you pictures of your kids getting mangled/subvert democracy with constant sock-puppeteering/etc..
Needless to say, questioning the right to anonymity was not a popular idea with some commenters. Which I can understand; there are plenty of arguments in favour of anonymity. But the arguments against it are rarely spelled out and they are, IMO, gaining in strength as online discourse gets worse and worse, and begins to bleed into the real world more and more.
P.S. – I don’t think censorship is the right direction and it wasn’t my intention to suggest it was(although it’s where the big websites seem to be going, in the sense that they’re either not going to allow comments, or they’re going to set up a heavy moderation system.).
There are cases where one would want to have anonymous (or pseudononymous, in other cases) contributions to *protect the contributors*. Think of, say, the Clergy Project’s fora.
Now, if one grants that *and* also thinks that the principle should usually be “real names”, then how does one resolve which applies?
Worse, with “real names”, how much dilligence is required to check? What sort of documents are allowed? What will help prevent using these documents by malicious operators for identity theft?
A couple of observations:
“with the internet we have an environment that removes almost all those risks [of social consequences]”
1. This at time of hacking and doxxing and data gathering by corporations and governments. Is privacy or anonymity dead? We don’t know how this will work out.
“free-speech online is fundamentally different from anything we’ve encountered before.”
2. Mostly because throughout human history we have little evidence that free speech was valued at all until the Enlightenment.
Turns out some of those who have now want to subvert others who have it too.
I agree that there are a lot of creeps online who seem to get their rocks off by bullying or degrading people in a way they would be too cowardly to in real life. I have no issue with individual sites moderating such comments. Aside from that, while there are legal protections for free speech, in just about any real world setting one is in, there are restrictions placed on it. They’re just not handed down by the government, in all but a few cases (sexual harassment laws, for example.) But outside of one’s own home, almost any setting will put restrictions on one’s speech and behavior – workplaces, private businesses, neighborhood streets, etc.
I think the difficulty with Malik’s article, however, is that it’s a very vague “society in general feels this way too much, and that’s wrong” type piece. I don’t think anyone is challenging the right of places like the Guardian to moderate comments, so that’s sort of a non topic. If people want to complain about it, well, they have every right to complain – but individual companies still have the right to moderate content as they see fit. Her one specific complaint seems to be with deplatforming, in that she is for it, which I think is ridiculous, at least for the types of speakers who are deplatformed these days (pretty much, anyone Republican or conservative.) So it comes down more to an ethereal “Is the zeigeist too much this or that way?” type piece, which are almost always extraordinarily biased by the circles you happen to run in. I think you need large scale surveys on attitudes on free speech in order to say much about it.
A side note – I noticed she used the word ‘derailed’, which I have now officially added to my watchlist of online code words / phrases, ha ha. (It’s right under “I don’t owe you an explanation, you need to educate yourself!” which is code for “I don’t actually have an explanation, so don’t ask me for a source.”) “Derailed” now seems to be code for “bring up a point that I don’t like”.
My post was less a reaction to anything in her article(which I skimmed yesterday – the ‘Long Read’ sections are usually much better than this) and more just me getting something off my chest about this topic.
I hope you don’t think it was meant as any kind of endorsement for her rather sly, tendentious article, because it definitely wasn’t.
Oops! I kinda did, but probably should have known better as I’ve seen your posts for awhile now.
Judging from other replies I think I just didn’t do a good job of making it clear.
I find Islamophobiaphobia quite puzzling. Surely Islamophobia is exactly the rational response to Islam of Coptic Christians in Egypt, of free-thinkers in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia, and of everyone other than fundamentalist Sunni Muslims in places that were controlled by the Islamic State. For that matter, any Muslim of the Ahmadi sect should quite properly feel Sunniphobia in Pakistan.
“Phobia” means an *irrational* and inappropriate fear, not a rational one.
The term “Islamophobia” was thus invented to try to suggest that there is something improper about being opposed to Islam.
‘Islamophobia’ is a misnomer, it is used to describe bigotry against Muslims, as well as genuine fear of the promulgation of fundamentalist Islamic tenets.
In the first case, the bigotry, it should be at least ‘muslimophobia’.
In the second case it is not a phobia (phobia = irrational fear), but a rational fear of Islamic/Islamist expansion.
Unfortunately, it’s the word we’ve ended up with. I hate seeing accusations of it used to shield Islamist nutcases, but I also hate to hear genuine racists(and people who should just know better) say ‘Islamophobia doesn’t exist’. For better or worse it is now the word we use when talking about racism against Muslims, and the latter does exist.
None of this is aimed at you FYI. It’s just a point that needs to be made IMO.
Saul, you are making my point more vividly than I could have done.
I’m not sure if that’s a compliment of an criticism but I’m simply going to pretend that it’s the former because I’m like that.
‘or a’ not ‘of an’. D’oh.
If you consider it a compliment are correct.
I agree with Malik. We should ban hate speech. Islamic speech is hate-speech, against gays, women and blacks (‘abeed’ means ‘slave’ as well as a ‘black’ human), always punching down.
Let us ban all Islamic and Islamist speech!
🙂
Let’s compare:
Dr. Coyne dismisses Bret Stephens’ reacting to being called a “bedbug” with (1) a formal complaint to the university and (2) an article in the New York Times comparing being called a “bedbug” with the Holocaust (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/opinion/world-war-ii-anniversary.html) as a mere “tantrum.”
In comparison, every utterance by a Muslim woman necessitates a vicious attack and a discourse on the dangers this woman poses to the freedom of expression.
At best, Dr. Coyne is disingenuous. At worst, he is a tribalistic hypocrite.
“Dr. Coyne dismisses Bret Stephens’ reacting … as a mere “tantrum.””
Mere? And he also called it “hypocritical”, a “bad act” and being “oversensitive”.
Furthermore, Stephens has been widely and justly mocked for his silliness. He has very few defenders, whereas Malik’s article, which IS a danger to the freedom of expression, represents the viewpoint of far too many people out there and deserves a reasoned rebuttal (and Coyne’s is precisely that, not “a vicious attack”).
I’m reading Ms. Malik’s Guardian piece now, and I wish she’d lay off the nautical metaphors. Ships don’t “drown”; they sink or founder. And they don’t “come up for air” to make fast to a mooring, unless of course they’re submarines, in which case they would not have been traversing “choppy waters.”
She’s routinely terrible. You can always guarantee that she won’t just take the worst side in an argument, she’ll also express it in a way that will irritate.
Malik’s metaphors scuttled.
If Malik is truly serious, she should have no trouble defining BDS as hate speech. But somehow I would bet an “argumentative technicality” would be forthcoming.
I don’t disagree with much you’ve written here, but your assertion that “there is a free speech crisis on campus” is not supported by the very source you cite.
Disinvitations are one troubling parameter of illiberal speech policies in academia, but as FIRE notes, the number of campuses with objectionable speech codes is on a >10 year decline.
https://www.thefire.org/resources/spotlight/reports/spotlight-on-speech-codes-2019/
That sounds like…good news? Surely not…
I suppose it shows that long-term trends just aren’t news, while short-term ones are.
But, they don’t always go away quietly…
https://www.thefire.org/western-illinois-universitys-zombie-free-speech-zone-resurrected-to-shut-down-satirical-pot-brownies-event/
And of course you also have students being taught that ‘The purpose of free speech is to promote equality, speech that does not promote equality should be banned and the speaker excoriated.’
https://www.thefire.org/when-it-comes-to-free-speech-good-policy-is-not-enough/
Malik is too stupid, or high on her own self-righteousness, to realize that if hate speech is banned, right-wing governments will quickly begin jailing and prosecuting people for “hate speech” against whites, right-wingers, Christians, and so on. Any mildly rude speech on those subjects will earn a visit from the police. Malik is nothing more than a useful idiot for future demagogues, authoritarians, and dictators. She is giving her enemies weapons to use against her.
For a preview of what a country looks like without robust free speech laws, take a look at Turkey—today the BBC has a news story about a leading secular politician sentenced to nearly 10 years in jail for tweets that supposedly were “terror propaganda and insults” against the Turkish state (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49613074). Now imagine if the US or UK classified insults as hate speech. Are you shuddering yet?
You seem to imply that hate speech laws ineluctably lead to fascism.
But most European countries have had hate speech laws on the books for more than half a century. Not to say that mistakes have not been made, but they are corrected.
I don’t think hate speech laws lead the Fascism, but hate speech can be so broadly defined that hate speech laws can be easily abused, especially by right-wing authoritarian governments. I would not the Trump administration leading prosecutions for hate speech.
As for Europe’s hate speech laws, they have done little to nothing to prevent the resurgence of hatred and anti-immigrant/anti-Muslim/anti-Jewish sentiment on the continent.
Don’t overlook the possibility European hate speech laws have actually made ethnic and religious bigotry more wide spread or more intense. Such laws will drive bad ideas underground so the holders of those ideas are harder to identify. They can claim persecution and conspiracy as yet another grievance against the target of their bigotry.
Or Iran, who sentenced Soheil Arabi to death for criticizing Islam.
Thankfully, it was reduced to a mere prison sentence and forced study of Islamic theology due to international outrage.
-Ryan
You seem to imply that hate speech laws ineluctably lead to fascism.
But most European countries have had hate speech laws on the books for more than half a century. Not to say that mistakes have not been made, but they are corrected.
Malik seems like a rather sloppy thinker.
Thank you! I finally see a possible merit in having hate speech laws, as many nations have – with the courts as decider, re the quation raised here – since the public debate could be canalized into the democratic system.
However, it should be tested. (And of course Malik@UK provides an individual that does not agree with the law of the land [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#United_Kingdom ]. But it is not a randomized statistical sample!)
“quation” – question.