One need only go to the Jewish Museums in Sydney or Melbourne to see examples of how terrifyingly effective speech or images can be in demonizing the “other” and persuading people to view them as subhuman, with results that do not need repeating.
Source/Credit: Global Pulse Magazine
By Justin Glyn | January 19, 2015
Let there be no doubt about it: the recent murder of staff at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was appalling. No publication, however obscene or offensive, justifies killing in response.
Unfortunately, this crime (and, for all the talk of terror, that is what it is) has led to the usual broader Manichean media narrative of "us" (the civilized world that believes in free speech) against "them" (the murderous, terrorist hordes who do not).
According to large sections of the electronic and print media, "we" are all Charlie now. While it is absolutely right that we stand with the victims and their families in grief and outrage at these terrible acts, predictably we have been told that we should, as a corollary, also defend people's rights to say what they like, no matter how hurtful it may be.
I have previously made the point that this will not wash — a more sophisticated analysis of the values which free speech is designed to protect is required, as well as an analysis of any double standards at play. France itself protects its citizens’ right to insult Islam (and Christianity) but denies the right to wear the hijab in public. Within days of the Charlie Hebdo killings, France arrested a man for making a Facebook post satirizing the response and British and American prosecutors’ routine use of “terrorism” as an excuse for outlawing views — as opposed to direct incitements to violence — which they find offensive.
There is a difference between speech that enlightens and that which obscures. “Speaking truth to power” and allowing fearless investigation of facts that others would rather keep hidden is a major purpose of free speech and the essence of good journalism. Where, however, the dominant purpose of the speech is to offend or incite — and especially where the targeted group is already in a minority with limited means of objecting or putting a case in response, seems to be in a different category.
One need only go to the Jewish Museums in Sydney or Melbourne to see examples of how terrifyingly effective speech or images can be in demonizing the “other” and persuading people to view them as subhuman, with results that do not need repeating. I grew up in apartheid South Africa where such propaganda was a staple. Were the “total onslaught” propaganda tracts of the PW Botha era or Jud Süss, Hitler's notorious anti-Semitic film, really as worthy of protection as the publication of the Watergate tapes or Pentagon Papers? In the modern era, at least, the right to free speech has historically been closely connected to (and even a means of enforcing) the right not to be discriminated against. (Think about the civil rights movement in the United States, for example.)
To clarify, I am not demanding additional legal regulation of hate speech, especially where there are already statutes (such as the Crimes Act prohibitions on incitement, s18C of the Racial Discrimination Act or the law of defamation) that cover the ground. I am already uneasy with the string of curbs that anti-terror law in this country has brought on free speech. Nevertheless, I do think that public consideration of free speech and its moral and legal limits should be more nuanced than a sound-bite or hashtag.
There are no easy answers here: what is required is an ethically nuanced discussion that recognizes both a right to an open society without taboo topics but also the vulnerability and marginalization of some groups and people within society. People cannot be assumed to have thin skins. Nevertheless, to pretend that money and power do not influence speech and, in some cases, openly buy a louder voice for some that allows them to drown out others is to blatantly ignore reality. (One only has to look at the concentration of media ownership in Australia for an example.)
Context matters to this debate. Where Muslim women are being assaulted in public for wearing traditional dress and rhetoric explicitly linking Islam and terror appears in even mainstream media outlets, does abusive comment such as hateful cartoons or the racist rants on public transport periodically uploaded to YouTube count more as an exercise in free speech or as one in marginalization or discrimination? Should we deliberately use free speech as an excuse to hurt people because we theoretically can? The problem becomes particularly acute in societies where the demonization of the other has gone beyond mere words. Shia leaders in Iraq, for instance, have just prohibited sectarian hate speech in a context where Sunni-Shia tensions are open and violent.
In the final analysis, therefore, it may be that more legislation will be required in order to protect the fabric of society. That would, however, mark a failure for compassion and real freedom. I would hope that we do not reach that point and that a responsible, rather than a knee-jerk, sloganeering but ultimately damaging, approach to free speech carries the day.
Justin Glyn is a Jesuit seminarian. He has previously practiced law in South Africa and New Zealand and has a doctorate in administrative and international law.
Courtesy: Stephen Steele @manosteele65
Read original post here: In defense of censorship: Is a freedom of speech that dehumanizes certain groups truly free?
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