What are we fighting for? It’s not freedom of speech.

It is lazy and self-indulgent to think we are fighting for freedom of speech. We need to be honest and cut through our own hypocrisy.

Salman Rushdie says that freedom of speech can only be an absolute. In expressing his anger last week at the vilification of the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre for expressing racist and unnecessarily provacative views (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/15/salman-rushdie-on-charlie-hebdo-freedom-of-speech-can-only-be-absolute) Mr Rushdie quoted JFK and Nelson Mandela, who both used the same 3-word phrase “Freedom is indivisible”.

I’m afraid that Mr Rushdie is wrong (though JFK and Mr Mandela weren’t – more on that later). Like most things in life, freedom of speech is not an absolute concept. We ourselves willingly and rightly restrict the rights of people to say what they want on a regular basis in order to ensure a functioning and stable society. Just witness the action taken recently against members of the football community for their ill-considered racist comments. There are numerous laws and regulations that protect a variety of different groups of people from being insulted  and offended, from racist abuse to that linked to religious stereotypes.

And these restrictions are generally accepted as being positive and an important protection in our civilised society. Certainly at the margins there will always be different views on where the line of political correctness should be drawn, and these rights and wrongs can be debated on a libertarian basis or in terms of whether explicit legal protections actually further alienate the protected party, but most people would agree that they are a good thing in principle.

Indeed, in France they have one of the Western world’s most controversial restrictions on freedom in their ban on niqabs (face-coverings) and, in public sector jobs, on hijabs (headscarves); a restriction of self-expression that goes beyond speech to the clothes one wears. The ongoing battle around where lines should be drawn is one that is regularly tested and debated by comedians and satirists such as Charlie Hebdo itself.

 

So when is freedom absolute? What did JFK and Mandela mean?

Well, both men’s words were actually a message of solidarity stating that restrictions on one person’s freedom is a restriction on everyone’s. In JFK’s words ” when one man is enslaved, all are not free”, while for Mandela “the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me”. However, this is not really Mr Rushdie’s point (he seems to have misunderstood the context of the two great men’s words).

To tackle Mr Rushdie’s words specifically, the type of freedom that is absolute is the freedom from the proactive control of your actions by others, where your actions have no direct impact on others. Fundamentally, this is the freedom to exist without fear of unprovoked or unfair persecution. And there is no doubt for me that this is an absolute concept, one that is indivisible in the way that Rushdie meant. Just to be born and to exist earns the right to to do so without unprovoked or unfair persecution. On this there can be no half measures or any concept of greyness. This type of concept is what informs the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights which contains concepts such as freedom of association, thought, conscience, and religion, but interestingly not the freedom to say whatever you want to anyone. Why? Because it cannot be seen in absolute terms; it is a concept that resides in shades of grey that would make it impossible to credibly define and impose at a supranational level.

 

Freedom of speech is not an absolute concept. What does this all mean in the context of recent events?

In reaction to the Charlie Hebdo attacks what are we really fighting for? What are we defending? Well, though people like the romantic idea of it, it’s not freedom of speech. Many of those holding up “Je suis Charlie Hebdo” placards would, I’m sure, also be the first to protest against an example of racial abuse. Some may also be quite supportive of the hijab ban, especially in the current climate.

No, what we are fighting for is something far more prosaic, and less effective in sparking the public imagination. It is the democratic process and the rule of law. In reality what we object to is not that the extremists were offended by Charlie Hebdo’s publication, or even that they felt angry about it and thought some action should be taken. We object to their means, the action they took, the deprivation of their methods and their un-evolved medieval mindset. The basis of stable and democratic society is that laws are respected and followed, but also that they can be disagreed with.

However, if there is disagreement then there are accepted processes to follow to attempt to initiate change such as peaceful protest and demonstration, or challenge through the legal system. These should be followed no matter how much emotion or injustice is felt and are the most effective long-term drivers of change. Martin Luther King and Ghandi both understood this idea well and their greatness was in convincing and leading others in this direction.

Anything that challenges this threatens the very stability and democracy that we all rely on to underpin our basic peace and prosperity. Therefore, what we are really fighting for is as unsexy as the democratic process itself. Freedom of speech sounds good but it is the democratic process that maintains our way of life and it is that which is threatened.

 

So why do I write this?

Just for some pedantic thrills at Rushdie’s expense? No, I write this to challenge the prevailing hypocrisy and ignorance, the lazy and self-serving thinking to which we are all prone and which tends to dominate the current conversation. The popular (and populist) idea that we are fighting for freedom of speech is a convenient one, one that we like to believe and which makes us feel good about ourselves. For a small minority it may even be true, but for most it is a fantasy created as a self-indulgence, because of its comfort, because its sweet righteousness has no bitter aftertaste.

But while this offers a short term antidote, in reality it is an unhelpful distraction. The questions we face are difficult and complex. They involve trade-offs that confuse us and make us uncomfortable. Each of us, to maintain what is important to us, have to accept some things we don’t like.

Positive change, a solution to the convulsions that engulf us, resides in awareness, understanding and acceptance. Of others, but most importantly of ourselves. Our real motives, our latent desires, our true natures and our underlying prejudices and hypocrisies. If we do this, and are honest, then we open the gateway to properly understanding others and responding intelligently to their actions.

While there is much more to understand, this is at least a start.