For the past two weeks, most of
my spare time has been taken up by the deeply unpleasant business of moving
house. We’ve only moved a few hundred
yards, but nonetheless the process of packing, moving, unpacking and cleaning
has been neither brief nor easy. (And,
indeed, we only got the internet back yesterday!)
This is all by way of an excuse
for not having written a new blog post for a little while, especially given the
events of the past couple of weeks.
Having pontificated previously on the question of free speech, offense,
blasphemy and religious toleration, I thought I’d better weigh in on this one too, and
let you all know the Important Thoughts I’ve had on the subject.
Firstly of course, I should
restate my absolute belief that anyone should have the right to say anything to
anyone, and not face violence, persecution or prosecution. If we wish to have freedom of speech, we have
to accept that people are free to speak, whether they are racists, fascists,
lunatics or even people who disagree with me on any subject whatsoever. People have the right to be as offensive,
crude, vulgar, blasphemous or generally unpleasant as they can possibly be, and
do so without fear of violent or legal reprisal. Of course, they also have to accept that
others can act in exactly the same way towards them.
However, as Chesterton once said,
“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing
it.” I believe absolutely that you
should have the right to be offensive. I
would defend it to the death. That does
not mean that I think you actually should be offensive. The cartoons published by the French magazine
Charlie Hebdo were offensive, and deliberately so. They have every right to publish them. I just don’t think that they should
have. Not out of fear, you understand. If there was any suggestion that someone was
not saying or publishing a thing purely out of fear of attack, then I would
strongly suggest that they say it or publish it, and I would be happy to
publically support them, if only because the kind of people who resort to
intimidation and threat are perhaps the only sort of people who actually do need
belittling and insulting.
No, I think that they should have
refrained from publishing those cartoons for the simple fact that they were
insulting. I do not like having my
beliefs and opinions insulted. Challenged,
yes. Having them challenged is
absolutely vital, but insulted? No. It’s the issue I take with much of the
aggressive, evangelical atheism I see online.
Much of it seems to be far more interested in insulting religious belief
than in challenging it in a sensible, respectful (but nonetheless challenging)
manner, and this is helpful to no-one whatsoever. Satirise it by all
means. Make fun of it, laugh at it, but
stop short of direct insult if you want the conversation to continue. Charlie Hebdo might hold itself up as an icon
of free speech, and in a faintly unpleasant, distinctly canary-like way I
suppose it is, but to me it also represents the abuse of free speech to
deliberately upset others in a way that is completely non-constructive. If anything, it’s just entrenched people’s
views, widened divisions, added grist to the extremist mill and generally made things worse.
In a way, I actually think the
cartoon of Mohammed printed in the first issue after the attack was more
justified, since it acted as a signal that the magazine would not be swayed by
violence or threats of violence, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t think the
initial cartoon can be justified by a mere appeal to the principal of free
speech.
The BBC (yeah, yeah, I know) ran an article about people getting fired for posting racist comments online. Well, which are we going to have? Do we want free speech, in which Charlie
Hebdo can publish offensive cartoons, or do we want limits on what one can say,
even as private individuals online?
Should people be racist? Of
course not. Should they be ostracised or,
preferably, reasoned with and educated?
Very much so. Should they lose
their job (assuming of course that they are not acting in an official manner,
or on a company blog or twitter feed etc, or otherwise representing the company
when they make the post) over their (unpleasant, offensive) personal
opinions? My opinion on holocaust denial
is the same. Historians who deny the
holocaust should be publically identified as very poor historians, and their
scholarship and credentials rightly scrutinised and doubted, but should it be
illegal? Should it be against the law to
hold an erroneous opinion? I believe
not. We cannot have it both ways, and
only maintain the right to be offensive when it’s not us being offended.
If we actually believe in the
principle of free speech, and we certainly claim to, then we have to accept
that it applies to everybody equally, irrespective of their position or
opinion.
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