Free Speech and When To (Not ) Use It

[andrewducker]

I'm somewhat torn over the recent events with the Islamic comics. In case you haven't been following it, the story goes something like this:

A Danish newspaper, covering a story that a writer had been unable to find an illustrator for their children's books about Mohammed (for fear of Islamic extemists), asked a group of cartoonists to draw something about Mohammed. They then published the resulting cartoons, as part of a piece on freedom of speech and the problems of people fearing reprisals for said speech.

This had the expected effect of causing mass uproar across the Islamic world, because (a) Islamic tradition is against images of any of the prophets and (b) one of the images implied Mohammed was a terrorist.

Now, on the one hand, I firmly stand behind people's right to any speech that isn't directly causing harm (i.e. shouting "fire" in a packed cinema, giving out the addresses of people to those that want to kill them, descriptions of how to construct nuclear weapons, etc.). On the other hand, just because you have the right to free speech doesn't mean that you ought to go around insulting people.

I have several comics that are deeply offensive - Preacher is deeply offensive about Christianity, for instance. Many Northern Irish people of the Unionist persuasion wouldn't be impressed with Troubled Souls. Obergeist is unlikely to go down well with people who lost family in the German concentration camps, and Faust is pretty much offensive to anyone in a 50 foot radius. Should I give them all up and toss them on a pyre?

I was deeply offended that people campaigned against Jerry Springer the Musical. And I'm deeply offended that they are trying to suppress the cartoons. Should the Muslims stop trying to get them banned because _I'm_ offended that they want to?

Should it matter that many Islamic newspapers routinely publish pieces referring to Jews as dogs and eaters of shit? Should we really care if they're offended by other people's imagery when they're publishing their own? Or is that like saying that all British people are responsible for the terrible nonsense published in the Daily Mail?

I think, in the end, that in one sense I wish they hadn't published the cartoons, largely because they mostly aren't any good - they're not that clever, and they aren't saying anything that couldn't be said in a less offensive way. In another sense, I think that not doing something _purely_ because someone out there will be offended will lead to people doing nothing. Everything will offend someone, and people should publish what they feel is right, without worrying too much about their audience.

Free speech includes the right to offensive speech, and much as I'm against the recent attempts to make "reckless" (i.e. accidental) incitement to violence illegal, I'm against any restraint on speech just because it will offend someone. Doing things _just_ to be offensive is generally the resort of the childish, and it doesn't interest me, but I'd rather that people were allowed to be childish than that they weren't.

Comments

[balthial.livejournal.com]

I wrote a post on this just a few minutes ago actually. Basically, I see it as a battle of ideologies. American Liberalism can be viewed as a religion, much as Confucianism can be viewed as a religion. And American Liberalism says "Respect everyone! Don't say offensive things! Just vote and try to make money!" But that's our religion, and the Muslim World ain't into it. In the Muslim World, offensive cartoons about Christians are a daily occurence, not something someone plans as a deliberate provocation.

The point of this is, American Liberalism and fundamentalism Islam don't get along. We really are opposed to Muslim values. We might as well say so.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

The point of this is, American Liberalism and fundamentalism Islam don't get along. We really are opposed to Muslim values. We might as well say so.

Having just read this whole thread: yep. That sums it up I think. (though you could lose "American" from liberalism.)

I particularly like the realisation that liberalism is just as much of a cultural-relativistic credo as anything else eg Islam. there's no more reason for Islamic leaders to buy into "our" liberalism (the lack of differentiation in this whole debate between what individuals feel and what societal leaders can and do condone/have the power to enforce is another whole topic), than for us to buy into their treatment of women and gays. What we do about that is a problem for us, it appears, but not necessarily one we either can or should solve. Only a few years back (when I was being taught international law, ie 1978) whatever a sovereign country did to its own nationals, kill them, torture them, expropriate them, this still wasn't considered the business of other nations - indeed for them to interfere was generally seen as an act of war and an international wrong. Then human rights became more teethy (esp after stuff like Kampuchea and Rwanda and Bosnia and of course, the defusing of the Cold War and the Soviet veto in the UN). It seems to me we're now heading towards a Western imposition of Western consensus views on what be seen as second tier moral values, like freedom of expression, folowing on from the first tier "absolute musts" like torture and genocide - but this is causing more chattering among the classes.

Whether you see this as a good thing or a bad thing seems in many ways an irrelevance to what is actually happening - the dinner party talk rather than the actual process.

Though it is strange that there is not much talk above about inter- and trans-national recognition of human rights (nor of the fact that tho freedom of expression is a human right, so is fredom of religion and that human rights instruments tend far more to wishy washy balancing of incompatible rights than to any prioritisation of say fredom of speech; however much the US might wish the First Amendment was international law - it ain't.)

Incidentally I'm also suprised that no one has mentioned, re advancement of liberal causes worldwide by carrots, recent WTO efforts to swap trade advantages for human rights advances in , notably, China - a project which most have seen as a failure for various reasons.

[balthial.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'm glad someone doesn't totally disagree with me. And I think International Law has a good point. I have very mixed feelings about US attempts to go about telling other countries how to run their stuff. Its cultural Imperialism, yeah, but it also just doesn't get good results. I study China, and the human rights situation is pretty awful. There's no way a couple of international bureaucrats can change the situation. Perhaps we should not give preferential trade agreements to countries with poor human rights records, but saying "ok, they released 3 dissedents, now we can deal" doesn't do much.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

My understanding from colleague who teaches WTO law is that any type of sanctions and/or better treatment for human rights deal, tends to negatively impact those who need human rights most ie the poorest people in the country who most need the WTO trade advantages. As with all sanctions plans, it really doesn't work optimally.

[andrewducker]

I don't see China as a failure - I see it as slow moving, but the general increase in education in the urban areas has increased the number of people over there who are pushing for democratic reform. I think that the people who originally thought we could move China to democracy in 10 years were clearly wrong, and it's a 50-year project, but that engagement is a much better way to influence them than cutting them off.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I wasn't saying China was a failure per se - just that WTO efforts to swap human rts for trade breaks have largely so far failed to achieve much, and are, in informed views, unlikely to.

I think it's interesting - knowing a bit more about China than I do about the Islamic world - that certain values do seem do get ameliorated (from a Western perspective) by engagement with Western liberalism, and some don't, being more rooted in what we might think of as the essence of Chinese culture. A certain amount of money and Internet access, etc, sloshing round Beijing and Shanghai etc, has certainly made huge inroads into communism in favour of a capitalist mentality (tho not at all in the huge amount of rural peasant areas); but the impression I have is that nothing much has changed in the Chinese leadership and general cultural attitude that gay and mentally ill people are basically (pick any two :-) sick, bad and wrong.

And as V pointed out just because it's a cultural norm in some places to stone people for coming out as gay, doeasn't make it in some absolute, liberal, let everyone have their views, way, "right".

Re the particular point of democracy - the impression I had was that increased wealth/westernisation of urban China had not in fact lead to more pressure for "democracy" - note the absence of another Tiananmen Square in the last 15 years - but merely for access to private wealth and the general materialistic trappings of a capitalist lifestyle. I have seen plenty of articles in the last 5 years or so bemoaning the depoliticisation of the average Beijing yuppie. Who needs free speech when you have a 3G phone?

[andrewducker]

I agree that we can't force liberalism on other cultures easily (if at all), but I do think that education and exposure to other cultures tends to do that naturally.

I also think that people have a natural tendency towards a certain level of rebellion, and giving them more access to knowledge and tools to help them with that will let them crowbar in freedom from the inside.

And China is changing - see this BBC story on former senior members of the party publicly coming out against censorship, or this Guardian piece on the fact that China has 5 million bloggers now, and censors are saying its impossible to stop them from discussing what they like, with a censorship official saying "The technology hasn't reached a level that will allow us to control them. And we must also consider the trend of democratisation, which cannot be stopped,"

Things are moving slowly, but they are moving.