Freedom of speech

[liv]

Somebody on Twitter linked to a really pointed Al Jazeera article: The freedom to criticise free speech. It concisely articulates something I've thought for a long time, but haven't quite been able to state without waffling a lot. tl;dr version: freedom of speech – Muslims have it too.

This is my big bone of contention with large swathes of the New Atheist / Skeptic / Rational movement(s): they seem to be very shouty about the right, mostly exercised by people who are (entirely coincidentally I don't think) white, middle-class men living in powerful, rich countries, to publish utterly vile, ignorant, hateful stuff about Muslims and Islam. But as soon as any Muslim raises the slightest objection to this, it's an attack on free speech and the very foundations of democracy. Yes, it's important to protect freedom of speech you don't agree with, but I don't see much knee-jerk Voltaire quoting when it's Muslims exercising that right.

Even in the most repressive regimes, powerful, influential, well-connected people can pretty much say what they like, there's nothing especially notable about that. The point of enshrining freedom of speech as a right is that it applies to people of subaltern status. Immigrants, members of minority religions or ethnic groups, these days people living formerly colonized countries. If it's important to you to have or protect the right to express prejudices, then you should care at least equally much about the right of oppressed or relatively less powerful to point out that bigotry is bigotry. They also have the right to refuse to give money or attention to people publishing bigoted stuff, that's not an attack on free speech, that's exercising their democratic, free market right to give their business to people whose views they agree with. And yes, some of them are wrong, they see things as offensive or attacking when they're actually true and harmless. So? They still have the right to hold and express their opinions, that's the whole point about freedom of speech.

Comments

[ceb]

As far as I can see, the way the "free speech" argument works in the US is:

Person A does something unpleasant/bigoted/discriminatory.
Person B tries to get them to stop.
Person A says "you're treading all over my right to free speech!"

See also efforts of parts of the US white Christian right to convince people that white Christian right-wingers are a beleagured minority.

I am seriously confused as to why you think this is something the "New Atheist / Skeptic / Rational movement(s)" are doing; I've only seen them being Person B over arguments like whether evolution should be taught in schools. Am I missing something?

[liv]

True, sometimes New Atheists are Person B about evolution teaching. The thing I'm fed up with is that they're also quite often Person A about Islamophobia. First example I can find quickly, but I see a lot of this kind of thing. Harris is pretty extreme, but he's also quite influential within the New Atheist world. He's much more strident about the right to make and distribute Innocence of Muslims, which pretty much everybody agrees is a vile, incoherent piece of excrement with no redeeming value, than about the right of Muslims to express negative opinions of said film. Some of what he's objecting to is violence, which never has been part of free speech, but he's completely conflating criticism with violence.

Don't have links to hand, but the thing that started me off thinking about this was the controversy about the Danish cartoons. I've seen those cartoons (in a Dutch news magazine), and they are really, really disgusting and hateful, they would pretty much fit into Der Stürmer and I'm not just saying that for Godwin points. I am generally sympathetic to the idea that part of free speech means that people should not face legal sanction for drawing or publishing such cartoons, vile though they are. But a lot of the reaction from prominent Atheists / Skeptics was moral panic about the reaction from the Muslim community, including boycotting the magazines that printed the cartoons and in some cases boycotting Danish goods altogether. If racists have the right to publish graphic pictures of the Prophet Mohammed raping children, surely Muslims have the right to condemn those images, and they have the right to use strong language, they don't have to be measured and polite in their reactions to protect the freedom of speech of the racists.

[jack]

Can you remember who did those cartoons? I was talking about this somewhere else, and I remembered the avalanche starting with some really gratuitously not-artisticly-redeeming disgusting cartoons, which I thought did make a big difference, and I thought should not be published. But when I googled it, I seemed to only get a later iteration of the furore of people drawing Mohammad only to push the freedom of speech angle.

[liv]

The Wikipedia article gives the name of the newspaper: Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, if that helps. The whole thing is a big muddle by now, I agree, because lots of people were so upset about the perceived attack on the free speech of the Danish journalists that they made lots of new cartoons and images of Mohammed, and some were pretty innocuous although obviously designed to offend Muslims who object to such depictions, and some were worse than the original images.

[ceb]

Sam Harris> Good grief (having just read his wp page), what a nutter... especially about Muslims, it's like he's not talking about people any more but about some weird sub-human things. I do not understand a lot of US attitudes to things, I can only hope that your average athiest-on-the-street thinks he's a dangerous embarrassment.

[jack]

There was an awesome essay on less wrong explaining why we should not be deliberately offensive to people about things that they were very, very sensitive to (such as obscene depictions of Mohammad), but it was disturbing that people couldn't see in advance why they shouldn't do that...

Most people I know don't have any connection to the Muslims-are-evil meme, whether tied to religion or not, but I've heard "Islam is an especially bad example of religion" ideas from a couple of places in the atheist blogosphere. I don't know how widespread the idea is.

[liv]

The thing about Harris is that he's a really prominent New Atheist, and widely regarded as one of the intellectual leaders of the movement, (along with Richard Dawkins whom I can't stand, Daniel Dennett whom I somewhat respect, and the late Christopher Hitchens, of whom I say de mortuis nihil.) I could easily have quacked some sub-literate islamophobic rant by someone claiming to be an atheist and presented that as an example, but I'd consider that rhetorically underhand. Harris should be a dangerous embarrassment, but instead he has a huge following among capital A-Atheists. I absolutely don't hold everyone who happens not to believe in God responsible for Harris, of course.

[nameandnature]

I largely agree with Harris, though I don't find that he completely conflates criticism with violence or that he thinks Muslims should not protest. The closest I can get to that is the line "And where they do not immediately resort to violence in their protests, they threaten it", but it's not clear whether the reference is to "some percentage of Muslims" or to everyone who protests. If it's the latter, he's certainly wrong.

Harris is much more strident (you missed "shrill", "fundamentalist" and "militant": see the fake convert Harris) about the right of people to make bad art because it's that right that's under threat.

and they have the right to use strong language, they don't have to be measured and polite in their reactions to protect the freedom of speech of the racists.

I think Harris is right to criticise people who hold signs threatening other people with beheading, personally.

[nameandnature]

I largely agree with Harris

Actually, I agree with Blackford more: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=5969 for that.

[liv]

It's almost hilarious to see Harris coming over all precious over a placard mentioning beheading, when he himself is notorious for calling for pre-emptive nuclear strikes against countries whose state religion he doesn't approve of! My problem is not at all that Harris is strident, he's entitled to be strident if he wants to, it's that he's a virulent hypocrite. And Islamphobic, as I have argued from the beginning, (and I have absolutely no time for his tortured argument that Islamophobia doesn't exist.)

the right of people to make bad art because it's that right that's under threat
I am not entirely surprised that you perceive this right to be threatened, because you consume a lot of media that is pushing this line. I just think it's really barely reality based. The murder of Theo van Gogh was, yes, a threat to free speech (as well as being an actual murder which just about nobody is in favour of). The fatwa against Salman Rushdie was a serious threat to free speech. Muslims protesting against Mohammed cartoons and bad anti-Muslim propaganda films, not so much.

[redbird]

On the other hand, the first place I read about Harris being unreasonable was at PZ Myers's Pharyngula, an atheist blog that is not exactly devoted to moderation, sweetness, and light: but Myers is pretty clear that we can say both "this person is saying horrible things, and we're not going to allow them in our space" and "this person is saying horrible things, and he has the right to do so in his own space."

[liv]

I have mixed feelings about PZ Myers. It's rather damning with faint praise to say that he's less of a virulent Islamophobe and more clear on what freedom of speech actually is than Sam Harris! Generally I think his heart's in the right place, but he can't really be bothered to do the work to actually tackle misogyny and racism within his community. But as for the more general point, I completely and wholeheartedly agree that not all atheists are Islamophobic, or Sam Harris fans, or in any way to blame for the opinions of some specific atheists who are offensive and bigoted.

[ceb]

(And the other people being mad in that article are the French government, who are at best confused about the whole religion issue.)

[liv]

I don't claim to understand what's going on with the French government, but it certainly looks disturbing from here. The fact that they're explicitly enacting these policies in the name of secularism (Laïcité) doesn't mean that all other secularists are responsible for their bad policies, of course.

[ceb]

It's so obviously wrong it's quite surreal; state-sponsored victim blaming. Hello France! banning religious expression is not the way to create a harmonious multi-cultural society.

1 != 2

[siderea]

Um. I thought the article was terrible, because it claims an equivalency between holding a kiss-in and murdering people.

From the article: "In America, a nation was divided by a sandwich. Across the world, people are dying because of a Z-grade film trailer."

Shooting people is not free speech. The correct analogue to what happened in Benghazi wasn't gay people boycotting chicken sandwiches, it was Salvi hosing my gynecologist's office with automatic weapons fire and Tiller being killed by a sniper for the Christian god.

I am 100% in favor of offended people expressing their severe displeasure. With words. Pictures are also okay. No bullets. No nooses. No fires. Allow me to suggest boycots and marches.

[liv]

Innnnteresting. You read the Al Jazeera article as conflating speech with violent actions, whereas I read much of the anti-Muslim rhetoric I'm responding to as conflating speech with violent actions! I absolutely agree with everything else you say in this comment, one hundred percent. Words, pictures, boycotts, marches, but not bullets, nooses or fires.

The problem for me is that a certain proportion of atheists are calling the words, boycotts and marches an attack on their freedom of speech, I suppose because some of the protesters share the same religion as some violent extremists.

[siderea]

You read the Al Jazeera article as conflating speech with violent actions

Not only am I reading the Al Jazeera article as conflating speech with violent actions, I'm reading you as conflating speech with violent actions.

You are making statements like "Atheists have the right to draw pictures of Mohammed, and Muslims have the right to call for the blaspheming infidels who do that to be beheaded." Worse, you then turn around and say, "(as well as being an actual murder which just about nobody is in favour of)". Excuse me, there are people marching in the street saying they're in favor of murder. That is precisely what calling for beheadings is. What say we take them at their word.

[liv]

You're not the only one in this conversation who's far more upset than I am by the beheading slogan. To me, it doesn't read as any worse than, say, that dreadful mock-prayer that does the rounds, where they list a bunch of recently deceased celebrities and the punchline is "God, I'd just like to mention that Obama is my favourite president".

I actually don't have very strong feelings that the beheading placard should count as protected speech. What worries me is treating all marches by Muslims as threatening because one Muslim once carried a placard advocating violence, which seems to be Harris' line.

[naath]

Well, quite. You have the free-speech right to call me nasty names and I have the free-speech right to call you a nasty-name-caller...

It's quite amazing how many people will pull out the "OMG FREE SPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH" crap whenever anyone tells them their speech is nasty and hurtful.

[liv]

Yay, succinct naath is succinct! That's pretty much what I meant, in a nutshell, so thank you!

[ptc24]

In particular, whenever an American mentions the First Amendment, I always think: "do they know it starts with 'Congress shall make no law...'?" - there was a case of that in the article.

Looking at the article, there's "the politicians who argued against allowing Chick-fil-A in their cities may have overreached" and I agree this is overreach; it's one thing to let private citizens organize a boycott, it's another thing to get the state to join in.

I suppose a big messy grey area would be where you had marchers with placards calling for state censorship - I'm not sure whether or not thing is something that has gone on (I think so, but my memory for specifics is hazy - the title of the article suggests so), and if so, to what extent. On the one hand, on general principles, it seems to fit nicely in the category of things that should be considered "legal but wrong". On the other hand, there are legitimate debates as to the boundaries of free speech; see libel, privacy, confidentiality, harassment, threats, incitement, shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre, etc... (deciding on precise definitions of these things is a debate in itself). and to a certain extent, people who are incapable or unwilling to make those fine distinctions might still have something to contribute to such discussions.

[liv]

Yeah, Americans who really don't understand the remit of the First Amendment are significantly annoying, but your average online Atheist / Skeptic tends to be a bit better educated than that. I totally agree there's a big messy grey area and that there are legitimate debates as to the boundaries of free speech. What I am arguing for is that whatever boundaries people do end up arguing for or setting, they should be equitable; having one law for vaguely Christianish atheists and one law for Muslims or people from a Muslim cultural background is dangerous and unjust.

[cjwatson]

shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre

I don't remember where I ran into this recently, so apologies if it was e.g. you, but Three Generations of a Hackneyed Apologia for Censorship Are Enough has an interesting pile of US legal history about this which I didn't previously know.

[sunflowerinrain]

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HEAR, HEAR!

I had a similar argument about the owners of church halls refusing to allow certain activities. Far too many friends became rather shrill about the freedom to practise yoga or whatever, utterly disregarding the freedom of others to decide what goes on in their own property. The trouble with freedom is that it doesn't really exist. Any freedoms are likely to impinge on someone else's life.

Those cartoons and video and articles are just *rude*. As for the malicious spreading of them...