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

[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.

[redbird]

It looks to me as though PZ is working to tackle misogyny, both in terms of what he allows in his comment site and what he's saying about misogyny and sexual harassment at conferences. I'm less sure on racism: I think his heart is in the right place there, but I don't know how much work he's doing. (There is a lot of work to be done, and nobody is doing all of it: that doesn't mean we get credit for good intentions when we don't, but that "this person is working on a different problem" is different from "this person wants us to stop working on that problem" as well as from "this person is working against us."

[yvi]

It looks to me as though PZ is working to tackle misogyny, both in terms of what he allows in his comment site and what he's saying about misogyny and sexual harassment at conferences.

Yes, same impression here. Pharyngula is pretty much my femism-friendly go.to place for discussion of Atheism.

[liv]

OK, maybe I should give Pharyngula another try, then. I think I'm never going to like Myers' contempt for people less well educated than he is, but if you and yvi both think he's making a genuine effort to tackle some of the misogyny in the Skeptical community it's plausible that I've judged him unfairly.