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?

[ceb]

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

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.

[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.

[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...