The idea of free speech is both an incredible and terrifying one, a utopia and dystopia. One in support of absolute free speech such as John Stuart Mill would see that a world of freedom of thought and expression would produce incredible ideas. No limitations on the human mind and ability to express these concepts would lead to a far more enlightened, intelligent, and progressed society, surely? Repression of free speech may, to a free speech absolutist, be comparable to Orwell’s 1984, in which the notion of ‘wrongthink’ and ‘thought crime’ are rampant.
However, to one critical of total free expression, free speech is a dangerous tool that can be utilised by extremists masquerading as liberals and whilst still inherently good in moderation, total free speech can give platforms to ideas that should not be accepted by society on a moral level. A world of limited free speech allows those ideas deemed morally good by society to rise to the top and those that are deemed reprehensible would be suppressed for the good of society, to prevent mass hate crime or similar. They would consider the prevention of racial genocide and other morally reprehensible events a worthy trade off if they must lose a certain level of freedom.
John Stuart Mill argues in On Liberty that “freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, are needed for the mental well-being of society”. (Mill, 1859) He breaks this down in several key ways, citing that to assume that we know which opinions should be repressed and which should be lifted is to assume our own infallibility as mankind, something which is absolutely untrue. (Mill, 1859) Humanity raises up and defeats ideas constantly, as seen with Nazism’s rise and fall or more recently neoliberalism’s waning in favour of populism. Both ideas were raised to the highest levels of society by humans and were then decided against by humans. If we were infallible, it follows that we would not mistakenly embrace ideas that are against our own interests. He secondly argues that even if humanity were to censor an opinion it deemed reprehensible, there would potentially be a portion of truth within the idea that would also be lost due to the complete rejection of the idea as a whole (Mill, 1859).
Most today consider the works of Niccolò Machiavelli, for example, to be a cynical and pessimistic view of what a leader should be. However, it is undoubtedly clear that leaders with the qualities of the Machiavellian Prince do often rise to the top, with Roman Emperor Augustus for example being one of the most successful leaders the world has ever seen. It does follow, then, that rejected ideas can prove to contain grains of truth that if rejected as a whole, can’t be explored and the potential knowledge will be unutilised. He thirdly presents the point that if society does simply accept an idea and hold it up as truth, then those who live in this society will have no reason to truly grasp the idea. It will become something that is accepted on a very basic level as good and those who dispute it rationally will be seen as opponents to good (Mill, 1859). This can be seen to have happened with the idea of democracy, with wars from the West to assert democratic values onto countries without them being presented as wars for good, and those countries being invaded are simply the enemy for being culturally different. Finally, Mill makes the point that the doctrine itself is weakened by not being challenged and needing to back itself up in the sea of opposing ideas. It becomes a formality and a barrier to free thought and intellectual expansion (Mill, 1859). Thus, Mill makes his point convincingly that freedom of speech must be absolute or that it will never truly be free, and that without it, society will be less progressive and worse off overall.
However, Mill is a philosopher and so sees the world through a philosopher’s lens. Although total free speech would be a nice idea academically, it doesn’t tend to be as nice as we would like to believe. Dangerous ideas that can take off due to skilled oration are a real threat to democracy and freedom across the board, and so surely some regulations must be put in place? Mill does introduce a Harm Principle to his writings, which effectively says that one does not have the right to incite violence towards others although one may be offensive. (TEC, 2016)This is, however, somewhat overly simplistic. It may cover one saying, “We should kill x group”, but does it cover one morally promoting the reasons why killing x group may be beneficial to society, from a philosophical standpoint? What about if one were to speak hatefully on x group? Whilst one may not technically say that they should be killed, does it spark the idea in others, or take advantage of the instability and bad intentions of those who may hear? There is no objective arbiter of what does and does not incite violence, and so the harm principle may be impossible to truly implement into society.
Philosopher Joel Feinberg attempts to patch this hole somewhat with his offense principle. He firstly makes the points that speech should also be determined by its social value and the amount of offense it would cause. (Mill D. V., 2017) If a piece of speech is not beneficial to society in any way, and causes many people to be upset, then perhaps it should be restricted? However, somebody like Mill would surely argue that simply by being a piece of speech that challenges social norms and disrupts things whilst not inherently calling for violence, it would be valuable? Is controversy not inherently important to make us think about our values and beliefs?
Feinberg also argues that hate speech particularly should be limited by the offense principle as hate speech is targeted at a small demographic and it is often unavoidable or impossible to ignore. (Mill D. V., 2017) Forcing people to listen to your dangerous and hateful speech could be seen as a tyranny in and of itself, especially when you make the speech directly to the groups you hate. However, Feinberg does support the rights of these reprehensible groups to speak in private and congregate in spaces where it would not violate the rights of those groups that they would speak hatefully about. (Mill D. V., 2017)
Both philosophers have their real issues that come with the matter of unrestricted freedom or trying to restrict something that is inherently free. What Mill’s world of unrestricted free speech means for Mill is complete intellectual freedom to do say as we wish. In reality, it would be anarchical and lead to a likely more radical, polarised world. Introducing his harm principle would stop direct incitement of violence, but speech is easily manipulated and one could certainly incite violence without directly doing so. Feinberg tries to rectify this with his offense principle which restricts what is known commonly as hate speech in public, but then this may be a slippery slope. As Mill rightly notes, man is not infallible and defining what is hateful by one man’s definition will be different to the next man’s.
What makes one group more in need of protection from hate speech than another? What counts as hate speech anyway? Can you be hateful without it being necessarily hate speech? Short of being able to truly define these terms (and this will never be possible due to the subjective nature of speech and offense), it can never be applied well in society. The UK and many other nations have implemented hate speech laws not without controversy and it has, as predicted, been impossible to truly define what is hate speech with every wielder of the law having a different take upon the matter.
Do offensive jokes count as hate speech? Does the humorous nature of them take away from the hateful language? I repeat, these questions can never be objectively answered in ways that satisfy everybody and will always remain a source of great debate. However, Mill’s world whilst ideologically perfect will never be able to exist so long as society and civilisation continue to survive. It is ideal in concept, but absolutely impossible to carry out in practice. Both Feinberg and Mill’s versions of Free Speech either fail to be absolutely free or fail to be practical in a real-world context. Therefore, this essay concludes that speech can never truly be free.
Written at University May 2021
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