We all know that many on the political Left are sympathetic to banning hate speech, but it’s rare that we get an intellectually honest argument to that effect.
On Thursday, we did. Enter Nesrine Malik’s latest column at the Guardian. I stumbled across the piece thanks to Alex Griswold’s tweeting. Malik makes a number of assertions worthy of our attention. First, she claims that far-right speakers do not deserve a platform for their views: “They are cynical exploiters of [platforms given]… It’s a scam, trading notoriety and worse for attention. Why do we fall for it?”
Malik continues, “The disappeared of Egypt, the jailed and flogged blasphemers of Saudi Arabia, the arbitrarily detained bloggers and journalists of China are being denied freedom of speech. It’s an insult to their ordeals that we equate them with shutting down Milo Yiannopoulos’s Twitter account.”
This, Malik claims, means freedom of speech “has become a loophole exploited with impunity by trolls, racists and ethnic cleansing advocates.” Malik laments that some liberals disagree with her under “the delusion that freedom of speech is a neutral principle uncontaminated by history or social bias.”
Malik ends by complaining that free speech advocates supposedly don’t defend her right to free speech — which seems odd considering her position as a columnist. Regardless, whatever you think of Malik’s views, her column offers a great insight into the intellectual premise that underpins the Left’s emerging anti-free speech ethos. As I see it, there are three foundation stones that link Malik’s argument to the broader anti-speech movement.
First, society requires the order of the enlightened. One step short of the liberals who propose beating up Nazis on Bill Maher’s HBO show, Malik and her fellow “no-platforming” enthusiasts believe that they are singularly well-placed to act as doorkeepers against unacceptable speech. And of course, they’re the ones who get to decide what that speech is, too — quite conveniently.
There’s an inherent, if implicit, belief here that a public marketplace of speech is a bad thing. Those who know better must provide guidance to those who do not. Hence Malik’s contrast of speech restrictions in China with the restriction of Milo Yiannopoulos’s Twitter account.
But of course, we are asked to accept this contrast as simple logic, when it is actually anything but. If the freedom of speech isn’t a universal right shared by all, then on whose authority is it propagated?
What Malik is outlining is explicitly the reverse of the U.S. constitutional understanding of free speech, by the way: that maximal speech is the only means of balancing the private and public discourse in society. American courts, from top to bottom, have made clear that while government has power to prevent and punish actual threats and incitement to crime, it has no role at all in judging speech by its content.
Second, self-censorship is a righteous impulse (at least for white people). Whether it is colleges canceling plays through fear of being disrespectful, or cities removing statues in efforts to right historical wrongs, the Left’s anti-speech advocacy finds its central locus in a sense of unshakable white guilt. Judith Butler is an important voice here, often referencing a sort of natural harm that flows inextricably from the legal tradition that allows all people to speak their minds.
Third, permissible speech must defer to the marginalized. Whether it’s Malik referencing her own self-considered struggles to be heard, or London Mayor Sadiq Khan prioritizing his insulation from unpleasant speech over maximized public discourse, the anti-speech Left defers to the idea that some mouths and ears are more equal than others.
The Orwellian importance of ears cannot be understated here. Professor Lisa Barrett, for example, argues that speech itself can be violence to some who hear it. In this sense, marginalized individuals, as subjectively defined by the Left, require speech deference not simply due to their marginalization, but also due to the harm that the public commons otherwise imposes on their physical and mental being.
Anyway, if nothing else, Malik’s piece shouldn’t be ignored. Passionately argued, it illustrates the growing intellectual confidence of the Left’s anti-free speech ideology.
