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The Assault on Freedom
From: The British Library
| By:
Mick Hume |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
 Mick Hume (below) was the editor of LM (formerly Living Marxism) magazine until it was forced to close down after losing a libel suit brought by a major television broadcaster. In this story, he argues that one of the greatest threats to freedom comes from the liberal left. He suggests that encroaching on the basic rights of far-right groups and forcing them to use the rhetoric of freedom in their defence has created an enemy in freedom itself. This is a consequence, Hume claims, of the lowered esteem in which humankind is commonly held--people cannot be trusted to survive insults or resist the siren call of bigots. And so we must be policed as much as protected. |
Talk freedom
I thought I should comment a little bit about freedom and why it is important to me and the way in which it is generally seen today. I think the first thing we should say is that it is extremely bizarre that we're discussing an issue like freedom and the importance of freedom at the start of the twenty-first century. It is a quite interesting sign of the strange times in which we live, but if you look back to the start of the nineteenth century, the demand for liberty is resonant as the birth cry of the modern world. At the start of the twentieth century people all over the world were beginning to fight for their freedoms and at the start of the twenty-first century "freedom" is a dirty word. |
That is the kind of attitude summed up most astutely and succinctly, I think, by Tony Blair, the British prime minister, in his major speech last year at the Labour Party conference. He dismissed any suggestion that there might be civil-liberties questions about the government's law-and-order crackdown as being "libertarian nonsense." And you know that when somebody like Tony Blair says "libertarian nonsense" he really thinks that's a tautology--that "libertarian" and "nonsense" actually mean exactly the same thing to him. "Freedom" is a dirty word. |
And that is another very interesting sign of the times: not only is freedom out of fashion but it is not the old forces of conservatism who are encroaching upon freedom. The dynamic to restrict freedoms or to discuss the way in which freedom must be restricted comes more and more from the liberal left side of the political discussion. The theme seems to be that only dubious causes talk about freedom. If you use the language of freedom you are immediately put in a suspect situation. |
Who talks freedom?
Basically, freedom seems to mean being very right-wing and pretty dangerous, especially if you are someone who associates with freedom or uses that as some kind of badge or cause that you believe in. I suppose the image of someone who espouses beliefs in free speech and freedom today is a kind of right-wing, far-right American militiaman, with his Confederate flag, armed to the teeth, all his children armed to the teeth, and that is someone who believes in freedom--the freedom to bear arms, the freedom to fly the flag, the freedom to be a racist. That is the image of freedom pointed at us today. |
Most of the measures that we might call mind policing or thought policing today are aimed at those kinds of people. Such measures are presented as being against racists, against homophobes, against hate speech, going as far as the suggestion in the MacPherson report about the Stephen Lawrence murder, published in 1999, that actually it should be illegal in Britain to use racist language in the privacy of your own front room. |
That is the area in which the cutting edge of this discussion lies, and it is encroaching on the freedoms of those kinds of people. You might say, "Well, what is wrong in dealing with those kinds of people in that way?" And indeed it is very disconcerting for those of us who believe in freedom (for entirely different reasons) to think of ourselves as being somehow associated with those kinds of people. But it is also disconcerting for me to find that the only places where free speech has been discussed publicly in Britain recently was two libel cases; one was our case, the magazine LM, formerly Living Marxism, against the British broadcaster ITN. The other was the David Irving libel case, where David Irving's people were continually talking about free speech. It is still more disconcerting to find yourself using the same words that racists like David Irving use. I think it is important that we do not allow ourselves to be blind to that. |
However, being in favour of free speech today means that you have to end up defending some pretty unpleasant people. But I don't think we should allow that to let us lose sight of why freedom matters. |
First of all, I think we have to point out that just because you do not like what some people do with their freedoms, that is no reason to abolish them. And that is the fundamental point about freedom. People are not free to do what you want them to do. |
I was going to point out that it would be almost as bizarre as saying that, just because we do not like the governments people elect, we should abolish democracy. But of course that is exactly what the EU have done in relation to Austria. We don't like who they have elected, so we're going to abolish democracy and have nothing to do with them. And that revives the logic of saying that because we do not like what people do with their freedoms, then freedom itself should be encroached. |
Second, I am not prepared in any sense to allow anybody from that kind of far-right group to have a monopoly on the language of freedom, because it is not their preserve. I do not actually think these people believe in freedom. They are certainly not consistent. There are very few people around who are consistent upholders of freedom. If you talk to one of these freedom-loving militiamen about a question like abortion, you might find that his kind of libertarian instincts are slightly different than they are on the question of gun control or flag flying. |
Why freedom matters
It is important that we do not allow any of that stuff to blind us to why freedom matters. Why freedom matters to me and why I hope I am entirely consistent in my support for it, regardless of how distasteful the people who wave that banner might be today, is not because of what it says about them. It is not that I care about racist rights, or some nonsense like that, but what the cause of freedom, the idea of freedom, says about and means to the rest of us. |
The key thing, it seems to me, is that the lowering regard for freedom and free speech in recent times is a side effect of the lowering esteem in which we hold our fellow humans today. Because what we are saying is that, on the one hand, people cannot survive insults, cannot survive that kind of personal unpleasantness and must be protected from what other people say, and, on the other hand, that we cannot resist the siren call of bigots. The assumption is that if we hear them, we are likely to act on their word. So our freedom to listen and to speak must be restricted, and we cannot be trusted to own guns, or even to wear tattoos, without necessarily turning into some major antisocial incident. And so we must be on the one hand protected and on the other hand policed, in a way, which increasingly restricts our freedoms. |
The flip side of this is that standing up for freedom today is about raising our sights with respect to what we think people are capable of and the kind of society that we want to live in--a society of robust individuals, people who can decide for themselves, exercise their own rights and so on. |
What is often counterpoised to that point is: "Well, that is, of course, typical of you people who believe in freedom. You are always on about the individual banging on about individual freedoms. What about the community?" The good of the community is what matters and that is a very important consideration. We would all like to live in a community where solidarities and behaviour are followed. But my answer to that is always: What kind of community or collectivity or society do you imagine we are going to end up with if we do not have any sense of individual freedom or individual autonomy? What kind of community do we have if the people who make it up are not themselves free-thinking, free-acting, autonomous individuals. The only thing you can have is a community of victims, fearful victims and potential victims. There is another word for a community like that. It is sometimes called a lynch mob. |
That's life
I would like to make a final point about hate speech and the trend to collapse words and actions. I think it is a very important issue for us to consider. Traditionally, there has always been a distinction between what people said and what they did and the way that was recognised in law. You are responsible for your actions, but you are not responsible for what you thought or a conversation that you had. You would not be punished for that, but you would be responsible for your actions; the distinction is between words and deeds. It was summed up in that childish phrase "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." |
Now, I do not think the proverbial children are entirely right, because words can hurt you, words do hurt people and people's words do cause offence--but there is a phrase for that as well, which is "That's life." You just have to get on with it, and the solution is not to impose a repressive, guilt-ridden form of censorship. More importantly, I think, if we start to collapse distinctions between words and actions, we are denying any sense of will or agency amongst people. We are treating people as automatons who, if they hear something said, will act upon it, and the kind of free will which comes between words and actions is really wiped out. Again, I'm saying it reflects a low opinion of what we're like. |
People might say, "That is a slippery slope. You start off with dangerous speech and dangerous action follows." Well, I think the real slippery slope is this: that you begin by equating words and actions and before you know it you are saying that words are actually worse than actions and that emotional hurt becomes worse than physical hurt. For example, the problem with the asylum discussion in Britain is that people use bad words. People say "'bogus' asylum seekers." The fact that the government then wants to kick out 3,000 refugees is not a problem, as long as they do it politely and don't call them "bogus." |
Words actually become worse than actions, and the final stage on that slippery slope is that you end up trying to police our very thoughts along with what we put in our personal e-mails and what we say to each other in our own front rooms. |
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