Freedom of Speech on the Defensive
Britain's conviction on Tuesday of Abu Hamza al-Masri for "racial hatred" should help to clear the air around the cartoon/free-speech debacle that became world news this past week. Flemming Rose, the Danish editor who originally published the Muhammad cartoons last September, has stated that he solicited the cartoons as a flagrant show that speech should not be stifled for fear of offending. While it is likely that there is a good dose of racism to Rose's frustrations, this does not change the fact that what Rose was attempting to slaughter was not Muslim sentiment per se, but Europe's multicultural consensus.
Rose's somewhat pathetic cartoon display is not about Muslims at all, and most especially not about a clash of civilizations. As much as Europeans would like to understand the current unrest as definitive evidence that their culture is vastly different from that of Muslims, this reading couldn't be farther from the truth. Rather than a Europe that, with firm resolve, embraces a robust free speech principle, what the cartoons express is the very weak position of free speech in Europe. The criminalization of "hate speech", institutional speech codes, and the growth of anti-offensive behavior ordinances have all seriously eroded free speech. Britain's conviction of Abu Hamza al-Masri, solely on the basis of controversial speeches he has given, is one more example, propelling us further down the road of suppression. This conviction represents a shocking disfigurement of traditional liberal criminal concepts. For, as the judge in the case himself pointed out, "No one can now say what damage your words may have caused. No one can say whether your audience, present or wider, acted on your words." The judge's assessment makes clear that we have shifted away from the once-cardinal requirement of a crime: action. Speech without action is now enough. And even in cases where there is action, prosecuting the speaker pushes the autonomy of the listener aside, as he is presumed to be the mindless instrument of the speaker.
Of course, the war on terror has served as a powerful pretext for why speech should be deemed dangerous, and not merely unpleasant. In Denmark, where Muslims only comprise 2% of the population, the current government was voted-in riding, in part, on an anti-immigrant agenda. Unsurprisingly, free-speech loving Denmark then proceeded to change speech laws to make it illegal to instigate terrorism or provide advice to terrorists. But the war on terror is far from the only arena in which Europeans are willing to compromise on the principle of free speech (for a good example, see last month's excellent column in the Christian Science Monitor, or France's conviction last week of a French Parliamentarian here, or Brigitte Bardot here).
This does not mean that, since Europe compromises on speech a lot already, it should now crack down on anti-Muslim newspaper content as well. But it does mean that Europe should stop hiding behind its Muslim obsession and see the problem for what it really is: an internal crisis of faith in the West's own commitment to liberty. Denmark's tiny Muslim population can't really be the cause of all this fuss. Europeans are worried that their Muslim populations won't assimilate and accept European values because Europeans themselves have lost sight of what those values are.
Rose's somewhat pathetic cartoon display is not about Muslims at all, and most especially not about a clash of civilizations. As much as Europeans would like to understand the current unrest as definitive evidence that their culture is vastly different from that of Muslims, this reading couldn't be farther from the truth. Rather than a Europe that, with firm resolve, embraces a robust free speech principle, what the cartoons express is the very weak position of free speech in Europe. The criminalization of "hate speech", institutional speech codes, and the growth of anti-offensive behavior ordinances have all seriously eroded free speech. Britain's conviction of Abu Hamza al-Masri, solely on the basis of controversial speeches he has given, is one more example, propelling us further down the road of suppression. This conviction represents a shocking disfigurement of traditional liberal criminal concepts. For, as the judge in the case himself pointed out, "No one can now say what damage your words may have caused. No one can say whether your audience, present or wider, acted on your words." The judge's assessment makes clear that we have shifted away from the once-cardinal requirement of a crime: action. Speech without action is now enough. And even in cases where there is action, prosecuting the speaker pushes the autonomy of the listener aside, as he is presumed to be the mindless instrument of the speaker.
Of course, the war on terror has served as a powerful pretext for why speech should be deemed dangerous, and not merely unpleasant. In Denmark, where Muslims only comprise 2% of the population, the current government was voted-in riding, in part, on an anti-immigrant agenda. Unsurprisingly, free-speech loving Denmark then proceeded to change speech laws to make it illegal to instigate terrorism or provide advice to terrorists. But the war on terror is far from the only arena in which Europeans are willing to compromise on the principle of free speech (for a good example, see last month's excellent column in the Christian Science Monitor, or France's conviction last week of a French Parliamentarian here, or Brigitte Bardot here).
This does not mean that, since Europe compromises on speech a lot already, it should now crack down on anti-Muslim newspaper content as well. But it does mean that Europe should stop hiding behind its Muslim obsession and see the problem for what it really is: an internal crisis of faith in the West's own commitment to liberty. Denmark's tiny Muslim population can't really be the cause of all this fuss. Europeans are worried that their Muslim populations won't assimilate and accept European values because Europeans themselves have lost sight of what those values are.
5 Comments:
I wonder if the realities of the Information Age aren't also shaping people's attitudes toward speech. In other words, since speech is information, and information carries as much if not more weight in today's world as more concrete actions and objects, is it really that great a leap anymore to conclude that speech vs. action is a distinction without a difference?
That said, the real shame in all this is not that some newspaper would purposefully try to get a rise out of Muslims, or even that those Muslims would respond with violence and calls for sensorship. It is that, for want of anyone else in the mainstream Western media willing to publicize the Islamist threat to Western freedom through serious, hard-hitting journalism, these Danish cartoonists have become the de facto flagbearers for that effort, with the bomb-turbaned Mohammed cartoon as their flag.
You write: "What [Flemming] Rose was attempting to slaughter was not Muslim sentiment per se, but Europe's multicultural consensus." "Slaughter" seems rather a strong word to apply to a cartoonist's provocation, and if Europe's "multicultural consensus" was ever anything but stillborn, it has had little life left in it since the murder of Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands. You would like the law to distinguish sharply between "speech" and "action," as if the category dubbed "speech acts" did not exist. Consider: if I say, "I want that man killed" and promise you $500 if you do it, I have entered into a criminal contract. If I say, "I want that man killed" and promise you eternal milk and honeycakes, am I engaging in protected "speech" or noxious "action?" The answer, you suggest, depends on the "autonomy" of the listener, but autonomy is limited precisely by authority, and where a conflict of authorities--between, say, a secular and a religious authority--exists, the degree of autonomy may remain ambiguous until law itself seeks to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate speech acts. Thus a soldier must obey a lawful order but may defy an unlawful one with impunity: his autonomy exists not prior to the rules defining "lawful order" but in consequence of them. Although you see Europeans as having "lost sight" of what their values really are, the turmoil surrounding a number of recent controversial speech acts suggests rather that Europe's citizens are trying to clarify their understanding of a cluster of conflicting values more complex than you seem willing to grant.
The autonomy of the listener is not controlled by the authority of either the state or the speaker. This is what makes speech such a dangerous thing, even without action on the part of the listener.
The state attempts at definition and repression grow more overt as people seek out speakers who denounce the repression, not because those speakers exist.
Goldie,
Should we presume by your post that you opposed JFK's election as President? As you will recall, many argued at the time that by virtue of his Catholic faith, Kennedy too could not be counted upon to utilize his own reason when faced with papal edicts. We hold strongly to the position that the degree of autonomy of the religious person is firmly rooted in the individual who holds that faith.
It is also puzzling that you seem to presume that an individual who will unswervingly follow any promise made to him by a religious "authority",no matter how irrational, would credit in any way the laws of a secular authority. We cannot ascribe to this outlook that asserts that the only people who can be trusted to make up their own minds are those without any religious beliefs.
Dear Editors,
Your response is weak because its only palpable hit is on a straw man. I do not claim that a believer has no autonomy. I claim only that a democratic polity should have the right to declare certain kinds of speech acts illegal. A promise of monetary consideration for murder can legitimately be made illegal, whether or not the promise is accepted; few would disagree. So why ought it to be illegitimate to make a promise of spiritual consideration for murder illegal, WHETHER OR NOT the promise is accepted? American and European norms in this respect differ. Europeans, for reasons of historical experience, are charier of hate speech. Bernard Williams puts it this way: "It is simply a fact that many European liberals, fully respectable (I hope) in their liberal convictions, find it a quaint local obsession of Americans that they insist on defending on principle the right to offer any form of odious racist insult or provocation so long as by some argument it can be represented as a form of speech. I should have thought that these were obviously matters of political judgment, above all in telling the difference between the point at which the enemies of liberalism have been given only enough rope to hang themselves, and the point at which they have enough rope to hang someone else." So why do you, who in other respects champion "the political" over the thin abstractions of "human rights," in this instance revert to a purely formal and apolitical defense of an abstract right?
Post a Comment
<< Home