Why do free speech debates make us so angry? | community

IIn January 2015, two al-Qaeda members shot cartoonists at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in retaliation for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. In the following weeks, my Facebook page split into two parts. Many of my childhood friends (I grew up in France and went to school near Paris) expressed their sadness at the deaths of artists they had known for decades, their anger at religious extremism, and their fear of the decline of freedom of expression.

Meanwhile, many of my British and American academic colleagues, who were discovering Charlie Hebdo and its offensive cartoons for the first time, were concerned about the stigmatization of French Muslims and cast doubt on the wisdom of publishing the images in the first place; One of them reposted a link to a blog that described the slain cartoonists as “racist assholes.”

I was glad that there was so little overlap between these two groups of friends. Both sides viewed some of the views expressed by the other party – and by extension the people who expressed them – as extremely disturbing and morally unreasonable. Two groups of people, who a week ago shared the same type of memes and were amused or angry about similar things, have become two radically different groups with seemingly incompatible values. I spent a long time writing sad comments on several friends’ posts, trying to figure out where I stood on all of this — and then I deleted them. They don’t seem to help. Instead, I picked up the phone, which worked a little better. Shortly after, she left Facebook. Since I am an anthropologist, I started a research project to find out what was happening.

Freedom of expression debates seem to revolve around abstract principles and rules: What should be allowed? When does he cross the line? Do we need more or less regulation? These differences are real – but they don’t explain why we feel so angry, upset and divided about free speech. In fact, the free speech wars of recent years aren’t just about rules, they’re about what it means to be a good person. Notice how such discussions are full of caricatures of “types” of people: snowflakes, trolls, cancel culture warriors, border lords, bigots, whiners, bigots, and so on. What really drives these debates is a set of implicit judgments about character: What kind of person wants to regulate another person’s speech? What kind of person doesn’t care about the impact of his words on others?

This is the world of what philosophers call “virtue ethics.” Arguments about freedom of expression are arguments about a set of virtues – sincerity, courage, resilience, generosity, care – and the character of the people who embrace them. Here’s what the Facebook posts were implicitly asking: Are you the kind of person who stands with murdered cartoonists, even when you personally don’t like what they drew? Are you the type of person who challenges audiences to denounce social injustice? That’s why it all feels so personal – straining relationships, dividing families, leading to heated arguments or depressing silences.

On the European and American scene, almost everyone seems to agree that freedom of expression is broadly a good thing. However, we find people wrestling with different visions of what kind of (good) person a free speaker is. I would argue that three of these visions were particularly prominent: the first depicted the free speaker as a rational, thoughtful citizen sharing ideas—perhaps the eloquent contributor to Question Time, the writer to a literary committee, the citizen to a town hall meeting. In the second case, it is the free speaker who passionately breaks rules and conventions – think of blasphemous artworks such as “Pissing Christ” by Andres Serrano, or the Mona Lisa “soup” by climate activists. The third sees the free speaker as a courageous and honorable person who stands up for the truth – classically, whistleblowers like Edward Snowden or Li Wenliang, the Chinese doctor whose WeChat posts warned the world about coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19).

Sometimes a person can be represented as all three at the same time. Consider the case of Salman Rushdie, who in a measured, nonpartisan tone defends freedom of artistic expression, strongly condemns censorship, and defends freedom of expression at the risk of his life. More controversially, this is how Charlie Hebdo supporters saw the magazine in the immediate aftermath of the shooting: Charlie advocated a rational and secular commitment to discussing religion and religious extremism in public; Its employees mocked established figures of religious and secular authority; They did all this with courage and selflessness, risking their lives. Critics, of course, challenged this choice: for them, Charlie Hebdo was neither rational, nor targeting the powerful, nor selfless. In other contexts, the three figures of the free speaker are inherently in tension with each other: the activist who shouts passionately from the barricades beyond all reason and measure; The rational citizen calmly selects the activist’s most cherished beliefs; The courageous speaker of the truth exposes and shocks decent citizens.

Once we see free speech debates as debates about morality and character rather than rules and principles, we can understand why people might defend free speech one minute, and condemn their opponents for what they say the next. Examples are all around us, including MAGA activists engaged in cancel culture after the shooting of Charlie Kirk, or progressives who have previously defended campus speech rules denouncing their use against pro-Palestine protesters. This is often attributed to “double standards,” confusion, or lack of honesty. But if you start from the character, a different picture emerges. Each of our three “types” sincerely advocates freedom of expression, but each of them sometimes has good reasons to demand silence. A rational citizen supports restricting freedom of expression through law, copyright, or civility; The emotional activist may feel that the powerful should be silenced to allow the powerless to speak; Sadiq calls on honest people to respect their values ​​and compensate them for the insults inflicted on them or their friends.

Of course, these model speakers are fiction. But it’s actually more three-dimensional than the flat cartoons we started with (snowflake, elf, etc.). The goal of this anthropological perspective is not to change your mind about freedom of expression or weaken your convictions—rather, it is to provide a language through which to see the other side’s convictions more clearly, and to recognize the assumptions that both sides actually share.

There is no single argument in favor of free speech that would withstand the push and pull of our current partisan debates. Instead, we need to commit to freedom of expression less stringently, and therefore more strongly, like a rope woven from multiple strands; One has room, each in turn, for reason and cold logic, fiery passion and courageous integrity.

mate candia He is a professor at Cambridge University and a book author Reason, Carnival, and Honor: An Anthropology of Free Expression (Swans).

Further reading

What is freedom of expression? By Fara Dabhoiwala (Penguin, £14.99)

The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt (Penguin, £14.99)

The Puzzle of the Mind by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber (Penguin, £10.99)