Freedom of Speech
A Speech, adapted for reading
“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take 'good,' for instance. If you have a word like 'good,' what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well--better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good,' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood' if you want something stronger still...In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words--in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?”
- George Orwell, 1984
In 1953, the European Convention of Human Rights was passed setting out, among other things, the fundamental right of freedom of speech. This was enacted into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998 which states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.”
Freedom of speech is one of the most important principles in any society. What does any group of people need to survive? Food, shelter: that’s a given — the things needed to sustain life itself; to be free from danger and death, as far as possible. But for that to be tangible, in any civilised society, you need to have the freedom for conversation. It is the bedrock of democracy. Without out, you cannot have discussions, or contest ideas. The withdrawal of it is the precipice of totalitarianism. Why else would reigning in freedom of speech be the first thing done by any dictator? Whether left or right, that’s always the first thing to go: Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, North Korea…
In 1984, George Orwell presents the dystopia of Oceana: a place where thoughts can be crimes, and being found guilty of wrongthink can mean punishment worse than death — and you can simply be edited out of history, as if you had never existed. It was written as a reflection of the past, and a warning for the future. Much of what he wrote about mirrors the past - especially the Soviet Union. But are these dystopian ideals really so far-fetched? They’ve happened before. What’s to say they won’t ever happen again?
In Nazi Germany, censorship was extreme. From May 1933, any books that conveyed anti-Nazi ideas were banned, and many were publicly burned. Newspapers, radio, film and cinema, and theatre all had to be pro-Nazi. By 1939, the Nazi Party owned over two thirds of Germany’s newspapers, and the rest had to abide by the Nazi’s publishing laws. Anything the Nazis didn’t want published, didn’t get published. You still had freedom of speech — one could argue — it’s just that it had consequences: most often, death. Is that really freedom of speech?
In the Soviet Union, propaganda was based on the Marxist-Leninist ideology to promote the Communist Party. The main Soviet Union censorship body was employed not only to eliminate any undesirable printed materials, but also "to ensure that the correct ideological spin was put on every published item.” Writer Isaac Babel once said: “Today a man only talks freely to his wife — at night, with the blankets pulled over his head,” to a close friends, during the Stalin era of the Soviet Union.
Chairman Mao, leader of the Chinese Communist Party, used propaganda and disinformation against State institutions as components of their insurgency doctrine. Not only that, he — much like Hitler and Stalin — committed mass murder: the killing fields of Cambodia, starting in 1975. Anyone who was remotely educated — teachers, doctors, professors, scientists — were taken and murdered. All because they were too intelligent; they could see through the façade of propaganda and lies, and they were a threat to the authoritarian government.
We’ve seen what happens, historically, when freedoms are slowly taken away; it almost always begins with the removal of free speech and expression.
One common argument against freedom of speech is ‘freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences.’ Yes, it does. If freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences, then it is not freedom of speech. The only ‘consequence’ for speech — besides that prohibited by law: slander, incitement to violence — should be more speech. Argument, disagreement, discussion. If we can no longer have free discourse, then we no longer have free speech. Because, after all, if ideas are worth their while, they will stand up to scrutiny. As writer and journalist Douglass Murray said, “Disagreement is not oppression. Argument is not assault. Words – even provocative or repugnant ones – are not violence. The answer to speech we do not like is more speech.”
Let’s hope that we’ve learned our lesson from history. If George Orwell was trying to say anything, it was to warn against totalitarianism, and to make aware how easily and subtly it can become a part of everyday life. To quote a common analogy: a frog in water being heated very slowly doesn’t realise it’s being boiled alive. Let’s hope we have learned our lesson from history. We’ve been warned, many-a-time. Let’s hope we never end up in a society where you can be visited by police to check your thinking. Let’s hope we never end up in a society where you can lose your job for disagreeing with a mainstream opinion. Let’s hope we never end up in a society where thoughts or speech can become crimes.
To conclude with the words of 18th Century philosopher, Voltaire - a correspondent of Gallileo, the well-known heretic who dared to suggest the earth is round and orbits the sun: “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” — George Orwell.