Charlie Hebdo hypocrisy: offensive speech demands scrutiny, not censorship
Argument: Members of the Board of Deputies of British Jews hold up signs reading "I am Charlie," "I am Jewish" and "I am Ahmed", in London on Sunday. Photo: Stefan Wermuth
In response to riots over the latest Charlie Hebdo cover this weekend, French President Francois Hollande said: "There are tensions abroad where people don't understand our attachment to freedom of speech." Yet for all the talk of free speech as a non-negotiable right, many Charlie Hebdo supporters are rank hypocrites. Far from bearing strong attachments to free speech, many support restrictions on free expression in their own countries.
Our concern with the erosion of free speech goes beyond partisanship. One of us is conservative, the other left-liberal. What unites us is a shared belief that people should be able to speak their minds, that freedom of speech irresponsible, offensive, even blasphemous speech is a cornerstone of democratic society.
We see an ominous trend toward government restrictions on speech in the very places speech freedoms were born.
We also believe that with free speech comes great responsibility not to gratuitously offend. But that responsibility belongs to the individual, not the government, and the consequences for breaching it should be social, not governmental. Yet we see an ominous trend toward government restrictions on speech in the very places speech freedoms were born.
Counterpoint: People protest against Charlie Hebdo in Lahore. Photo: Reuters
Many Australians, for instance, have no qualms over tweeting #jesuischarlie one moment and in the next calling to keep section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act. But those who say they're Charlie, as former NSW Labor solicitor-general Michael Sexton has argued, should support changes to section 18c.
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Australia, of course, is hardly alone in curtailing protections on free speech. In the US, from 1949 to 1987, the Fairness Doctrine mandated that radio and television stations cover controversial issues in a balanced manner. At face value, this seemed reasonable, but the devil was in the details. Who decided what was controversial? What "balance" looked like? How to threaten stations to provide equal time and "balanced" news coverage? Like 18c, the Fairness Doctrine was rarely used to revoke stations' broadcasting licenses, but it still had a chilling effect on controversial speech.
That chilling effect now comes not from US government regulators but from university administrators. To be sure, there is a significant difference between the two, but it is a troubling trend that universities have increasingly become spaces that dole out tougher penalties for offensive speech than most American institutions. Professors have been fired for offensive tweets. Students have been constrained by university speech codes.
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Charlie Hebdo hypocrisy: offensive speech demands scrutiny, not censorship