Adieu, Free Speech
By P.K. Adithya
I wish you a happy 2015; Sadly, the year of 2014 was grim, with many of its events hitting us like an Ice Bucket Challenge nobody volunteered for. Already 2015 has not been significantly better. Within a week of the New Year the cold-blooded massacre of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s staff at their headquarters in Paris by the Kouachi brothers shocked most of the world.
Censorship is the hallmark of totalitarianism and free speech the foundation of liberty. When free speech is threatened, there can be no compromise. Below I will give clarifications of a few misconceptions.
1. Free speech is all very good in theory. But really, how much do we need the right to offend people as crudely as Charlie Hebdo was in the habit of doing?
The whole point of a constitutionally protected freedom of speech is to ensure that people who take issue with your opinion can’t prevent you from expressing it. Why would anyone want to censor speech that they agree with? The moment offence taken becomes grounds for censorship, freedom of speech loses all meaning. This is perfectly compatible with believing there should be civil consequences for slanderous and defamatory speech.
2. I believe in First Amendment-style free speech, so I certainly support Charlie Hebdo’s right to publish those cartoons. But why I am being asked to celebrate them? I find the cartoons racist/provocative/blasphemous.
This argument is not outright absurd – there is no question that if an advocate of racial segregation had been murdered for his opinions, we wouldn’t be seeing an outpouring of international solidarity. However, this hypothetical scenario is nothing like the Charlie Hebdo shooting – the only surprise for me is that more people cannot see that. Historical context is everything.
Charlie Hebdo was doing us all an invaluable service – showing extremists that they couldn’t lay down the rules using violence in a free society. Regarding the accusation of several of their cartoons appearing racist, a quick search will show that Charlie Hebdo was a left-wing anti-racist publication, with a propensity to exaggerate racist stereotypes in order to lampoon them. In any case, the killers left absolutely no doubt as to their motivations – immediately after the attack, they shouted “We have avenged the Prophet!” and not “That’ll teach the bastards to draw racist cartoons!”
3. Okay, I get why people are paying tribute to Charlie Hebdo’s courage. But why are some lunatics calling for the cartoons to be published by all major newspapers? Isn’t this just going to unnecessarily offend Muslims who had nothing to do with the atrocity?
We need to make a strong statement and show that terrorism does not work. What better way than to publish the cartoons? And the smaller the number of newspapers that publish the cartoons, the more symbolic those newspapers become as blasphemers to be targeted. Only if sufficiently many newspapers run the cartoons will the risk be diluted.
