This weekend I wrote a column for the Washington Post on the crackdown of free speech in France. The column suggested that, if the French really wanted to honor the dead at Charlie Hebdo, they would rescind the laws used to hound them and threaten them with criminal prosecution for years. (Indeed, at least one surviving journalist expressed contempt for those who now support free speech but remained silent in the face of past efforts to shut down the magazine). Now, however, news reports indicate that the French government is doubling down on criminalizing speech in the name of free speech after the massacre. France has reportedly made dozens of arrests of people who glorify terrorism and engage in hateful or antiSemitic speech.
Prosecutors have gone out of their way to make it known that they are prosecuting people for speech — a remarkably ironic twist since the victims were prosecuted for the very same thing and died defending free speech against such private or governmental speech codes. Some 54 people have been arrested since the Paris terror attacks. The French justice department has encouraged more arrests for speech violations.
Notably, one of those detained was mentioned in my column, the comedian Dieudonne, who has been prosecuted for anti-Semitic jokes. For earlier posts and columns on Dieudonne, click here and here and here. We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in France (here and here and here and here and here and here) and England ( here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). Much of this trend is tied to the expansion of hate speech and non-discrimination laws. We have seen comedians targets with such court orders under this expanding and worrisome trend. (here and here).
The crackdown in France shows that this is really not about free speech despite the rally in Paris. The West seems to be falling out of faith with free speech, which is now something to be prosecuted rather than protected. Of course, the prosecutions will do little to change minds and will only make the West appear hypocritical and arbitrary. Notably, the arrests this week include four minors. The government is also ramping greater surveillance and searches. So, to recap, the French government just rallied millions for liberty this weekend and then used the attacks to further deny free speech and privacy rights.
In the case of Dieudonne, he ran afoul of the laws by posing a Facebook statement that he felt like “Charlie Coulibaly” — merging the names of Charlie Hebdo and Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who seized a kosher market and killed four hostages. It was later taken down. He later wrote to the Interior Minister that “Whenever I speak, you do not try to understand what I’m trying to say, you do not want to listen to me. You are looking for a pretext to forbid me. You consider me like Amedy Coulibaly when I am not any different from Charlie.”
Don’t worry leftists, you will get your beloved hate speech laws here, sooner or later. It is already in the embryonic stage. Some prominent, serious people in academia are already advocating for it. Not a stretch to see some presidential candidate being on board in another cycle or two. And it will all be promoted in the name of tolerance!
I find it ironic that liberals were big free speech advocates when the perpetrators were leftist radicals advocating for the counterculture or pornography. What phoney hypocrites! Kind of reminds me of those who love diversity and minorities, but live in exclusive suburbs, send their kids to private schools, etc.
Tony
It’s a big mistake to crack down on free speech. Free speech is a necessary safety valve – issues of concern to people need to be discussed, just to straighten the situation out. It also allows everyone to feel that they are respected. When taboo subjects are created – you can’t discuss immigration without being accused of being racist – this increases resentment against migrants. When the subject cannot be discussed rationally, irrationality takes over. The peace of Western societies are partly the result of this freedom – the right of anyone to express their viewpoint without being shot down.
France is conducting low level warfare against radical Islam.
They are hoping that legislation and the Gendarmerie can contain or eject the worst offenders.
Nevertheless, this is a war, one they cannot avoid.
Escalation is inevitable.
France is still so scarred by World War I that they will resist conflict until the last possible moment.
But that moment is nigh.
The issue is not about free speech alone. In fact free speech is one of the freedoms the more advanced societies, that have put religion in its proper place or are trying, that inevitably reaches a point of irresponsibility that threatens the over all freedom, the freedom to live without fear of persecution.
What happened in Paris was an attack on the freedom to live without persecution. Persecution is the mainstay of thugs and plays an inordinately large part in the way Islam is performed in countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, etc. Those that attack physically should be brought down. The rest is a constant fine tuning between freedom and responsibility.
Western society needs to simplify this so it can get on with the job of eradicating thuggery. Focus on fine tuning is one thing but exposing Nazi ideals and advocating the eradication of a race, religion, or nation crosses the line. On one side of the line is “I believe we should….”. On the other side is, “Go out and…..”.
Well, at least France is “on trend” in the erosion of free speech.
A country without free speech is not free.
What they’re doing is akin to yelling fire in a theater. Bust’em and then deport them. Inciting terrorism should carry the death sentence
The left, and their PC mindset, have created an unwritten right not to be offended. And, they are enforcing that illegitimate right w/ missionary zeal.
In large part, it is the left in the Western world, attacking free speech. In the US, it is spearheaded by college campuses and supported by the WH, who support blasphemy laws. The internet has posed new challenges for free speech. And, the West has failed miserably in meeting those challenges.
A wise person just ignores someone else’s attempts to demonize others. However, few people are wise. When a US govt official demonizes a person, journalists and many others hop right on that band wagon to participate in the demonization. It’s an attempt to be part of the “in” group rather than part of the “out” group. The march had nothing to do with free speech, but rather being part of the “in” group rather than the “out” group.
Once the people accept infringements of natural rights by government, then they are no longer rights; they are privileges granted by government. They have all the look and feel of rights until they are violated; that’s when the people will discover this illusion of rights. If the people of France truly want free speech then they are going to have to do it the hard way because I do not see their government just ‘giving it back’.
Olly – freedom of speech does not allow you to contract for a murder.
It seems odd that a person can be sued for defaming an individual, but be held unaccountable for defaming an entire group of people.
The problem, it seems to me, lies in the application of the words that we use to distinguish unlawful incitement to violence from lawful freedom of speech.
Under the U.S. test (from Brandenburg) there are three key terms whose application may depend on what’s happening in the country:
1) is there “advocacy” of violence?–if you, for example, call people “rats”, are you implicitly advocating their extermination, because that’s what we do to rats. “Every idea is an incitement” wrote Justice Holmes.
2) if there is advocacy, is it directed to producing “imminent” unlawful action?–how quickly must action follow the incitement–a minute, an hour, a day, a week. The 9/11 killers didn’t act the minute that they made up their minds to attack America.
3) is the advocacy likely to work?–once there’s been violence, doesn’t it seem more likely that there’ll be further violence. On what side do you err?
All of these are difficult question, I think. But Professor Turley simply defends “Free Speech” without grappling with the difficult questions of what to do when speech has led to, and seems likely to lead to more, killing.
See this is exactly why Obama did not go to France to be part of the demonstration. He is the one true believer in free speech and his absence and lack of saying anything is proof of how he feels about free speech rights. I mean please, ask James Rosen, he can vouch for Obama.
The argument of “the slippery slope” is a logical fallacy.
Not an original thought, but government regulation is a slippery slope.
Once you start introducing pernicious concepts such as “No reasonable expectation”, you have opened the door to all sorts of regulation.
It seems there is a fundamental difference between the United States and France, or as the topic of another article here, United Kingdom regarding free speech.
The view seems to be that our core value on the matter rests with accepting that while all speech is not protected, in general we accept that even outrageous speech is a core right guaranteed by our constitution and therefore that is liberty.
These other two nations view that liberty is protected because attempts to subjugate or oppress minority groups through speech is just as damaging as physical threats.
So it seems to me they wish to protect the freedom of others rather than the mechanism; that is free speech.
While we would seem to agree that government ought not to censor speech, there ought to be a way to hold people accountable for their lies (apart from defamation lawsuits brought by an individual). Suppose a person who denies the Holocaust is required to justify this statement in a public forum. The government issues him a summons to appear at a moderated televised public debate where he will be afforded the opportunity to speak his mind at length, but then be confronted by those who wish to take issue with him. If he does not appear or refuses to answer the questions challenging his statements, then the public will see him for what he is. There is no punishment or verdict as a result of this process. Merely a summons to appear, but the threat of public humiliation if he chickens out. Being summoned to have one’s speech publicly challenged hardly amounts to a chilling of it because no speech is immune from criticism. The salutary effect of the marketplace of ideas cannot be achieved unless the instigators of bad speech are shamed into justifying their rhetoric. Just a thought.
what a mess…
I am a little undecided on this one. Nipping it in the bud may not be such a bad idea. And there are limits to free speech. This may be the speech too far.
Reblogged this on HAPLOGROUP – bit that makes us human..