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War On Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail
Heresy Press’s first non-fiction offering addresses free speech and creative freedom—central to the press’s mission—in the form of a concise primer of arguments against censorship. Co-authored by Greg Lukianoff and Nadine Strossen, The War on 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail constitutes a bulwark against attempts from both the political left and right to limit individual expression. At a time when pressures to conform threaten the exercise of viewpoint diversity and when attacks on free speech in word, print, performance, and image are a daily occurrence, we sorely need a book such as this!
This handy volume is organized around 10 flawed assertions that are often invoked to limit the freedom of speech, followed by well-reasoned rebuttals of those arguments by both authors. A comprehensive introduction, updates to highlight current issues, and an appendix with helpful resources round off this volume. The writing is lively, clear, and persuasive.
This handy volume is organized around 10 flawed assertions that are often invoked to limit the freedom of speech, followed by well-reasoned rebuttals of those arguments by both authors. A comprehensive introduction, updates to highlight current issues, and an appendix with helpful resources round off this volume. The writing is lively, clear, and persuasive.
- GenresPoliticsNonfiction
128 pages, Paperback
Published July 22, 2025
26 people are currently reading
86 people want to read
About the author
Greg Lukianoff
14 books262 followersGregory Christopher Lukianoff (born 1974) is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). He previously served as FIRE's first director of legal and public advocacy until he was appointed president in 2006.
Lukianoff has published articles in the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Atlantic, Inside Higher Ed, and the New York Post. His article in The Atlantic, "The Coddling of the American Mind" laid the groundwork for a nationwide discussion of whether or not trigger warnings are harming college health.
He is a blogger for The Huffington Post and served as a regular columnist for the Daily Journal of Los Angeles and San Francisco.[citation needed] Along with Harvey Silverglate and David A. French, Lukianoff is a co-author of FIRE's Guide to Free Speech on Campus. He testified before the United States Congress on the state of free speech on college campuses, and he appeared in the films Brainwashing 101 and Indoctrinate U on the same topic. He has made numerous appearances on nationally syndicated television shows.
Lukianoff has published articles in the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Atlantic, Inside Higher Ed, and the New York Post. His article in The Atlantic, "The Coddling of the American Mind" laid the groundwork for a nationwide discussion of whether or not trigger warnings are harming college health.
He is a blogger for The Huffington Post and served as a regular columnist for the Daily Journal of Los Angeles and San Francisco.[citation needed] Along with Harvey Silverglate and David A. French, Lukianoff is a co-author of FIRE's Guide to Free Speech on Campus. He testified before the United States Congress on the state of free speech on college campuses, and he appeared in the films Brainwashing 101 and Indoctrinate U on the same topic. He has made numerous appearances on nationally syndicated television shows.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 28, 2025
This is a very basic book. Unfortunately, it’s necessary.
September 26, 2025
Clear refutation of oft cited arguments against free speech by two members of the Free Speech Mt. Rushmore (the other two of course are John Stuart Mill and James Madison).
September 8, 2025
Concise, flawless, and forever timely. Free speech ought to be an easy civic concept to grasp. Still, unfortunately, history is rife with examples of people from every political stripe attempting to silence others, not understanding the causal links between speech and genuine violence. If you're on the side of censorship and confident that your arguments are sound, this book is for you. Also, join and support FIRE if you can. They're doing great work to defend free speech rights.
Notable quotes:
"The right to speech and hear-including the right to inform others and be informed about public issues-are inextricably part of that process. The freedom to speak and the freedom to hear are inseparable; they are two sides of the same coin. But the coin itself is the process of thought and discussion. The activity of speakers becoming listeners and listeners becoming speakers in the vital interchange of thought is the 'means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth."
-Justice Thurgood Marshall
"There can be no right of speech where any man, however lifted up, or however humble, however young, or however old, is overawed by force, and compelled to suppress his honest sentiments. Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money."
-Fredrick Douglass
"Both for scientific reasons and for success as a democratic republic, we need to know more, not less about the idea in our fellow humans' heads. I call it my 'Iron Law': it is always important to know what people really believe, especially when the belief is perplexing or troubling. Conversely, in the overwhelming majority of scenarios, you are not safer or better off for knowing less about what people really think."
-Greg Lukianoff
Notable quotes:
"The right to speech and hear-including the right to inform others and be informed about public issues-are inextricably part of that process. The freedom to speak and the freedom to hear are inseparable; they are two sides of the same coin. But the coin itself is the process of thought and discussion. The activity of speakers becoming listeners and listeners becoming speakers in the vital interchange of thought is the 'means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth."
-Justice Thurgood Marshall
"There can be no right of speech where any man, however lifted up, or however humble, however young, or however old, is overawed by force, and compelled to suppress his honest sentiments. Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money."
-Fredrick Douglass
"Both for scientific reasons and for success as a democratic republic, we need to know more, not less about the idea in our fellow humans' heads. I call it my 'Iron Law': it is always important to know what people really believe, especially when the belief is perplexing or troubling. Conversely, in the overwhelming majority of scenarios, you are not safer or better off for knowing less about what people really think."
-Greg Lukianoff
November 28, 2025
Greg Lukianoff and Nadine Stroussen's 2025 book War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech and Why They Fail is exactly what its title promises: a refutation of ten distinct arguments that are regularly made against free speech in our modern era. However, as the authors reveal, these arguments are hardly new or novel; instead, they're arguments that have been made against free speech at multiple points in the past century. Of these arguments, the most pressing is that words have the potential to do harm, which both authors acknowledge is likely true, but explain that government censorship is a less effective way of mitigating this harm than intelligent counterspeech. This essentially is the entire theme of the book: that any attempt by the government to censor speech as a form of harm prevention is both doomed to fail and a potential slippery slope to even more censorship. Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), and Stroussen, the former head of the ACLU, seem to know more than anyone about this concept, and they bring their expertise to a wide variety of modern and historical free speech issues. While the format leads to a jarring difference between Stroussen's highly academic and Lukianoff's conversational writing style, and there are certainly better books out there about free speech, War on Words is a useful guide to navigating our current era of illiberalism and division.
December 29, 2025
A good, concise list of bad arguments against free speech and their refutations. It's not an exhaustive history (other books already are), but it's a great overview.
As always, the free speech advocates are conspicuously more informed than the censorship advocates, and it shows. How could it be otherwise, when the censors intentionally close themselves off to information, and the free speakers do not? And yet, I was still surprised to learn the depth of the ignorance of some pro-censorship "scholars," such as Richard Delgado, who the book explained was hopelessly ignorant of the history of the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and free speech in general.
As always, the free speech advocates are conspicuously more informed than the censorship advocates, and it shows. How could it be otherwise, when the censors intentionally close themselves off to information, and the free speakers do not? And yet, I was still surprised to learn the depth of the ignorance of some pro-censorship "scholars," such as Richard Delgado, who the book explained was hopelessly ignorant of the history of the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and free speech in general.
August 31, 2025
Short But Substantive Defense Of Free Speech
There is nothing new for those who have read about free speech before, so I debated giving 4 stars. However, the stated aim of the book is to combat common myths anout free speech and so from that standpoint it is excellent. It is short, to the point, and counters the common arguments effectively.
There is nothing new for those who have read about free speech before, so I debated giving 4 stars. However, the stated aim of the book is to combat common myths anout free speech and so from that standpoint it is excellent. It is short, to the point, and counters the common arguments effectively.
November 22, 2025
Mildly interesting
January 7, 2026
“La libertà di parlare e la libertà di ascoltare sono inseparabili: sono due facce della stessa medaglia.”
Greg Lukianoff
Di seguito i discorsi che ho trovato interessanti.
L’esito finale dell’idea che la parola sia violenza: rende la violenza reale inevitabile. È una formula per una reazione a catena senza fine di violenza, repressione e regressione.»
«Molto più efficace che proibire il “discorso d’odio” è educare le persone a respingere le idee discriminatorie e punire i comportamenti discriminatori.»
Non esiste alcuna correlazione tra l’applicazione delle leggi contro il discorso d’odio e la riduzione dell’intolleranza.
Inoltre, i tentativi di sopprimere certe idee attirano inevitabilmente maggiore attenzione su di esse. Questo fenomeno è così comune che esistono diversi termini per descriverlo, tra cui il “Streisand effect” (effetto Streisand), che si riferisce al tentativo della celebre artista Barbra Streisand di far rimuovere da internet fotografie della sua casa sulla spiaggia a Malibu, ottenendo l’effetto esattamente opposto: aumentare drasticamente il numero di persone che le hanno viste.
Dopotutto, la censura in genere non cambia le opinioni delle persone, ma le rende più propense a parlare solo con chi è già d’accordo con loro.
I fact-checker hanno ridotto la fiducia nelle piattaforme. (Questo argomento non è stato affrontato nel dettaglio. Secondo me i fact-checkers hanno anche dei vantaggi.)
È sempre importante sapere cosa le persone credono davvero, soprattutto quando quella convinzione è sconcertante o preoccupante.
Data l’inevitabile elasticità del concetto di disinformazione, le restrizioni su di essa possono essere facilmente usate contro informazioni importanti, persino nei paesi democratici.
Un caso d’uso storico: le restrizioni alla libertà di parola non riuscirono a fermare i nazisti e alla fine si rivelarono potenti armi nelle loro mani. Fu un atteggiamento permissivo verso la violenza e il degrado dello stato di diritto — non un atteggiamento permissivo verso la libertà di parola — a condurre alla più famigerata atrocità della storia.
Non mi è piaciuta la struttura del libro. Ad ogni domanda gli autori rispondono separatamente perché, secondo quanto scritto nell’introduzione, a volte hanno idee diverse sull’argomento. Il problema però è che spesso le risposte hanno contenuti ridondanti.
Di seguito i discorsi che ho trovato interessanti.
L’esito finale dell’idea che la parola sia violenza: rende la violenza reale inevitabile. È una formula per una reazione a catena senza fine di violenza, repressione e regressione.»
«Molto più efficace che proibire il “discorso d’odio” è educare le persone a respingere le idee discriminatorie e punire i comportamenti discriminatori.»
Non esiste alcuna correlazione tra l’applicazione delle leggi contro il discorso d’odio e la riduzione dell’intolleranza.
Inoltre, i tentativi di sopprimere certe idee attirano inevitabilmente maggiore attenzione su di esse. Questo fenomeno è così comune che esistono diversi termini per descriverlo, tra cui il “Streisand effect” (effetto Streisand), che si riferisce al tentativo della celebre artista Barbra Streisand di far rimuovere da internet fotografie della sua casa sulla spiaggia a Malibu, ottenendo l’effetto esattamente opposto: aumentare drasticamente il numero di persone che le hanno viste.
Dopotutto, la censura in genere non cambia le opinioni delle persone, ma le rende più propense a parlare solo con chi è già d’accordo con loro.
I fact-checker hanno ridotto la fiducia nelle piattaforme. (Questo argomento non è stato affrontato nel dettaglio. Secondo me i fact-checkers hanno anche dei vantaggi.)
È sempre importante sapere cosa le persone credono davvero, soprattutto quando quella convinzione è sconcertante o preoccupante.
Data l’inevitabile elasticità del concetto di disinformazione, le restrizioni su di essa possono essere facilmente usate contro informazioni importanti, persino nei paesi democratici.
Un caso d’uso storico: le restrizioni alla libertà di parola non riuscirono a fermare i nazisti e alla fine si rivelarono potenti armi nelle loro mani. Fu un atteggiamento permissivo verso la violenza e il degrado dello stato di diritto — non un atteggiamento permissivo verso la libertà di parola — a condurre alla più famigerata atrocità della storia.
Non mi è piaciuta la struttura del libro. Ad ogni domanda gli autori rispondono separatamente perché, secondo quanto scritto nell’introduzione, a volte hanno idee diverse sull’argomento. Il problema però è che spesso le risposte hanno contenuti ridondanti.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews