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The free speech wars: How did we get here and why does it matter?
Who gets to exercise free speech, and what happens when powerful voices think they have been silenced?
Assembling a diverse group of commentators, activists and academics, this book explores the contemporary free speech wars to try to understand how this issue has become increasingly charged. It asks how the spaces and structures of 'speech' – mass media, the lecture theatre, the public event, the political rally and the internet – shape this debate. The contributors examine how acts such as censorship, boycotts, and protests around free speech developed historically and how these histories inform the present.
The book explores the opposing sides in this beginning with a defence of speech freedoms and examining how speech has been curbed and controlled, before countering this with an exploration of the way that free speech has been weaponised and deployed as a bad faith argument by people wishing to commit harm. Considering two key battlefields in the free speech wars – the university campus and the internet – this book encourages the reader to be suspicious of the way that this topic is framed in the media today. The free speech wars offers context, provocation, stimulation and – hopefully – a route through this conflict.
Assembling a diverse group of commentators, activists and academics, this book explores the contemporary free speech wars to try to understand how this issue has become increasingly charged. It asks how the spaces and structures of 'speech' – mass media, the lecture theatre, the public event, the political rally and the internet – shape this debate. The contributors examine how acts such as censorship, boycotts, and protests around free speech developed historically and how these histories inform the present.
The book explores the opposing sides in this beginning with a defence of speech freedoms and examining how speech has been curbed and controlled, before countering this with an exploration of the way that free speech has been weaponised and deployed as a bad faith argument by people wishing to commit harm. Considering two key battlefields in the free speech wars – the university campus and the internet – this book encourages the reader to be suspicious of the way that this topic is framed in the media today. The free speech wars offers context, provocation, stimulation and – hopefully – a route through this conflict.
- GenresNonfictionPolitics
296 pages, Paperback
Published November 20, 2020
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120 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 12, 2021
Goodreads had its own troubles with free speech back in 2013. Not everyone reading this will recall the details so I will mention that it hinged on the question is it okay to say an author is a bad person in your review? A few authors in the YA genre had done some bad things IRL and people were outraged and posted straightforward reviews saying “don’t buy this person’s books because they are a minion of Satan”. GR management said that was not within the guidelines, you had to stay on topic and review the book, not the author. And some reviews were deleted because of that. Naturally people began reviewing Mein Kampf and saying what a terrible person the author was and waited to see if those reviews would be deleted. I remember at the time if I gave one star to a book I made a point of saying I thought the author was an absolute darling and they were welcome to come for tea any day of the week.
Manny Raynor wrote an ebook about the whole affair and you would have to say it’s rather critical of the then GR management. I think they tried to delete the book entry from GR but gave up in the end – it’s still there now
Off-Topic: The Story of an Internet Revolt by G.R. Reader
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
This whole free speech issue is tricky. Currently it’s the alt-right who like to say they’re being cruelly banned and deplatformed and censored and whatall. All I can say is, I hope they are. Ban the lot of them.
Just to be clear, free speech is a sacred right for everybody I happen to agree with.
Manny Raynor wrote an ebook about the whole affair and you would have to say it’s rather critical of the then GR management. I think they tried to delete the book entry from GR but gave up in the end – it’s still there now
Off-Topic: The Story of an Internet Revolt by G.R. Reader
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
This whole free speech issue is tricky. Currently it’s the alt-right who like to say they’re being cruelly banned and deplatformed and censored and whatall. All I can say is, I hope they are. Ban the lot of them.
Just to be clear, free speech is a sacred right for everybody I happen to agree with.
May 1, 2021
This is a troublesome one to review... But I had such high hopes! These are such interesting, complicated issues!
On the whole, it was an overwhelming disappointment. It's such a mixed bag, and to be fair I have only been reading them every so often, but most are just badly written essays. A worrying number started with a paragraph stating "in this essay I will discuss x, y and z" and just made me feel like I was reading a poorly researched piece of undergraduate coursework.
I didn't feel many delved into the issues in any depth, and a lot of them either rambled vague academo-babble for five pages, or were really only tangentially related to free speech. There is a lot of vague complaining about those groups who weaponise free speech, without all that much exploration of why that is or whether they have a point.
The better essays were the more specific ones, I enjoyed the history of the Boycott, speaker's corner and the British press. Altogether a smattering of 3/4 star essays in a sea of 1s. Unlikely to shake anybody's world view.
On the whole, it was an overwhelming disappointment. It's such a mixed bag, and to be fair I have only been reading them every so often, but most are just badly written essays. A worrying number started with a paragraph stating "in this essay I will discuss x, y and z" and just made me feel like I was reading a poorly researched piece of undergraduate coursework.
I didn't feel many delved into the issues in any depth, and a lot of them either rambled vague academo-babble for five pages, or were really only tangentially related to free speech. There is a lot of vague complaining about those groups who weaponise free speech, without all that much exploration of why that is or whether they have a point.
The better essays were the more specific ones, I enjoyed the history of the Boycott, speaker's corner and the British press. Altogether a smattering of 3/4 star essays in a sea of 1s. Unlikely to shake anybody's world view.
December 30, 2020
This book was a great collection of articles on Free Speech and what this concept means in today’s culture wars. A diverse range of topics are covered from trigger-warnings, no-platforming at universities, to men’s rights groups to Swiss culture! All interesting, most of the essays are highly readable however some slip into indecipherable acedimo-babble and get lost up their own high-falutin’ arses.
The most interesting position was that ‘free speech’ is now often used as a shield that right-wingers hide hateful opinions behind in the culture wars. ‘When you have been used to dominance, equality feels like oppression, and when you have been used to pushing people around with no regard for their feelings, any limits on your own behaviour feels like an assault on your rights.’
By adopting the banner of Free Speech, and stealing the tone of the civil-rights movement, racists, homophobes, transphobes and sexists find a rhetorical defence for their unkind feelings.
The most interesting position was that ‘free speech’ is now often used as a shield that right-wingers hide hateful opinions behind in the culture wars. ‘When you have been used to dominance, equality feels like oppression, and when you have been used to pushing people around with no regard for their feelings, any limits on your own behaviour feels like an assault on your rights.’
By adopting the banner of Free Speech, and stealing the tone of the civil-rights movement, racists, homophobes, transphobes and sexists find a rhetorical defence for their unkind feelings.
January 30, 2021
Simply Books, Bramhall continued its services to customers during the lockdown. I came across The Free Speech Wars recently through its publication by the University of Manchester Press, which encouraged me to follow-up.
My interest was already whetted by the role fake news was playing in the American political scene, reaching dramatic levels in Trump’s desperate efforts to claim he won the Presidential race.
The book is a collection of essays which has the feel of the proceedings of a conference of an invited group of academics with shared interests in these real-life issues.
The editor, Charlotte Riley, sets the scene with the introductory chapter. The current ‘culture wars’ are battles for the right to free expression of views regardless of the nature of the views, resulting in academic issues of ‘no platforming’ on University campuses and and the gruesome consequences in the violence from America’s battles against fake news.
Riley sketches out the problematic issues: ‘who gets to make claims for freedom of speech, and whose rights are defended by institutions?’
The subsequent international contributions examine personal experiences intended to help the reader navigate the debates in this culture war’. In them we learn of the rich history of speakers corner in Hyde Park, of the boycott as a political tool of protest, the context of the attack on Charlie Hebdo Offices In Paris, and the Internet, ‘the new Wild West of free speech’.
The studies have the immediacy of personal involvement or research into the different topics. I found the essays vibrant and interesting. The book makes a contribution to researchers and students of issues of contemporary importance,
Rating make as a reference book.
My interest was already whetted by the role fake news was playing in the American political scene, reaching dramatic levels in Trump’s desperate efforts to claim he won the Presidential race.
The book is a collection of essays which has the feel of the proceedings of a conference of an invited group of academics with shared interests in these real-life issues.
The editor, Charlotte Riley, sets the scene with the introductory chapter. The current ‘culture wars’ are battles for the right to free expression of views regardless of the nature of the views, resulting in academic issues of ‘no platforming’ on University campuses and and the gruesome consequences in the violence from America’s battles against fake news.
Riley sketches out the problematic issues: ‘who gets to make claims for freedom of speech, and whose rights are defended by institutions?’
The subsequent international contributions examine personal experiences intended to help the reader navigate the debates in this culture war’. In them we learn of the rich history of speakers corner in Hyde Park, of the boycott as a political tool of protest, the context of the attack on Charlie Hebdo Offices In Paris, and the Internet, ‘the new Wild West of free speech’.
The studies have the immediacy of personal involvement or research into the different topics. I found the essays vibrant and interesting. The book makes a contribution to researchers and students of issues of contemporary importance,
Rating make as a reference book.
February 8, 2021
My favorite quote in this collection of essays is this one about deplatforming:
It’s wry, but it points to what I think is the biggest absurdity in 95% of the public dialogue about free speech, namely: the complainers are not actually being denied their rights. The complaints are, rather, that they (or their heroes) aren’t getting the spotlight that they want or deserve.
In the US, there are almost no legal issues at stake. Sure, there would be if our government were trying to prevent any criticism of itself. And there are legal consequences for libel and for false advertising and such. But besides that, no one is trying to use the law to squelch speech. It’s all just shaming and feeding the outrage machine.
Most accusations of censorship and cancellation revolve around political correctness, and they are more emotional than analytical. For example, in an essay about the online masculinity movement (a.k.a. the Red Pill), Henry Price pens this fictional, though representative, comment that will seem familiar to most of us:
The culture war is engaged on both sides, of course. Ben Whitham states:
And Whitman continues,
One of my favorite essays, entitled “Anatomy of a ‘trigger warning’ scandal,” relates an episode in which an archaeology professor came under concerted attack from “a bunch of right-wing dullards and sociopathic libertarians.” The tale is too long to retell here, but Gabriel Moshenska lays bare how desperate the media-hungry partisans are to find and/or fabricate evidence supporting their ideological talking points. It’s almost hilarious.
What I like most about these essays is the way they highlight the cornucopia of absurdities surrounding free speech controversies. There is great ignorance of what free speech is supposed to mean, or what it is even “for.”
Certainly, it was an important advancement that citizens could criticize the King or President without fear of prison, as was the concept of “parliamentary privilege”, without which legislative problem-solving would be difficult.
In the US, though, much of the justification for the First Amendment rested upon the (now-archaic) social contract and natural rights theory, wherein any restriction on individual activity would now require proof of public need. Today, this translates to an eighth-grade conception of free speech which is basically that “I get to say whatever I want!”
The point is, of course, that nobody has a particular right to speak in a particular place, especially not a private space. I remain, as yet, sadly uninvited from giving the keynote speech at the Conservative Party conference or presenting the Oscars, but this does not mean that either organization has actually no-platformed me.
It’s wry, but it points to what I think is the biggest absurdity in 95% of the public dialogue about free speech, namely: the complainers are not actually being denied their rights. The complaints are, rather, that they (or their heroes) aren’t getting the spotlight that they want or deserve.
In the US, there are almost no legal issues at stake. Sure, there would be if our government were trying to prevent any criticism of itself. And there are legal consequences for libel and for false advertising and such. But besides that, no one is trying to use the law to squelch speech. It’s all just shaming and feeding the outrage machine.
Most accusations of censorship and cancellation revolve around political correctness, and they are more emotional than analytical. For example, in an essay about the online masculinity movement (a.k.a. the Red Pill), Henry Price pens this fictional, though representative, comment that will seem familiar to most of us:
Free speech is being destroyed. Only certain views are allowed these days: there are more than two genders, we shouldn’t have limits on immigration, and Churchill was a war criminal. Political correctness has run amok, and its snowflake acolytes are more interested in signaling their own woke virtue by condemning and excommunicating than they are in seeking the truth. Not only is the truth unsayable, it’s also increasingly uninhabitable: just try being a real man or woman today and see how society treats you!
The culture war is engaged on both sides, of course. Ben Whitham states:
Contrary to free-speechists, we must refuse a ‘right’ to be publicly racist, misogynist, homophobic or transphobic.
And Whitman continues,
This is precisely what the current far-right movement – enabled by liberals – seeks to (re)produce. Speech is the currency of politics and, as Aristotle saw, the horizons of political possibility are negotiated through it. Centrist liberals, who pride themselves on their superior reasoning and pragmatic nous, have become the useful idiots of the far right, as the latter strives to redefine social norms in fascistic ways.
One of my favorite essays, entitled “Anatomy of a ‘trigger warning’ scandal,” relates an episode in which an archaeology professor came under concerted attack from “a bunch of right-wing dullards and sociopathic libertarians.” The tale is too long to retell here, but Gabriel Moshenska lays bare how desperate the media-hungry partisans are to find and/or fabricate evidence supporting their ideological talking points. It’s almost hilarious.
What I like most about these essays is the way they highlight the cornucopia of absurdities surrounding free speech controversies. There is great ignorance of what free speech is supposed to mean, or what it is even “for.”
Certainly, it was an important advancement that citizens could criticize the King or President without fear of prison, as was the concept of “parliamentary privilege”, without which legislative problem-solving would be difficult.
In the US, though, much of the justification for the First Amendment rested upon the (now-archaic) social contract and natural rights theory, wherein any restriction on individual activity would now require proof of public need. Today, this translates to an eighth-grade conception of free speech which is basically that “I get to say whatever I want!”
April 2, 2021
A book that proves again and again, it's not as simple as that when it comes to the subject of freedom of speech. This is an informative and useful collection of essays, written by (generally) early career academics who are able to discuss real examples of the challenges of freedom of speech and its inherent contradictions.
As with all collections of essays I preferred some to others but as a whole it was a useful and interesting resource that does much to knock down tired arguments.
As with all collections of essays I preferred some to others but as a whole it was a useful and interesting resource that does much to knock down tired arguments.
January 30, 2021
Collection of short essays all on the topic of free speech. At times felt a little one sided (toward the left of the political spectrum).
February 28, 2021
Academic papers on free speech and what it means.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews