Against Free Speech

by Anthony Leaker

This book explores the renewed and vociferous defence of free speech witnessed in relation to a number of high-profile events, including the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the Brexit and Trump campaigns, and recent campus politics. Anthony Leaker argues that the defence of free speech has played a pivotal role in a resurgent right-wing nationalism, that it is the rallying point for a wider set of reactionary political demands, a form of aggrieved liberalism at best and patriarchal white supremacy at worst, aided by a complicit liberal centre. By focusing on these events and situating them within the wider geopolitical context of a post-democratic, post-truth world of austerity, ongoing conflict in the Middle East, Pasokification, and rising fascism, Leaker critiques the role that the defence of free speech has played in legitimising the scapegoating of oppressed minorities while deflecting attention from the egregious operations of power that have led to ever greater inequality, injustice and capitalist destruction. This powerful book shows that free speech is in fact a myth, an ideological tool employed by those in power to sustain existing power relations.

Genres: Politics

115 pages, Paperback

Published July 22, 2020

Reviews

[Noah · Rating 1 out of 5]

In his book Against Free Speech, Professor Anthony Leaker argues that free speech, both in theory and in practice, serves the ends of the powerful and represses the marginalized. As such, Professor Leaker believes we should not only reject free speech, but actively censor reactionary ideas. I did not like Professor Leaker’s book, not because his arguments are wrong—though they are—but because he did a poor job of making them.

As I explain more fully in a review essay that will be published in the South Carolina Law Review, Professor Leaker refuses to meet free speech advocates on fair terms, disregards countervailing evidence, and seems to misunderstand the very nature of the free speech right. These missteps do his arguments a serious disservice, because they make it difficult--and to a degree unnecessary--to engage meaningfully with his thesis.