Let’s make free speech the great cause of 2019
Andrew Doyle Spiked Online 26th December 2018

Who would have thought that in 2018 it would be deemed controversial to uphold the principle of free speech? Whatever else the events of this year have taught us, it is now clear that the fundamental human right to express oneself as one sees fit is under threat. With both major political parties supporting further hate-speech legislation and varying degrees of press regulation, and with Silicon Valley tech giants routinely censoring their users, the time is ripe seriously to consider how we might retaliate against the creeping authoritarianism of our age.
Related:
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- Twitter Bans Legendary Troll Godfrey Elfwick for Ridiculing Leftists
Those who were active in the civil-rights movements of the ‘New Left’ in the Sixties and Seventies understood that free speech is the linchpin of all other struggles for equality. But today it is mostly well-intentioned activists on the left who are calling on the state to constrict the Overton window. Worse still, in a world in which social media have become the de facto public square, and online platforms are controlled by powerful likeminded CEOs, we are left with the paradoxical phenomenon of self-identified leftists seeking to empower huge corporations to set the parameters of acceptable thought.
One of the most troubling developments over the past year has been the politicisation of our law-enforcement agencies. The government recently launched a new campaign to tackle hate crime, defined on their website as ‘any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim, or anybody else, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice’ towards any of the five ‘protected characteristics’ (race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and disability). It’s not clear why acts that are already criminal should require a separate category at all, let alone on the grounds of ‘perceived’ motive.








In April 2017, Turkish European Affairs Minister Omer Celik claimed in an interview that the Greek Aegean island of Agathonisi (pictured) was Turkish territory. (Image source: Hans-Heinrich Hoffmann/Wikimedia Commons)









