Romina

28.07.2024

Schülerblog: Free Speech – Romina Salarian

Lesezeit: 3 Minuten

Voltaire: “I dis­ap­prove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

“Free­dom of speech is a prin­ci­ple that sup­ports the free­dom of an indi­vid­ual to artic­u­late their opin­ions and ideas with­out fear of retal­i­a­tion.”

How­ev­er, what does the term “free speech” mean?

In what sit­u­a­tions should free speech be lim­it­ed?

The Term “free” means to be able to act at will, not under com­pul­sion or restraint. Free­dom is often asso­ci­at­ed with lib­er­ty and auton­o­my. It is the absence of neces­si­ty, coer­cion, or con­straint in choice or action. The bold­ness of exe­cu­tion or con­cep­tion.

In the con­text of free speech, “speech” isn’t only used to describe spo­ken words, but also films, plays, writ­ten words, pho­tographs,  and paint­ings. In most cas­es, it is sim­ply the idea of what is being expressed that deter­mines the mean­ing. It is also the con­text of the pre­sen­ta­tion of our medi­um that has an impact on how it will be received.

How­ev­er, if this free speech gets lim­it­ed, it counts as cen­sor­ship. Cen­sor­ship is often described metaphor­i­cal­ly as the removal of an individual’s or group’s voice.

In his work On Lib­er­ty, Eng­lish philoso­pher, polit­i­cal econ­o­mist and politi­cian, John Stu­art Mill, dis­cussed the lim­its and dan­gers of free speech, but also pos­i­tive aspects of it.

He pro­posed some­thing called the “Harm Prin­ci­ple”, which describes how indi­vid­u­als should be free to do what­ev­er they wish up to the point where they cause harm.

He was also known for his famous “No-Plat­form Tech­nique”, which is the prac­tice of refus­ing some­one an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make their ideas or beliefs known pub­licly, because you think these beliefs are dan­ger­ous or unac­cept­able.

Free­dom of speech is a fun­da­men­tal human right, as stat­ed in Arti­cle 19 of the UDHR. The arti­cle states that

Every­one has the right to free­dom of opin­ion and expres­sion; this right includes free­dom to hold opin­ions with­out inter­fer­ence and to seek, receive and impart infor­ma­tion and ideas through any media and regard­less of fron­tiers.

It can also be seen as a safe­guard against gov­ern­ment tyran­ny. In times of cri­sis, the voice of the peo­ple should nev­er be silenced. The gov­ern­ment often tries to use cen­sor­ship upon the opposition/ dis­senters  to con­vey their own mes­sage. Let­ting the peo­ple who are being direct­ly affect­ed by the acts of the gov­ern­ment above them is essen­tial, not only to prop­er­ly inform the rest of the world but also for the peo­ple to real­ize what is going on them­selves.

It allows peo­ple to vent their thoughts and feel­ings with­out the fear of per­se­cu­tion. More­over, it enables dia­logue, builds under­stand­ing and helps increase pub­lic knowl­edge.

As pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed, cen­sor­ship is used to describe tak­ing away the voice of an indi­vid­ual or group. In most cas­es, cen­sor­ship is dis­ad­van­ta­geous since it sup­press­es free­dom of expres­sion and hin­ders access to infor­ma­tion, which is essen­tial for a free and informed soci­ety.

Yet, cen­sor­ship can also func­tion as a shield against harm­ful and hate­ful speech. The issue arris­es when one tries to pin­point the line between free­dom of expres­sion and caus­ing offence. It is impos­si­ble to fil­ter all ideas that are like­ly to anger. How­ev­er, it is even more prob­lem­at­ic to only cen­sor the opin­ions that one does­n’t agree with. Chal­leng­ing big­otry by ban­ning it may result in greater harm. It is unclear if its worse to let sen­ti­ments fes­ter or to allow them to be aired out/ vent­ed.

Anoth­er big aspect of the issue that we pre­dom­i­nate­ly have in our cur­rent day and age is the inter­net. The biggest issues to con­sid­er are the enor­mous poten­tial audi­ence size, lack of qual­i­ty con­trol and anonymi­ty. The poten­tial con­se­quences of dan­ger­ous speech in con­nec­tion to any of the pre­vi­ous­ly list­ed points are enor­mous.

Poten­tial pos­i­tive out­comes might include that anti­so­cial peo­ple can find an out­let to their ideas in the inter­net that does­n’t direct­ly harm any­body. Anoth­er point would be that with a big poten­tial audi­ence size, one can start move­ments and strikes for pos­i­tive caus­es more eas­i­ly than ever.

In con­clu­sion, we can say that free speech is absolute­ly essen­tial for a free, func­tion­ing soci­ety but harm­ful or hate­ful speech can emerge from it. Attempt­ing to con­trol this would mean con­don­ing cen­sor­ship. Cen­sor­ship on the oth­er hand, is not nec­es­sar­i­ly always a bad thing. Still, it is impos­si­ble to set a line between free­dom of expres­sion and caus­ing offense.

In my opin­ion, it is clear that the pro­tec­tion of some­one is more impor­tant than the free­dom expres­sion, as long as one rec­og­nizes the impor­tance of free speech in a democ­ra­cy.

Text von Romi­na Salari­an, 3. Sek Häne