Free speech is something skeptics understandably care about. As a skeptical activist and the editor of a magazine that relies on the right to express ideas without fear, I firmly believe that free speech is a fundamental human right, and something we must fight to preserve. It is also a right that I think is comprehensively misunderstood – sometimes intentionally. This has come into sharp focus after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who, at the age of 18, co-founded the youth movement Turning Point USA with his good friend, the wealthy 72-year-old businessman Bill Montgomery.
To many of his followers, Charlie Kirk was a committed defender of free speech. He made his name travelling to college campuses and engaging with people he disagreed with. Well, that’s not quite true. He made his name as the teenage face of a movement funded by septuagenarian millionaires and billionaires, trying to persuade young people that a regressive form of conservatism was something they could really get into. Part of that political strategy involved turning up to college campuses and having provocative ‘debates’, often involving Kirk using his position on the stage with a microphone, to catch inexperienced debaters in gotcha questions – while talking over any counterpoints from his opponents and belittling them to the audience – and portraying it as free speech.
In the wake of his death, Kirk has been reframed as a committed defender of free speech, despite maintaining a watchlist of professors he believed should be fired for what they taught. But that branding of free-speech warrior, once grasped, is hard to wrestle free of, and even media outlets who would disagree with Kirk’s positions described him in their coverage as a free-speech activist. Becoming synonymous with a fundamental right, even if you’re doing so falsely, is a powerful branding exercise.
It’s also an exercise that puts skeptics and other critical thinkers who value free speech into a potential bind – how do you distance yourself from the views, actions and positions of Charlie Kirk, as well as other would-be free-speech activists like Toby Young of the Free Speech Union, or even “free speech festival” founder Stephen Yaxley-Lennon/Tommy Robinson, without defending infringements of free speech?
The issue is partly one of framing. By allowing propagandists to frame themselves as free-speech defenders, anyone who disagrees with them is by default seen as being against free speech. That framing is powerful because it’s part of the norms we live by in society, which can be hijacked and subverted to give space to misleading views.
Media norms
Take the media, for example. The BBC is, by design, a media organisation that seeks more than any other to achieve a fair and balanced view; the impartial view from nowhere. This can lead to all manner of distortions. On a topic where there’s a vocal-but-fringe perspective, the BBC’s coverage might highlight the fringe view, before featuring someone who disagrees. Balance. Even though believers in the fringe view are, in reality, outnumbered 99 to 1.
This ‘false balance’ isn’t merely a question of which experts are in studio – it applies equally to talking-head, person-on-the-street interviews. Balance must be achieved, even if that means spending a huge amount of time trying to find someone, anyone, who represents the fringe viewpoint. If the first nine people interviewed agree with the mainstream point of view, eight need to be cut, while reporters work hard to find anyone who will give voice to the fringe. When it comes to broadcast, what gets aired is a view from either side – balance. But, in reality, distortion.
This came up in relation to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, with the BBC’s Documentary Podcast interviewing people with a range of views. Those views included an activist from conservative group Moms for America and two students from the university, one a Kirk fan, one a critic. They all agreed that Kirk was committed believer in free speech, and that he was always willing to talk to anyone about his beliefs and their beliefs – which is simply not the case, but as it was their opinions and perceptions, it was unchallenged.
The left-wing interviewee explained that ‘both sides’ are equally responsible for extremism and radicalisation; the right-wing interviewee explained that the left is to blame for silencing views any views that hurt their feelings, whether or not they were true. In the second half of the show, host Rahul Tandon tells three Charlie Kirk fans that, whether you agreed with Kirk or not, what he always wanted was dialogue.
This reporting, I’d argue, is incredibly naive. While the BBC show followed the media norms – interview a range of people, find interesting case studies, hear from different voices, and don’t celebrate the violence – the effect was to platform six voices, only one of which disagreed with Charlie Kirk’s actions and rhetoric. Meanwhile, the host himself repeated the idea that Kirk was committed to open dialogue and freedom of speech – something Kirk’s actions and deeds demonstrate was not the case.
Similarly, the reporting suffered from the media bias towards a novel story. Demographically, the average fan of Charlie Kirk is male, white, conservative, religious, and likely to agree with Kirk’s troubling views on the positions of women and people of colour in society. Across the six interviews, all five Kirk supporters featured were women, including a woman of colour who denied that Kirk was racist or misogynistic.
From a media point of view, finding a Charlie Kirk fan who is a young, black woman is obviously novel, because she defies the norm. It’s easy to see why a journalist might want to hear her story. But, in sharing it, the reporting centred viewpoints that weren’t remotely reflective of Kirk and his fanbase and so presented a skewed view. You wouldn’t present a story on white supremacy in the US under the framing “Are the KKK antisemitic? We found the only Orthodox Jewish member of the Klan, and they told us, ‘No!’”.
It’s easy to see how an organisation might make use of these established media norms to manage their reputation in the press. Charlie Kirk fans who agreed with their hero’s statements that black women are intellectually inferior and gay people were deliberately trying to recruit and corrupt children probably wouldn’t speak to the BBC, and certainly wouldn’t be put forward by his organisation as spokespeople. Turning Point USA understands the value of putting forward outlier spokespeople from diverse backgrounds – the organisation hired conspiracy theorist Candace Owens as “director of urban engagement” in 2017 in the wake of allegations of racism at Turning Point.
Skeptical norms
That idea of societal norms being used subversively to push agendas is something we as skeptics also have to be conscious of. The norm, for skeptics, is that we treat arguments in good faith, we listen to the claim as it is being presented, and then we examine the evidence for it. That is all very reasonable, and obviously the right way to do things. But equally, those norms can be used to subvert skeptical defences of free speech by helping to shape which claims we see and question and which cases stay out of the spotlight.
Take, for example, the UK’s own staunch ‘defenders of free speech’: Toby Young and the Free Speech Union. Given the credible threats to free speech in the UK, it might be seen as a comfort that Toby Young and his union are here to be our defenders. But what causes are they championing? Their number one case right now, visible from a banner on their homepage, is to “Help Graham Linehan Fight Back”. As their associated fundraising campaign explains:
After getting off a nine-hour transatlantic flight, [Linehan] was met at Heathrow by five armed police officers, arrested, interrogated and held in a cell for 16 hours…
What had he done wrong? Threatened to blow up the plane? Plotted to steal the Crown Jewels? Been found with indecent images of children? No. His ‘crime’ was to have posted three tweets taking the Mickey out of trans rights activists. That’s it…
We have to fight this all-out assault on freedom of expression. The police shouldn’t be wasting their time arresting people for hurty words when there are actual crimes they could be investigating, such as the epidemic of violence against women and girls.
According to the Free Speech Union, Graham Linehan’s only offence was for sending a mere three tweets that “took the mickey”, and for that he was arrested. If true, that would be self evidently an outrage, and deeply illiberal. But, once again, the framing is important because arguably there is more context that warrants at least mentioning, amidst the condemnation of taking “hurty” words to heart. One of the tweets in question read:
If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.
If we’re engaging those skeptical norms, we can debate the exact wording of the tweet, and whether it’s OK to be arrested for calling on people to punch someone from a protected class, simply because they’re from a protected class. There is a discussion to be had there, and I would suspect, for most people, such a tweet wouldn’t result in arrest.
Even if you switched out the target of the suggested violence – if Linehan had instead tweeted: “if you happen to see someone who is black, make sure you punch them”. Would that be arrest-worthy to tweet? Honestly, as offensive, unpleasant, and nakedly prejudiced as that would be, I’m still unsure that it would result in arrest – people tweet far more direct incitements to violence against minorities on a regular basis, without action being taken.
Why, then, was Linehan singled out? It’s hard to say, because the police do not routinely release details to the public of arrests and the only information we have on the arrest comes from Linehan’s own blog – which, even if you were an enormous fan of the former comedy writer, you would be forced to admit is written to present him in the most sympathetic light. Linehan has a sizeable online following, specifically among people who follow him for the things he says and does about trans people. Further, what the FSU don’t mention in their fundraiser is that Linehan was arrested for those tweets two days before he was in court for a separate case in which he is accused of publishing a “relentless” series of “abusive and vindictive posts” about a trans teenager, and a physical altercation in which he smacked her phone out of her hand.
Returning to the analogy, the story is closer to Tommy Robinson – famed for his negative views on people of colour – tweeting that his followers should assault people of colour, days before being in court over assaulting a person of colour. Whether or not you think that meets the standard for police action at that point, you have to accept that the context offers a far clearer view than the misleading framing of the FSU. Who, incidentally, have already raised £180,000 of their £250,000 fundraising goal on the case (at time of writing), while their supporters praise them for “defending all of us against the forces of creeping tyranny” and “making a stand against those who are attempting to destroy freedom of thought and expression, both in this country, and throughout the democratic world”.
Free speech… for whom?
But, is the FSU defending all of us? Because while the cases and causes they champion are telling, it’s the places where they’re silent that speak the loudest.
In recent years, thousands of protesters have been jailed for taking part in Just Stop Oil (JSO) demonstrations – merely exercising, in many of those cases, their right to protest. In response, the Free Speech Union have stepped in to defend… a police inspector from Merseyside Police was dismissed from his job for describing JSO as “spoilt special needs kids” and calling them “r****ds”. That is the sole article about JSO on the Free Speech Union website.
JSO isn’t the only protest group facing mass arrests for free expression – people have been arrested for holding signs bearing the words “Palestine Action”, since the government have proscribed the protest group as a terrorist organisation. One protestor, Miles Pickering, was arrested just last month for being at a protest against clampdown on expression, while wearing a shirt that read “Plasticine action”, with a pitcure of the stop-motion character Morph. However you look at that, it is a clear infringement of the right to protest – yet it is one that, to date, the Free Speech Union has been unmoved by. If you are a celebrity who is imprisoned for encouraging people to attack trans people, the FSU will raise £180k to defend you – but, wear a satirical T-shirt and, when you find yourself in jail, you’re on your own.
Most recently, during Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK, the protest group Led By Donkeys projected photos of Jeffrey Epstein onto the walls of Windsor Castle, making international headlines. Commentators in the US praised British protestors for being willing to remind people of Trump’s close friendship with the convicted paedophile. What those commentators likely do not realise is that Led By Donkeys were arrested for the stunt, on suspicion of “malicious communications” for an “unauthorised projection”. The number of mentions on the Free Speech Union website of Led By Donkeys, or their arrest for projecting images from published newspapers onto the sides of buildings? Zero.
All of these selective blinkers can be hard to point out, as skeptics, because people who have claimed the title of defenders of free speech frame any criticism of them as an attack on free expression. How can you criticise the Free Speech Union – what have you got against free speech? Why are you talking about Led By Donkeys when Graham Linehan was arrested just for posting three tweets? Why are you talking about THIS when we should be talking about THAT?
And they’ll rely on your good faith to engage with where they’re leading you, those skeptical norms of how we check claims, and soon you’re in a conversation about Irish celebrities and trans people, and the censorship of unpopular opinions. Soon, you’re once again on their turf, because you assume their arguments are in good faith.
The hypocrisy is the point
It can be tempting to focus instead on highlighting the hypocrisy of a free-speech champion who is more than comfortable turning a blind eye, or even outright celebrating, when ideas they dislike are silenced. But doing so is ineffectual, because ideological consistency and consistency of values isn’t something they aspire to or try to uphold.
For many of the most vocal and visible champions of free speech, their commitment is just a cloak they wrap themselves in to give themselves cover – and one they’ll drop as soon as it’s convenient. Meanwhile, their position as would-be free-speech defenders relies on people taking their free-speech claims in good faith; reasonable people who might say “Well, I don’t like that Nigel Farage says those things, but doesn’t he have a right to? And doesn’t the right to expression also cover Charlie Kirk’s right to call for women to subjugate themselves to their husband? And if we want to have a truly free society, doesn’t that freedom of speech also extends to what Tommy Robinson has to say about Muslims?”
Robinson, another who would grasp the crown of free-speech champion, labelled his “Unite the Kingdom” march in London as a festival of free speech – though, notably, it was primarily concerned with celebrating the freedom of far-right politicians from across Europe to speak freely, while Elon Musk video called in to tell the crowd:
“Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die.”
This was a message the crowd was clearly comfortable hearing, given how readily they attacked the police, throwing bottles and flares, with 24 arrested. A movement that was condemning political violence three days earlier, was now openly scuffling with the police, egged on by a foreign tech billionaire who called for the dissolution of a democratically elected parliament.
Meanwhile, more than 150 lawyers, human rights, refugee and environmental organisations have said they are being “pressured into silence” by the rape threats and death threats they’re receiving from anti-migrant protesters – the very same people who, I’d argue, were the audience for that free speech march from Tommy Robinson and that speech from Musk.
This inherent hypocrisy is not a flaw in the ideology – it’s a strength. Fascism relies on making it clear that there is a system of very important rules the rest of us must live by, but that absolutely does not apply to them. It is why fascists make a show of upholding the rules, up until they violate them, at which point those rules don’t matter. Seen through this lens, it’s easy to see why it’s important to protect the rights of a police officer to tweet slurs about protestors, or for favoured celebrities to encourage violence – but to be silent once someone is arrested over a cause you dislike.
Skepticism is political
As skeptics, we rightly care about free speech. Indeed, here in the UK, skeptics were at the forefront of the Libel Reform campaign, whose goal was to ensure that the powerful can’t just silence criticism with legal threats. And, on a personal level, I defy anyone to look at my career of over fifteen years and tell me free speech doesn’t matter to me – that I’m not willing to let people I disagree with speak, or that I won’t engage with their ideas civilly and respectfully.
Unlike Charlie Kirk, whenever I speak to people I disagree with, I don’t just focus on trotting out gotcha questions, or shouting louder than them in order to bully them into silence, or engaging in cheap dunks and insults to dismiss anything I can’t explain. Unlike Kirk, I don’t seek out those least capable of defending an idea, and then use their inability to overcome well-rehearsed rhetoric to castigate any ideas I disagree with, and portray them as inherently stupid or evil.
There is a movement, on both sides of the pond, that has self-evidently fascist features, where free expression is under threat from the very people who claim to be its staunchest defenders. It is a movement that relies on the norms of polite society and civil debate to offer cover for a campaign of intimidation, censorship and authoritarianism.
Now is not the time for skeptics to sit on the sidelines or to act as apolitical intellectual referees, because doing so cedes the ground to people whose interests are not in free speech, but in control and domination. To paraphrase one of the most powerful men on the planet: whether you choose politics or not, politics is coming to you.
