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What is Free Speech? With Fara Dabhoiwala | Bonus 1 · The Real News Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hi folks, I'm your co-host Michael Fox, and this is
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: the battle for free speech. So as promised, this is
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the first of a number of bonus episodes we'll be
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: rolling out in the coming weeks. Today, I speak with
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Farah DeBoivla. He's a professor of history at Princeton University,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and he's the author of the book, What is Free Speech?
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: The History of a Dangerous Idea. That book was published
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: last year by Penguin Random House and Harvard University Press.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: And if you've listened to this podcast series, you have
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: heard his voice before because I go to him for
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: analysis and insight in numerous episodes. That's because he's a
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: wealth of knowledge on this subject, but also because his
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: book in many ways challenges the status quo about our understanding.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Of free speech.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: In this podcast series, I feel like I was able
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: to only just barely scratch the surface on so many questions.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: particularly about the beginnings of what we understand as free
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: speech in the United States and elsewhere, and also the
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: difference between free speech in the United States and abroad.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: So today I'm bringing you my conversation with him in
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: its entirety. I know you will appreciate it.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Well, Farah, I just want to say, I'm going to
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: start off. Thank you so much, so much for your
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: time and for being here.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: A pleasure to talk to you, Mike.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Fer, can you start by just introducing yourself and tell
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: me a little bit about why this became such an
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: interest for you, why you wrote this book?
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm a historian at Princeton, but I used to
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: teach at Oxford University in England. And more than 10
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: years ago now, I published a different book on the
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: history of Western attitudes to sex and what I call
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: the sexual revolution of the 18th century. And that was
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: a very popular book. And I went around the world
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: talking about it. And in the course of that, almost immediately,
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: I was censored in various ways. I was deplatformed. I
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: got into trouble for saying things on the radio. And
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: then it all culminated in my book being translated into Chinese.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: And when it was translated into Chinese, it was censored.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: And then I went to China and traveled around talking
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: And.
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  Speaker 3: And at that point, my interest shifted from my own
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: kind of experience of being silenced to the extraordinary things
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: that were happening in China already 10 years ago, which was,
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: as a historian, I realized every single apparatus of censorship
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: ever invented in the history of the world was now
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: simultaneously being deployed to muzzle free speech in China, as
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: well as some totally new ones. that the Communist Party
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: had developed to deal with the internet. And of course,
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: 10 years ago, everyone still generally believed the internet was
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: a technology of freedom that would set people free. And
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: before long, surely the Chinese would also experience it that way.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: And my experience traveling around taught me that actually that
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: was a very naive idea and the opposite was happening.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: So I came back from that trip really shocked by
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: the way in which a modern dictatorship like China can
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: operate to muzzle free speech and silence dissent.
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: At every level.
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: Believing myself in free speech and starting to think, well,
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: why do we have such different views about this? Where does,
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: first of all, this Western belief in free speech come from?
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: And given that we all believe in it, and I
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: do very strongly myself, why can we never agree on
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: what it means? I mean, within our cultures, we're fighting
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: about that all the time. And across cultures now, this
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: is a really important political transnational problem in the world.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: But it's not just a political series.
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: Of questions and problems.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: It's also a historical problem because people didn't always believe
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: in free speech. Anyway, so that's where I started. I
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: thought in 2015, oh my goodness, it's peak free speech
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: time now. I should hurry up and write this book
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: before the moment passes. And sadly, the moment has not passed.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: It's just got worse and worse. But I can explain
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: why that is, which is part of the interest.
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: Of the subject.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to ask you.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: How did we get into this mess? And obviously, through
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: reading your book, I'm just fascinated by the Cato letters
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: and all this. But if you could give me a
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: little bit of.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: How did we get to this point?
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  Speaker 3: Well, it's taken us 300 years to get to this
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: point because the modern idea of free speech really is
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: invented about 300 years ago. But the reason it's such
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: a hot topic right now, let me just deal with that.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: The reason it's such a hot topic right now is
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: because we're living through a giant communications revolution. I mean,
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: the internet has completely transformed how humans communicate at every
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: level about every subject. And every time that's happened in
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: the past, in the 18th century with print, in the
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: 19th century and the 20th century with new forms of
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: print and the telegraph and broadcasting and all the rest
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: of it, every time there's been a new communications revolution,
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: people have needed to think about free speech harder and
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: in different ways. And so that's part of what's happening
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: right now. Do you want to come back to me
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: about the history?
• 5:24
  Speaker 4: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's dive all the way back in the history
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: and we'll bring it up to the present. Talk to
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: me about kind of those beginnings of what free speech
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: meant in those days.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so really the first thing you need to understand
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: about free speech is it's, on the one hand, a
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: very old idea.
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: There are various forms of freedom of expression.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: That go right back to the classical period. On the
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: other hand, our modern sense of it is, our current
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: sense of it is really quite recent because older ideas
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: of free speech are always very restricted. They're to do with,
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: you know, speech in an emergency, the idea of scholars
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: communicating peacefully amongst themselves. But what's always lacking in all
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: those earlier notions is a notion of political free speech,
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  Speaker 3: that everyone has the right to speak out on matters
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: of public concern.
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  Speaker 4: That's really the core of.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: Our modern idea. One reason that's lacking before the 18th
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: century is that people have a very sophisticated understanding of
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  Speaker 3: what words really are. That's to say, words are not
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: different from actions. Words are a type of action in
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: the world. Everyone in the past knew this. They also
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: know that words, although often trivial and harmless and fleeting,
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: sometimes can have really potent consequences in the world. And thirdly,
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: they know that sometimes those potent consequences can be dangerous
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: and harmful. And they're particularly focused on the harm to
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: individuals from lies and slanders and defamation, which is something
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: that everyone sees is a real problem. And people all
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: the time in the pre-modern world are going to court
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: to defend themselves against the bad words, the slanders.
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: The lies of others.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: And the second way in which they are focused on
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: this is the dangers, the problems of untruth and misinformation
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: and conspiracy theories. Everyone knows in the past, and it's
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: a documented fact, that, first of all, lies and misinformation
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: spread very quickly, much more quickly than the truth, and
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: that they can, if left unchecked, cause riots and political
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: disorder and pogroms and massacres and bloodshed on a horrible scale.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: Everyone in the European past knew this. Happens time and again.
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: And so because of these insights into the power of words,
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: they are very keen to control technologies of print when
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: those are invented, and they're keen to regulate speech in
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: all sorts of ways.
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: Okay, so that's the background.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: Then what happens in the early 18th century, and it
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: happens first in England, is that for contingent religious and
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: political reasons, there the government cannot anymore agree on exactly
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: how to regulate the printing press. There's been a political
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: and religious revolution, and so the normal forms of prior censorship,
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: whereby you go to the church with anything controversial on
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  Speaker 3: a spiritual subject and ask them to sign off on
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  Speaker 3: it before you print it, that doesn't work anymore. Anyway,
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: I won't go into the reasons, but what you get
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: is this explosion of new kinds of printing, because now
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: for the first time, people are allowed to just put
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: it out there. You can still be punished and prosecuted
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: if you publish something that is beyond the pale, but
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  Speaker 3: still it's a different form of regulation. And so in London,
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: which is the epicenter of this, you get an explosion
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  Speaker 3: of political pamphlets, newspapers, a much more fast-paced, a different
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: kind of media world than has ever existed before. And
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: the reason for this is partly also that this is
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: the first age of permanent political parties. In England, the
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: Whigs and the Tories are constantly, they're popular parties, they're
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: appealing to the people. And so they use this new
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: technology right from the outset to start to attack each other.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: And as part of that, they are constantly shouting back
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  Speaker 3: and forth across the partisan landscape that the other side
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  Speaker 3: is lying and abusing words and misinforming the public. They,
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: on the other hand, are trying to tell the truth. Anyway,
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: it's a situation very analogous, very evocative of our own age.
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  Speaker 4: And in this new.
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  Speaker 3: Landscape, people get addicted to fast-paced news and newspapers and
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: so on. They like it and they celebrate that this
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: has come about because of the liberty of the press.
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  Speaker 3: So the liberty of the press comes this new slogan
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: that everyone loves to be in favor of. But that
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: doesn't mean that anything goes. On the other hand, they
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: can also see actually very sharply, acutely, that this new
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: technology has also made worse all the problems of mass
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: communication that have always existed. I mean, the first law
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: against false news in the English-speaking world dates back to 1275.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: These are not new problems at all. So in the
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: 18th century, people see that, for example, print has only
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: made worse the problem of lies. There's a great quote
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: by Jonathan Swift, the great writer of the early 18th century,
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  Speaker 3: which is basically that truth is slow and lies are fast.
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  Speaker 4: It goes like this.
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  Speaker 3: Falsehood flies and truth comes limping after it, like a
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: man who's thought of a good repartee long after the
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: party's over. It's still true. And Daniel Defoe, his co-journalist
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: and writer, brilliant novelist as well, complains that newspapers have
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: created an explosion of, quote, false news, forgery, infamy and absurdity,
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: masquerading as facts. So everyone knows who looks into this
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: and understands how the world works, knows that this has
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: just made things worse. And the final aspect of that
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: that all people in the know are aware of is
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: that this new media world is hugely corrupt. It's not
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: about spreading truth so much about making money. Everyone is
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: trying to make money out of the print revolution. It's
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: hard to do. Many newspapers go under, but everyone wants
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: to make it big. They're always primarily concerned with selling advertising,
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: getting sales, and above all, getting sponsorship by a politician.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: And so the world of journalism is hugely corrupt. People
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: are writing for money. Newspapers are being bought and sold
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: all the time. And this is not a neutral marketplace
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: of ideas at all, on the contrary. So in this world,
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: liberty speech, everyone agrees, is great. But because of all
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: these problems, they also agree that that liberty of speech
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: is easily abused. And they call that licentiousness. Licentiousness is bad,
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: liberty is good. But the problem with this balancing model
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: of saying liberty of speech is good as far as
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: it goes, but you shouldn't abuse it, is that everyone
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: can also see this lies entirely in the eye of
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: the beholder. It's a subjective judgment.
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: And that's why no one.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: Is able to put forward a really cogent.
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: Theory of free speech. Everyone can see that, for.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: Example, opposition politicians are always banging on about freedom of
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: speech and all for it and maximally for it. And
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: then the moment they get into power, they start censoring
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: their opponents as heavily as they can. So there's no
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: worked out theory of free speech. And into this moment
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: come these two journalists called John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon,
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: who put forward the first much more hard edged theory
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: of free speech in which they describe what we might
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: call the origins of the absolutist view of free speech.
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: And their argument, which they put forward in an anonymous
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: newspaper column called Cato's Letters, which is immensely successful and
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: has a very long afterlife, is that liberty of speech
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: is the foundation of all liberty and that governors are
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: always trying to abuse power and aggregate more power to themselves.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: Governors are, in fact, always trying to turn into tyrants.
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: On the other hand, the people are always noble and
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: virtuous and able to see that. And so you should
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: allow the people maximum freedom of expression in order that
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: they can keep a check on their tyrants, their governors,
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: and call them to account.
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: And so they claim this.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: They claim that liberty of speech is the foundation of
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: all liberty because the moment you see it being reduced
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: even a tiny bit, then you know you're on a
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: slippery slide to tyranny because that's the first thing that
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: tyrannical governors try to do. Now, everyone has always known
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: that Cato's Letters is a tremendously influential text in the
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: history of free speech. Cato's Letters is not just about
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: free speech. It's a series of essays putting forward simple
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: understandings of important Republican thinkers like Locke and Machiavelli. And
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: in North America, it becomes the most important political text
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: for the Patriot movement in the middle and later 18th century.
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: So the founders of the United States take this as
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: gospel truth. And they import these slogans from Cato's letters
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: into the Declaration of Rights about free speech in 1776,
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: and then into the First Amendment. So it has a
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: very long afterlife.
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: It's very powerful.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: Everyone's always known about this. But when I started reading it,
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: two things revealed themselves to me that no one had
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: ever really noticed before. And they're really quite astonishing. The
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: first is This is a theory full of holes. This
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: is not a coherent, sincere doctrine of free speech. It's
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: in fact an attempt to justify the practices of these
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: two hack journalists themselves in attacking the government and calling
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: for the lynching of stock market profiteers and the overthrow
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: of the current administration. They are justifying themselves by saying, well,
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: of course, freedom of speech can never be abridged.
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: And there's no such thing as libel.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: That's another thing they try and claim that if you
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: attack someone and you spread lies about them, then the
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: people will just see that they're lies and that will
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: just have no effect at all. On the other hand,
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: if you criticize someone and it's true, then it'll stick.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: And so really, there's no such thing as libel. It's
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: a very dodgy argument, but they make it with great passion.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: So the first thing is, they don't pay attention to
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: any of those things that everyone else around them notices,
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: that this is a deeply corrupt media world, that the
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: newspapers themselves are writing, and the journalists are writing for money,
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: that the people don't always agree on everything, that truth
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: is difficult to establish, and that lies can spread dangerously
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: if you allow them to.
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: None of those things are there at all. So it's
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: full of holes.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: The second thing, even more remarkably, that I discovered is
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: that they themselves are not writing in good faith. They're
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: not just writing to defend themselves. They are deeply, deeply
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: complicit in this corruption and political partisanship of the age.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: They are writing basically to be noticed by the government
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: and then to be paid off by the government. And
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: the lead author, Thomas Gordon, he does exactly that. He
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: writes Cato's letters about the people are always right, the
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: people should never be suppressed. the government reaches out to
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: him and says, hey, you're quite a good writer, but
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: why are you wasting your time with this muckraking, rabble-rousing stuff?
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: Why don't you come work for us? And he says, oh, yes,
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: that sounds quite interesting. Thank you so much. And he
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: starts writing simultaneously for the government press, exactly the opposite.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: The governors know what they're doing. People are often being
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: misled by dangerous hack journalists. Misinformation is rife. And then finally,
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: he jumps ship and they shut down Keita's letters and
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: he makes a deal with the government and he becomes
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: the prime minister's chief propagandist. He goes rich and famous
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: over the next 20 years as a spin doctor on
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: the establishment side. So anyway, these were remarkable discoveries and
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: they really also, I think, are important, not just historically,
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: but in showing up that from the outset, theories of
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: free speech are very difficult to to make watertight. They
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: often are concocted in bad faith. And yet what lasts
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: is powerful rhetoric. And so over time, no one knows
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: about Thomas Gordon's own corruption, but his text lives on.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: It's very powerfully still read as an epitome of wisdom
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: and truth and foundation for why we should think of
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: free speech in a particular way.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Why has this concept, this absolutist concept and these concepts
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: of free speech at all costs, particularly in the United States,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: why has this remained so powerful over the centuries up
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: until today?
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: Well, one of the revelations of my book is that
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: actually Americans didn't always think exactly as they do now
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: about free speech, that for most of American history, actually
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: from 1789 all the way to the 1960s, Americans had
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: views that were quite similar to those in the rest
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: of the world, a more balanced understanding of free speech
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: as a matter of both of rights and of responsibilities,
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: as something that required attending to the public good, something
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: that required looking at the role.
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: Of the mass media, et cetera, et cetera.
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: And it's only because of the Cold War, really, that
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: they diverged into a more hardline libertarian outlook, the results
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: of which we're living through today. But more fundamentally, I
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: think the reason that these slogans are so attractive is
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: that everyone wants simplicity and everyone likes the idea that
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: the rules of free speech should be simple and straightforward.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: And everyone can also see that if you take a
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: balancing approach that on the one hand talks about this
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: as a right and on the other hand talks about
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: the possible harm and thinks about the public good and gives,
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: you know, powers to regulate and so on, that this
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: can lead to all sorts of serious problems of subjective interpretation,
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: of censorship on grounds that we don't agree with, That
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: creates all sorts of problems that you can see playing
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: out in countries around.
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: The world that take that approach. If you look at Britain, for.
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: Example, right now, it's a mess. So that's not a
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: good solution. It's not a perfect solution either. I happen
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: to think that that approach is more intellectually justified, but
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: I don't think that it is problem free at all.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: And so the alternative of just saying, well, this is
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: a simple matter. We just need to make the rules
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: as simple and as hard edged as possible has an
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: obvious intellectual appeal. I think there's also a really interesting
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: psychology here, which I experienced myself when I was censored
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: in trivial ways at the start of this project, which
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: is no one likes to be told that they can't
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: say something. No one likes to be told to shut up.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: So the reverse psychology here here, again, makes this a
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: wonderful slogan to appeal to if you feel censored, you
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: feel aggrieved, in a way that other rights maybe don't
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: quite have that immediate emotional purchase.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: I thought one of the themes, like the central themes
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: of your book, which I found fascinating, is that freedom
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: of expression, freedom of speech, isn't just about the words
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: that are used, the individuals that are speaking, but it's
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: also about power, the different groups and structures and systems
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: that exist in order for some people to be able
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: to speak and others not to speak. Can you speak
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: a little bit about that?
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: So another problem with laws about free speech is that
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: if you think about communication and free speech in a
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: sophisticated way, you need to acknowledge that speech is always
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: exquisitely contextual. It's never just about the words. The action
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: in the world is Voltaire once said, I write in
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: order to act. Let me just remind people, this is
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: an action in the world, but the outcome of that action,
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: the impact in the world is different, not just according
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: to the words, but according to who is speaking, who
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: is the audience, what is the context, what is the intention,
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Me saying something to
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: you in a bar in the middle of the night,
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: in the middle of nowhere is a completely different speech act.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: Even if I use the same words, as the president
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: of the United States, standing up and broadcasting this around
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: the world repeatedly over and over again, just to take
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: a trivial example. And that's a problem, this exquisite contextual
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: understanding of what's happening when someone says something. We can
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: navigate that in real life. We can navigate that face-to-face
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: pretty well.
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: We know when.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: Someone's joking or when they're saying something seriously. We know
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: if we're aligned in our understanding of what this conversation
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: is about. When we're not, that's when miscommunication occurs. Online
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: miscommunication is much easier than face-to-face. The larger the setting,
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: number of people involved, the greater the problems of miscommunication.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: But basically, we know this is a matter of judgment
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: on all sorts of levels. And the problem is laws
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: are predicated pretty much on the opposite set of principles.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: That is to say, consistency, transparency, everyone has the right
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: to be treated the same. And if you think that
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: for the same action, and if you think that the
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: action is basically saying X, Y, Z, then it doesn't
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: seem right that people should be treated differently or that
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: these other contextual elements should be brought into the frame.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: And again, then you come into the problem that it
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: becomes very subjective to judge exactly what's happening, what the
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: effects are. Anyway, so that's the problem with but it
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: also points to the complication of the real issues. Free
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: speech is a great noble ideal, but communication is really
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: quite a complicated thing. And if we don't attend to that,
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: if we just push it all aside, as American free
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: speech increasingly does, for the sake of simplicity, then we're
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: throwing out with the bathwater, we're throwing out also the baby,
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: which is the fact that Speech is an action, and
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: it's an action that can cause harm. Now, we need
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: to take a minimalist approach to making laws. We need
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: to take a maximalist approach to rights. But still, there
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: is something called truth. Sometimes the truth is very important.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: There are ways in which communication can cause harm. We've
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: known this throughout history. We see it time and again.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: If we just ignore that completely, we're opening up a
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: whole set of different problems, which is where the absolutist
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: doctrine leads us.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: This is the thing for me that I find shocking, surprising,
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: is that every time we're talking about free speech or
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: people are speaking about free speech, it's as if this
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: question of hate speech, truth, Fake news, disinformation, intentional disinformation,
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: particularly in the United States, is just like it's like
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: this huge elephant in the room that nobody wants to
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: talk about. It's just there. And then people go, oh, yeah, well,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: there's a you know, and then we end up in
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: this same cycle where then obviously, as you've mentioned, that's
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: the stuff that that that goes viral.
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: It's all it's the lies, this information. This is why
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Brazil has really cracked down hard on that, particularly around
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: the election time and why the United States is, of course,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: calling Supreme Court Justice censorship judges and things like that
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Where does fake news fit into this question of free
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: seats or where should it quit fit into this question
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: of free speech? Or how are some countries handling this?
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: Visa vise how the United States is handling in a
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: different way Yeah.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: So that one of the I mean one of the
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: problems with free speech and one of the reasons why
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: we're in such a mess Today is that our approach
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: to it is really way too simplistic there's a reason
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: why because everyone wants the rules to be simple and
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: just to be about individual rights and But it's not enough.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: And so one thing we might start by acknowledging is
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: that free speech can be many different things. There are
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: many different forms of free speech. For example, free speech
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: for writers of fiction or artists or comedians is one thing.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: And free speech in the political sphere is another thing.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: Because for artists and comedians, the aim of their freedom
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: of expression is to amuse people, to make them laugh,
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: or to enlighten them, to spin worlds that will blow
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: their minds. But in doing so, the literal truth is
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: actually not really that important. The literal truth is something
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: that you play with in art and comedy, and rightly so.
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: So we need to think about what the free speech
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: is for. Now, In the case of democratic discourse of
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: citizens trying to deliberate around the public good and about
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: politics more generally, truth is actually very important. And the
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: foundation of our democratic discourse has always been that we
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: deliberate in good faith and that we don't spread lies
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: and misinformation because that way, you know, we're going to
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: end up with a corrupted public sphere. So there, if
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: we're talking about freedom of speech, we do need to
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: have truth somewhere in our sights as part of the
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: aim and the purpose of this speech. Now, already in
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: the 19th century, people started to see, here's another way
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: in which our notions of free speech are too simplistic.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: They started to see that thinking about free speech just
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: in terms of the rights of the individual on the
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: one hand and the powers of the state and the
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: government on the other hand was not sufficient. Why is
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: it not sufficient? Because if you're thinking about the sphere
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: of political discourse, the marketplace of ideas, if you like,
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: then what also is very important and shapes that whole
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: sphere is the power of the media, the power of
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: the mass media, the power of the private media. And
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: already in the 19th century and into the 20th century,
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: people who thought about this in sophisticated ways, including in
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: the United States, focused on that as a real problem
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: because from early on, people could see that the incentives,
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: the motives, the aims of the mass media are not
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: primarily to educate the public or to advance truth. They are,
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: on the contrary, to sell advertising and to increase the
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: power and the wealth of their owners. So out of
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: that comes a very powerful socialist and communist critique, but
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: also conservative and across the political spectrum.
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: People can see this as a problem.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: And so If you fast forward into the 1930s and 40s,
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: this is something that Roosevelt and the administrations and indeed
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: the Supreme Court of that era are very highly focused on.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: If you read First Amendment jurisprudence of that era, it's
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: full of people saying, well, you know, it's completely insufficient
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: to think of this in a simplistic way of just
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: about individuals versus government.
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: The real problem of our age.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: Is how to tackle the power of the mass media.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: And out of that comes an attempt to reconstruct free
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: speech as also a matter of the public good. And indeed,
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: as people conceptualize it at the time of the right
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: to truthful information on the part of citizens. This is also,
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: of course, a time where people everywhere are thinking about
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: this against the backdrop of the 1930s in Nazi Germany
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: and Soviet Russia, and they can see how powerful propaganda
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: is and that vehicles of mass communication are not neutral.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: They are instruments of power. Anyway, so out of that
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: comes a jurisprudence which feeds into, for example, the United
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: Nations Declaration of Human Rights, which is, after all, an
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: American document drawn up under Eleanor Roosevelt. If you look
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: at that document's definition of freedom of expression, it channels
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: what is then the mainstream American and European view, which
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: is on the one hand, freedom of expression is a right.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: On the other hand, it can never be abused to
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: harm the rights of others. So it's a balance between
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: rights and responsibilities, and it includes the right to truthful information.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: And out of that also came a huge effort to
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: impose on or remind the mass media of the age
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: of their responsibilities. So out of that come ways of
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: rethinking what mass media could be, public broadcasting, subscription models,
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: all sorts of ways in which we might have a
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: better alignment between the incentives of the media and the
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: incentives and the needs of the public. But also journalism school,
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: the professionalization, especially in America, and the taking seriously by
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: news organizations of their responsibilities, fact-checking, making sure that you're
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: not telling lies to the public and correcting.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: Things as necessary.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: It's hard. It takes a lot of money. It takes
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: a lot of effort. But people generally in what we
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: now disdainfully call the legacy media were very heavily invested
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: in that project because they saw what the stakes were.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: The stakes were a healthy public sphere with truthful information.
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: I'm afraid what's happened in the internet in the communications
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: revolution of our own time is that model has been
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: destroyed by a new ecosystem where these things are simply
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: not attended to at all. And we as a public
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: have lost sight of the fact that we used always,
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: including in the United States, to regulate mass media in
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: the public interest for the public good for precisely this reason.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: That happened to broadcasting, it happened to television, The FCC
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: was set up for that purpose. All markets, even in
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: the United States, are regulated. Again, this doesn't mean by
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: the government, precisely regulated at arm's length by non-governmental organizations
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: that are supposed to be non-partisan or at the very
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: least bipartisan. You know, the FTC, the FCC, all that
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: is now under assault by right-wing authoritarians whose project is
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: made easier by the fact that our public discourse is
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: now being overwhelmed by greedy social media companies that take
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: no account at all of the public good insofar as
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: it contravenes their profits.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: You mention as well this weaponization of the discourse of
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: free speech. You know, everyone should have it, but then
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: how it's used over time is usually the powerful and
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: the limiting free speech from folks that are marginalized or minorities.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: And I think we're at this even hyper moment because
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: social media has this image of appearing as though anyone
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: can say whatever you want to, but you still have
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: the algorithms. It's controlled by some people and not by others.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: So how dangerous is this moment? And if you could
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: just speak for a moment about this use, this weaponization
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: of the discourse of free speech, either in the past
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: or currently still.
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: Well, sadly.
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: Free speech has always been a weaponized slogan. It was
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: a weaponized slogan at the outset in the early 18th century,
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: and that has never gone away.
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: We see that today.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, the worst censors are often the people shouting
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: most loudly that they ask for free speech. Trump is
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: a great example of that. The moment that we're in
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: is really a very dangerous political moment because of the
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: ways in which social media Social media is really an old-fashioned,
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: anachronistic term for the mass media of our age. It's
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: not social, it's political discourse and every other kind of discourse.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: The difficulty with that is really manifold. One is, as
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: that nomenclature already indicates, we've now shifted to a moment
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: where all discourse happens in the same medium, on the
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: same level. So pictures of cats, jokes, serious political debate,
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: all happening in the same sewer. And that muddles the
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: rules and how the audience understands what's going on. And
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: it makes it much easier for untruth to spread, for
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: sloganeering to take over from fact-based, evidence-based argument. So that's
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: one intrinsic difficulty.
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: With the medium.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: But the deeper problem is that these social media companies
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: to begin with had some sense of the public good
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: and of moderation and of, you know, applying standards of truth,
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: for example, not allowing, you know, someone who's just attempted
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: a coup against the elected president of the United States
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: as Trump tried to do and whipped up people on
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: social media to attack the capital. It seems a long
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: time ago, but that could get you banned on deplatformed
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: and rightly so. In the political moment that we are
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: in now, of course, all of these companies are rolling
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: all that back and hiding behind the slogan of free
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: speech to moderate as little as possible. Because again, it's
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: politically inconvenient. It's also expensive. They never put a huge
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: amount of effort into it. They always tried to get
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: away with as little as possible. And finally, it plays
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: into a political discourse which is increasingly dominated by populist rabble-rousing.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: And there's an understanding that this is good politics on
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: the part of right-wing politicians that chimes with good business model.
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: of just allowing anything to go. And at the heart
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: of this, in terms of the technologies, as it were,
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: of our mass communication now, first of all, these media companies,
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: the online media companies, are the most powerful publishers the
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: world has ever seen. But they're not treated as publishers.
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: No one thinks of them as publishers. Governments fail to
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: think of them as publishers. We as citizens are no better.
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: They are publishers.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: And the reason that's important is that it focuses on
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: two things. First of all, that they are constantly censoring discourse.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: Their algorithms amplify certain voices and certain messages, and they
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: suppress and silence others. That's what publishers do. They make
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: judgments automatically or otherwise about what they want people to see.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: So in that sense, they are deeply influential on public discourse.
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: They also, of course, when it suits them, don't stand
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: up for free speech when they are issued with a
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: takedown notice by an unsavory overseas government.
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: They obey the law.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: So what can they do? They say, you know, we're
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: just trying to obey the law. You know, I would
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: feel slightly less contemptuous of them if they did sometimes
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: stand up for what we would think of as real
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: free speech in countries under unsavory regimes. But they don't.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: Or just the situation in the United States and students
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: protesting at universities and university freedoms and things like that.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Oliver Wendell Holmes, I wanted to touch very briefly on
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: his marketplace of ideas because I feel like this is
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: this mythic idea, this concept that people bring up again
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: and again, every place.
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: And how everyone uses this as the reason why free
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: speech works in the United States. What's your analysis of
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: that today? What do people actually have to understand about
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: this idea and what it means for us today?
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: It's a wonderful ideal, and he's a wonderfully readable writer
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: of opinions, Holmes. One of the interesting things about Holmes
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: that I discovered was that he was too high-minded to
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: read newspapers. He didn't really... engage in the mass media
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: of his age. And so he was able to take
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: this Olympian view of the marketplace of ideas and how.
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: It might work.
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: I think he also, to be fair to him, he
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: wasn't sure this would work out, but he was willing
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: to let the experiment run out. It's a noble American ideal.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: You know, they're always saying it's an experiment. Oh, well,
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: it's slightly annoying to an outsider, you know, slavery.
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: Oh, it's just an experiment. Oh, you know, genocide of
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: the unions. Oh, we're just doing an experiment here.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: Anyway, Back to your question, the marketplace of ideas is
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: a fantastic ideal, but think about what it really means.
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: It would mean that each of us is independently able
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: to walk around a marketplace where all ideas are given
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: equal weight and airing, that we are all equally capable
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: reasonable in our approaches and that we're equally able to
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: judge truth against falsehood somehow intrinsically and that we're all
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: doing so in good faith and that all the arguments
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: being put to us are being put in good faith
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: and in reasoned ways. That's absolutely the opposite.
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: And we could go on.
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: There are many other ways in which we could flesh
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: out this as an ideal. It's actually the opposite of
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: the kind of shit-filled sewer of public discourse through which
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: we have to wade every day with our very different
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: levels of understanding of things, our very different perspectives and
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: backgrounds and abilities to judge the truth. No one has
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: an intrinsic ability to judge the truth. That's a presumption
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: that is there in many free speech doctrines, but it's
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: actually conclusively debunked by history and by science. What we
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: require is attention to how, as a society, we might
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: create a better marketplace of ideas. And I'm afraid just
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: throwing everything into the jumble of social media and allowing
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: private companies basically to determine how they can best keep
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: people hooked on their platforms is not the best way
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: of creating, especially a political sphere of debate.
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Would you say that there's a battle today over the
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: definition of free speech, the absolutism versus a more balanced approach,
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: or at least going back to what we understood, say,
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: free speech in the 1960s, where people can get out
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: and protest and now kind of a free-for-all of absolutism?
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, free speech has always been about power, both
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: in the theory and in practice. We see that today.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: What voices are silenced or elevated is about power. It's
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: a noble ideal because everyone can appeal to it. And
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: throughout history, as my book shows, those without power and
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: those who attempted to be silenced have also appealed to
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: it from abolitionists and early feminists onwards into the present day.
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: So that's the good side of why it's a dangerous idea.
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: And we should all be shouting from the rooftops that
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: right now, free speech rights are being trampled upon. The
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: First Amendment is being completely disregarded in the United States
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: and the rest of it.
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: But I think the real global.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: Battle here is about how to deal with the communications
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: revolution that we're living through and how to deal with
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: the power of media companies, the unfettered transnational power of
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: basically of American media companies. And I think that the
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: minimalist approach that the Europeans have taken to this is
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: really an encouraging way forward. Again, it's being faced by
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: massive amounts of corporate and political opposition from the United States.
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: It's always in danger of being watered down. And nonetheless,
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: what they have said and what the Brazilians are also
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: trying to do is basically to ask these companies, it's
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: not censorship, it's to ask these companies to to be
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: transparent upfront about their moderating practices. They are publishers. They
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: are constantly censoring. Tell us what the rules are. Secondly,
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: apply those rules consistently and fairly. Thirdly, show us the
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: public that you're doing that consistently and fairly. Report back
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: commensurate with the power that the Europeans have this in
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: their legislation. I don't know if the Brazilians do, but
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: proportionate to the power of your platform, you have a
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: greater obligation because you have greater power, you have a
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: greater obligation to report on how these rules are being followed.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: And that's not imposing any kind of censorship from the outside.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: It's just asking them to be transparent about what they're doing. And,
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: you know, I would go further as a citizen and
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: require them to uphold, you know, standards of truth in
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: political discourse and, you know, to do more about curbing
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: misinformation and so on. But as a first step, we
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: really do need to tackle the power in our societies.
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: Americans are very bad at tackling corporate power of any kind.
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: The First Amendment has always been weaponized by corporations and
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: by people with money to claim that money equals speech
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: and corporate power should never be limited. But even Americans,
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: I hope, will see and try and do something about
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: this big problem of our time.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: Farah, the last question is, could you just speak a
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: little bit about what free speech meant for the abolitionist
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: movement back in the 1800s?
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: Frederick Douglass once said, I think, something like the Civil
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: War would never have happened if American politicians had taken government,
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: had taken the First Amendment as seriously as as it
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: took the rights of states. And by that, he was
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: alluding to the fact that abolitionists before the Civil War
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: were routinely appealing to their right of freedom of expression
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: to make their case. And they were met with violence,
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: both in the North and the South, and by the
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: presumption that what they were saying was completely beyond the pale,
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: was dangerous and harmful and couldn't be allowed. And it's
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: a good example of how Our understanding of the First
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: Amendment has evolved. Our understanding of harm has evolved. When
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: I say that harmful speech is something that societies should
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: be allowed to take a view on and potentially to
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: regulate public discourse about, I don't mean that those things
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: are set in stone and they're always self-evident. I mean
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: that instead of shouting about censorship and free speech, we
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: should be having a discussion about what is harmful. and
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: as a society trying to take a view on that,
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: and that view will evolve. So abolitionists are shut up
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: violently and otherwise, and out of that develop even stronger
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: passionate view that.
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: They have a right to speak out.
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: The same is true of early feminists who told, actually
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: this comes out of the abolitionist movement, first American feminists
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: are told when they are leading the campaign for abolition,
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: that they may not sit with men or address men
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: on equal terms. And out of that develop the view
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: that actually there's something wrong here. Their voices deserve to
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: be heard. And so the early women's movement starts not
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: primarily as a campaign for the vote, but simply for
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: the most basic right of all, which is to speak out.
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: And be heard by the public.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Farah, is the United States really such an outlier in
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: the world in terms of its understanding, absolutist understanding of
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: free speech?
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: It's an outlier at the moment in the jurisprudence of
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: free speech, in the way that the laws are drawn up.
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: I don't think it's an outlier in the sense that
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: actually even absolutists or self-proclaimed absolutists are always drawing limits
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: and balancing harms against rights. The Supreme Court does that
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: all the time, even when it's supposedly not. So in
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: that sense, not. But I think that the difficulty that
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: the United States has is that it has a very
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: ancient constitution. It's a bit like having a very ancient car.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: You can be proud of it, but it's not necessarily
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: roadworthy in the 21st century. And there are very few
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: citizens' rights in that. Indeed, even the First Amendment is
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: not a right of citizens. It's another big flaw that
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: Americans tend to overlook. It's only a prohibition on the
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: government to censoring anything. In the private sphere, people get
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: sacked and fired all the time for expressing their views,
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: political or otherwise. So it's not a right of citizens.
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: But the fact that there are very few other rights
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: in the Bill of Rights and in the Constitution, and
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: that this one happens to be named first, and because
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: we all love free speech, of course, it's given it
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: this elevated popular kind of supremacy, which means it's the
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: ultimate legal trump card. There's nothing that can trump the
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: First Amendment. So that's why it's especially been weaponized by
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: anti-regulation corporate forces, by people who want more money in
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: politics and all sorts of ways, because there's no legal
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: comeback against it. Once you can define something as free
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: speech in an American courtroom, you're home and dry. And
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: that's not necessarily the best way of balancing the right
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: to free speech, which is a great thing, against other
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: important rights and indeed the common good.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: Farrah, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate your time.
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: This has been fantastic.
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: It's great to talk to you, Mike. Thank you.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Hi, folks. I hope you enjoyed our conversation. As I
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: mentioned before, this is the first bonus episode of this series.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: There are more on the way. Please watch out for
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: those in your feed. This is The Battle for Free Speech.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: This podcast is co-hosted by myself and Mark Steiner. This
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: show is produced by The Real News. You can find
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: out more about my work and this show on my
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: Patreon page. That's patreon.com forward slash MFOX. And as always,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: please make sure to sign up for The Real News
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Network's newsletter so you never miss an episode. You can
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: find that at therealnews.com. Thanks so much again for listening
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: to this podcast. See you next time.