By Peggy Sastre
There is censorship that is obvious: it hits, locks up, banned, cuts the Internet, throws journalists in jail and does not bother with big words to make you understand that it prefers silence to freedom. And then there is the sweetest in her manners, cleaner on her, more satisfied with her reasons, the one that never claims to outlaw, but to protect. Children, democracy, minorities, national security, civil peace, the common good, mental health, the future of the planet and future generations – check all useful boxes.
Like the issue of The Future of Free Speech (Johns Hopkins University Press), which Jacob Mchangama and Jeff Kosseff have just published. The result of years of quantitative and comparative research, this masterful book documents a global “recession” of freedom of expression. The Danish lawyer, a researcher at the American University Vanderbilt, and the professor of law at the United States Naval Academy describe a formidable pincer: authoritarian regimes brutally locking up public space; democracies regulating ever more in the name of the fight against hatred, disinformation, terrorism or the protection of minors; platforms transformed into private police of speech; and, now, Mchangama and Kosseff obviously do not whitewash the autocratic censorship of the Putin, Xi Jinping or Iranian mullahs. Their book obliges above all to look at the beam stuck in our liberal eye: for several years, our dear democracies have been making, in the name of their own values, the tools that the enemies of freedom will have only to seize. By wanting to purify the public space of false, hateful, offensive, dangerous or supposedly destabilizing words, they delegate to the state, the platforms and the bureaucracies the exorbitant power to decide what adult citizens can read, say, contest or bear.
A perfect paradox: freedom of expression has never been so celebrated in principle; rarely it has seemed so fragile at the moment – and it happens quickly – that it can be accused of serving the opponent. Everyone dreams of voltairian until the first offense. Everyone defends the dissident as long as he is dissenting in the right direction. And everyone cherishes pluralism provided that it does not hurt his camp, his morals, his nerves or his algorithm too much.
Exclusively for Le Point, Jacob Mchangama recounts this shift: the panic of the elites in the face of the Internet and AI, the European temptation of a “ministry of Truth” with a regulatory face, the symmetrical hypocrisy of the American left and right, the illusion of laws against hatred, the force of political amazement of the youth at risk. So many symptoms of a strange time when democracies, after having long promised individuals to protect them from the arbitrariness of power, now seem mainly busy protecting power from the indocility of individuals.
Jacob Mchangama is the Founder and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech. He is also a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).