By Peggy Sastre
INTERVIEW — What if censorship were our natural state? From ancient Greece to AI, the Danish lawyer and human rights specialist analyzes the improbable survival of freedom of expression.
Freedom of expression has one major flaw: it also benefits the people we despise. Hence this feat: praising it for ourselves, then declaring it dangerous the moment it serves someone else. The left wants to protect minorities, the right the nation, governments to save democracy, platforms to sort out what is true… The motives change, the urge to silence remains, and everyone convinces themselves they are the most virtuous exception.
In his impressive Free Speech: From Socrates to Social Media, A World History of Freedom of Expression (Flammarion), the Danish jurist Jacob Mchangama traces this hypocrisy back to its sources. His diagnosis is anything but comforting: censorship is an atavism, tolerance is learned, and our gains never rest on more than a few safeguards — which we rush to dismantle in the name of the good of the moment, little by little, without anyone (or almost anyone) noticing… until the point of no return.
Le Point: Since October 7, 2023, the controversies over antisemitism, Islamophobia and Gaza have divided even the defenders of free speech. Why do we demand it for our own side while wanting to deny it to our adversaries?
Jacob Mchangama: This conflict has revealed how easily everyone disowns the principles whose respect they demanded only yesterday. Progressives in favor of punishing hate speech discovered its dangers when their own views on Israel and Palestine were targeted. Conservatives hostile to cancel culture called for firings and state intervention as soon as speech offended their convictions.
I denounced these double standards after October 7, before criticizing the Trump administration’s attempts to deport students because of their political opinions. Defending someone’s freedom of expression implies neither sharing their ideas nor holding them in any kind of admiration. And their past hypocrisies do not deprive them of their rights.
[. . .]Translated from the original French.
Read More
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).