By William Bourton
In his essay Free Speech, the Danish lawyer Jacob Mchangama retraces the history of freedom of expression and warns of the temptation to restrict it, which, he says, is taking hold in some European countries.
In Free Speech (Flammarion), the Danish lawyer and human rights expert Jacob Mchangama recounts the long struggle for freedom of expression, from Socrates to digital activists — and how, in every era, authoritarian and controlling forces, whether political, religious, economic, ideological, social or cultural, have tried to undermine this foundation of democracy.
As early as 430 BCE, the Athenian statesman Pericles was extolling the values of open debate and tolerance toward opponents. Is the struggle for freedom of expression specifically Western?
I think one can reasonably say that freedom of expression, as a political and legal concept institutionalized within a state, was born in the West, in Europe. Europe was also the first continent where freedom of expression was written into constitutions and recognized as a right enjoying legal protection. But this history is not confined to Europe. You mentioned ancient Greece, but the Abbasid Caliphate (the Sunni dynasty that ruled the Islamic empire from 750 to 1258 — Ed.), for example, offered a space for free thought; it produced very great philosophers who interpreted Greek philosophy and whose work inspired Western thinkers… And today, freedom of expression is unquestionably of considerable importance in other parts of the world. In Iran or in China, women and men are fighting to have this right recognized, despite overwhelming obstacles and odds.
At a certain point, you note, the leaders of any political system, however enlightened, tell themselves that freedom of expression has now gone too far. How do you explain this phenomenon?
It is partly down to human nature: we all have a certain inclination to take pleasure in punishing those we regard as “heretics”… The other explanation is that those who come to power seek to preserve it against those who challenge it. And that applies to democracies too. A country being a democracy does not mean it becomes, as if by magic, completely open to criticism and dissent. I think this is particularly true in periods of great upheaval, crisis or technological disruption. These are moments when societies and governments seek to restrict freedom of expression, because they regard ideas that call the established order into question as particularly dangerous.
[. . .]Translated from the original French.
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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).