Balance has shifted too far - we need exchange of views!

 

We don’t get many people standing on street corners in Debenham, Diss or Sudbury shouting ‘jihad, jihad’, do we?

I wonder what the reaction would be if we did?

Yet the issues raised by someone doing just that at a recent pro-Palestinian demonstration in London, does have relevance here in Suffolk and elsewhere.

I’ve touched on this topic once or twice in the past. But this particular event has persuaded me to revisit the dynamic balance between upholding freedom of speech and dealing with language that promotes hatred, or incites acts of violence against others.

It’s certainly not an easy balance to get right every time, but I do think that overall, some groups are given the benefit of the legal doubt - more so than others.

I wonder why?

In short, I think that the Police frequently turn a blind eye to actual criminal actions by individuals allied to loud ‘woke’ lobbying groups, whilst over-reaching themselves in stifling the legal freedom to express views by those without such advocacy muscle. 

The key issue is, surely, one of context? Section 5 of the Public Order Act establishes that someone is guilty of an offence if they “display any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening … within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress.”

I suspect the issue of geographical proximity may have been enough for the Metropolitan Police not to have taken action against the ‘jihad, jihad’ person – not least as one assumes not too many Jews and Israelis were nearby during the protest in question.

Officers would have had more justification for charging the speaker at a recent Sussex University rally in support of terror group Hamas, who described the 7th October butchery of Israeli men, women and children, as ‘beautiful’ and ‘inspiring’. But they chose not to, apparently, in spite of the proximate threat to the academic institution’s Jewish students. 

Universities, actually, are the worst perpetrators of these kinds of double standards. Too many have bowed the knee to small, but immensely intolerant grouplets with specific animus and agendas, to remove speaking opportunities to outside speakers, whose views these grouplets may disagree with.

Even more heinous, is the connivance of university bosses in imperilling the livelihoods of their own staff who have the temerity (or maybe naivety) to believe that such academic spaces benefit from, y’know, the actual thoughtful exchange of differing viewpoints.

Interestingly, many of these are high-profiled women who have been sanctioned at the behest of various parts of the spectrum of intolerance that is the professional trans lobbying industry.

In recent months, festival promoters and venues have joined this chorus line of prejudice. Readers of this column may recall that comedy writer Graham Linehan, of Father Ted and The IT Crowd fame, was banned from performing at a number of venues during this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, because of earlier comments criticising some of the activities of the trans lobby.

His recently released book – Tough Crowd – details the emotional and financial impact of being ‘cancelled’ more generally at the instigation of loud and intolerant voices.

And of course, social media behemoths, hungry for the advertising spend from the major companies who are bending over in all sorts of curious directions, to be seen to be supportive of such groups, have become just as unevenly-handed.

Rod Liddle recently wrote in The Spectator how Facebook’s algorithms seem to stifle posts critical of groups such as Hamas but amplify more banal posts. He calls it out for what it is: an attempt by the global elite to shift attention away from those that only wish Israel and Israelis ill.

The UK Government now has direct skin in this manipulation game with the passing of the Online Safety Bill (OSB) into law last week. In effect, the legislation requires companies like Facebook and TikTok to censor speech on behalf of the Government (or more precisely, the Secretary of State for Culture, and the regulator, Ofcom) and access previously end-to-end encrypted conversations, even when no law is thought to be being broken.

This is all doomed, ultimately, to failure of course. Suppressing certain opinions won’t make them go away. A far better approach would be to critically challenge them in the glare of public discourse.

I recall the decision taken nearly 15 years ago by the BBC to invite Nick Griffin, then leader of the British National Party, onto Question Time. There were concerns raised that it would give him unparalleled publicity.

They were right. In front of an audience of nearly 8m, Griffin proved to be unequal to the task: out of his depth, nervous and incoherent. The most devastating comments were made, not by the panel, but by members of the audience. 

He and his odious little party collapsed back into irrelevance soon afterwards. 

So, I look forward to us rolling back cancellation culture, defaulting to open debate on issues, and a more even-handed approach to those who go too far and deliberately incite hatred and violence.

The Free Speech Union exists for that very reason, and I’d urge everyone interested in this key topic joining them at https://freespeechunion.org/

First published in the www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk on Thursday, 2nd November, 2023

Privatised control is another attempt to stifle free speech

I'd like to wish all readers of this newspaper a healthy & prosperous 2023: one as free as possible from war, coercion, state-sponsored, and other types of bullying.

I’ve been writing these columns for almost 5-years now and I'm flattered and grateful for the various comments I receive about the topics covered in my monthly offerings, including - no - especially those that disagree with me. 

I try to practice what I preach and welcome all views prompted, or sometimes provoked by my explanations of the core libertarian principles when applied to the challenges and opportunities of the present times.

As ever, we must remain vigilant in the defence of these vital freedoms, as governments around the globe seek to constrain the free exchange of ideas and opinions. We mustn't kid ourselves that the British state, if it had the chance, wouldn't wish to control what its citizens say and think as its equivalents in China or Iran are doing - with murderous consequences.

And when access to opinions, views, and contentions is shut down, it becomes all too easy for authoritarian regimes, such as that of Putin's Russia, to hoodwink their populations into backing and prosecuting illegal wars. 

Nowhere is this conflict of interests at its most intense than across the various major online platforms.

The UK Government has been piloting its Online Safety Bill (OSB) through Parliament and it is currently at the House of Commons Report Stage. The headline intention is to hold the likes of Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and other social media platforms, fully accountable for pre

This is a form of privatised control: the companies are being forcefully franchised to censor speech on behalf of the Government (or more precisely the Secretary of State for Culture, and the regulator, Ofcom).

This is in spite of the fact that there are already sufficient laws in place for the authorities to act in terms of child abuse, hate speech and cybercrime.

Were it not for a heroic rear-guard action by various campaign groups and libertarian Conservative MPs, the Bill would also have required technology platforms to take down (so called) legal but harmful material.

I find quite a lot of what I read online to be offensive, ill-judged, or plain silly. But I'd rather have a chance to engage with, mock, and/or disprove the value of such content. 

Suppression doesn't usually mean such views have been defeated. They are merely reinforced in the minds of those who adhere to them and articulated in end-to-end encrypted conversations. There are still concerns that the Bill, even as currently drafted, might give the state powers to infringe such encryptions, even when no law is thought to be being broken. 

The state is remorseless in its efforts to control what goes on in people's minds and what they type out on their keyboards. 

It's still not too late to lobby your MP to ensure that the OSB is as focussed and as slim as possible. 

One person who is trying to establish a freer online experience is, of course Elon Musk, a self-confessed 'free speech absolutist'.

I have to confess that I'm a little conflicted about him, even though he is a self-styled libertarian. To date, I’ve not seen much change on the platform however, I do take some guilty pleasure in seeing a few virtue-signalling celebs & luvvies closing their Twitter accounts in protest at Musk’s ownership.

At his best, he is a model libertarian. In 2021 he said: "in general, I believe government should rarely impose its will upon the people, and, when doing so, should aspire to maximize their cumulative happiness,”

As tech author and entrepreneur Antonio García Martínez, says, Musk's removal of hundreds of content moderators is a move against "the professional-managerial class regime that otherwise everywhere dominates." In short, this is a rebellion against the heavy-hand of virtue-signalling corporate governance - a useful ally of the equally heavy-handed state. 

I rather like the direct democracy aspects that he's recently introduced, including the polls about how the platform should be run and who should be allowed on it.

Twitter now exemplifies a much freer flow of information - allowing individuals to engage with it or not, and to agree with it, or not. 

But just as I'm worried about a bullying state, I'm nervous about Musk as an overbearing powerful individual, able and willing to shut down opinions at a whim. The temporary 24-hour suspension of the Twitter accounts of a number of journalists because Musk didn't like the information they were sharing about him, was not an encouraging sign. The only good thing about this move was that it was temporary.

And perhaps it would be better all-round if Musk now acted on the mandate from one of those polls - to step back and find a chief executive charged with further enhancing the platform, allowing him to be an advocate for those freedoms he has so long articulated?

Individual freedom will not be protected by one or two billionaires, rather by millions and millions of individuals like you and me.

First published in www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk & www.dissexpress.co.uk on Thursday, January 5, 2023

Musk must deliver on rhetoric

 

A business contact of mine recently declared that he'd closed his Twitter account.
In itself, there's nothing remarkable about this. All social media platforms experience a fairly consistent churn among their user base.
Yet, what struck me as especially odd about this one individual decision was the rationale given: because Twitter's ownership had changed. Or more precisely, because he disagrees with some of the opinions of the company's new owner - Elon Musk.
To be fair, I don't think my contact objects to the growing success of the Tesla brand and its contribution to making the motor car much more environmentally friendly.
Equally, I doubt he objects to Musk's extraordinary space flight ambitions enshrined in his SpaceX venture, although admittedly he might consider such effort and expenditure to be vainglorious.
No, his reasoning is that as a self-declared libertarian, with a strongly reasoned default objection against the growing censorship on and off social media, Musk might well let the likes of Donald Trump, and those holding similar views, back on the platform.
My contact is not alone. Amongst the political elite in this country and elsewhere, Musk's ownership of Twitter - and in principle, support of free speech - has been lambasted, often with the most ridiculous hyperbole.
As usual, the Left shows its cowardice in challenging others' views or having its own assumptions challenged by running away and crying foul.
Even this Government, tacking between its libertarian instincts and its newfound fondness, thanks to its COVID19 interventions, for state control, seems to be gearing up for a fight.
The Online Safety Bill, apparently so benign in its language, would allow the British state to compel social media platforms to remove content that it deems “harmful” - or risk the latter facing huge fines.
Yet, domestic legislation in this country already offers a range of ways in which social media posts can be removed, and penalties imposed either through civil or criminal means.
Frightening though the prospect of state-sanctioned censorship might be, it is not as if these social platforms are free speech sanctuaries in any case.
As Musk has said, the use of evermore complicated mathematical formulae to set the limits as to what opinions even make it onto the respective platforms, means that much news reporting and opinion never sees the light of day - or are marginalised into irrelevance.
Elon Musk has promised to bust open this self-censorship culture by publishing the algorithms that censor certain messages. The likes of Facebook, YouTube et al have made no such commitments and so are already conniving in the suppression of information.
Yet, even this might not be enough, since machine learning is so powerful that the way that the algorithms develop, in light of their own operation, may well be beyond the comprehension of their initial human programmers.
Furthermore, Musk has committed to addressing the other poisoners of the well of free speech: bots which send out hundreds of thousands of messages per minute but which are not linked to individual users, by improving the transparency of Twitter accounts.
Surely these efforts at the de-industrialisation of Twitter by handing back control to individuals is a positive and democratically enlightened intention?
To be honest, my worry is from the other end of the debate: that Musk will not fully deliver on his rhetoric. As a serial entrepreneur, he has many business interests that might result in him trimming back on his plans in order to appease authoritarian governments around the globe including, regrettably, our own!
That would be a shame. In the past, Musk has referred to Twitter as "the public town square". In such scenarios, the most effective way of seeing off false and hateful views is to argue them off the platform with reason, facts and careful questioning.
For all our sakes, let's hope that Musk sticks to his libertarian guns and delivers a platform that allows us all to participate in debates and come to our own conclusions about issues.
And I hope my business contact reconsiders and re-joins Twitter.

First published www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk & www.dissexpress.co.uk on Thursday May 12, 2022