There is no such thing as ‘free speech but.’
Call it the Salman Rushdie Act of 2022.
S ince news of the harrowing attempt on Salman Rushdie’s life broke from Chautauqua on Friday, the British government and its emissaries have been sure to say all the right things. “Appalled,” was Boris Johnson’s verdict. “Appalled that Sir Salman Rushdie has been stabbed while exercising a right we should never cease to defend.” Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party and Johnson’s sparring opponent in Parliament, echoed this position. Rushdie, Starmer said, “has long embodied the struggle for liberty and freedom against those who seek to destroy them.”
Great. And how about those censorship laws of which the British still seem so fond?
I do not make this comparison tritely. Neither Johnson nor Starmer would condone stabbing British citizens who write things they dislike. But investigating? Arresting? Charging? Imprisoning? About those courses of action, they are far, far more sanguine than they should be. If, indeed, Johnson and Starmer believe that free speech is “a right we should never cease to defend” — if they believe, indeed, that it is a key part of the “struggle for liberty and freedom” — then they ought to follow up on that thought by ensuring that the ugly web of restrictions and rules that sit on Britain’s books at present are consigned to the ash heap on which they belong. Call it the Salman Rushdie Act of 2022.
In its current form, British free-speech law — or rather, British anti–free-speech law — exhibits a dangerous respect for the subjective concept of “offense.” Just two weeks ago, in the English county of Hampshire, a man was arrested for posting a meme that showed a trans flag as a swastika. When, inevitably, he asked what the hell was going on, he was informed by the arresting officers that “someone has been caused anxiety based on your social media post, and that’s why you’re being arrested.” In a sensible country, this answer would have been met with cacophonous laughter, followed by a confident, “So what?” In Britain? Not so much. In the last few years alone, the British government has secured “hate crime” convictions against a man who filmed his pet dog giving Nazi salutes, against a man who criticized a popular soldier on social media, and against a woman who posted Snoop Dogg lyrics on her Instagram page. Each year, Britain plays host to thousands of such prosecutions.
In 2013, the British parliament attempted to limit the worst among the excesses by removing a section of the 1986 Public Order Act that, among other things, had justified the arrests of a man who had sung the song “Kung Fu Fighting” in a pub, of a man who had made a joke about Nelson Mandela, and of a man who had told a mounted police officer in the city of Oxford that his horse was “gay.” Clearly, that didn’t do the job. And why not? Well, because the root problem with Britain’s free-speech laws is not that they are occasionally abused by the overzealous, but that they do not actually protect free speech at all. Almost everyone can grasp that it is absurd to arrest people for making offensive jokes, but, until the British come to understand that it is equally absurd to arrest people who hold their unpopular opinions in earnest, they will remain stuck in their present bind.
Rifle through the court documents from any high-profile censorship case and you will see the same language repeated ad nauseam. The speaker had to be imprisoned, you see, because he had caused “offense” or “anxiety” or “upset.” The sentence had be imposed, you understand, because it was “necessary to reflect the public outrage.” The police had to get involved, you grok, because, if they hadn’t, then someone, somewhere might have had to process their emotions without the intervention of the state. Or, put another way: The mob grew upset, so we indulged them.
The result of this approach has been the transformation of Britain into an equal-opportunity censor, from which nobody is immune. As one might anticipate, the country’s dense thicket of laws has often ensnared Muslims and Christians for their criticism of “sexual immorality.” But it has also entangled the atheists who pushed back against them — which, given the deference paid to subjective intangibles such as “hate,” “offense,” or “outrage,” was inevitable. A few years ago, in his capacity as Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer suggested that it would be problematic if the British government were to investigate “offensive, shocking or disturbing” statements, and proposed that, instead, prosecutors should limit themselves to material that was “grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or false.” I think I might be able to see the problem here.
In its scope and in its severity, there is a meaningful difference between the approach taken by the British government and the fatwa that the Iranian dictatorship saw fit to impose upon Salman Rushdie, and yet, in a substantive sense, they are indistinguishable in every way beyond degree. The Iranian government contends that some words are beyond the pale because they offend its most deeply held beliefs. And so does the British government, albeit in the name of a different herd of sacred cows. Unlike in the United States, the rules in Britain are not designed to prevent only that speech which is attached to imminent action, but to prevent speech that might make self-professed adults feel sad.
That is not good enough. I do not doubt for a moment that it is unpleasant for a man who truly believes that he is a woman to see a meme that compares his political allies to the Nazis. But this cannot be the end of the story. Presumably, it is also unpleasant for a man who believes that the Koran is true in every particular to read criticisms or mockery of his faith, and yet a commitment to elementary liberalism prevents us from responding to this possibility by dispatching the cops to his aid. In essence, the question in both cases really is a simple one: Namely, “What should happen to people who say unpopular, ugly, or even downright evil things?” In my estimation, there can be only one answer: Nothing. Actions? In certain circumstances, actions may be brought under authority. But words, unconnected from motion or force? Never.
Next month, either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak will replace Boris Johnson as prime minister. Responding to the attack on Salman Rushdie, Truss said that, “People must be able to speak freely and freedom of speech must be defended,” while Sunak hailed “free speech and artistic freedom” and submitted that Rushdie was “in our thoughts.” If they are serious, they will begin the work of removing from British law any traces of the mindset that put Rushdie and others at risk in the first instance. There is no such thing as “free speech but,” and the desire to insist otherwise represents a catastrophic concession of the most important premise in all the free world: that however offended one might be at what another person has said or written or thought, that offense is a purely private matter that ought to be of no more interest to our governing authorities than is the number of socks in my bedroom drawer.