This Day in History: Today is World Day Against Cyber Censorship, which is an online event held each year on March 12 to rally support for a single, unrestricted Internet that is accessible to all and to draw attention to the ways that governments around the world are deterring and censoring free speech online. Of course many governments now no longer have to censor speech as the giant tech companies are more than willing to do it for them. We used to say proudly that "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" but now we hear, "I support free speech...BUT." The BUT usually includes something about "hate speech." But who gets to decide what is hateful? I see hateful speech against white people all the time, and this seems to not only be allowed, but encouraged. Also, freedom of speech is meaningless unless it means the freedom of the person who thinks differently...that's the entire reason to have free speech.
Christopher Hitchens once said of the holocaust denier: "That person doesn't just have a right to speak, that person's right to speak must be given extra protection because what he has to say must have taken him some effort to come up with." He follows this with: "One of the proudest moments of my life, that's to say in the recent past, has been defending the British historian David Irving who is now in prison in Austria for nothing more than the potential of uttering an unwelcomed thought on Austrian soil."
George Orwell once noted: "The point is that the relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them… The notion that certain opinions cannot safely be allowed a hearing is growing. It is given currency by intellectuals who confuse the issue by not distinguishing between democratic opposition and open rebellion, and it is reflected in our growing indifference to tyranny and injustice abroad. And even those who declare themselves to be in favour of freedom of opinion generally drop their claim when it is their own adversaries who are being prosecuted." George Orwell, “Freedom of the Park,” Tribune (Dec. 7, 1945)
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