We will no doubt survive the
Mayan apocalypse this Christmas. But will freedom of speech survive into 2013?
This year, the boundaries of what can be said contracted to an unprecedented
degree. Here’s a Top 10 countdown of some of the worst erosions of freedom of
speech in Britain in 2012.
10) Defamation Bill
In 2012, many of the activists in Britain’s
free-speech lobby unwittingly cheered on censoriousness. Consider their
response to the government’s Defamation Bill, which is supposed to make
England’s ridiculous libel laws ‘fairer’. Index on Censorship excitedly
exclaimed ‘We did it!’ when the bill was unveiled. But the bill proposes
expanding the remit of the libel laws to cover the internet, and removing the
right to trial by jury in defamation cases, which would give judges even
greater authority over the question of what is acceptable speech.
Fundamentally, the bill enshrines the idea that the state is best placed to decide
what should and shouldn’t be uttered.
9) Protest bans
‘Fuck your free speech!’, shouted an anti-fascist
campaigner at the far-right English Defence League (EDL) during a march in
Walthamstow, London in September. It typified the illiberal outlook of some on
the radical left. When the EDL announced it would march through Walthamstow
again in October, anti-fascists gave up on the idea of holding a
counter-protest and instead successfully campaigned to have the march banned.
Home secretary Theresa May also banned every other group, both right- and
left-wing, from marching in Walthamstow, to be on the safe side. Which only
shows how foolish it is to imbue the authorities with the right to decree who
may march and who may not.
8) Plain cigarette packs
This year, it became compulsory in Australia to sell
cigarettes in mucus-coloured ‘plain packs’ covered in pictures of dead babies
or rotting organs. All company branding is outlawed. Other countries, including
Britain, plan to follow suit. But isn’t this an affront to freedom of
expression, effectively preventing companies from expressing themselves on
their own products? Even worse, such anti-ciggie censoriousness implies that
the public at large is incapable of making rational decisions about health and
is easily swayed by flashy, colourful packaging. So the state opts to cover our
eyes and protect our fragile sensibilities.
7) Gay marriage
In 2012, many of those who criticised the gay marriage
campaign were denounced as ‘bigots’, heretics, in essence, for daring to
dissent from the broad church of political and media activists who support gay
marriage. Gay marriage is now openly described as ‘utterly conventional’ and
even ‘beyond argument’. It isn’t illegal to criticise it, of course, but then
it doesn’t need to be - the moral forcefield erected around this issue
demonstrates the power of what John Stuart Mill called the ‘despotism of
custom’, whereby the informal enforcement of convention ends up crushing
curiosity.
6) Child protection
This year, Durham-based Toni McLeod, an eight-month
pregnant 25-year-old mother-of-three, was told by social services that her new
baby would be taken away from her because of her links with the EDL. Then it
was revealed that a couple in Rotherham had their foster children removed
because of their support for the mainstream UK Independence Party (UKIP).
Apparently, if you support a party that criticises the politics of
multiculturalism, you aren’t fit to look after kids, and the state will punish
you for holding Wrong Views.
5) The war on trolls
The definition of ‘trolling’ expanded exponentially in
2012. It now covers not only those who make nasty threats online, but also
those who make daft or drunken comments on Twitter or who slag off the British
Army on Facebook; such individuals can now be arrested. And increasingly,
anyone who simply expresses a view that goes against the grain can be written
off as a ‘troll’ and twitch-hunted into obscurity. In insisting on conformity
and consensus, troll-hunters prove more problematic for online freedom than
‘trolls’ themselves.
4) Ad bans
This year, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)
continued its one-quango war against saucy or provocative ads. It banned
billboard posters for the Channel 4 series Big Fat Gypsy Weddings(following
372 complaints from the public); an American Apparel advert that apparently
sexualised children (two complaints); and a jokey ad showing a brain surgeon
booking a holiday online while also operating on someone (441 complaints). The
ASA encapsulates the way the confused and defensive modern elite uses tiny
numbers of ‘offended people’ as a stage army to enforce its own censorious
moralism.
3) Football freedom
From fans’ chanting to on-pitch banter, never has
football-related speech been as obsessively policed as it was in 2012. From
cops and stewards looking out for any borderline racial utterance in the stands
to demands that Tottenham Hotspur fans stop referring to themselves as a Yid
Army, from the proposal to fine teams whose fans chant lewd things to the
attempt to stop fans using the word ‘gay’ in a derogatory way, in 2012 football
stadiums became laboratories for modern PC censorship. And the free-speech lobby
failed to kick up a fuss.
2) Twitter
Is Twitter, as CEO Dick Costolo said, ‘the free-speech
wing of the free-speech party’? Pull the other one. From the #shutdownTheSun
campaign to various efforts to have offensive tweeters reported to the cops,
Twitter risks become the censorship wing of the censorship party. The number of
twitch hunts is increasing, including campaigns to have the far-right Nick
Griffin expelled from Twitter for being predictably offensive and the mass
emailing of anti-celeb trolling tweets to police forces around the country.
Let’s have a new hashtag in 2013: #TwitterTolerance.
1) The Leveson Inquiry
As spiked argued from the outset, the
establishment of the Leveson Inquiry was an act of serious state interference
in the press. And sure enough, following a drawn-out process of mini-showtrials
and celebrity circuses, in November Leveson recommended setting up a regulatory
body with statutory backing. Whether or not his proposals are adopted, it’s
already clear that a dangerous precedent has been set for 2013 - that the
government, judges and various experts have the right to sit in judgement on
grubby newspapers and tell them what their ethics and morality ought to consist
of.
No comments:
Post a Comment