Summarised by Centrist
Free Speech Union chief executive Jillaine Heather says reactions to the assassination of US conservative Charlie Kirk show how quickly free speech principles are abandoned when politics turns emotional.
Heather writes, despite many celebrating Kirk’s killing, which “stopped me in my tracks,” she insists censorship is no answer.
Firing people from jobs over ugly or offensive remarks “rarely persuades. Surely it makes them double down or bury their views underground only to have them crop up in more dramatic ways.”
According to Heather, censorship is “narrow-minded” and “shortsighted.” She warns that punishment campaigns risk turning employers into “the censorship arm of the loudest online crowd.” The response, she says is to “Engage in counter speech; dismantle the bad ideas; make people uncomfortable with persuasion, not with punishment, and ultimately trust the public to judge.”
“Free speech protects speech you despise as much as speech you celebrate. If we only defend the speech we like, it’s not freedom; it’s a preference pretending to be principled,” she notes.
She writes the lesson of Kirk’s killing is clear: violence cannot silence ideas. “Have Charlie Kirk’s ideas disappeared since he was killed? No – they’ve reached further than they ever have.”
“Condemn violence without using grief as an excuse to shrink the space for speech. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend – because protecting freedom protects everyone’s right to speak,” she concludes.
Read more over at The Platform
Image: Gage Skidmore
