Some Thoughts on Free Speech and Social Justice
We really need a revival of genuine liberal values
In the second half of the 2010s, as incidents of cancel culture ramped up rapidly across the West, and anti-free speech philosophical theories appeared to get some mainstream traction, a new free speech movement arose in response. While there was only mixed results when it came to defending free speech itself, there was at least a revival in interest in classical liberal values, which I thought would be sustained for at least a generation. Sadly, it appears that the 2010s free speech movement has fizzled out rapidly. You don’t hear much about the importance of free speech these days, except from a handful of dedicated activists like myself.
Surprisingly and sadly, some who supported the free speech movement in the 2010s have turned to an authoritarian-right politics that includes bans on everything from controversial books to drag queens. Elon Musk’s supposedly pro-free speech takeover of Twitter has also been disappointing, with the platform now so full of open racists, conspiracy theories and culture war stuff that it is arguably worse for rational discourse than before (which I didn’t imagine was even possible a year ago). Musk himself also turned out to be no better than the previous people in charge of Twitter: in June, he declared that the word ‘cisgender’ would be treated as a slur on Twitter. While I don’t use that word personally because of its controversial connotations, this still represents censorship on behalf of one side of the culture wars. It just shows that Musk is not above meddling in the marketplace of ideas either. Meanwhile, some people (who I will not name), who used to defend free speech all the time, have now become very friendly with the ‘postliberal’ authoritarians, and accordingly, they never seem to discuss free speech anymore. Instead of defending classical liberal values, they now blame these values for giving rise to ‘wokeism’, against all reasonable logic. Sometimes, it seems that very few people are truly dedicated to free speech these days.
Having thought about all this for a while, I now think that the 2010s free speech movement stalled because something was missing: we were good at defending free speech and opposing cancel culture. But we weren’t putting enough effort into arguing why free speech is necessary. The necessity of free speech is inherently linked to the marketplace of ideas. The reason we need to support free speech and oppose cancel culture is because we want all ideas to get a fair hearing in the marketplace of ideas, so the most sound ideas can win out. If this is the vision we are committed to, then we would also recognize that we need to have good speech too. What I mean by good speech is speech that is delivered in a good faith attempt to get to the truth, rather than to score culture war points, promote the interests of political parties or particular politicians, or simply to ‘troll’ your enemies. I think we can all agree that blatant racism, ‘triggering’ your opponents, and deliberately selecting stories to create a biased perception about particular issues aren’t examples of good speech, at the very minimum. Sadly, I’m seeing way too much of this kind of speech in so-called anti-woke circles lately. If we truly believe in a healthy and functional marketplace of ideas, I think we need to call out such bad faith speech when we see it, to halt and prevent its proliferation. If we allow this bad faith speech to grow unchecked, it will poison the marketplace of ideas, no less than cancel culture and censorship.
Right now, free speech continues to be under threat, which means the free speech movement really needs to be revived. Besides the continued threat from postmodern critical theory-inspired activism on the left, the rise of the authoritarian postliberal right has made the future of free speech even more fragile than before. Meanwhile, the culture wars and the associated polarization and tribalism also pose great threats to both free speech itself and the health of the marketplace of ideas. All this means that it is more important than ever to take a stand in support of free speech.
The past decade has been a truly insane time in Western politics. The culture wars have heated up like never before, and divisive and toxic ideas have been introduced into the mainstream from both sides. Those of us who continue to believe in classical liberal values like free speech and individual freedom have had to defend these values in an extraordinarily bold way, given that they were (and still are) under extraordinary threat. However, what I don’t want to be lost in all this are other priorities in the big picture, such as the need to make society better and more just for disadvantaged minorities.
If reasonable progressives who still believe in old-school reformism want to put forward proposals for reforms, in the liberal tradition that gave us things like universal suffrage and marriage equality, then I really want to hear about it. I am still eagerly interested in society making progress for justice and inclusion, in the old-school liberal way. I just don’t believe in a language-obsessed and deconstrutionist culture war politics rooted in the ideas of thinkers like Foucault and Marcuse, or an anarchist-adjacent politics supporting things like defund the police.
As I have often said, postmodern critical theory is not the key to social justice. Indeed, I believe that it is the enemy of true justice (and freedom). It is rooted not in the desire for justice, or the desire to make things better for oppressed minorities, but the desire for a social revolution (with or without political revolution) that would fundamentally dismantle the values of the Enlightenment. Taken to its logical conclusion, I would call it ‘critical anarchism’, because it is effectively a process of challenging and replacing liberal values with ultra-anarchist values. Therefore, I believe that postmodern activists are effectively using embattled minorities as a battering ram to bring down society as we know it, in an attempt to usher in their ultra-anarchist utopia. Not only do most minorities don’t want anarchism at all, history tells us such an unnecessary revolution would not bring good results. The upheaval and backlash alone would be very harmful to already embattled minorities. I think every would-be postmodern revolutionary needs to consider the harm they are potentially (directly or indirectly) inflicting on such minorities, and if a would-be revolutionary actually did so, they might just pull back from their revolutionary position. History has also taught us that life for minorities can be improved through a process of gradual reformism instead, and there is no reason to believe that this tradition can’t continue going forward.
If we could get behind a liberal reformist agenda again, I think we could make social justice not divisive again. This means we could achieve a better, broader consensus for much needed reforms. I truly hope we can embark on the long road of reformism again, and just forget that the past ten years of madness even happened at all.
Originally published at https://taraella.substack.com.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).
