This is exactly the problem. "I do not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" has been replaced with "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences". The latter is, of course, utter nonsense. Repercussions or retaliation for expressing wrongthink is the literal definition of a place that does not have freedom of speech.
You want your speech to be free from consequences -- i.e if you were to call someone a liar / cheat, they can't change their opinion of you based on what you've said? How is that compatible with their freedom of thought?
To me, freedom of speech means I shouldn't worry about legal repercussions for expressing wrongthink.
There is perhaps a separate discussion to be had about the sort of society we want to live in - do we want to promote open discussion, even if it can be divisive? But I don't think it's really a rights issue unless the consequences progress from social / economic to legal.
Freedom from speech can only mean freedom from consequences, but virtually nobody thinks all speech should be free from all consequences.
For example, if the government allows its critics to speak freely, but then puts them in prison [1], is that free speech? No. So because of a consequence, speech is not free.
If someone says they hate you and want to kill your family, and you avoid them as a result, is that free speech? Yes - no significant number of people would say it is not. So here, despite a consequence, speech is free.
Some people connect free speech specifically with prior restraint. But prior restraint is also purely about consequences: if the government bans your book, what that actually means is that anyone distributing your book will be punished, and that's a consequence.
Some people connect free speech specifically with government action. But if a tech monopoly deletes its enemies from the internet, is that free speech? I would say it is not.
It's meaningless to be for or against free speech in some binary sense. What you can have is an opinion about the mapping from speech to consequences. You might think that speech should map to lighter consequences than it does at the moment across all speech, or to heavier consequences, for for some kinds of speech to be lighter and some heavier.
[1] Idi Amin is reputed to have said "There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech."
> It's meaningless to be for or against free speech in some binary sense. What you can have is an opinion about the mapping from speech to consequences. You might think that speech should map to lighter consequences than it does at the moment across all speech, or to heavier consequences, for for some kinds of speech to be lighter and some heavier.
I think this is a very good way of putting things. However, when it comes to answering the question, there's two ways of thinking about it -- how do I map other's speech to consequences with my actions (i.e morally) and how does the government map speech to consequences (i.e legally). I think only this second way of thinking is where the "right to free speech" comes in.
The view that I'm advocating is that I want the government to support a relatively strong version of free speech (i.e you should be able to say what you want without fear of being persecuted by the government, bar a few exceptions), but my personal map of speech to consequences is for me to decide. This means, for example, that I may choose to stop supporting a particular business because of something one of their employees have said, and may even shout about it on Twitter, but doing so wouldn't be an infringement of their right to free speech (it may be morally questionable).
Exactly. People say they want freedom of speech, but really they want the ability to say whatever they want while also having the ability to punish others for saying things they don't like.
Similarly, people say that some countries have freedom of speech, when in reality every country has ways of punishing people for making certain noises out of their mouths - they just differ in which noises and to what degree.
The effect of this dishonesty is there is a hidden social contract on what you are, or are not, allowed to say, and everyone has to negotiate that. The article is about how people are becoming more self-censorious as a consequence of this social contract tightening up.
So the strong form of the phrase "free speech must mean freedom from consequences" implies all speech must mean freedom from all consequences, whereas the weak form would mean all speech must be free from a certain undefined subset of consequences?
That phrase is always proposed as a rebuttal to "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences," and always in the context that any consequences given will lead to a slippery slope. It doesn't contradict that premise at all if interpreted in the weak form, it only makes sense as a rebuttal in the strong form.
So either the so-called "free speech maximalist" side actually believes that people who argue free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences are referring to all consequences rather than any consequences, or else we're all just in violent agreement with one another, and really just haggling over what those consequences should be.
Limiting it to legal consequences is not enough. There are also physical and psychological safety consequences that are relevant. You're not, for example, free to speak your mind if expressing wrongthink will result in a punch to the face.
In the context of a workplace (being the topic of this post, after all), one such consequence is the loss of your job. Something that is very real these days, with so-called activists doxing people and trying to get them fired just because they dared to express a dissenting opinion.
Punching people in the face is illegal regardless of the reason - I don't really see how that's relevant?
Are you really saying that it should be impossible for someone to lose their job over what they say? If someone, for example, threatened to kill a co-worker, you don't think they should be fired? I appreciate that this is an extreme example, but when we talk about rights, don't we have to cover all examples of speech?
I'd agree that social media mobs trying to get people fired is a bad thing, that it's become too easy to whip up such mobs, and that as a society we should try to be more tolerant of other views. But I don't see somebody losing a job over something they've said as a rights issue - you don't have a right to a job.
> Punching people in the face is illegal regardless of the reason - I don't really see how that's relevant?
The 'freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences' was popularized (repopularized?) and became a somewhat mainstream talking point in America around 2016-17 to justify political violence with the "punch a nazi" thing and stuff. It's the "paradox of tolerance".
Fair enough. I'm certainly not advocating that it's ok to punch someone over something they said.
The context of this thread (expressing political opinions at work) makes me think the other types of consequence are more relevant for this discussion though.
In non-America places (or in the few remaining unionised workplaces in America) you typically have some right to due process, and you can't just be terminated on a whim because you said something the boss didn't like.
Yes, and I think that's a good thing. But I don't see think that's incompatible with my view here - that freedom of speech doesn't mean I have the right to say anything and expect to keep my job.
If I was to say something offensive, I should be accorded due process, but the result of that process may be that I'm let go.
Sure, I probably largely agree with that. But there's a difference between what you're describing and what often happens in the real world where a twitter mob calls for you to be fired and your company immediately shitcans you to placate the yobs.
I'd agree that a twitter mob getting someone fired is in most cases a bad thing and I can think of a bunch of reasons why it's a bad thing. But "infringing on the employees right to free speech" isn't one of them.
This might seem a bit pedantic, but I do think it's important. If something is a violation of someone's rights then there doesn't need to be any further discussion - it shouldn't be allowed. I think claiming that this is a free speech issue is not only wrong, but also shuts down much needed discussion about where we set the limits of our tolerance.
I think we largely agree, and where we disagree is quibbling over semantics.
I don't consider myself a "speech absolutist", so I wouldn't agree that assigning, say, twitter mobbing to the category of "free speech issues" shuts down further discussion.
Freedom of speech should have the same protection as freedom of religion, and there really shouldn't be a difference between if someone speech is referencing views from an old book/science fiction author, life experience good and bad, or anything else that is a reflection of the personal identify of an individual.
The European humans right is a good example of this. EU has countries with widely different religions, widely different politics, geographic regions and cultures. If you want freedom of speech in such a diverse area you can't allow discrimination for expressing wrongthink, because any speech is a wrongthink somewhere except for views about kittens and ice cream.
The only major hard lines are explicit and direct threat of violence targeting person or persons, fraud, and national security (the later being a topic of debate).
>You want your speech to be free from consequences -- i.e if you were to call someone a liar / cheat, they can't change their opinion of you based on what you've said? How is that compatible with their freedom of thought?
The issue of calling someone "a liar / cheat" if they're not belongs to libel. Same way yelling fire in a crowded cinema is a public safety issue.
Expression of ideas is neither, and should not have "consequences".
>To me, freedom of speech means I shouldn't worry about legal repercussions for expressing wrongthink.
So is it OK if a mob (not a legal or govermnet entity) stomped on you and beat you to a bloody pulp?
If a church (not a legal entity) asked its members to spit on your face and abuse you on the internet?
> So is it OK if a mob (not a legal or govermnet entity) stomped on you and beat you to a bloody pulp?
No - legally and morally, this is not OK.
> If a church (not a legal entity) asked its members to spit on your face and abuse you on the internet?
Morally, I'd say this was wrong, but legally, I think they would be within their rights. But equally, if I were to respond by encouraging my friends to protest outside the church, I wouldn't be violating their right to freedom of speech.
> If you were immediately fired?
This would depend on the country and my contract, but I'd hope that immediate dismissal would be a violation of my labour rights - not my right to free speech.
>Both libel and inciting imminent lawless action are expressions of ideas, that term is so vague as to be all-encompassing.
And yet courts all over the world are able to separate them from "expression of ideas" (here in Europe e.g. where we have and use libel laws).
It's not that hard either, unless we specifically go for edge case.
"X is a thief" can be libel.
"The climate is in danger/is not in danger and we should or shouldn't do so and so" is an expression of an idea, and can't be libel.
As long as you don't speak about someone in particular (a person or set of named persons, as opposed to ideas and abstract groups), and don't accuse them of being something criminal or derogatory (especially something they're not) you should be able to express any idea you like, how about that?
> "The climate is in danger/is not in danger and we should or shouldn't do so and so" is an expression of an idea, and can't be libel.
If I was an employee of a climate action advocacy group, wouldn't publicly stating that the climate is not in danger cause harm to my employer? Should they be forced to continue employing me despite that harm?
Again, I'm not advocating that this person should be fired, but it feels like overreach to say that it shouldn't be possible for someone to be fired for what they say.
Let's talk concretely about the consequence that is most fraught.
Should employees be fired for expressing political positions at work that their employer disagrees with? Should all employees be told to focus on their companies mission instead?
Previously progressives seemed happy for the former to happen, but now they seem annoyed that they also might have their free speech squashed.
Uhm, I'm not following you. Historically, employees who "expressed political opinions" would typically support leftist/progressive views that their employer would disagree with; hence why laws were passed to protect their rights in this area (at least in Europe). So I don't think anybody on the left was ever "happy" that an employer could fire someone for their political position, as a general concept.
What might have some support is the idea that an employer could fire someone holding positions that are incompatible with the majority of other employees. We can argue about the best way to regulate this, but it's a different and horizontal view of determining the boundaries of civil coexistence.
Surely that depends on a number of things -- the nature of the employer's business, the manner in which the opinion is expressed, etc? I think businesses should generally be free to set their own terms and conditions, provided they are compatible with the nation's labour rights.
Personally, I'd prefer to live in a society where people are encouraged to have frank and respectful exchanges of views, and I'd prefer to work for a business where I'm not afraid to share my views, but equally where political discussion is not a large part of workplace culture.
But that's just my preference _- we're not discussing what should happen, but what rights people have, and no, I don't think you have the right to say whatever you like and keep your job.
That doesn't mean your boss should fire you because he disagrees with something you said, but it does mean it should be possible, provided you are accorded due process.
As the old Soviet joke goes: "We have freedom of speech in the USSR too. The difference is that in the USA, you can use your freedom of speech more than once."
I don't agree with your comparison of the two terms above - and in fact I think they are complementary, not contradictory as you suggest. The right to speak has been to say unpopular opinions and be free from government oppression, not from social opinion.
If "freedom of speech MEANS freedom from consequences", as you suggest, then what would be the point of speaking with our absolute freedom, as no one would be allowed to form an opinion on it?
Freedom of speech has always meant "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" in America, it is just that you have the right to say it and be free from government persecution. You can and will be judged on it socially, which is what this paper says is not right, as workplace employees are self censoring their views because people will take a principled stand on their opinions.
This paper seems to want people to be able to state exactly what they please and for there to be no social repercussions - which the first quote you have acknowledges there are.
"I do not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" contains "I do not agree", meaning that the individual who uttered it has made an opinion based on someone else's speech.
I think you have a misconception here about what freedom is. A freedom is a restriction on the state. It simply says that the state cannot act against you for exercising a freedom, or act to prevent you from doing so. Repercussions, consequences, or retaliations are completely unrelated so long as they are not state-sponsored.
With this in mind, "I do not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it", and "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences", are totally compatible. You can both fight for a restriction on state power, and have a personal reaction to what somebody has said.
The real issue here is that people never had to utter "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" in the past because people had an implicit understanding that this was reality.
If a Catholic school teacher declares publicly that women should have the right to choose to have an abortion, what do you think her chances are of retaining her employment at that school?
Conservatives would claim that the school has a right to fire the teacher, because it's just freedom of religion, as if somehow that particular freedom should supersede the others.
So what changed?
Oh, right, the country has shifted left and Christianity is not the dominant social force that it used to be. One man's belief in a man in the sky is no more important than another's alignment with a set of moral values.
No, the expectation of being able to say anything and not be responsible for it, is what's wrong.
Say what you want, but be prepared to stand by it and take responsibility for it, in a court of law if necessary.
Free speech is a right, and thus it requires the person exercising that right to understand that it does not absolve them from being held responsible for what they say or express.
Just like the 2nd amendment doesn't shield you from all possible consequences of exercising that right to bear arms.
I'm not really sure what the amendments to the US constitution have to do with a post about British workplaces, but I think you have a very different view on "freedom of speech" than the classically liberal one that it is arguably founded upon. That's OK, of course.
In the UK we don't have and have never had freedom of speech. In fact, we have some of the harshest libel laws in the world. There are very many consequences for saying or publishing things that you're not allowed to here.
But this post is about people self-censoring their opinions, particularly in the workplace, for fear of repercussions, and that is something that absolutely is getting worse. Like many others I steer clear of all of these topics myself, as even though I hold "approved" opinions on them. I fear that someone may wilfully misinterpret something I say and cause me irreparable harm by going on some weird crusade to have me fired and my life ruined, as that seems to be what normally happens these days.
>In the UK we don't have and have never had freedom of speech.
That's not true - we do have freedom of speech.
It's just not absolute freedom of speech, which is a frankly horrible idea, because absolute rights almost always undermine other rights. (As an example, absolute freedom of speech would preclude all rights to privacy and confidentiality.)
What we have is a framework of fundamental rights, most of which are "qualified rights" and must be balanced with each other.
That it is a balancing act means that it's an imperfect system, for sure, but it's better not to allow the use of one right to trample over another.
In the UK we have limited freedom of expression (under S10 of the Human Rights Act 1998), which is much more narrowly defined, and even then subject to many restrictions and limitations (libel, court privilege, hate speech, and more). It doesn't really qualify as "freedom of speech" in the sense that really matters for this discussion.
>In the UK we have limited freedom of expression [...] which is much more narrowly defined
There is no real distinction between freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Speech is expression, or rather it is a subset.
Section 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998 is the "Power to take remedial action" by ministers if a court has issued a declaration of incompatibility.
I think you mean Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which is given direct domestic legal effect by the Human Rights Act.
A10 states
>Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
which I'm not sure you can claim isn't "freedom of speech".
I did state earlier that it's a qualified right, and those qualifications are:
>The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
but this hardly seems like it undermines freedom of speech. There are limits, but they must be "necessary in a democratic society" (which can be - and often is - the basis for a legal challenge by those who think their A10 rights have been violated) and for a defined, and limited, number of reasons.
Like I also said above, if you remove (some of) these qualifications then you end up with perverse results, like undermining the right to privacy or justice itself.
I'm not from the US either, however I wanted to frame the argument in a way that would be understandable to the majority on this site.
> "But this post is about people self-censoring their opinions, particularly in the workplace, for fear of repercussions, and that is something that absolutely is getting worse. Like many others I steer clear of all of these topics myself, as even though I hold "approved" opinions on them."
In a way, this gives you just a little perspective on how homosexual people have felt for millennia, in fact how anyone with a sexuality, religion, political view or any other aspect that was sufficiently divergent from the status quo have been treated for millennia. In many parts of the world, some of those things still carry death sentences, and it's not very long ago that this was also the case in our western countries.
Being told that ones views are "not cool, dude" is extremely mild, and the threat of doxxing is wildly overblown, unless you are an actual political activist. And in that case, it still a lot more dangerous being an ultra-woke leftie than a white supremacist, considering the cases we've seen of violent attacks, car rammings at protests and so on.
> "I fear that someone may wilfully misinterpret something I say and cause me irreparable harm by going on some weird crusade to have me fired and my life ruined, as that seems to be what normally happens these days."
I'm sorry, but that is just horse manure. You hear of a small handful of cases, which are given completely overblown coverage in the media, because outrage sells. That is not an accurate representation of the world, it is a twisted media picture. It is especially bad in the UK, where the big media is overwhelmingly conservative.
As someone who probably agrees with you on a number of things, being of an old-school leftist persuasion (trade unions, progressive taxation, wealth taxes, completely legalize weed, trust that people have good intentions at heart, judge people by their actions, not by where they happened to be born), and someone who interacts with a lot of different companies from all over the spectrum, I simply cannot recognize your argument that people who don't hold "woke leftist" views are discriminated against.
On the contrary, there is still a undercurrent of conservative and somewhat xenophobic attitude at a lot of manual labor and otherwise "blue collar" workplaces. It has gotten a lot better, but it is still present.
You can call my fears "horse manure" if you like, but that doesn't really change the fact that I have them. Based on how I've seen some of my (now ex-)colleagues treated when they have spoken up, I don't think they are at all unfounded.
And yes, people have been discriminated against for who they are, or what they believe, for a long long time. It was wrong then and it is wrong now.
You can say as many wrong things as you want, but you cannot expect that there will be no consequences.
Those consequences range from people not wishing to associate with you anymore at the mildest end, to actual fines and jail time, if your speech can be proven to have directly incited violence (the bar for which various according to country and jurisdiction).
You can't just claim that "I have no control over these words that are coming out of my mouth, and I take no responsibility for them", free speech doesn't work like that.
And if your strongest argument for saying something is "I have the right to say this", then maybe reconsider whether it's actually worth saying.
If freedom of speech is so limited, does it even exist as a freedom anymore?
You could say I have the "freedom to take anything I want" except I mustn't take anything that belongs to somebody else. Do I really have any freedom with that restriction in place?
Personally I don't think we have freedom of speech (in the UK, certainly legally we do not). You have to be careful of what you say and who you say it to. Maybe that's OK, and free speech was a failed experiment. But to claim we have that freedom whilst restricting it thus is just wankery.
The really important thing here is that your freedom does not overrule the freedom of others. It's freedom of speech, not an obligation to listen to or agree with or condone what you say.
As always, if your greatest argument for saying something is that you have the right to say it, maybe reconsider what you're about to say.
So "freedom of speech" is where you can say what you want, except that if you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, then there are potentially serious repercussions, up to and including imprisonment.
I'm curious to know what not having freedom of speech would look like.
I'll repeat myself: "your freedom does not overrule the freedom of others."
Words can and do cause harm, just as actions can and do. You don't see very many people seriously arguing for "freedom of action", because that would be an utterly chaotic and brutal society, even worse than the extremes of feudalism or warlordism.
Actions have consequences, and words have consequences. Arguing that you cannot be held responsible for the words that come out of your mouth or text written by your hand, is completely ridiculous.
Often I see the very same people who argue fiercely for personal responsibility above all, turn around and argue for free speech absolutism, seemingly unaware of the absurd incompatibility of those two stances.
Just because you "don't celebrate it" doesn't mean you should call their boss, harass their workplace, place demands that they are fired from their job, mark them as bad people, and so on.
And yet many people do just that, and feel good about it.
> We asked whether it is “fair or unfair for people who say grossly offensive things to be at risk of losing their livelihoods?” Nationally, 48 percent believe it is “fair,” but this figure rises to 65 percent for social democrat-aligned Labour voters, compared with 39 percent for right-leaning Conservative voters.
Meaning right leaning are more likely to live and let live.
"right leaning" is a minority in the UK, and if you exclude those who've retired it's a small minority. Minorities tend to be more accepting of speech that goes against the majority view.
And a lot of old-school lefties in the UK consider Blair's New Labour to be centre-right, "Red Tories" etc. Blair might have been left-wing but he certainly wasn't a socialist.
The "left" in Britain arguably haven't won an election since 1974.
It has to be considered that "the left" has been structurally divided in three parties (Lab, LibDem, Greens) for most of this period, which is a cardinal sin in the British system.
The right had fewer splits, and arguably none of them is comparably structural.
The left might have lost a lot of elections, but I think you can still make a case for the original point the "right-of-centre" are a minority in the UK, even if it's only a narrow majority. The Conservatives haven't won a majority of the popular vote in nearly 90 years (but then neither has any party)
Showing just how unrepresentitive our electoral system is. The combined Tory/Brexit/DUP vote was about 43% in 2019, a minority.
Ashcroft and Ipsos confirm that older people were more likely to vote tory, with >50% only in the over 65 range.
If you're a HN poster you're likely in a workplace with
1) Under 45s, certainly under 65s
2) ABC1
3) University education
All of those are 3 indicators of low 'right wing' (defined as voting Tory or whatever Farage's party is) support, so it's not surprising most people in the workplace of the average HN poster vote not-tory.
