Personal autonomy, as seen by a classical liberal, includes accepting the consequences of your actions (assuming you to be demonstrably of sound mind).
Thus, if it is these people’s decision to starve themselves, the outcome is theirs to deal with.
Attempting to make the outcome the responsibility of an external agency (in this case, the abstraction “society”, or more concretely the elected government) is not only inconsistent with liberal ethics, it would set an unacceptably dangerous precedent.
"there are liberal grounds to consider hunger strikes a protected form of protest"
I agree. As opposed to something like self-immolation, which by the unpredictable nature of fire poses a risk to the public, self-starvation can only harm the participant.
And, like all forms of protest, the protestor must be willing to accept the consequences. If someone engages in civil disobedience, they must accept if they are arrested. If someone refuses to eat, they must accept if they starve.
There is part of me that feels that the government has a duty of care to those under its arrest, and therefore any preventable death is evidence of a crime. But if someone had an infection and they refused antibiotics, we would not hold the government accountable for that death. These protestors have been offered the cure for their condition (food). The government has fulfilled its duty of care. I would document the hell out of everything, though.
This all makes sense but as a lifelong American I continue to be shocked at how the UK criminalizes expression and association. Whatever the organization has done, banning the expression of support for it is no different than criminalizing any statement that hurts a trans-identified person's feelings.
Yes, I don't like how that is worded either. It's one thing to ban financial or material or practical support for a terrorist organisation. That makes you complicit in the crimes they commit. My concern is that people could be arrested simply for saying the organisation should be allowed to exist or has good aims. They must be allowed to believe that and say it.
No right is an absolute. Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. Would you still feel the same if it is a society that promotes and protects, say pedophiles, and distributes manuals giving tips on how to lure children?
The “Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose” argument is the liberal one for protecting people’s right to believe, speak and live as they see fit provided it does no material harm to anyone else. In this case, the line is where verbally expressing support for the organisation ends and materially supporting it to do harm begins.
Words have consequences. You don’t get to say you think I’m a witch in Salem in the late 1600s and claim you’ve done no harm. Is Trump simply exercising his first amendment rights when he calls groups of people rapists and murderers and that they eat cats? Has he done no harm?
Free speech is often the excuse used to mean you can say whatever comes into your head, falsely accuse whoever you want, shout fire in a crowded movie theatre. I’m still amazed that Obama has not seen fit to sue people who say he wasn’t born in the United States for libel. Free speech can mean whatever you want it to mean.
Well, not from me. I have spent the last 15 years settling out exactly what I mean by it and why it does not include anything that can expressed in words and how it ties into liberal principles of harm.
1) We should protect individual liberty to hold ideas that others find appalling because we never know who is going to have the legal and social power to decide what is appalling and some ideas considered too appalling to be spoken in the past are now widely considered to be reasonable and acceptable - e.g., "Maybe God does not exist" & "It is OK to be gay."
2) We can only properly beat bad ideas and marginalise them if we can get at them and show them to be bad.
3) We can protect society better when we know what bad ideas are out there and how commonly they are held rather than forcing them into hiding.
The argument that some ideas are so bad they should be banned from being spoken can only convince those who believe that this makes bad ideas go away. Those who believe this only makes them harder to get at & defeat and that forcing them underground makes them more extreme and powerful can never be convinced by this.
I broadly agree with this, but I’d add that free speech isn’t just about protecting liberty or surfacing bad ideas—it’s about maintaining a healthy information environment. When speech is suppressed, bad ideas don’t disappear; they mutate in darker, less accountable spaces, where disinformation, grievance, and radicalisation reinforce each other without friction. At the same time, the answer can’t be a naive faith that all ideas are equal once aired. A society also has a responsibility to cultivate epistemic standards: truth-seeking, proportionality, and reality-based debate. Without those, free speech degrades into a battlefield where the loudest, most emotive, or most manipulative narratives dominate. What we’re seeing now isn’t a failure of free speech as such, but a failure to defend the conditions under which free speech actually produces understanding rather than chaos—which is what I explore in more depth in my essay.
Producing manuals to lure children would make it easier for the public and law enforcement to learn how predators are targeting children and thus how to better protect children.
This is actually already done. Schools require parents and volunteers to go through screening and training to ensure that they don't abuse children while volunteering for school events. Part of the training outlines common steps and tactics that predators can use for targeting children, thus making parents aware of actions to watch out for and alerting would-be predators to the fact that their tactics are already known.
Allowing people to expose their bad or immoral ideas is, historically, one of the primary strategic reasons for permitting free speech.
used to be that their fear of public scorn and respect for decorum kept things civil. Unfortunately constituents and party leaders now indulge in nasty behavior.
Maybe politicians are suffering from reverse Benjamin Button syndrome. Old men are reverting to acting like spoilt toddlers throwing tantrums with swear words thrown in.
Concept Creep is the problem. Once you can ban some speech the move is to figure out how the speech you want to ban is that thing. Note this already happening with pedophilia whereby a 25 year old having sex with a 17 year old is commonly called pedophilia. Probably not something we want to encourage broadly, but not pedophilia. Note antisemitism is now just criticizing Israel and “white supremacy” is a bunch of things that aren't that. Questioning Islam is now "Islamaphobia" and believing in biological sex is "anti-trans" . The right also plays this game. Believe in single payer healthcare you are apparently a "Marxist".
NAMBLA has the same free speech rights as anyone else but that doesn't mean that back in the day the Gay Liberation Movement let them take part. They tried and were rebuffed. The First Amendment survived.
I agree that it's a liberal stance to allow a hunger strike to continue to its grim conclusion if the participant is of sound mind. And if you oppose the goals of the hunger strike, it makes sense not to glorify the act and keep press coverage at a minimum: you don't want copycats.
I'm not sure what the liberal stance would be if one were sympathetic with the hunger strike. It isn't Corbyn's approach; that's disingenuous about the options at our disposal, but what would be the correct approach? Fight for the right to continue the strike, and then cover it extensively in the press?
Yes, as with forms of civil disobedience, if you are going to put yourself on the line for a cause and take the consequences, this can be a rational decision.
Hunger strikes in an environment of plenty are the ultimate compliment to society, which is assumed to be all-caring even by its protestors. You do not find group hunger strikes in poor starving countries. Hunger is forced onto these people. To force hunger and starvation on yourself is to take yourself hostage in exchange for your demands being met.
I'd be interested in your take on those eg New Age "breatharians" who come to believe they can survive without food, but other features of a delusional disorder aren't present. In a liberal society should they simply be allowed to continue at their own risk, or is that level of irrationality the sort of thing that requires paternalistic action?
I agree entirely that by contrast, political hunger strikers are making a fundamentally rational choice.
Hmmmm, interesting edge case. I don't know. The right to hold a false belief is generally protected even if it is harmful and force-feeding is an extreme form of coercion, so I think I'd be inclined to say that if they were not otherwise disordered and delusional & the reality has been presented & explained to them, we have to let them do it. More common is probably things like people believing they can cure their cancer with juices and coffee enemas and then dying of curable cancer. I think we have to let them.
There was a high profile cases recently with a couple who had both got into that fringe health stuff. "The Children Act" (film with Emma Thompson and Stanley Gucci) has a good treatment of the fully religious version (Jehovah's Witnesses).
No, it's not legal to force life-saving care including nutrition on people who have mental capacity and decline it. Since publishing, I have seen the law on this and it is very clear.
Well then let them die. I'm not even remotely conflicted—especially given the results of these past few years of giving in to trans activists who've been threatening suicide.
Blackmail is terrorism (terrorism in service of other terrorism, in the case of Palestine Action). Never negotiate with terrorists—especially never to save terrorists from themselves.
.
Agreed on minimizing media coverage, for roughly the same reason as other situations with copycat potential.
I am recovering. Tests ongoing into potential posterior nosebleed or gastric ulcer. Reason so much of my blood left my circulatory system and ended up in my stomach is currently unknown. Indeed. Internal bleeding bad. Still get breathless and dizzy and go into cardio having a shower and then have to nap, but at least I can think now.
Heavens, this sounds terrifying. I wish I could offer some helpful advice but I am not a doctor and I presume you have seen a few of those recently … Get well soon! x
I agree with your overarching point, but have never been comfortable with the idea that the way the media reports something, including the amount of coverage they choose to give it, should be informed by anything other than the duty to inform. Then again, of course, taken to the extreme that principle would be unworkable and it is part of being a journalist that you make small moral choices every day about how you report things rather than just recklessly laying out all the facts. But if this should be a bigger story (I'm not saying it should), and is being downplayed to try to avoid a media circus which would increase the chances of the strikers taking their own lives ... in the abstract, I'm not sure how I feel about the duty to try to save life taking precedence over the duty to inform. However, were someone I loved one of the strikers, I would feel differently.
Yeah. I tried to get a balance there between what is in the public interest - the facts of the matter - and what is glorifying and glamorising a situation to the extent it could inspire copycats. Of course, I would be utterly opposed to censorship of any journalist or think piece writer who must make their own decisions. I think those who decide to report in a way that does not make it 'sexy' for the reasons I gave make a good decision, though. I don't agree the BBC has a duty to bring attention to their plight in the way the linked article suggests.
What I find missing from much of the discussion is any serious attention to information ecology and incentive structures. Hunger strikes and similar tactics don’t emerge only from blocked legal pathways; they also arise in environments saturated with disinformation, moral absolutism, and social reward for maximalist gestures. When a movement systematically collapses complexity, erases Israeli and Palestinian lived realities alike, and frames self-destruction as virtue, the issue is no longer just autonomy versus state power but collective epistemic failure. In that context, refusing to negotiate is not merely about precedent—it’s about declining to reinforce a feedback loop where distorted narratives, radicalisation, and performative sacrifice are rewarded with attention and legitimacy. The tragedy, if deaths occur, would not only be individual but civilisational: a sign of how effectively chaos—whether ideological or strategic—can weaponise human bodies once meaning, nuance, and proportionality have been stripped from public life.
You can die for your cause. You cannot murder nor maim nor destroy for your cause.
Helen is not wrong here.
However she’s approaching the issue from the wrong premise in the case of these protestors. They are not under the same auspices or laws as the rest of us. They do not see our laws, our culture, as legitimate. Islam and Sharia law is supreme. Their ideology calls for and encourages martyrdom, murder and mayhem to further the cause.
Consequently by supporting this cause you’re effectively supporting murder, mayhem and destruction. It may be with good intentions and even inadvertently or through ignorance, but that’s not an excuse under our laws. Therefore, while you can choose to do so, your support must come with consequences.
Our laws do not prohibit people from saying they think Islam and Sharia are good. They may now prohibit saying they think the activist group, Palestine Action, is good. That doesn't advocate imposing Islam or Sharia and many of them are not Muslim and seem to support women's and LGBT rights in contravention of Sharia, but it does promote public disorder, anti-Zionism and destruction of property. It does not advocate violence but activists have been violent and it has been dismissive or callous about Islamist violence and anti-semitism. Therefore, verbally expressed support of it does include supporting some horrible things. The same reality around the benefits of free speech apply, however. We are still better off protecting it even for horrible ideas and we still beat bad ideas better when we can get at them and we are still better off knowing these ideas exist rather than forcing them into hiding to ambush us.
I’m a firm believer in allowing all speech, the more the better. But this isn’t just about speech was my point.
The people who support this group are in effect supporting the violence, mayhem and destruction this group advocates for and carries out. Claiming ignorance of their advocacy of this violence doesn’t excuse culpability in it. Because you’re a supporter of LGBTQ rights has little or nothing to do with anything.
Also, if we’re honest Palestine Action doesn’t view itself as coming under our laws. As I stated, Islam and Sharia are supreme for them. Consequently they couldn’t care less about our free speech laws. But they’re extremely happy we do, as we should. It serves their purposes for us to argue their case. Either way it won’t make a bit of difference to their acts of violence, they will continue.
Very nicely argued. Thank you.
Well argued, thank you.
Personal autonomy, as seen by a classical liberal, includes accepting the consequences of your actions (assuming you to be demonstrably of sound mind).
Thus, if it is these people’s decision to starve themselves, the outcome is theirs to deal with.
Attempting to make the outcome the responsibility of an external agency (in this case, the abstraction “society”, or more concretely the elected government) is not only inconsistent with liberal ethics, it would set an unacceptably dangerous precedent.
Thanks very cogent horrible topic but good for once it seems to be being handled appropriately
"there are liberal grounds to consider hunger strikes a protected form of protest"
I agree. As opposed to something like self-immolation, which by the unpredictable nature of fire poses a risk to the public, self-starvation can only harm the participant.
And, like all forms of protest, the protestor must be willing to accept the consequences. If someone engages in civil disobedience, they must accept if they are arrested. If someone refuses to eat, they must accept if they starve.
There is part of me that feels that the government has a duty of care to those under its arrest, and therefore any preventable death is evidence of a crime. But if someone had an infection and they refused antibiotics, we would not hold the government accountable for that death. These protestors have been offered the cure for their condition (food). The government has fulfilled its duty of care. I would document the hell out of everything, though.
Compelling reasoning. Great piece.
This all makes sense but as a lifelong American I continue to be shocked at how the UK criminalizes expression and association. Whatever the organization has done, banning the expression of support for it is no different than criminalizing any statement that hurts a trans-identified person's feelings.
Yes, I don't like how that is worded either. It's one thing to ban financial or material or practical support for a terrorist organisation. That makes you complicit in the crimes they commit. My concern is that people could be arrested simply for saying the organisation should be allowed to exist or has good aims. They must be allowed to believe that and say it.
No right is an absolute. Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. Would you still feel the same if it is a society that promotes and protects, say pedophiles, and distributes manuals giving tips on how to lure children?
The “Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose” argument is the liberal one for protecting people’s right to believe, speak and live as they see fit provided it does no material harm to anyone else. In this case, the line is where verbally expressing support for the organisation ends and materially supporting it to do harm begins.
Words have consequences. You don’t get to say you think I’m a witch in Salem in the late 1600s and claim you’ve done no harm. Is Trump simply exercising his first amendment rights when he calls groups of people rapists and murderers and that they eat cats? Has he done no harm?
No, we can prosecute people for false accusations and hold politicians responsible for misleading the public.
Free speech is often the excuse used to mean you can say whatever comes into your head, falsely accuse whoever you want, shout fire in a crowded movie theatre. I’m still amazed that Obama has not seen fit to sue people who say he wasn’t born in the United States for libel. Free speech can mean whatever you want it to mean.
Well, not from me. I have spent the last 15 years settling out exactly what I mean by it and why it does not include anything that can expressed in words and how it ties into liberal principles of harm.
Yes. The benefits of free speech are three-fold:
1) We should protect individual liberty to hold ideas that others find appalling because we never know who is going to have the legal and social power to decide what is appalling and some ideas considered too appalling to be spoken in the past are now widely considered to be reasonable and acceptable - e.g., "Maybe God does not exist" & "It is OK to be gay."
2) We can only properly beat bad ideas and marginalise them if we can get at them and show them to be bad.
3) We can protect society better when we know what bad ideas are out there and how commonly they are held rather than forcing them into hiding.
The argument that some ideas are so bad they should be banned from being spoken can only convince those who believe that this makes bad ideas go away. Those who believe this only makes them harder to get at & defeat and that forcing them underground makes them more extreme and powerful can never be convinced by this.
I broadly agree with this, but I’d add that free speech isn’t just about protecting liberty or surfacing bad ideas—it’s about maintaining a healthy information environment. When speech is suppressed, bad ideas don’t disappear; they mutate in darker, less accountable spaces, where disinformation, grievance, and radicalisation reinforce each other without friction. At the same time, the answer can’t be a naive faith that all ideas are equal once aired. A society also has a responsibility to cultivate epistemic standards: truth-seeking, proportionality, and reality-based debate. Without those, free speech degrades into a battlefield where the loudest, most emotive, or most manipulative narratives dominate. What we’re seeing now isn’t a failure of free speech as such, but a failure to defend the conditions under which free speech actually produces understanding rather than chaos—which is what I explore in more depth in my essay.
https://open.substack.com/pub/brendenstrauss/p/a-new-relationship-with-our-rights?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer
Yes, absolutely.
Producing manuals to lure children would make it easier for the public and law enforcement to learn how predators are targeting children and thus how to better protect children.
This is actually already done. Schools require parents and volunteers to go through screening and training to ensure that they don't abuse children while volunteering for school events. Part of the training outlines common steps and tactics that predators can use for targeting children, thus making parents aware of actions to watch out for and alerting would-be predators to the fact that their tactics are already known.
Allowing people to expose their bad or immoral ideas is, historically, one of the primary strategic reasons for permitting free speech.
Does restricting their right to this speech actually protect children or is it to protect you (us) from being exposed to really unpleasant people?
Actually I would like to restrict the speech of people in public office using crude insults and lewd gestures in public to make political points.
used to be that their fear of public scorn and respect for decorum kept things civil. Unfortunately constituents and party leaders now indulge in nasty behavior.
Maybe politicians are suffering from reverse Benjamin Button syndrome. Old men are reverting to acting like spoilt toddlers throwing tantrums with swear words thrown in.
Concept Creep is the problem. Once you can ban some speech the move is to figure out how the speech you want to ban is that thing. Note this already happening with pedophilia whereby a 25 year old having sex with a 17 year old is commonly called pedophilia. Probably not something we want to encourage broadly, but not pedophilia. Note antisemitism is now just criticizing Israel and “white supremacy” is a bunch of things that aren't that. Questioning Islam is now "Islamaphobia" and believing in biological sex is "anti-trans" . The right also plays this game. Believe in single payer healthcare you are apparently a "Marxist".
Concept creep is human nature.
NAMBLA has the same free speech rights as anyone else but that doesn't mean that back in the day the Gay Liberation Movement let them take part. They tried and were rebuffed. The First Amendment survived.
I agree that it's a liberal stance to allow a hunger strike to continue to its grim conclusion if the participant is of sound mind. And if you oppose the goals of the hunger strike, it makes sense not to glorify the act and keep press coverage at a minimum: you don't want copycats.
I'm not sure what the liberal stance would be if one were sympathetic with the hunger strike. It isn't Corbyn's approach; that's disingenuous about the options at our disposal, but what would be the correct approach? Fight for the right to continue the strike, and then cover it extensively in the press?
Yes, as with forms of civil disobedience, if you are going to put yourself on the line for a cause and take the consequences, this can be a rational decision.
Hunger strikes in an environment of plenty are the ultimate compliment to society, which is assumed to be all-caring even by its protestors. You do not find group hunger strikes in poor starving countries. Hunger is forced onto these people. To force hunger and starvation on yourself is to take yourself hostage in exchange for your demands being met.
I'd be interested in your take on those eg New Age "breatharians" who come to believe they can survive without food, but other features of a delusional disorder aren't present. In a liberal society should they simply be allowed to continue at their own risk, or is that level of irrationality the sort of thing that requires paternalistic action?
I agree entirely that by contrast, political hunger strikers are making a fundamentally rational choice.
Hmmmm, interesting edge case. I don't know. The right to hold a false belief is generally protected even if it is harmful and force-feeding is an extreme form of coercion, so I think I'd be inclined to say that if they were not otherwise disordered and delusional & the reality has been presented & explained to them, we have to let them do it. More common is probably things like people believing they can cure their cancer with juices and coffee enemas and then dying of curable cancer. I think we have to let them.
There was a high profile cases recently with a couple who had both got into that fringe health stuff. "The Children Act" (film with Emma Thompson and Stanley Gucci) has a good treatment of the fully religious version (Jehovah's Witnesses).
Never give blackmailers what they want. Never, ever, ever.
If you think their lives are worth facing, then just force-feed them. They did it to the Suffragettes, they can do it to these guys.
No, it's not legal to force life-saving care including nutrition on people who have mental capacity and decline it. Since publishing, I have seen the law on this and it is very clear.
Well then let them die. I'm not even remotely conflicted—especially given the results of these past few years of giving in to trans activists who've been threatening suicide.
Blackmail is terrorism (terrorism in service of other terrorism, in the case of Palestine Action). Never negotiate with terrorists—especially never to save terrorists from themselves.
.
Agreed on minimizing media coverage, for roughly the same reason as other situations with copycat potential.
Helen I think you'd really love Kornerz. It's a space for thinkers, a social network where you find real people and meaningful conversations.
It feels like the kind of place you'd enjoy.
You can check it out at Kornerz.com.
The "appropriate" way to challenge rulings that outlaw effective protest against existential malfeasance is by any means available.
PS are you okay? Internal bleeding bad
I am recovering. Tests ongoing into potential posterior nosebleed or gastric ulcer. Reason so much of my blood left my circulatory system and ended up in my stomach is currently unknown. Indeed. Internal bleeding bad. Still get breathless and dizzy and go into cardio having a shower and then have to nap, but at least I can think now.
Heavens, this sounds terrifying. I wish I could offer some helpful advice but I am not a doctor and I presume you have seen a few of those recently … Get well soon! x
I agree with your overarching point, but have never been comfortable with the idea that the way the media reports something, including the amount of coverage they choose to give it, should be informed by anything other than the duty to inform. Then again, of course, taken to the extreme that principle would be unworkable and it is part of being a journalist that you make small moral choices every day about how you report things rather than just recklessly laying out all the facts. But if this should be a bigger story (I'm not saying it should), and is being downplayed to try to avoid a media circus which would increase the chances of the strikers taking their own lives ... in the abstract, I'm not sure how I feel about the duty to try to save life taking precedence over the duty to inform. However, were someone I loved one of the strikers, I would feel differently.
Yeah. I tried to get a balance there between what is in the public interest - the facts of the matter - and what is glorifying and glamorising a situation to the extent it could inspire copycats. Of course, I would be utterly opposed to censorship of any journalist or think piece writer who must make their own decisions. I think those who decide to report in a way that does not make it 'sexy' for the reasons I gave make a good decision, though. I don't agree the BBC has a duty to bring attention to their plight in the way the linked article suggests.
I agree with this summary.
What I find missing from much of the discussion is any serious attention to information ecology and incentive structures. Hunger strikes and similar tactics don’t emerge only from blocked legal pathways; they also arise in environments saturated with disinformation, moral absolutism, and social reward for maximalist gestures. When a movement systematically collapses complexity, erases Israeli and Palestinian lived realities alike, and frames self-destruction as virtue, the issue is no longer just autonomy versus state power but collective epistemic failure. In that context, refusing to negotiate is not merely about precedent—it’s about declining to reinforce a feedback loop where distorted narratives, radicalisation, and performative sacrifice are rewarded with attention and legitimacy. The tragedy, if deaths occur, would not only be individual but civilisational: a sign of how effectively chaos—whether ideological or strategic—can weaponise human bodies once meaning, nuance, and proportionality have been stripped from public life.
You can die for your cause. You cannot murder nor maim nor destroy for your cause.
Helen is not wrong here.
However she’s approaching the issue from the wrong premise in the case of these protestors. They are not under the same auspices or laws as the rest of us. They do not see our laws, our culture, as legitimate. Islam and Sharia law is supreme. Their ideology calls for and encourages martyrdom, murder and mayhem to further the cause.
Consequently by supporting this cause you’re effectively supporting murder, mayhem and destruction. It may be with good intentions and even inadvertently or through ignorance, but that’s not an excuse under our laws. Therefore, while you can choose to do so, your support must come with consequences.
Our laws do not prohibit people from saying they think Islam and Sharia are good. They may now prohibit saying they think the activist group, Palestine Action, is good. That doesn't advocate imposing Islam or Sharia and many of them are not Muslim and seem to support women's and LGBT rights in contravention of Sharia, but it does promote public disorder, anti-Zionism and destruction of property. It does not advocate violence but activists have been violent and it has been dismissive or callous about Islamist violence and anti-semitism. Therefore, verbally expressed support of it does include supporting some horrible things. The same reality around the benefits of free speech apply, however. We are still better off protecting it even for horrible ideas and we still beat bad ideas better when we can get at them and we are still better off knowing these ideas exist rather than forcing them into hiding to ambush us.
I’m a firm believer in allowing all speech, the more the better. But this isn’t just about speech was my point.
The people who support this group are in effect supporting the violence, mayhem and destruction this group advocates for and carries out. Claiming ignorance of their advocacy of this violence doesn’t excuse culpability in it. Because you’re a supporter of LGBTQ rights has little or nothing to do with anything.
Also, if we’re honest Palestine Action doesn’t view itself as coming under our laws. As I stated, Islam and Sharia are supreme for them. Consequently they couldn’t care less about our free speech laws. But they’re extremely happy we do, as we should. It serves their purposes for us to argue their case. Either way it won’t make a bit of difference to their acts of violence, they will continue.