Not a lot of response to this simple cheap crowd protest organised campaign. In general I agree we need a more active movement to promote the core liberal values that are both taken fir granted but have also slipped up badly. And I like this idea because it would take some but really very little organising. Thanks Helen.
An intriguing proposal. I would love to be proved wrong, but I think the number of principled free speech advocates -- those who strongly believe in protection of all speech regardless of viewpoint expressed and their personal feelings on the topic-- are too low to make this effective. But I want to be proved wrong! Only one way to find out - by actually doing it.
Thinking of logistics. Perhaps starting with a webpage where the principles/action plan are set out clearly and people can sign up and once signups reach a critical mass there can be a daily controversial statement (the frequency can be changed) issued to everyone to publish on all their social media platforms/blogs etc.
I am reminded of the scene in An American Werewolf in London where David McNaughton's character is trying to get arrested in Trafalgar Square because a full moon is coming and he doesn't want to harm everyone else. "Queen Elizabeth is a man! Prince Charles is a fag! Winston Churchill was full of shit! Shakespeare's French! Fuck! Shit!"
I'm not in England, but just imagine a Million Brit March in which hundreds of thousands of Brits screamed aloud that transwomen were men and Emma Watson is a men's rights activist and even Satan won't sleep with Nigel Farage. That the Labour Party is Fascist and Pakistani Muslims shouldn't babysit your daughters. It would make one bastard of a point!
Hi Helen. Your proposed campaign would be disruptive but nothing that is effective won't be. The disruption will, one hopes, be relatively brief as the UK world rebalances toward freedom.
I'm not in UK so have no feel for how practical the proposal is, but it is a start. As a true liberal, you're reluctant to disrupt which is usually fine, but UK may be past the point where non-disruptive, freedom-positive change is possible. Good Luck!
I’m sorry HP, but the right have long corralled free speech as their issue, regardless of the fact, as you say, they’re only interested in it when it’s saying something they agree with. I’m afraid the political reality is that rallying around free speech is a non-starter.
But what about reasonableness? If we were to push reasonable discourse as a British response to Russian and Chinese attempts to set us against each other, might that have legs? I mean it would take some branding, but if we unimpeachably pull up all sides for aggressive nonsense, for branding dissent as far right, for calling anyone fascists save actual fascists, for blanket condemnation of all young male migrants, then we might be able to push the debate in a decent direction.
This is surely too naive but, despite the lack of enthusiasm for your campaign proposal here, isn’t it fairly simple for us or « someone » to 1. frame the purpose of the campaign clearly (you’ve already done that) and 2. invite anyone and everyone to re-post their own fresh versions of « speech we hate but etc »; that is NOT just RTing eg this video of Andrew’s, plus I guess 3. some coordination of selection of previously prosecuted words to provide that safety in numbers for the online campaigners. Just saying!! … 4. might be to routinely and provocatively draw public and authorities’ attention to what was illegal, so why not now prosecute 500 miscreants!!
I think it would a simple campaign, yes. I also feel sure we must be able to get a significant number of people to engage. I refuse to believe that gender critical feminists and anti-immigration activists can organise themselves and defenders of free speech cannot. It's just a matter of getting a load of liberal individualists to cooperate. The "herding cats" cliche comes to mind.
Herding cats is right. AD’s way is not to herd but just lead the way and let us cats follow — in small but sufficient purposeful and then growing numbers. But we can’t all do the high quality videos AD does, so we’d need a simpler template or two as the frame for what we post more simply.
… I’m old and unskilled at this, but it surely wouldn’t take long to chat with eg AD and/or invite a few creative ideas for campaign name, icon (to attach to profile pic and posts), and guide to basic best ways to do it (AD must already have those in mind).
I know that there are the usual factional groups pro this or the other meanings of liberal. But wouldn’t those organisations agree with the main central tenet and be worth contacting maybe?
Thank you very much for your article, Helen. I completely agree with the thrust of your argument and the need to go on the front foot regarding freedom of speech in the UK.
As you rightly say, we have a number of organisations in the UK that defend freedom of speech. We have the Free Speech Union, Academics for Academic Freedom, Students for Academic Freedom, Big Brother Watch, Humanists UK, Amnesty International UK, Open Rights Group, Index on Censorship, Together and English PEN. There may well be others too.
In addition to the above, we have a number of media outlets (e.g Spiked) and event organisers (e.g Academy of Ideas) that regularly defend freedom of speech.
These organisations vary widely in the level of attention they give to freedom of speech in the UK (many of them cover multiple issues, not just free speech), and they also differ with respect to the conception of free speech they defend (some favour alignment with the US, others favour the EU or UN).
I cannot think of a single UK organisation which lobbies specifically for content-neutrality. This may present a unique opportunity for unifying voices and multiplying forces. Whilst the organisations above differ on the issue of free speech, they do nonetheless represent a network of advocates for free speech writ large that could be used to amplify your message. The great strength of content-neutrality is its manifest political impartiality. A movement centred on this principle is an extremely exciting prospect and one which I have been longing to hear in the UK.
Your suggested campaign is an interesting idea - and I’m sure there will be people within the network of free speech advocates, as well as campaigners more broadly, who can brainstorm with you on how to achieve cut-through.
I sincerely hope you can be the driving force for a content-neutral conception of free speech in the UK, and I look forward to hearing more from you about this topic.
Liberalism's leitmotif is about living free from fear. Necessarily that entails not living in fear of a knock on the door from the police.
The states leitmotif is control lest its agents lose their privileged place in society. Making rules for others is addictive. Engineering society, for our gauleiter establishment, is a moral mission.
We do need a popular movement to tell the state to back off.
Not a lot of response to this simple cheap crowd protest organised campaign. In general I agree we need a more active movement to promote the core liberal values that are both taken fir granted but have also slipped up badly. And I like this idea because it would take some but really very little organising. Thanks Helen.
An intriguing proposal. I would love to be proved wrong, but I think the number of principled free speech advocates -- those who strongly believe in protection of all speech regardless of viewpoint expressed and their personal feelings on the topic-- are too low to make this effective. But I want to be proved wrong! Only one way to find out - by actually doing it.
Thinking of logistics. Perhaps starting with a webpage where the principles/action plan are set out clearly and people can sign up and once signups reach a critical mass there can be a daily controversial statement (the frequency can be changed) issued to everyone to publish on all their social media platforms/blogs etc.
Ooh, yes. I like that.
I am reminded of the scene in An American Werewolf in London where David McNaughton's character is trying to get arrested in Trafalgar Square because a full moon is coming and he doesn't want to harm everyone else. "Queen Elizabeth is a man! Prince Charles is a fag! Winston Churchill was full of shit! Shakespeare's French! Fuck! Shit!"
I'm not in England, but just imagine a Million Brit March in which hundreds of thousands of Brits screamed aloud that transwomen were men and Emma Watson is a men's rights activist and even Satan won't sleep with Nigel Farage. That the Labour Party is Fascist and Pakistani Muslims shouldn't babysit your daughters. It would make one bastard of a point!
Hi Helen. Your proposed campaign would be disruptive but nothing that is effective won't be. The disruption will, one hopes, be relatively brief as the UK world rebalances toward freedom.
I'm not in UK so have no feel for how practical the proposal is, but it is a start. As a true liberal, you're reluctant to disrupt which is usually fine, but UK may be past the point where non-disruptive, freedom-positive change is possible. Good Luck!
I’m sorry HP, but the right have long corralled free speech as their issue, regardless of the fact, as you say, they’re only interested in it when it’s saying something they agree with. I’m afraid the political reality is that rallying around free speech is a non-starter.
But what about reasonableness? If we were to push reasonable discourse as a British response to Russian and Chinese attempts to set us against each other, might that have legs? I mean it would take some branding, but if we unimpeachably pull up all sides for aggressive nonsense, for branding dissent as far right, for calling anyone fascists save actual fascists, for blanket condemnation of all young male migrants, then we might be able to push the debate in a decent direction.
The left does claim to do so, but it has a tendency to see half the population as having views that should never be expressed, e.g. More In Common https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/our-work/research/progressive-activists/
Maybe Andrew Doyle is already leading the way for the new campaign, Helen!!
https://open.substack.com/pub/andrewdoyle/p/the-uks-war-on-free-speech
Oh, yes! He has long been doing so!
This is surely too naive but, despite the lack of enthusiasm for your campaign proposal here, isn’t it fairly simple for us or « someone » to 1. frame the purpose of the campaign clearly (you’ve already done that) and 2. invite anyone and everyone to re-post their own fresh versions of « speech we hate but etc »; that is NOT just RTing eg this video of Andrew’s, plus I guess 3. some coordination of selection of previously prosecuted words to provide that safety in numbers for the online campaigners. Just saying!! … 4. might be to routinely and provocatively draw public and authorities’ attention to what was illegal, so why not now prosecute 500 miscreants!!
I think it would a simple campaign, yes. I also feel sure we must be able to get a significant number of people to engage. I refuse to believe that gender critical feminists and anti-immigration activists can organise themselves and defenders of free speech cannot. It's just a matter of getting a load of liberal individualists to cooperate. The "herding cats" cliche comes to mind.
Herding cats is right. AD’s way is not to herd but just lead the way and let us cats follow — in small but sufficient purposeful and then growing numbers. But we can’t all do the high quality videos AD does, so we’d need a simpler template or two as the frame for what we post more simply.
… I’m old and unskilled at this, but it surely wouldn’t take long to chat with eg AD and/or invite a few creative ideas for campaign name, icon (to attach to profile pic and posts), and guide to basic best ways to do it (AD must already have those in mind).
I know that there are the usual factional groups pro this or the other meanings of liberal. But wouldn’t those organisations agree with the main central tenet and be worth contacting maybe?
Thank you very much for your article, Helen. I completely agree with the thrust of your argument and the need to go on the front foot regarding freedom of speech in the UK.
As you rightly say, we have a number of organisations in the UK that defend freedom of speech. We have the Free Speech Union, Academics for Academic Freedom, Students for Academic Freedom, Big Brother Watch, Humanists UK, Amnesty International UK, Open Rights Group, Index on Censorship, Together and English PEN. There may well be others too.
In addition to the above, we have a number of media outlets (e.g Spiked) and event organisers (e.g Academy of Ideas) that regularly defend freedom of speech.
These organisations vary widely in the level of attention they give to freedom of speech in the UK (many of them cover multiple issues, not just free speech), and they also differ with respect to the conception of free speech they defend (some favour alignment with the US, others favour the EU or UN).
I cannot think of a single UK organisation which lobbies specifically for content-neutrality. This may present a unique opportunity for unifying voices and multiplying forces. Whilst the organisations above differ on the issue of free speech, they do nonetheless represent a network of advocates for free speech writ large that could be used to amplify your message. The great strength of content-neutrality is its manifest political impartiality. A movement centred on this principle is an extremely exciting prospect and one which I have been longing to hear in the UK.
Your suggested campaign is an interesting idea - and I’m sure there will be people within the network of free speech advocates, as well as campaigners more broadly, who can brainstorm with you on how to achieve cut-through.
I sincerely hope you can be the driving force for a content-neutral conception of free speech in the UK, and I look forward to hearing more from you about this topic.
Liberalism's leitmotif is about living free from fear. Necessarily that entails not living in fear of a knock on the door from the police.
The states leitmotif is control lest its agents lose their privileged place in society. Making rules for others is addictive. Engineering society, for our gauleiter establishment, is a moral mission.
We do need a popular movement to tell the state to back off.