Chalk Talk #2: Is censorship ever justified?
Here are the results of the second Chalk Talk along with the posted essay.
Why defend speech we hate? Why defend speech that suggests I ought to lose some of my rights?
Two philosophers present useful arguments for why censorship is never justified; J.S. Mill and John Rawls. Mill argues in On Liberty, that “if all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” For Mill, being part of the majority opinion doesn’t guarantee that your judgment is true. The need for exposure to diverse opinions is two-fold; we need a voice of doubt to challenge our ideas and encourage growth, but we also need to know our opponents’ views in debate to present the strongest argument against them. It is in my best interest to hear those unsettling opinions because at least then I know who in the room hates me and I know how to challenge them effectively if I choose to do so.
In A Theory of Justice, Rawls describes the hypothetical Original Position where a person knows nothing about their circumstances or place in society; in the Original Position, a rational person would not agree to a conception of justice that doesn’t maximize the basic liberties of every individual as that risks jeopardizing their rights once they leave the Original Position. Imagine I agreed that the majority could censor speech they dislike in the Original Position, but then it turned out that the majority hated my speech. In this situation, I foolishly assumed I would be in the majority and allowed for my basic freedom of conscience to be restricted. Since I don’t want to be censored, I must extend the freedom of speech to others to protect my own—I would be a tyrant if I acted otherwise.
If I don’t defend speech I hate—that is, speech I find offensive or wrong—and instead, I propose hate speech should be illegal, I am suggesting that others ought to lose some of their rights. I am narrowing my scope of justice to those who agree with me in direct response to being morally excluded; fighting fire with fire and further degrading the freedom of speech as a principle. Will anyone defend my right to free speech if I do not also defend theirs? A quote I love from the feminist poet June Jordan is, “Freedom is indivisible, and either we are working for freedom or you are working for the sake of your self-interests and I am working for mine.” To be short, conservative people have human rights, too. We cannot advocate for criminalizing speech we disagree with or that hurts our feelings without opening the door to self-censorship.
“But that’s not hate speech; hate speech is harmful—it’s dangerous,” you might say. Except, don’t we all find certain ideas harmful and dangerous? As of today, there have been 527 anti-trans bills considered across the US in 2024, and I’m angry about it. I believe these bills are dangerous and wrong, but they also reveal that a portion of the population believes being trans, and talking about queer identities, is harmful and dangerous. The question of who is to say what is and isn’t harmful speech is a question about who is in power, not who is correct. There is no person we can all trust to decide what should be censored. It is precisely because our words contain so much power, to persuade and to harm, that they cannot be silenced. Harmful speech must be heard and actively discredited in order to lose its power. Censorship is driven by the fear of ideas, but that fear only serves to make those ideas more powerful; censoring only further radicalizes the silenced. We must be brave enough to fight back. We have to win the game rather than flip the table.