Free speech under attack - time to speak out in its defense

According to The Economist, June 4^th-10^th, 2016, p. 9., free speech is under attack and it's time to speak out in its defense.

Free speech is under attack in three ways:

First, repression by governments has increased.  Several countries have reimposed cold-war controls or introduced new ones.  Russia under Vladimir Putin is an example of cold-war controls.  China under Xi Jinping is an example of introducing new control.

Second, a worrying number of non-state actors are enforcing censorship by assassination.  Reporters in Mexico who investigate crime and corruption are often murdered.  Jihadists slaughter those they think have insulted their faith.  French cartoonists are gunned down in their offices.  The jihadists hurt Muslims more than any others, not least by making it harder for them to have an honest discussion about how to organize their societies.

Third, the idea has spread that people and groups have a right not to be offended.  This may sound innocuous.  Politeness is a virtue, after all.  But if I have a right not to be offended, that means someone must police what you say about me, or about the things I hold dear, such as my ethnic group, religion, or even political beliefs.  Since offence is subjective, the power to police is both vast and arbitrary.

Nevertheless, many students in America and Europe believe that someone should exercise it.  Some retreat into the absolutism of identity politics, arguing that men have no right to speak about feminism nor whites to speak about slavery.  Others have blocked thoughtful, well-known speakers, such as Condoleezza Rice and Ayaan Hirsi Ali from being heard on campus.

Concern for the victims of discrimination is laudable.  And student protest is often, it itself, an act of free speech.  But university is a place is a place where students are supposed to learn how to think.  That mission is impossible if uncomfortable ideas are off limits.  And protest can easily stray into preciousness:  the University of California, for example, suggests that is a racist “micro-aggression” to say that “America is a land of opportunity”, because it could be taken to imply that those who do not succeed have only themselves to blame.

Intolerance among Western liberals also has wholly unintended consequences.  Even despots know that locking up mouthy but non-violent dissidents is disreputable.  Nearly all countries have laws that protect freedom of speech.  So authoritarians are always looking for respectable sounding excuses to trample on it.  National security is one,  Russia recently sentenced a blogger five years in prison for promoting “extremism”, after he criticized Russian policy in Ukraine.  China locks up campaigners for Tibetan independence for “inciting ethnic hatred; Saudi Arabia flogs blasphemers; Indians can be jailed for up to three years for promoting disharmony “on grounds of religion, race…caste…or any other ground whatsoever.”

The threat to free speech on Western campuses is very different from that faced by atheists in Afghanistan or democrats in China.  But when progressive thinkers agree that offensive words should be censored, it helps authoritarian regimes to justify their own much harsher restrictions and intolerant religious groups their violence.  When human-rights campaigners object to what is happening under repressive regimes, despots can point out that liberal democracies such as France and Spain also criminalize those who “glorify” or “defend” terrorism, and that many Western countries make it a crime to insult a religion or to incite racial hatred.