The concept of ‘free speech’ is woefully misunderstood by right-wing commentators, and it’s reducing political discourse to mush.
Take Laurence Fox, the man no-one had heard of until the BBC helpfully underscored him with the words ‘Actor and Musician’ (no, me neither). After telling a mixed-race woman that she was being racist for daring to talk about the Megan vs Kate media bias, he went off and schmoozed every lunchtime presenter on British TV, all of whom praised him as ‘brave’ and ‘outspoken’. He said ‘woke culture’ was the death of free speech- while getting platformed across the entire British media as a reward for saying something ill-informed on Question Time.
Lorain Kelly, Jeremy Vine, that other one, they all loved him. Sitting there pretending to have thought about the topic for more than ten seconds, they would lament and bemoan the loss of free speech to the PC woke brigade who can’t STAND anyone with a different opinion.
You will have heard this line a lot on the right:
“Why can’t you accept that people have different opinions to you?”
“Are you seriously saying that because I don’t agree with you, I’m somehow in the wrong?”
“I’m entitled to my opinion”
Out of context, these lines of retort are completely innocuous, were they in response to a fight about the best pasta shape. But as a response to criticism of outrageous ignorance, they’re absolutely infuriating.
If someone tells me that BAME people shouldn’t be listened to on the topic of race, and I don’t want to be friends with that person anymore, and they respond with “oh, just because I have a different opinion we can’t be friends”, then they have completely missed the point. Disagreeing on things that materially impact people's lives, things like racism, class, and gender discrimination, isn’t quite the same as disagreeing on a flavour of ice cream, or your favourite film. I’m not shunning you simply because you have a different opinion, I’m shunning you because your opinion is shit, you see? I'm not saying you shouldn't be allowed to chat bollocks, only pointing out that what you're saying is, in fact, bollocks.
On his final victory lap of studio couches, Stunning and Brave Laurence appeared on GMB to face Arch Anti-Vegan and Squashed-Grapefruit Lookalike, Piers Morgan. Morgan, in an uncharacteristically erudite line of questioning, confronted him with something he'd said about the film 1917, specifically its choice to include a Sikh soldier in the British regiment the film depicts. You see, just days earlier, in a wild frenzy of free speech, Laurence had called this choice ‘institutional racism’.
Morgan asked him the quite reasonable question of how it was racist to include a Sikh soldier in a war that featured Sikh soldiers. This is where Laurence fell apart. He couldn’t explain how it was racist, because it wasn’t, nor would he apologize. Instead he launched into a rant about, you guessed it, ‘free speech’. He rambles on about how he has the right to say what he said, and if other people don’t agree then they’re just being ‘woke’ etc etc. He failed entirely to engage with the argument on any level. No one there said he shouldn’t be allowed to say it, all they did was question what he said, and point out that it was actually just wrong. He likes to defend his right to say what he wants, but can't defend what he actually says.
In perhaps his most cringe-worthy appearance of the week (the whole Laurence Fox thing lasted about a week), Laurence went on Jeremy Vine to share his feelings on just how silenced and oppressed he had become through the art of song.
They have put something in the water
They seek a cure for the conversation
They stole a march on your indecision
And the first to fall is laughter
They seek to murder your opinion
Laurence Fox- Distance
Laurence Fox sees any challenge leveled against what he says as an attempt to 'murder his opinion'.
To give one more example (because I can't help myself), Darren Grimes- love child of Nigel Farage and a white Freddo- is similarly prone to misunderstanding free speech. With one out of every three tweets feverishly stating his resistance to ‘woke culture’, and batting down any criticism of his views, beliefs, or statements of untruths with this same tired argument about his right to say what he wants. Never engaging with the substance of the criticism, only disregarding it by labeling it an 'attack on his right to an opinion'.
What these people don’t seem to understand is that people critical of their arguments are not ‘shutting down free speech’, but adding their own free speech. The right to say something stupid doesn’t mean other people have to pretend its not stupid. That’s free speech.
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