The Debatable Right
to Free Speech
(Human Rights Series Part 1)
The United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, Article 19 states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion
and expression; this right includes freedom to… receive and impart information
and ideas through any media.” Sounds completely reasonable, until you realise
that the first item returned on a Google search ‘Did the holocaust happen?’ is ‘Top
10 reasons why the holocaust didn’t happen’ published on the anti-Semitic, hate
speech website Stormfront.org. Is
that an opinion which has a right to dissemination through any media and
regardless of frontiers?
I find holocaust denial a very compelling
case because it’s not just an aberrant opinion; it’s an opinion that makes very
specific claims about historical reality. That the Nazis killed six million
Jews is an undeniable fact, and to deny it is to make specific claims about
reality. If even the most basic research shows that holocaust denial is
demonstrably false, why bother to proscribe it? My argument is that even easily
falsifiable facts may be more harmful that mere opinions. If you post an article
about why you personally hate Jews, it’s obvious to any reader that it’s just
your opinion. However, opinions become something a lot more dangerous when they
distort facts to try and win converts. It’s facts rather than opinions that
need protection sometimes.
Donald Trump told a great many lies in his
presidential campaign. Not strongly worded opinions, or political doublespeak,
but out and out lies. The most notorious of these lies was the promise to build
a border wall and make Mexico pay for it. If he merely expresses the opinion
that the US government should make more effort to seal the border with Mexico, that’s
his right. The problem is that he made appeal to actual real-world facts. He
made a promise to do something which cannot actually be done. You can’t
actually force another country to pay for your public works. But the lie is
told, the seed is planted in people’s heads and the harm is done. The same
might be said about the claims which were pushed by the Leave campaign in
Britain.
I don’t really mean to get political, but these
events do highlight the fact that increasing numbers of people are being duped
by claims that could easily have been falsified. Fake news is the hot topic of the day, but it’s
really just the extreme version of various forms of counterfactual and spurious
claims which float freely around the internet. See the anti-vaccination
movement for another example. My question is; what should be done about
it? Should these sorts of falsehoods be
allowed to survive?
I don’t have an answer. I just want to
start the discussion. Maybe governments should start by banning fake news. Maybe
politicians should be censured for making claims that are demonstrably false. Does
the internet need some kind of watchdog? Or is it simply up to us to educate
future generations so that they are less susceptible to BS? Let’s just hope it’s
not too late by then.
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