‘Why Are We Constantly Fighting About Free Speech?’

In 2015, I travelled to China and was talking about my previous book, The Origins of Sex. They translated it into Chinese. I was just blown away by the apparatus of censorship there. It’s a totalitarian dictatorship where everything, even online, is scrubbed clean all the time. I met lots of wonderful intellectuals who explained to me how the system works; that nothing can be published in any medium without permission. In those days, India was quite a free society by comparison. After I came back, I thought, I believe in free speech and everywhere that I’ve lived, people believe in free speech. Yet, we are constantly fighting about it. Why is that? As a historian, I knew it’s quite a recent idea. There are lots of older ideas of free speech, but the way we think about it now is quite recent. So, the modern idea that everyone has a right to speak out about matters of public concern is invented only in the 18th century. Until the 18th century, in every culture around the world, including India, China and Europe, they understand two very important things about speech, which are true.

One, speech is an action in the world. Every kind of speech act is meant to do something. To convince another person, to entertain them, to make them fall in love, to make them vote for you, etc. Second, most of the time, it’s a fleeting action but sometimes it can be harmful. And particularly, it can be harmful if it is untrue. If you spread lies, then you can harm individuals. Slandering and defaming, telling people lies about someone else in the past, as in the present, is really harmful to them. And, it can be harmful to the community as well. If you spread medical misinformation about vaccines, or elections, that’s extremely dangerous. So, for that reason, all cultures regulate its speech quite strictly. There are some boundaries. And individuals are constantly going to court to defend their good name, and so on. What is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea explains why that happens, and then how it comes to the present.