OF CABBAGES AND KINGS | When ‘Free Speech’ Is No Longer ‘Free’… And The Rising Peril Of ‘Deplatforming’ | Farrukh Dhondy

“Abandonment on the cross gave rise

To the great religion of hope

So can all abandoned ones surmise

That within it there’s still some scope…

For a small revival -- though it may be best

That the transgressor go her ways…

Is this not a spiritual test

To bring light to these darkest days?”

From Aaj Hi Bhaaji, by Bachchoo

As those of us who possess a dictionary know, the word “free” has two meanings – “without a price” and “unconfined”. The phrase “free speech” originally meant the latter -- unconfined expression -- but today it seems to have picked up connotations of the former -- having a price.

How? The French police have raided the Paris headquarters of Elon Musk’s X, the social media platform with its AI branch Grok, which charges users to create pornographic pictures of children and women without their consent.

France, and now the UK, allege that X is guilty of the violation of security and the promotion of Holocaust-denying pro-Nazi propaganda.

The prosecution could mean the closure of X and Grok in these countries, or perhaps a climbdown by Musk, who could filter usage on the platform and its mechanisms to exclude potentially criminal content.

What X’s spokespersons plead is that their content and AI nude-making devices are there in the interests of “free speech” and the prosecution by France and Britain is “politically motivated”. This is abject hypocrisy as the people who access these nasty Grok mechanisms pay for them.

Free, at a price?

And as for “politically motivated”, it certainly may be, as both countries have legal strictures against Holocaust-denial propaganda and there certainly could be some political motivation in investigating fascist-apologist stuff from X’s owner who raised his arm, for all the world to see, in a Nazi salute at a Donald Trump political rally.

This shibboleth of “free speech” has now become a rallying cry of right-wing and ultra-right-wing publications, politicians and parties. A right-wing British weekly called The Spectator’s present editor is the ex-Tory Cabinet minister Michael Gove. His magazine, no doubt in the interests of “free speech”, recently published a feature interview with the criminal misogynist brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who have sought refuge from the 26 cases of rape and abuse which they face if they return to the UK. They are proven traffickers of vulnerable young women and see themselves as the influencers of a new masculinity which champions extreme misogyny on social platforms which have built up a vast following of young men.

The interview in Gove’s magazine was nothing short of an advertisement for these unpleasant criminals… And then Gove also ran a piece by some woman who calls herself Bonnie Blue and claims to hold the world record for having sex with 1,057 men in a single day. Her piece wasn’t an explanation of why she had sought notoriety with this demented stunt. It wasn’t in any sense enlightening and as far as I remember could have been about affection for her pet dog -- or for Michael Gove, for that matter.

Each week in this publication a fellow called Toby Young -- who has now been elevated to the House of Lords by the Tory establishment -- who runs an outfit which he calls “The Free Speech Union” writes a column. Apart from boring readers with accounts of visits to games his favourite football team plays, or some confessions about drink or abstinence, he writes in support of people who have been stopped from speaking on some platform or the other.

His diatribes are always in favour of someone who has been “deplatformed” because of their denial of transgenderism or their support for the present Israeli government and its actions in Gaza. Fair enough. These platforms, usually in universities, should be open to all views as long as they don’t violate the British law against hate speech which prohibits the instigating of violence towards individuals or groups.

The name of the Free Speech Union suggests that it is a voice of liberalism and a necessary watchdog within any democracy. It isn’t. Its mission is the defence of right-wing views and the unrelenting denigration of anything Lord Toby deems to be leftist or “woke” objections to nasty and provocative right-wing stances.

I would put his “free speech” conviction to the test. There was recently in Adelaide, Australia, a storm in a literary teacup. The Palestinian writer Randa Abdel-Fattah, scheduled to appear at the city’s literary week, was, at the last minute, cancelled.

Jewish groups and politicians brought about the cancellation, claiming that she should not be invited as the memory of the massacre at Bondi Beach by anti-Zionists was still raw. Dozens of writers, including Zadie Smith, thought the association of Randa with events at Bondi Beach was ridiculous and walked out, causing the mid-January event to be cancelled. Would Lord Toby’s Union have opposed the ban on Randa Abdel-Fattah?

Unlikely, as it emerged that she had in posts and pronouncements expressed enthusiastic approval of the massacre and hostage-taking of civilian Israelis in October 2023. She’d also called in 2024 and later for the “deplatforming” of writers Ayan Hirsi Ali, American columnist Thomas L. Friedman and the pro-Israeli musician Deborah Conway. A cancelled pro-canceller?

Lord Toby would, without a doubt, have opposed the cancellations that Abdel-Fattah called for. But would he campaign against the cancellation of herself?

Was Rome built…

Free Speech for Nasty Right-Wing Views Union?