The right to remain silent: A defence of liberty.

By Ellis Asher,

Image Edited, Image by Ferdinand Stöhr - Unsplash

The struggles against tyranny are self-evident, the virtue of liberty is not. It is the duty of those who understand the importance of liberty to fight for it, for those who don't understand its value cannot.

I have noticed that as of late it has become a mainstream trend to embrace authoritarian values, tradition and tribalism. This is happening via a wide spread rejection of liberty, the values of our freedoms and the ideals that were strived so hard to reach. A rather distressing trend if you ask me. It seems to be spreading globally, in some places more-so than others, but since all disaster movies take place in the US of A I think it's time we brits show that we are just as good at ruining our own country as we are at ruining other peoples.

The modern political climate is a large beast to tackle with generalisations, but who is David to Goliath? The unfortunate truth is that until the far future, the world must be shared with other people. As such, the goal of making the world a less scary place has been pursued for millennia, in a seeming push back against the sheer terror of existentialism.

It has always been my view that Liberty is perhaps the most fundamental right in this life, it's only competitor being the right to life but that seems to be an argument for another time.

If we have to examine what makes liberty the best thing to strive for then we should likely start with what we see as its counterpart, tyranny. In the same way that regulation and collectivism lead to tyranny liberty leads to anarchism. Neither extreme is palpable for a society as both anarchism and tyranny have inherent, self-evident flaws as they only function when examined from a very linear and subjective world view. So of course the better comparison would be to that of liberty and regulation, more moderate ideas, both considered culturally relevant.

However my reasons for writing this and my fears are that in this day and age, it has become acceptable for the extremes of tyranny to infringe upon the movements of regulation and collectivism, masquerading as moderate and “Free thinking” ideologies. For those of you who perhaps live in this peculiar world, I can assure you they are not.

When rioters storm cities in the name of safety, they don’t support regulation at all, they are actively engaging in the same tyranny that they wish to impose. In the same regard when rioters storm the same governments, they aren’t in favour of stricter regulations on any one thing, they are in favour of their flavour of tyranny taking control. Do not let the insolent and the outsiders define your movement as they will do so in a way that bolsters themselves with enemies, and their enemies with allies.

As someone interested in politics I try to open myself up to discussion, especially with those who I disagree. It isn’t hard to guess my affection for the ideals of liberty from the title and as such I spend time discussing the value of regulation with those who can see it, for I cannot, in the hope that I might. What you soon learn from talking to individuals can be boiled down to 2 things. People can be incredibly nuanced and intelligent, considering things you didn’t even know were issues, calmly explaining the struggles you are now aware of in an elegant and sophisticated manner and forwarding potential solutions. The other thing is that people are completely incompetent buffoons, myself especially. Seeing other peoples perspectives is a process that provides great value for little effort, siting and talking with someone honestly can allow you to see the challenges that lie outside your world view and alter your political stances accordingly, however as a society we have a tendency to group into cliques of ideologies and all of a sudden there are a select few ways of perceiving peoples lived experiences, we view each persons perspective, and their subsequent ideas, through a lens, intolerant to certain types of light that could be shed on a new outlook.

But discussions of tribalism are pretty much settled on “it’s bad”, yet it persists. For the evil of the world can be weaponised if simply controlled.

How to control and weaponize tribalism in 3 easy steps:

Step 1: Create tribes (known know as parties and ideologies)

Step 2: Control the tribes (politicians, celebrities and the media)

Step 3: Turn the tribes against each other (modern politics)

Repeat and you will find yourself in hell in no time, with parties created being over-hyped personality cults, the politicians who run them see the opportunity to gain either through corruption or by scoring points against the opposition and before you know it nobody dares stand alone, as the hoards rile each other in a cycle of political grand standing, the parties grow larger as nobody dare stand outside the protection of their party and all of a sudden the cycle becomes self-sustaining, in fact, it becomes more than self-sustaining, with a widening gap between the two named polarisation and all of a sudden the people who once stood in place of simple regulation, with ideas for the collective, become the extremes of tyranny.

This is the state of modern politics, and if you’ll allow me to go off on a tangent, I think this was an inevitable result of the system. You may hear political commentators refer to days of old as having a “social fabric”, and typically assign a “breaking of the social fabric” to their chosen election year in the 2000’s. This is probably somewhat true; however I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure. I was not around in the 90’s let alone the 80’s or earlier, so I can't attest to the existence of shared morals or values in our society, I was around for something called the migrant crisis however and I think the two may be linked.

When I was growing up, in a time after 9/11, people became worried about terror and migrants. with the war on terror having some very real casualties and the migrant crisis having an impact on issues that still plague us, namely Brexit. This aired a very negative undertone of society, and at times even a racist one.

This idea of a social fabric, or collective agreement, where everyone would agree to disagree in good faith now seems over romanticised to me, but even if it existed as a concept, like honour and virtue, then i think it may have played a part in stabilising and negating the process of polarisation by giving the society something to strive for. Probably as a result of the increase in technology or rather the change in culture that followed, I think we have begun to see the full effects of a volatile system with it's restraints off.

The modern political climate has given rise to a new wave of extremism on the cultural level, mainstream conservatism and liberalism is being ousted from Hollywood and silicon valley, you are either with your side or you are against them and my goodness, you best hope you aren't against them. Twitter is by far the best (and by that I mean worst) example of this, like a perfect experiment we can see what happens when you create a culture of reactionary extremism the "witch-hunt" mentality so prominent where if you disagree with what someone says, or dare speak for yourself you best be ready to face the consequences. Ads on shows pulled, arrests made, lives ruined. It's disgusting that such an un-ethical experiment could be performed on such a massive scale, on a living, breathing society.

I remember watching Dr. Who as a kid, and if I'm honest, it is still one of my guilty pleasures. I remember an episode titled "midnight" where after a shapeless alien villain starts speaking through one of the passengers on a (space-y) bus. The 9 or so people on board are left mostly unharmed for the remainder of the run time. The uncertainty is what motivates them, speculation and hear-say are seen as fact while those who state facts, however unfortunate, are seen as dissenting from the collective good. This episode shows a slow turn of the passengers upon one another, as people dare not contradict what the more assertive group members say. This episodes villain was people, and demonstrated the dangers than can lie within when we as a group start acting in the interest of charismatic leaders. This is liberty's death, when a culture, a society, communities, politics and technology are turning against the moderate outliers, which we all know to be the majority, what you are experiencing is the first steps of tyranny. I'm not particularly pointing fingers, I'm not naming names. We are all equally responsible for allowing a system of polarising partisanism to consume the upper-echelons of public relations, by allowing it to seep into our lives, our conversations with our friends, our culture, by doing this we partake.

So, solutions? Well, the solution to cultural tyranny is the same as the solution to all tyranny, talk. Free thoughts and ideas kill extremism as when the silent majority of normal, sane and rational people speak, they speak to the masses, and they always win. Tangent aside, extremism is only one of the threats against liberty in todays climate, the more nuanced notion is liberty's real counterpart, not the extremes of cultural tyranny but rather the moderate view of regulation. I have significant respect for the supporters of regulation as most of the reasons for the argument boil down to wanting to help as many people as possible, keeping putting safety and comfort as a priority. These are obviously things to strive for in a civilised nation, which is why so many institutions have them as key values. However without liberty I'd argue there is a significant redundancy, advocates of increasing regulation fail to realise that safety isn't just violated by individuals, but also by the state and our beloved institutions.

In 2016, in the UK, 3,300 people were detained and questioned for things they said online. In some parts of Britain the arrest rate for offensive speech has risen by nearly 900% in recent years. In 2017 The Times reported that in the police were arresting "nine people a day" "for posting allegedly offensive messages online."

I don't want to have to worry that I am going to be arrested for criticising the wrong people, the wrong company or the wrong government, that is a terrifying notion, and not one of comfort or safety to me at all.

It is a well established fact that if you give any institution, especially a government, the power to arrest people for speech, they will use that power to cull their critiques from the public space. Maybe not this government, maybe not the next, heck, I'd like to think that it wouldn't happen in this country at all, but eventually a government will come along that will have to motive to do so, and they will remain in power far longer than the governments before because their supporters will be the only ones allowed to talk.

The problem isn't that regulating speech, or regulating our day to day lives is harmful, it's that it allows it to be harmful. In trying to future proof our lives from ourselves we would allow a door way into them for all of the tyranny our society can funnel though the existing systems of power.

If this sounds Orwellian to you then good, because it's what's happening right now in this country under our very noses.

What can we do about it then? Talk.

Talk to MPs, as long as there is a large portion of the population, or rather the vote, interested in their right to speech then you will have a base to build off.

Talk to the proponents of speech regulation, explain to them how dangerous an idea it is.

And listen, because if you cannot fully understand why someone would trade in these rights then you have little chance of them helping you fight for them.

If you would allow me I would like to dissect some arguments I've heard recently. Firstly that "freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence". Proprietors of this argument have either misunderstood the fundamentals of freedom of speech or perfectly understand and are intending to use censorship to quell dissent to their other ideals. This is an immediate red-flag either way.

Freedom of speech is the base of the liberty movement, it is loosely defined as the right to express your self, your opinions and your beliefs however you deem, as offensive or as polite as you see fit. There are however, as with all rights, responsibilities to this. In exchange for this right you have to also allow others their freedom of speech. This means that anyone can say anything without fear of tyrannical intervention.

Over time the value of this has lessened, as the memory of societies who lacked this fundamental and strayed into the depths of cruelty as a result have faded. What we have is a re-negotiation. By claiming this as a right we trade our ability to not be offended for the knowledge that we will never be locked up for our own speech.

Arguments such as "speech causes harm", which is not only false but obviously false, have been allowed to rise. The re-negotiation has begun and we must ensure that we keep this right.

However... The UK doesn't technically have this right.

The Public Order Act of 1986 makes it a criminal offence to cause alarm or distress, there are several communications acts that regulate speech digitally and

When asked via parliament petition the government made the following statement; "The Government is committed to upholding free speech, and legislation is already in place to protect these fundamental rights. However, this freedom cannot be an excuse to cause harm or spread hatred." Freedom of speech extends to all speech, ALL speech, like it or not. There is a valid argument that certain things such as a call for action may put partial responsibility on the people doing so as a form of verbal contract, a demand, rather than a statement or question as it is actively requesting services. In the same way hiring an assassin to murder someone is a call to an illegal action and an illegal transaction for a morally and legally wrong service.

The governments response to this is lacking and ambiguous at best, and at worst it is down right stupid. As an aspiring journalist with plenty of political opinions it is hard to believe that some thing as dangerous as "consequences" which translates directly to actual violence can be used to suppress speech that isn't liked. All of this before we dive into the potential for tyranny laws like this pose.

My speech shouldn't come with "consequences" and neither should yours.

Slippery Slopes

The heart of arguments for liberty in law centre around two principles. Firstly, that governments are generally just as, if not more corruptible and inefficient as other systems, such as markets, which there is goodness knows how much evidence in favour of. The second principle centres around the idea that right exist in nature, where you can do literally anything you want at all times, and that the government takes some of those rights away to form a functioning society.

Whilst this does sound like a pretty decent advertisement for regulation, this is nearly never the argument made by people in favour of it, who oppose liberty in law and claim that it is the government that provides us with our rights.

This is a debate that was pretty big during the 1700's, and the ideas surrounding natural rights inspired most, if not all the founding fathers of the US.

However, subsequent additions to their laws seem rather counter-intuitive to this principle.

A Brief Summary:

As I emphasised prior, I am a strong believer in the power of speech, and a strong defender of liberty in laws, and I believe that it partly due to the influence this carries in our quite free British legislature that I can indulge in conversation with peoples that both agree and disagree so commonly, and not fear severe repercussions.

However, due to the nature of governments, and peoples electing governments who confiscate our freedoms for dull promises, I think this will be a likely perpetual discourse, and that is okay. As, and this may just me being optimistic, but in the bounds of a civil discourse, for some reason, freedom may continue to prevail.