Reading recommendations on the topic of free speech

[JustAnotherDinnerLady]

The whole gender debate has spiked my interest in free speech generally.

Does anyone have any recommendations for books/ articles/ essays on the topic of free speech?

The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray. The Spectator has some interesting articles and reports stuff often absent from other sources. James Lindsay on Twitter from an American perspective

Vaclav Havel's essay "The Power of the Powerless" (you can probably find a free download online).

John Stuart Mill.

Hannah Arendt, the origins of totalitarianism - I've not read it but it's on my list!

You could join the Free Speech Union.

freespeechunion.org/

Me too op. I’m ashamed to say that previously I hadn’t fully understood the importance of it...

Inaya Folarin Iman is worth a follow if you are on twitter:

inayafolarin.com/

Triggernometry (youtube) do interviews from a free speech / anti-woke perspective.

m.youtube.com/c/Triggerpod/videos?disable_polymer=true&itct=CBIQ8JMBGAEiEwi_iL_vt7HrAhUM2VUKHbUAAsk%3D

This is a great interview in defence of free speech with Lionel Shriver and Brendan O’Neill

m.youtube.com/watch?v=P60G1gJ3Q8Y

I can really recommend Solzhenitsyn's novels for a sense of what it's like to live in a regime with no free speech. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The First Circle, Cancer Ward. Or even just watch The Death of Stalin - just the first 10 minutes, the desperation around trying to "stage" a re-run of a concert so they can deliver the gift of the "live" recording to Stalin because they know they'll be shot if they don't.

Because most of Europe now consists of free democracies and the really repressive regimes with no free speech are now rather more distant, far flung places, I get the impression (compared to my youth growing up with the Cold War) that people have forgotten what life without free speech looks like.

Because most of Europe now consists of free democracies and the really repressive regimes with no free speech are now rather more distant, far flung places, I get the impression (compared to my youth growing up with the Cold War) that people have forgotten what life without free speech looks like.

I am sure this is true.

I've started to wonder though, if an equally important issue isn't that many o them believe themselves to be at the end of history, in a similar way the state-socialist regimes did. It would tie in with all of this business about taking down statues of the supposedly evil as well as thinking that there is no more need for free speech, which is what allowed for many of the reforms they cherish from the past.

Not a reading recommendation as such but a short talk on R4 this morning by John Gray, Emeritus Professor of European Thought at LSE. Very heartening it was too, and carefully coded. He has a go at Marcuse and the illiberal liberals. Well worth a 9 minute listen.

Tolerance: the Unfashionable Virtue
A Point of View

The strange kind of liberalism that is currently in fashion, writes John Gray, has rejected tolerance in favour of enforcing what it is sure is the truth.

He says these new "illiberal liberals" who allow freedom of expression only to those they regard as progressive, risk smothering the contradictory and enlightened ideas that make us human.

Listen again:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000ltfd

UnHerd has some good easy articles on free speech.

Freedom of thought might also turn up some good resurces.

I agree with the pp about reading Mill. I don't love him, but he's a good starting place historically.

Adding to what others have said, John Stuart Mill and John Locke are good starting points. Two recent books I read on the topic are AC Grayling's Towards the Light and Timothy Garton Ash's Free Speech.

Suzanne Nossel's Dare to Speak got good reviews, and it's just out.

I'll echo what others have said about reading about places and times in history (and the present) where people don't have freedom of speech, such as Stasiland by Anna Funder and Bad News by Anjan Sundaram, and then you understand the corrosive effect that limits to free speech have on wider society.

I'll echo what others have said about reading about places and times in history (and the present) where people don't have freedom of speech

And to add to the context for John Locke (heavy going but interesting, and a huge influence on the American Founding Fathers and Constitution), he had to flee 17th century England and move to Holland as a political refugee - one of the reasons the American Constitution is so big on freedom of speech.

Actually, follow up post - the American Constitution, specially the preamble explaining what its purpose is, is well worth a read (and quite short ).

I’ve recently started following this group blog focused on free speech

www.persuasion.community/

They also have a podcast

Have you read the judgement in the ‘Harry the Owl’ case? - google Miller v College of Policing.

I can't believe that nobody has mentioned 1984 yet!

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder is an easy/short read as far as this topic goes, but is very insightful. His analysis of how “truth dies in four modes” is applicable to so many aspects of modern politics.

Short article in The Week from February this year.
www.google.com/amp/s/www.theweek.co.uk/97552/hate-speech-vs-free-speech-the-uk-laws%3famp

As the article points out it's important to recognise the difference between US & UK politics, in that UK doesn't have a single written document for its constitution just a series of Acts of Parliament. A well thought out constitution could protect citizens rights but whether we'll ever get one remains to be seen. Developing a UK Constitution was discussed quite a bit for 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta but it all seems to have gone quiet again.
www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/britains-unwritten-constitution

This was a Parliamentary pdf for discussion about a constitution.

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/political-and-constitutional-reform/The-UK-Constitution.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjYhciIvrnrAhXksnEKHYoyDW8QFjAOegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw0QyhJfgxBMQ2rEuAMKBhyc" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/political-and-constitutional-reform/The-UK-Constitution.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjYhciIvrnrAhXksnEKHYoyDW8QFjAOegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw0QyhJfgxBMQ2rEuAMKBhyc

Start at the start: Areopagitica by John Milton. Every (or as near as makes no difference) thinker on free speech since it was written centuries ago has read it, it's an absolutely foundational text.

[quote Socrates11]This was a Parliamentary pdf for discussion about a constitution.

<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/political-and-constitutional-reform/The-UK-Constitution.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjYhciIvrnrAhXksnEKHYoyDW8QFjAOegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw0QyhJfgxBMQ2rEuAMKBhyc" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/political-and-constitutional-reform/The-UK-Constitution.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjYhciIvrnrAhXksnEKHYoyDW8QFjAOegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw0QyhJfgxBMQ2rEuAMKBhyc[/quote]
In Canada we added a written constitution around 1980, under our current PM's father, who was very influenced by American ideas about constitutions, having attended Harvard.

I can't say I think it's really offered better protection, at all. In fact I rather think the inflexibility of that kind of constitution is really very limited and it seems to lead to some extreme changes through the courts in short order.

1984 by George Orwell is ESSENTIAL reading.

Of all the many novels I've read I'd say it's probably the most important.

It's all about free speech.

yy to 1984

When I first read it, it felt like science fiction. But now it feels very real. I am, right here and now in 2020, prohibited from saying what I know to be the truth in any number of spaces including right here on this website which is supposed to be a place for women to talk. Now we know how it happens.

[quote smallestleaf]You could join the Free Speech Union.

freespeechunion.org/[/quote]
Toby Young can piss right off.

Thanks Goosefoot. Think I just get wound up by UK ministers challenging & trying to wiggle out of Human Rights legislation all the time. Also think I'm probably quite idealistic from listening to Edward Snowden speaking about the US Constitution in relation to privacy more than free speech. Just want to find a 'fail safe' way of holding government to account as much as ensuring citizens their rights.