In our contemporary moment, which I will generously describe as “hyper-normal,” we are confronted with the alarming reemergence of fascist ideologies, which I contend are not merely repressive structures of power, but rather performatives—rituals of exclusion and domination that circulate within the very structures that claim to protect “free speech.” The paradox, of course, is that fascism, as it manifests in our discourse, is both an exercise in free speech and a radical reorganization of the conditions under which speech can be considered “free.” And it is here, in this disjuncture, that we must locate the performative power of the fascist.
What is fascism if not a deeply enunciated claim to be heard, to dominate the linguistic field? When fascists declare, "We have the right to speak," they are engaging in the very performance of speaking that allows them to assert their epistemic violence. It is in this very act of speaking that fascism both conceals and reveals its own contradiction: the insistence on free speech becomes an act of censorship, a means by which certain bodies and voices are marked as “unhearable,” as unperformable in the dominant register of public discourse.
Now, let us not be so naive as to think that speech can be neutral. Speech, like all forms of power, is thoroughly interpellated by the very forces that shape its conditions of possibility. When we argue for “free speech,” we are not merely arguing for an unencumbered exchange of ideas. We are, rather, negotiating the terms of this speech, and who gets to participate in it. Fascists, in this context, perform a radical re-inscription of the terms of participation, positioning themselves as the arbiters of what can and cannot be uttered. But here lies the conundrum: to silence fascism is to challenge the conditions of free speech itself, yet to allow fascism its full utterance is to risk the very structure of the political community.
Thus, we must embrace what I call the “ontological suspension of free speech.” This suspension is not a denial of speech but a rethinking of the ethics of speech. It is a moment in which we question: whose speech is being protected, and at what cost? The freedom to speak, as I argue, is always a differential freedom, a freedom that is always already situatedwithin a grid of power relations that determine who has the right to speak and who is condemned to silence. Fascism, in its insistence on the freedom to hate, demands a counter-performative: a free speech that is not simply the right to speak, but the right to deconstruct the terms under which speech operates.
In this way, the very act of censorship—or as I prefer to call it, the "ethical reconfiguration of speech norms"—becomes a necessary precondition for the protection of a truly democratic discourse. After all, if democracy is merely the enactment of free speech without any consideration of the social conditions under which speech occurs, then we risk a situation where fascism itself can legitimately claim its right to speak, thereby undermining the possibility of democratic dialogue altogether.
In conclusion, the question of free speech must be understood as one that is always already embedded within a larger discourse of power. The rise of fascism, therefore, should not be seen merely as an affront to free speech but as a performative act that calls into question the very conditions under which free speech is granted. To speak of free speech, then, is to acknowledge the deep contradictions at the heart of our democratic practices, and to ask: is speech truly free if it is not freely contested, not freely deconstructed? In other words, perhaps we must silence fascism in order to protect the possibility of speech itself.
~Moodith Banalter