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Free Speech Course: Notes on Session 3

For this session of the Free Speech course Jonathan Heawood, Director of English PEN, gave a superb introduction to the topic of Incitement to Violence. These notes are based very closely on his own notes.

Jonathan began by giving a tripartite framework within which to fit theories of free speech. Those who defend extensive freedom of speech usually do so because 

a) It is the best way to discover the truth

b) They believe it essential to Demorcracy 

c) It allows individuals to fulfill themselves through self-expression

( A fourth reason that Eric Barendt mentions in his interesting book Freedom of Speech is suspicion of governments).

John Milton and John Stuart Mill, the two prominent defenders of free speech we have discussed so far in the course (see notes from first session, and notes from second session), both emphasised the link between freedom of speech and truth.

Jonathan introduced 4 news stories

1. Paul Chambers recently Tweeted 'Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!'. More about the Paul Chambers Twitter joke story here.

2. Birmingham Councillor Gareth Compton wrote 'Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan't tell Amnesty if you don't. It would be a blessing, really.' More about this alleged threat here.

3. The case Khalid Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Perry Bar. In the House of Commons in February 2005 he suggested that Salman Rushdie might have faced prosecution for inciting religious hatred under the Government’s new Bill. Lisa Appignanesi quotes from Mahmood as recorded in Hansard in this interesting article from Open Democracy. 

4. Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, the Rwandan radio station which broadcast instructions to 'cut down the tall trees' during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. And may have been responsible for up to 45,000 deaths. More about this story here. More about hate speech broadcast on Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines here.

These very different cases share a single common feature: that in every instance, speech acts have been deemed capable of inciting real acts of violence, or the slightly less tangible category of ‘hatred’.

 How should we understand these cases? Should free speech be untrammelled by laws against incitement? Does the risk of violence or hatred always outweigh the benefit of free speech? Or is the truth somewhere awkward, in the middle – in which case can we articulate a principled approach that allows us to make sense of these cases?

 

What does 'incitement' mean?

It's not the content of certain speech acts that does things; it’s the utterance of those speech acts in a specific context.

First, we need to work out what we mean by incitement. The dictionary gives us ‘To provoke and urge on,’ from the Latin incitare: to urge forward. It's part of a family of words which describe the way in which language can be used to make things happen: provoke, excite, stimulate, arouse, rouse, stir.Incitement makes things happen. It’s a variety of performative language. Not quite as performative as a marriage vow; but rather more performative than a comment about the weather. The words don’t actually cause something to happen. But they are deemed likely to do so.

But this is really problematic, isn’t it? Because words don’t do things; people do. Even in the classic example of the marriage vow, it isn’t the words which marry the people; it’s the wider social contract within which these words have a particular meaning. Without the legal, financial and moral implications of the marriage vow, it wouldn’t have any force. More than this: in a different context, the marriage vow would have no meaning. It’s not just ‘with these words’ that ‘I thee wed’; it’s with these words, spoken by this person, to that person, in the eyes of those people, recorded for posterity by that person in this book, in a venue licensed by those other people and backed up by the state.

So let’s say that it’s not the content of certain speech acts that does things; it’s the utterance of those speech acts in a specific context. (A point that Mill made when he contrasted writing 'Corndealers are starvers of the poor' in a newspaper editorial with waving a placard with the same words on it in front of an angry mob outside a corndealer's house.

Let’s try to clarify some of the aspects that might constitute a context in which incitement is likely to result in violent action (inspired by Aryeh Neier):

1. The authority of the speaker: someone whose words are likely to be acted upon.
2. The motivation of the listeners: people who are likely to act upon these words.
3. The environment: a library; a church; a public meeting; a demonstration; a riot.

So these three factors – the speakers, the listeners and the immediate environment – give us the context of a speech act.

 How does that help us with Robin Hood Airport and the rest?

1. Paul Chambers was prosecuted under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 which makes it an offence to send a ‘menacing’ message over a public communications network. He had no particular authority; nor was his audience likely to act on his words. His immediate context was hardly incendiary. It seems hard to justify his prosecution

2. Gareth Compton has been charged under the same law, though the prosecution is still pending. As a councillor, one might argue that he has rather more authority than Chambers – and in fact he has been suspended from the Conservative Party (which might increase or reduce his authority). Similarly, one might assume that he has an audience who will take his views seriously – though anyone familiar with Twitter will know that these are people who, by their nature, don’t do much. The context here is complex: Muslim women around the world are stoned; this was the subject of a radio debate in which Yasmin Alibhai-Brown was participating; and she herself has received serious threats in the past. So her anxiety is understandable. However, she has no wish to press charges; and, whilst his suspension seems appropriate, it would also seem excessive to prosecute him.

3. Khalid Mahmood’s comments on the Satanic Verses were interesting. He claimed that because the book was not a ‘valid criticism’ of Islam, but contained ‘abusive words’ in Urdu, it should not be exempt from prosecution under the proposed law on incitement to religious hatred. It was this argument that led English PEN and others to oppose the Bill very strongly. We argued that the law on incitement was very dangerous if it prohibited authors from expressing their views on religion – even in the strongest terms. The content of the book might be provocative but it was unlikely that anyone would act on Rushdie’s words with violence. Ironically, violence did follow the book around the world – but can the author be held responsible for what people did against him? The Ayatollah’s fatwa might constitute incitement; Rushdie’s novel did not.

4. And what of Radio Mille Collines? Research suggests that this station, which broadcast throughout the genocide in Rwanda, referring to the need to ‘cut down the tall trees’ (Tutsis), was responsible for an escalation in violence leading to around 45,000 deaths, or 9% of the total. The broadcasters had a large following; they apparently had authority over that following; and they broadcast at a time when violence was already in the air. The best that you can say of them is that they did nothing to counter the violence; and in fact it’s clear that they urged their listeners on to greater acts of violence. For this, the directors of the station were subsequently sentenced to around 30 years imprisonment for incitement to genocide.

Compare Aung San Suu Kyi. Should she be held responsible if her followers turn to violence? She’s clearly doing everything in her power to avoid this. Whilst it’s possible that Burma will see more violence in the conflict between democracy and dictatorship it would seem insane to blame Aung San Suu Kyi for this. But can we establish a principle that puts us on her side, but against Radio Mille Collines?

CONCLUSION

What do we make of this?

Three principles:

1. Words don’t do things; people do.
2. Context, not content, is crucial to incitement.
3. Incitement is not the same as provocation, or offence.

These principles are underpinned by a basic tenet: that we are responsible for our actions. Only in extreme situations, where moral responsibility has been complicated by an environment of extreme violence, can we say that incitement takes on real force. Otherwise, it’s a legal and philosophical nonsense. 

 

 

Free Speech Course: Notes on Session 2

Free Speech (in association with English PEN, and the Bishopsgate Institute)

Chapter Two of J.S. Mill's On Liberty (last week's focus) was undoubtedly influenced by John Milton's Areopagitica, a polemical tract published in 1644 in reaction to a 1643 Order of Parliament that proposed the licensing of books. Under this Order a censor would determine which books could be published, a return to the status quo of control of the presses that had been in place since the reign of Elizabeth, but which had temporarily been suspended following the revolution. Anti-Puritan tracts were in circulation and the Order was a reaction to what it labelled 'many false, scandalous, seditious and libelous' works that had recently been pubished 'to the great defamation of religion and government'. Read more on the historical context of Areopagitica.

Milton was strongly opposed to book licensing on both practical and moral/religious grounds, though not to post-publication censorship and punishment (for illegal libel and blasphemy, which was also illegal). Many passages in Milton's book echo phrases and ideas in Mill's chapter. This is not to say that Milton's is a straightforward defence of freedom of speech - it is much more specific than that: a reaction to a particular law and a robust statement of the value of books broadening out from its specific theme.

I love this passage from Milton:

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.

One key difference between the two writers is that Mill was an atheist from an early age; whereas Milton was religious and believed that each individual was responsible for his or her religious beliefs - this view of MIlton's motivates much of Areopagitica.

The title 'Areopagitica' alludes to the rocky area outside near the Acropolis in Athens where the democratic council of the city state would meet to decide law and policy. So Milton was appealing to a vision of a democratic parliament making just laws through free and open discussion.

A complete text of Areopagitica is available here:

Kindle versions are also available, e.g. here.

Alan Haworth, in his book Free Speech (Routledge, 1998) has provided a useful Appendix in which he quotes parallel passages from Mill and Locke. Although Mill gives the thoughts his own twist, there are obvious echoes both in language and ideas. To give a few examples:

on infallibility:

Milton wrote:

…how shall the licensers themselves be confided in, unless we can confer upon them, or they assume above all others in the land, the grace of infallibility and uncorruptedness?

Here's Mill on the same theme:

All silencing of opinion is an assumption of infallibility. It's condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common.

 Or again, Milton on the value of contrary opinions, and the morally purifying effects of contested opinions:

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.

 Mill on the idea that adverse opinions serve to bring out the truth on any matter:

...though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of the truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

For more in the same vein, see Haworth p224-8, or read Areopagitica and then Chapter 2 of On Liberty.

For fascinating information about the original context of Milton's Areopagitica watch this lecture (by John Rogers, Yale University):

 

J.S. Mill and The Internet

Are Mill's arguments good arguments? Do they apply today?
Many of Mill's views can themselves be challenged. Certainly in present day discussions of free speech, the truth of the view that is suppressed or censored is not necessarily what is at issue. Very often censors deliberately suppress what they consider to be dangerous truths, knowing full well that these are truths (the numbers of students killed in Tiananmen Square, for example), or else the issue may well be one of respect, particularly in a religious context. 

Not all censors assume infallibility: some just think they are almost certainly right, which is not the same thing at all.

Does this mean that Mill's arguments are no longer relevant to the present day context. The most important development in recent years is the combination of the Internet with widely available digital technology. 

Richard Posner in an essay in the interesting US-focused collection Bollinger and Stone (eds) Eternally Vigilant: Free Speech in the Modern Era has identified 4 features of the current use of the Internet that may be thought to magnify the dangers of irresponsible speech:

Anonymity

Lack of quality control

Huge potential readership

Anti-social people find their soul mates

Cass Sunstein (also in an essay in Bollinger and Stone (eds)) has expressed a further concern that Internet users filter the content they encounter to create a 'Daily Me' which simply confirms their prejudices for the most part. A deliberative democracy needs people who encounter views that are different from their own...

Do these factors mean that there are both qualitative and quantitative features of the new media that make Mill's earlier framework for establishing reasonable the limits of freedom of speech obsolete? Further reading on this topic: Nigel Warburton Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction, Chapter 5 'Free Speech in the Age of the Internet'.

Two recent events involving incitement to violence and xenophobia formed the focus of our discussion...

First, the case of an extremist website that seemed to be inciting violence against MPs who voted in favour of going to war in Iraq. (An update on this story here)

If, as seems reasonable, we should take the presumed intent behind the juxtaposition of names and addresses with details of how to obtain a kitchen knife etc., then this site appears to be encouraging violence, and in a context were we might expect violence to be the outcome. (For a - tangential - discussion of whether meaning is simply literal meaning or intended meaning in context, listen to my interview with philosopher of language Stephen Neale). Compare this with a recent alleged case of incitement to murder which in many people's eyes was simply a bad taste joke.

A different case from last week's news: a German neo-Nazi internet radio station was shut down. Neo-nazism is illegal in Germany. Does xenophobic expression constitute incitement to violence? Is it right to censor such expression? Or should it simply be met with counter-speech?

A topic that is relevant to the first part of next week's session (on incitements to violence), the power of the 'heckler's veto' and the implied threat of violence as a reaction to free expression crops up in this podcast interview with the U.S. philosopher T.M. Scanlon

Two Twitter cases that should contribute to next week's discussion of incitement to violence are discussed in this article from Time Magazine.

Further Reading

 

Free Speech: notes and links for course at Free Word Centre

Free Speech (in association with English PEN, and the Bishopsgate Institute)

lead by Nigel Warburton

Course Overview:

6.30 pm - 8.30 pm at the Free Word Centre, Farringdon. Ticket holders only. Course sold out.

2nd Nov. Introductory Session: J.S. Mill's 'On Liberty'

9th Nov. Free Speech and the Internet, Theories of Free Speech, Limits

16th Nov. Jonathan Heawood, director of English PEN on Incitement to Violence

23rd Nov Jo Glanville, editor of Index on Censorship on the First Amendment

30th Nov. Library visit to Bishopsgate Library

7th Dec. Gillian Slovo, novelist, on free speech and the arts

 

First Session

Notes on J.S. Mill's On Liberty (1859)

Mill's little book is the classic statement of a liberal position on free speech. The second chapter 'Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion' is still the starting point for many discussions of this topic.

Mill was a consequentialist (consequentialism is a general name for moral theories that judge the rightness of an action on the basis of probable outcomes rather than absolutes) who believed that individual development and flourishing required freedom. He was concerned to counteract both the curbing of individuals' activities by paternalistic laws and also bywhat he called 'the tyranny of the majority', the force of public disapproval. In order to flourish, he believed, geniuses need space in which to live their lives without interference, even if that offends, or worries those around them. But so does every adult who is in a position to decide for him or herself (i.e. is of sound mind and is not a child).

The limit of freedom for Mill was the point were an individual's actions risked harming other people. This is his so-called Harm Principle, and he applies it throughout the book.

In Chapter 2, he gives 4 main arguments as to why free speech should be tolerated and even encouraged up to the point of inciting violence. For Mill, even false opinions have great value, perhaps more value in some cases than widely-held true ones as they stimulate discussion and deeper understanding of what might otherwise be mere dead dogma. It is through the collision of truth with error in the marketplace of ideas that humanity flourishes and progresses. Here's his own summary found towards the end of this chapter (p.115-6 of the Penguin Classics ed.):

We have now recognized the necessity to the mental well-being of manking (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds, which we will now briefly recapitulate:

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume your own infallibility.

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never thew hole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remained of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly,the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering hte ground and preventing growth of any real and heartfelt conviction from reason or personal experience.

Relevant Links to texts and audio online

The full text of J.S. Mill's On Liberty available online here

A podcast summarising the main themes and possible criticisms of On Liberty (based on my book Philosophy: The Classics)

A general audio discussion of Mill's On Liberty with Mill expert Alan Ryan is available here, together with a downloadable transcript (scroll down in the righthand column of the linked page)

Listen to my podcast interview with Richard Reeves (author of an excellent biography of Mill) on the topic of On Liberty (from the series Philosophy Bites - also available on iTunes)

FURTHER READING

Sci Foo 2010 Un-Conference at Googleplex

What is an 'un-conference'? I was lucky enough to be invited to Sci Foo 2010 at Googleplex in California and now know. In this case it involved a group of about 300 fascinating people with loosely-connected interests in science, data, open access, new media, psychology, neuroscience, physics, astronomy, biomechanics, philosophy, science fiction, comedy, online publishing, computing, and probably quite a few other areas as well. 

What made this an un-conference was that there was no prior agenda. No schedule. It wasn't on a specific topic. It's aim was stimulation and cross-fertilisation amongst a group of pre-selected 'campers'. Before the conference some basic information was placed on a wiki, and participants linked to weblogs and so on, but until the first night, there was no plan. All we had was a grid on which participants put ideas for sessions written on large post-it notes. There were numerous parallel sessions - even the length of sessions wasn't completely fixed, there were hour-long slots, but some chose to fill them with a succession of five-minute lightning talks... This wasn't a place for death by Powerpoint, but an opportunity to meet and talk to some brilliant people, both within the more structured environment of a session or the congenial environment of Googleplex which provided an unending stream of delicious free food and elegant Californian wines. The heady mix will inevitably produce cross-disciplinary collaborations and at the very least was incredibly stimulating and liberating.

Why wasn't this anarchy? What made it so successful? The Friday evening began with drinks and a meal followed by introductions by the co-hosts Google, O'Reilly (the publisher) and Nature (the journal). Larry Page set the tone : Ask yourself 'Is what I'm doing going to change the world?' If the answer is 'no, then maybe you should do something else.' I looked around - well, there were Sergy Brin, Larry Page, Peter Singer - three people at least who had changed the world - and probably another twenty or so candidates in the room. With such a stellar list of attendees - this couldnt go wrong...within an hour I had queued for dinner next to someone who had flown the English channel with a jet-powered wing strapped to his back, had a drink with Andrew Marr and a  chat with Peter Singer and so it went on for the next couple of days...I'm still buzzing. 

Actually, I think it could have gone wrong. One fascination for me was the subtle ways in which the co-ordinators from Google helped this to work. It was an obvious advantage having such an impressive range of brilliant people circulating. These were people who had got things done, so the talk wasn't just talk.

There were a number of ways in which risk of a damp squib was minimized. One was that we had to wear our security passes at all times - these were on a lanyard and our names (no affiliations or titles - first name in larger font) were written on both sides - so whoever you met, you could see instantly who they were...no worries about forgetting names, but no intimidation by title. To help locate people and identify their interests a wall of photos was created with a few words about them. Before that we'd each stood up and given a three word (or three-phrase) summary of what we do and care about  (mine was 'Philosophy Bites - podcast - clarity') Then we had a great location at Googleplex with plenty of spaces to sit down or stand and talk informally as well as a range of room sizes to suit big and small sessions. 

Energy and enthusiasm were contagious...The most stimulating sessions I attended were on the Antikythera Mechanism and on The Singularity ...but the lasting effect will flow from the conversations I had and the connections I made. 

Read a range of reactions to this year's Sci Foo

Philosophy Bites: the book

Philosophy Bites, a book edited by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton is coming out in mid-August in the UK. David and Nigel discuss the book in this short audio interview (3' 51"):

Philosophy Bites: the book

Free Speech: An Introduction - Autumn Course

Free Speech - A 6-Session Course in association with English PEN and the Bishopsgate Institute. I'll be teaching this course on Tuesday evenings in the Autumn 2010 at the Free Word Centre, London. 

More on free speech

Speciesism and the Revival of the Animal Rights Movement

'Specieism' is a term coined by Richard Ryder to make clear the parallels between the treatment of animals and sexism and racism. I bumped into Richard at the Dartington 'Ways With Words' Literary Festival and asked him about the revival of the animal rights movement in 1970s Oxford, a time when Peter Singer, Tom Reagan and others were all starting to think seriously about animal welfare. He pointed out that for most of the 20th Century, the animal welfare movement had been in abeyance, in large part due to two world wars, though it had been lively in the 18 and 19th Centuries. Listen to my short interview with Richard Ryder here (12 mins 50 secs).

NIgel Warburton interviews Richard Ryder on Speciesism and the 1970s Animal Rights Revival

You might also be interested in this interview with Peter Singer:

Peter Singer on Using Animals

Read an article by Richard Ryder on Speciesism and Painism

Nigel Warburton on Deciding How to Live - a video interview

Humanism, Philosophy and the Arts, conference 26th June

I'll be speaking on Searching for Meaning in Tate Modern at this one-day conferernce organised by the British Humanist Society in Conway Hall, London, 26th June 2010.

Addiction: Nigel Warburton interviews Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Julian Savulescu

What is addiction? Is it a disease? LIsten to this interview (11 minutes 12 seconds)

Nigel Warburton interviews Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Julian Savulescu on Addiction