We Need Free Speech, but we Also Need Good Speech

Filling in the Void of the Free Speech Movement

In the second half of the 2010s, as incidents of cancel culture ramped up rapidly across the West, and anti-free speech philosophical theories appeared to get some mainstream traction, a new free speech movement arose in response. While there was only mixed results when it came to defending free speech itself, there was at least a revival in interest in classical liberal values, which I thought would be sustained for at least a generation. Sadly, it appears that the 2010s free speech movement has fizzled out rapidly. You don't hear much about the importance of free speech these days, except from a handful of dedicated activists like myself.

Surprisingly and sadly, some who supported the free speech movement in the 2010s have turned to an authoritarian-right politics that includes bans on everything from controversial books to drag queens. Elon Musk's supposedly pro-free speech takeover of Twitter has also been disappointing, with the platform now so full of open racists, conspiracy theories and culture war stuff that it is arguably worse for rational discourse than before (which I didn't imagine was even possible a year ago). Musk himself also turned out to be no better than the previous people in charge of Twitter: in June, he declared that the word 'cisgender' would be treated as a slur on Twitter. While I don't use that word personally because of its controversial connotations, this still represents censorship on behalf of one side of the culture wars. It just shows that Musk is not above meddling in the marketplace of ideas either. Meanwhile, some people (who I will not name), who used to defend free speech all the time, have now become very friendly with the 'postliberal' authoritarians, and accordingly, they never seem to discuss free speech anymore. Instead of defending classical liberal values, they now blame these values for giving rise to 'wokeism', against all reasonable logic. Sometimes, it seems that very few people are truly dedicated to free speech these days.

Having thought about all this for a while, I now think that the 2010s free speech movement stalled because something was missing: we were good at defending free speech and opposing cancel culture. But we weren't putting enough effort into arguing why free speech is necessary. The necessity of free speech is inherently linked to the marketplace of ideas. The reason we need to support free speech and oppose cancel culture is because we want all ideas to get a fair hearing in the marketplace of ideas, so the most sound ideas can win out. If this is the vision we are committed to, then we would also recognize that we need to have good speech too. What I mean by good speech is speech that is delivered in a good faith attempt to get to the truth, rather than to score culture war points, promote the interests of political parties or particular politicians, or simply to 'troll' your enemies. I think we can all agree that blatant racism, 'triggering' your opponents, and deliberately selecting stories to create a biased perception about particular issues aren't examples of good speech, at the very minimum. Sadly, I'm seeing way too much of this kind of speech in so-called anti-woke circles lately. If we truly believe in a healthy and functional marketplace of ideas, I think we need to call out such bad faith speech when we see it, to halt and prevent its proliferation. If we allow this bad faith speech to grow unchecked, it will poison the marketplace of ideas, no less than cancel culture and censorship.

I now want to focus on bad speech in the service of culture war purposes in particular. I think an important thing we need to stress is that free speech must be above the culture wars. The example from Twitter cited above is a good example of the ridiculous things that can happen when free speech is not placed above the culture wars. In the 2010s some on the political right attempted to place free speech within the culture wars, and in hindsight we should have much more strongly resisted this move. Seeing free speech not as a universal value but as a culture war weapon is what has led to the kind of hypocrisy we now see among right-wing culture warriors, where it is not OK to de-platform their favorite speakers, but it is good to de-platform books they don't like, drag queens, Bud Light ads, and the Pride section in Target. People with this kind of attitude are no better than the cancel culture activists on the left, and they should never have been welcomed into the free speech movement in the first place. I apologize on behalf of the whole movement for having been too lenient on them back in the 2010s. Going forward, the free speech movement must be impartial and dedicated to a fair marketplace of ideas, and it can only be that way if it remains above all culture war politics, and left vs right politics more generally.

Right now, free speech continues to be under threat, which means the free speech movement really needs to be revived. Besides the continued threat from postmodern critical theory-inspired activism on the left, the rise of the authoritarian postliberal right has made the future of free speech even more fragile than before. Meanwhile, the culture wars and the associated polarization and tribalism also pose great threats to both free speech itself and the health of the marketplace of ideas. All this means that it is more important than ever to take a stand in support of free speech.