The idea of freedom of speech is a difficult one to put your fingers onto. Can there be limits to this freedom or worse, can there be exceptions? The philosophy behind the freedom movement is a noble one. Everyone, if we talk in the context of the perfect setting, must have the freedom and choice to voice their concerns and opinions. However, the perfect setting requires that the freedom does not entail interdependence. That is, there should not be a causal relationship between the said expressing of opinions and an action or opinion formulation developed by someone else. Then, the said freedom escapes the premise of the individual and nestles into the social context. It is then when the freedom starts to hurt.
Let’s start with the extreme examples here: Charles Manson, a notorious psychopath who managed to influence others to do a series of murders for him. Before the said murders, his group and actions seemed like any other hippie routine. He took the people to a location away from the city, where they played music, smoked up and spoke about peace. Then, one day, Manson announced that a Beatles song, Helter Skelter, was infact a coded message by the band and required them to become more proactive. He convinced them to do murders to avoid a future war. They did.
Some would argue that the example is too extreme to start this conversation with. I don’t think so. Much like drugs, religion, adventurism and the likes, things need to be scaled not for what they are seen individually but infact for the potential that they possess. The majority, the normal users are never really the problem. It is the small niche that is. And this niche ends up doing a lot more harm to the cause than the good brought in by the majority.
Let me move forward to more examples: a mindless mullah announces in his sermon that Salman Taseer’s war on the Blasphemy law is one deserving of death. Many people sit there in the mosque. No one does anything about it but one particular person. The next day, that man, the Mumtaz Qadri, shoots Taseer dead in broad daylight.
Donald Trump claims that America would be better off once they start banning the entry of muslims within its premises. If seen as an individual, this too is a personal opinion. People are bigoted, so what? However, in a matter of days, the anti-muslim rhetoric spreads leading to huge rallies asking for the ban to take place and increasing Trump’s support.
The centre right government in Finland is shamelessly obvious in its reluctance to give asylum to refugees of the Syrian war. The political elites, each in their own personal capacity and insisting that theirs was not the official party stance, expressed anti-immigrant rhetoric in the most blatant manner. In a matter of days, a street patrol group comes to existence, known as Soldiers of Odin who insist they will be roaming around the country saving the local women from the many problems caused by the immigrants. They, in turn, instigate a whole intellectual wave on the issue of immigrants and people who would otherwise remain to choose to be oblivious to such matters, now seem to have become a lot more suspicious of the brown people.
B.O.B. a rapper who has only had one single song that has reached box office charts, comes out recently confessing that the world is flat and the oblated sphere that we have come to accept as fact is basically a conspiracy led by NASA, the governments and the powers that be. Now, in this time and age, one would laugh this off. But, suddenly, an incredibly large amount of his followers (new and old) start ‘confessing’ that they too knew this. The message gets retweeted and forwarded until a large number of people start believing that the world is infact flat.
The problem, again with all these cases is that two things are being mixed together in unproportioned terms. One, the freedom of speech is brandished across the world for it does indeed make the most humanist sense. However, on the other hand, there is a large gap of understanding as far as the definition of ‘humanism’ is concerned. In these cases, the freedom would have make sense if, as already declared in the start of the article, the opinions had stayed individual. However, given how they are not, it becomes obvious that the two do not make a comfortable match. The only way a purely free way of thinking can make sense is if the audience, and this must include everyone in the world, is rational, has access to information, has the ability to comprehend the information and understands the individualistic undelaying that come with it. Unless, such a context can be achieved, a truly free way of expression remains a wishful dream.
The author is a freelance writer based in Islamabad.