The Three Dimensions of Freedom

by Billy Bragg

  For despots around the world, the temptation to make deals with a major trading partner who doesn’t demand that you recognise basic human rights is undoubtedly attractive. Some unstable nations may be tempted to turn their back on democracy and deal with their economic difficulties by following China’s example of rapid economic growth through authoritarian rule.

  Under the so-called Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese engineers are building infrastructure projects across Asia and Africa, replacing investment where Western power is waning. This massive project, coupled with Beijing’s refusal to play by rules issuing from Western-controlled institutions, has shaken the world order created in the aftermath of World War II. Far from ending, history has shifted east in a sea change that challenges the long-held notion of Western hegemony.

  Unsure of their position in the world as Western influence declines, voters in Europe and America have begun to turn inward, falling, as if in panic, upon the nation state as a means of taking back control from the forces of globalisation. Yet the neoliberals have little interest in national sovereignty. While they make a great show of raging against supranational bodies that seek to regulate the economy, their true commitment is to trade.

  They may beat their chests patriotically as they speak of the people’s sacred right to make their own laws, but the globalised economy has no respect for national borders. Neoliberals have ceded power to the bond markets. Their nation is an offshore tax haven and TINA is their creed.

  Unable to respond to demands for change – TINA won’t allow it – the neoliberal establishment has recently found its certainties challenged. Since the market crash of 2008, an ideological refusal to countenance any alternative to free market capitalism has driven voters into the arms of a new breed of populists, leaving the perplexed neoliberals on the sidelines waiting impatiently for the public to see sense and come back to the fiscal priorities that dictated policy around the turn of the twenty-first century.

  Yet the pitch of the populist – a click-and-collect form of partisan democracy that promises to make everything great again – will only effect cosmetic changes to the neoliberal system. Like a placebo that fools the brain into releasing a jolt of pleasing endorphins, populism has little to offer the left-behind other than the visceral thrill of payback.

  In order to correct the imbalance of power that produces low unemployment figures yet leaves record numbers of workers stranded below the poverty line, citizens must be given the opportunity to vote for policies that hold the markets to account.

  2. EQUALITY

  I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

  The quote on the preceding page, widely attributed to Voltaire, was never uttered by the French philosopher. It was coined in the early twentieth century by a biographer as her interpretation of his viewpoint. Nevertheless, this expression of Voltaire’s thinking resonates with such power that it has become the default example of the principle of free speech.

  Although the words themselves are a summation, they confer on Voltaire the understanding that free speech alone is not enough to guarantee freedom. In order to be truly free, we have to respect the equal right of others to exercise the liberty that we claim for ourselves.

  In offering to put his life on the line for the right of his opponent to express their view, Voltaire is taking a stand on equality. He is challenging our notion of freedom as an inalienable right that we take for granted, turning it instead into a question of character: are you willing to give a fair hearing to those you may disagree with?

  In order to ensure that all voices are heard, equality – the responsibility to reciprocate the liberties that we enjoy – must be present to provide a second dimension to freedom. Working together, the one expanding the reach of the other, liberty and equality create an atmosphere of mutual respect in which we can each aspire to the ‘Voltairian Principle’.

  The vital link between freedom of speech and equality goes back to the very roots of democracy. The ancient Greeks developed a concept called isegoria, the equal right of all citizens to participate in public debate in the democratic assembly. Dating from around 2,500 years ago, isegoria was a defining aspect of Athenian democracy, allowing citizens from all strata of society to speak their mind in the public space.

  It existed alongside another ancient concept of free speech practised by the citizens of Athens called parrhesia, the right to say whatever one wanted, whenever one wanted and to whomever one pleased. Neither of these rights was absolute. Getting up to speak in the assembly could make you a target for the Athenian mob, while speaking your mind was sometimes fatal; Socrates lost his life because he told people what they didn’t want to hear.

  Today, the isegorian tradition of collective rights finds an echo in many legal definitions of freedom of expression. Under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, for example, an individual’s right to freedom of expression must be balanced against the rights of society as a whole.

  By contrast, parrhesia is reflected in the permissive definition of freedom of expression enshrined in the US constitution. Hate speech is largely protected, leading some commentators to fetishise the right to offend in the same manner that gun owners in the US feel the need to express their individual freedom by owning the largest and most rapid-firing automatic weapons.

  America’s commitment to free speech is such that, in 2010, the Supreme Court ruled corporations have the same rights of expression as individuals under the First Amendment. This decision made it impossible for citizens to limit the use of corporate funds to influence state and federal elections.

  In recent American history, freedom of speech has been challenged by questions of who has the right to express an opinion. During the 1960s, civil rights, feminism and the Stonewall riots were all part of a push for greater equality, as marginalised communities struggled for the right to be heard. When the 1970s saw many progressive ideas enter the mainstream, America experienced a backlash with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Encouraged by this rejection of liberal attitudes, conservative commentators began looking for socially acceptable ways to push back against the gains made by women, people of colour and the LGBT community. By the end of the 1980s, they were using the term ‘political correctness’ as a means to dismiss inclusive language and initiatives they felt uncomfortable with.

  Quickly gaining currency among right-wing circles, the term allowed reactionaries to actively police the limits of social change, while at the same time implying that they themselves were the victims of some kind of conspiracy. Accusations of political correctness became part of the armoury deployed against those who challenged the status quo.

  Universities have often been the front line in generational conflict, so it comes as no surprise that US campuses were already being excoriated for political correctness in the late 1980s. University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom wrote a book claiming that colleges were abandoning the canon of Western philosophy in favour of a multicultural approach. He had previously taught at Cornell and described his concern when, in 1969, African American students demanded the formation of a department to study the work of writers from their own culture, such as James Baldwin and Maya Angelou.

  Bloom’s book, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students, became a bestseller and sparked a series of investigations into an apparent trend towards what a 1990 New York Times article identified as ‘a growing intolerance, a closing of debate, a pressure to conform’. The piece, ‘The Rising Hegemony of the Politically Correct’ by Richard Bernstein, helped introduce the term to public consciousness.

  ‘Instead of writing about literary classics and other topics, as they have in the past,’ he began, ‘freshmen at the University of Texas next fall will base their compositions on a packet of essays on discrimination, affirmative-action and civil-rights cases. The new program, called “Writing on Difference”, was voted in by t
he faculty last month and has been praised by many professors for giving the curriculum more relevance to real-life concerns. But some see it as a stifling example of academic orthodoxy.’

  Bernstein quoted Roger Kimball, author of Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education, who described political correctness as a form of ‘liberal fascism’. ‘Under the name of pluralism and freedom of speech,’ Kimball stated, ‘[political correctness] is an attempt to enforce a narrow and ideologically motivated view of both the curriculum and what it means to be an educated person, a responsible citizen.’

  Far from narrowing the curriculum, students were seeking to broaden the scope of their education by including other voices. However, their critics made little attempt to investigate why they might have wished to do so.

  In 1963, when Cornell became the first Ivy League college to instigate a programme to increase the enrolment and support of African American students, Allan Bloom was already on the faculty. He must have known that the demand for an African American studies centre arose in response to the appearance of a burning cross outside the black women’s cooperative on campus. Yet this was never mentioned in his book.

  In their determination to defend the Western canon, Bloom, Bernstein and Kimball were unable to see that they were guilty of the very sins they ascribed to the radical students: a growing intolerance; a determination to close down debate; the need to pressure others into conformity; the imposition of an orthodoxy.

  In the debate over political correctness, the Voltairian Principle of equal respect for those you disagree with appears to have been discarded by those claiming to defend freedom of speech. What was it about the idea of inclusivity that drove them to such measures?

  Every nation relies on an educated elite from which to draw its administrators. In most countries, these are the product of a small number of exclusive colleges that provide an education based on the Western classical tradition. It furnishes graduates with a common frame of reference and a sense of entitlement that opens doors to the corridors of power.

  Bloom (Chicago), Bernstein (Harvard) and Kimball (Yale) are all products of such a system. If the orthodoxy they followed were to be challenged, perhaps superseded, by other criteria that they were not party to, how could they maintain their status within society? Exclusivity was the key to their power and thus it had to be defended against the inclusive intentions of outsiders.

  This battle still rages in academia today. Niall Ferguson (Oxford) rails against ‘grievance studies’; Jordan Peterson (McGill) sees ‘cultural Marxism’ at work everywhere. This negative labelling represents a determined attempt to control the agenda, to decide who is entitled to speak and who is not, and, ultimately, to define the meaning of liberty itself.

  In 2018, Eric Weinstein, an American investment banker, coined the term ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ to describe a loose grouping of contrarians who believe that they are being excluded from mainstream media due to their refusal to bow to political correctness.

  Given that these freedom fighters include Jordan Peterson (whose tour in support of his bestselling book sold out venues associated with rock stars), Joe Rogan (host of three-hour-long YouTube discussions that can garner over a million views) and Ben Shapiro (a podcaster who attracts 15 million listeners a month) among their number, it’s hard to see how they can claim to be marginalised. Yet they revel in the status of pariahs.

  Although they have no official ideology, members of the grouping see themselves as staunch defenders of free speech. In a long and widely reported ‘coming out’ article in the New York Times, journalist Bari Weiss summed up the ethos of the Intellectual Dark Web as being ‘committed to the belief that setting up no-go zones and no-go people is inherently corrupting to free thought’. Yet their willingness to extend that right to their opponents is sadly lacking.

  Weinstein, who since naming the group has emerged as a leading spokesman, recorded an interview, posted in early 2019, on the Rebel Wisdom website entitled ‘Inside the Intellectual Dark Web’. His commitment to free speech seemed to have little in common with that attributed to Voltaire.

  ‘It’s very important to me,’ he told interviewer David Fuller, ‘that not only do we not spend time debating people who are not serious in their intellectualism, but that we realise that it is important to the diversity of mature and important ideas that we not spend undue effort engaging ideas that are functioning very differently from regular conversation.’

  Just as the original promoters of the political correctness myth resorted to the very tactics that they were loudly criticising, so the denizens of the Intellectual Dark Web seem eager to set up their own no-go zones and no-go people. This reactionary tendency is not uncommon among the loudest proponents of free speech.

  On 2 July 2018, former Republican senator and Libertarian Party candidate Ron Paul tweeted, ‘Are you stunned by what has become of American culture? Well, it’s not an accident. You’ve probably heard of “Cultural Marxism”, but do you know what it means?’ Attached to the tweet was a crude cartoon of Uncle Sam being knocked out by a giant red fist with a hammer and sickle adorning its arm. The punch was being delivered by four racist stereotypes: a bearded, hook-nosed Jew; a yellow-faced, bucktoothed Oriental; a boss-eyed Latino; and a grinning African. Together they shout, ‘Cultural Marxism!’

  Following complaints, the tweet was quickly removed and Paul apologised for the offence caused. Yet many wondered how a self-declared libertarian could mount such an illiberal argument. Brian Doherty, writing on the libertarian website Reason, drew attention to a statement that Paul had made on his online TV series, itself on the subject of ‘cultural Marxism’: ‘Liberty means allowing [everybody] to make personal choices, personal social relationship, personal sexual choices, personal economic choices.’ That, he said, should not be a ‘threat’; it should ‘bring people together’.

  The difference between Paul’s measured statement before the cameras on his TV series and the bigotry evidenced by his use of the offensive meme highlights the manner in which social media has debased the currency of online discourse. Paul had clearly given some thought to the condemnation of cultural Marxism he broadcast on TV, reaching into his own libertarian principles to recognise the rights of others to freely make their own decisions, even though they may be opposed to his own.

  Yet Paul’s online persona recognised no such distinction; the immediacy of social media betrayed his principles to such an extent that he was forced to delete the image and apologise. This irrational urge to post outrageous statements with scant prior consideration is a hallmark of online debate, an indication that social media has punctured the division between private and public freedom.

  In the privacy of your own home, you may stretch out in a favourite armchair, kicking your shoes off and making ample use of the armrests. Yet if you try to relax in the same manner next to a stranger in an economy-class seat on a packed airliner, you’re very likely to find your behaviour challenged. Legs akimbo, elbows out, you’re invading the personal space of another individual which needs to be respected if you’re intending to fly economy.

  You may see someone in another seat spreading themselves, fast asleep on the shoulder of the passenger next to them, but you can be sure that those two are either related in some way or very good friends, and so have a respect for one another that allows behaviour that would otherwise be transgressive. If you are not willing to respect everyone equally, then your liberty to do as you wish in a public place will likely be met with admonishment.

  Context is key. At home in your comfort zone, you are free to act and speak as you wish. In public, different rules apply. You are still free to act and express your opinion, but you are conscious of the demeanour of those around you. Years of people-watching have made us adept at judging the mood of the strangers we encounter.

  The way that you deport yourself will have been shaped by your visual assessment of the person before you. Gender, age, ethnicity – all will be fa
ctored into how you interact, if indeed you do. A person may not want interaction, and you must be alert to that signal too. Whatever reaction you get, mutual respect is the key to getting through the day without confrontation.

  But what if you’re in a public place and you can’t see the stranger you’ve encountered? Social media takes the private freedom derived from being in your own space and places it in a public forum. Without clear visual signals to moderate your interaction, the lines between reaction and responsibility become blurred.

  For some social media users, this offers opportunities to act in ways they would never dare contemplate in real-world, face-to-face interactions. Online anonymity can create an atmosphere where bullying, pile-ons and abusive language are never far from the surface. Although it may feel like a cloak of invisibility, anonymity turns liberty into licence by removing both behavioural limits and consequences.

  This explains why, among the more belligerent online communities, there can be no greater crime than doxing, the sharing of information that identifies an individual, opening them up to the consequences of their behaviour in the real, offline world.

  The potential for online behaviour to spill over into our everyday lives has been a driver of the trend towards the creation of safe spaces at our universities. Digital natives are well aware that expressions of support for inclusivity will often attract trolls addicted to offending the sensibilities of those they dismiss as ‘social justice warriors’. While such behaviour can be blocked online, dealing with disruptive forces in the real world poses a greater challenge.

  While much of the controversy around safe spaces has focused on how they might be used to prevent opinions being heard, their actual purpose is to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to express their opinion free from harassment and discrimination. Safe-space rules drawn up by student bodies in the UK make it clear that the aim of this policy is to create an environment in which all students, staff and visitors feel welcome, respected and able to fully participate in events and activities.