Racism – free speech, or what?

The Free Speech Union is on the ascendency. They recently crowned Two-tier Keir ‘Free Speech Zero’ of the year, even though he’s only been in power (that is, he’s abused his power) for less than six months. The announcement on LinkedIn was favourably received, apart from one or two gripers accusing the FSU and its rapidly growing membership of being free-speech absolutists, as if that were unquestionably a bad thing, or not speaking out about every single perceived free-speech injustice anywhere in the world.

I want to focus on the accusations of being a free-speech absolutist. Apparently, this means supporting racism in all its goryness. Typical woke standpoint – lacks context, lacks nuance, lacks commonsense. So I’ll keep it simple for the wokies’ benefit. There are broadly three strands to racism that can be perpetrated independently of each other: 1) hurty words, 2) violence, and 3) discrimination, e.g. being overlooked for promotion. The second and third are plain wrong. Note that this includes the Environment Agency offering internships to just ethnic minorities and explicitly excluding whites. This. Is. Racism.

But what of hurty word racism? This includes (in woke eyes) personal and cultural insults, cultural appropriation, objecting to reparations for slavery, and blasphemy. Such standpoints have been deemed by some to be offensive. But, as is repeatedly pointed out, no one has a right not to be offended. People have a (legal but not moral) right to be offensive. Ergo, people have a right to be racist when it comes to hurty words. Hark! I hear the sound of another pile-on from the morality police, who are as rude and hurtful and unkind as any racist. Regardless, let’s crack on. 

There is of course a difference between being offensive and inciting violence. The latter is obviously unacceptable and shouldn’t be tolerated. However, as I argued here, context is everything as to whether a keyboard warrior, say, should be challenged or incarcerated.

Some people claim that hurty words lead eventually to hurty actions. There’s no evidence to back that up. Instead, I would argue that hurty words can prevent hurty actions. Most of us get angry and frustrated and need to ‘lash out’ or the pressure builds up. Better to lash out verbally sooner than physically later. Perhaps if people had been listened to (and not ignored, shouted down and threatened with being ostracised) when they first questioned the wisdom of allowing hordes of fighting-age males to invade our coastline, the riots after the Southport murders wouldn’t have happened. Am I blaming the morality police for fuelling racist violence? You betcha.

Another thought: why is hurty-word racism considered to be worse than insulting someone for their bad breath, speech impediment, being bottom of the class, job, criminal record, taste in curtains or social circle? I’m frequently insulted – by lefties – for my ‘privileged’ education and family career-choices. Conversely, I once got my knuckles rapped because I criticised Rayner (Angela not Clare) for her nasty, unprofessional, bullying vocabulary (e.g. she called Tories “scum”). Apparently, Rabid Rayner is allowed to be insulting – yet racists are castigated for their use of the ‘N’ word – because Rayner has had a hard life. So did a lot of others yet they conduct themselves respectfully. Did somebody say ‘Two Tier’, the in-euphemism for hypocrisy?

Talking about two-tier, and two-tier racism in particular, I got the better of Carol Vorderman on Twitter/ X the other day. Not difficult that; she’s two logarithms short of a differential equation. She posted something about rage-baiting by the right-of-centrists such as Reform UK, meaning race-baiting, i.e. deliberately making people angry and exploiting them. I had to reply, reminding her that it was Dawn Butler MP who called Kemi Badenoch a white supremacist, and it was Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu who said the Royal balcony was too white. I ended with, “But why let balance get in the way of a lefty race-baiting rant?”

So am I a free-speech absolutist? On moral grounds, no. On pragmatic grounds, probably reluctantly yes, but nuanced. As I said earlier, hurty words relieve the pressure before hurty actions kick in. Further, if you ban hurty-word racism, you have to ban every other form of insults, in the name of equality and inclusivity you understand. See how wokism can turn round and bite you in the rear?

As well as a litigious society, we live in a rude, insulting, unkind society. What’s the solution? The socialist instinct is censorship, even though socialists like Vorderman milk such social media platforms for all they’re worth. Socialists also like to lock people up … those who challenge them, that is. Another idea is for schools to educate us to be kind. Hah! They’ve been charged with doing that for a while and have failed miserably, because they’ve framed such instruction around DEI, and jumped on many other ill-informed band wagons for fear of being out of step with mainstream thinking, no matter how ill-informed that might be. Ideally, I’d like religious leaders to pick up the baton to guide us as to what is morally acceptable speech. Judging by the behaviour of marchers and protesters in London recently, Rabbis are doing a good job, and none of the others seem to be. Farmers behaved themselves impeccably, but I think that says more about the farming / traditional rural ethic than any Church-of-England guidance.

Perhaps if our Arch Bishes focused more on spiritual ministry to their flock, and less on protecting perverts and spouting DEI rhetoric, we’d all be in a better place.