In this episode, I attempt to discuss the fundamental importance of free speech, a concept pertaining to both an individual’s essential right to express themselves and the benefit society can derive from protecting an unfettered exchange of ideas. To aid in the explication process, I quote from a number of figures. For instance, Sam Harris has said that free speech is the best means to correct human stupidity, describing it as the master value that makes all the other ones possible. Flemming Rose, the former cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that stoked worldwide controversy when it published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006, stresses the importance of tolerance, intrinsically tied to free expression. Those who want to suppress speech in the name of religion, or culture, or political ideology, are being intolerant, which is the antithesis of the pluralism central to liberal democracy. Brendan O’Neill argues that offence has been in many crucial respects the “engine of progress,” as many ideas down the ages that were deemed offensive are now commonplace and seen as essential to civilised society.

I go on to note that absolutist systems of thought, whether in the religious or political realm, are merely differences in degree, not kind, as all claim to have found the one true answer for all people for all time. Not coincidentally, totalitarian ideologies of all stripes also share a deep and abiding antipathy to free speech, another term for independent thought. Voltaire’s advice to “surround yourself with those in search of truth, and run from those who have already found it,” is most appropriate in this regard.

I recount the incident in 2016 when Flemming Rose was disinvited from delivering the TB Davie Memorial Lecture at the University of Cape Town, incidentally on the topic of free speech, due to the febrile environment on campus at the time. Administrators feared that his talk would offend certain communities, hence he was barred from talking and the lecture was cancelled that year. This episode perfectly distils the grotesquely intolerant nature of the Fees Must Fall movement, which I cannot avoid discussing in this context. I trace the intrinsic connection between this toxic movement’s racism, violence, destructive vandalism, and hateful rhetoric, and its absolutist ideology, which is completely at odds with liberal values of tolerance, rationality, and the free expression. I remind listeners that protecting unpopular views today is essential if their own views are going to be protected in the future when the government and/or societal norms might have changed.

[Note: I recorded this podcast while in France last year, which is briefly mentioned at one point. I also described Steve Bannon as Trump’s chief advisor, which he was at the time, but has since been fired. This is the second episode of the Rutherford Report that I took the trouble of editing, so the listening experience should hopefully be superior, and, perhaps most importantly, the running time is only around 9:40, so there’s really no excuse not to listen.]