Recently a friend, in a conversation related to freedom of speech, spoke about how it was important to let all sides be heard and discussed no matter how obnoxious, even if you disagree with them, because that sharpens your own worldview and it means you’re not hypocritically dismissing someone without hearing their full arguments.
I got to thinking about this. Free speech and civil debate is a rallying cry for the alt-right and I feel it’s worth talking about what that means.
For my part, I have developed beliefs about human nature though a lifetime of, well, living with myself and alongside other people. I’ve tried to be logical in translating those beliefs into political visions for how society should be, and I’ve thought a bit and come up with words that can justify and explain those beliefs, but fundamentally my view of the world didn’t come about because of some academic exercise of logic and reason, but it is instead based on what I find valuable in human experience.
To paraphrase Matt Christman, you were born into a world that is so unfathomably vast and complex that you can never hope to understand a millionth part of it. You’re born in command of powers that you can scarcely comprehend, and you might spend your entire life trying and failing to master talents that you never asked for.
The idea that you could walk up to another human being, who is in exactly the same fix as you, and say “I Deserve Everything, and You Deserve Nothing. I deserve comfort, and ease, and riches, and you deserve to suffer, to be exploited or even to die.” That attitude is anathema to me, it clashes with my self-awareness, my empathy, and everything I know about and value in human experience.
By sitting down and having a civil discussion about whether vast swathes of the population do not deserve to live, you’re declaring that your worldview is not fundamentally incompatible with the idea that genocide is okay, that there might be arguments based on some shared principals that could convince either person to change their mind. But there are no shared principals between me and the fascists, I’m proud to say, and I don’t think people who are up for a debate about genocide realize how much they give away about themselves.
It’d be like an intellectual debate about whether pedophilia is groovy. It’s a concept that is toxic to the soul, it’s a poison that induces spiritual vomiting. That’s the reason many people have difficulty expressing their disagreement on such subjects with anything more eloquent than shrieks of outrage and calls for censorship.
So for me, civil discussion with fascists isn’t gonna happen; I’m not going to talk to them on their terms, but instead explain their motivations to the world (and mock them, because they’re pillocks). But what of free speech in general? There’s people who go around saying “gas the jews” because they’re soulless racist psychopaths, and there’s people who say such things for shock value. What of the latter?
The currency of online jokesters is annoyance. Liberals have won the culture war in the media – no small feat! – and you can’t be overtly racist on TV nowadays. I’d say that’s a good thing, but it means that you can make a career out of being edgy and subversive by using bigoted language ironically.
Now, such people don’t really have an ideology beyond rebelling against liberal cultural hegemony; they don’t have a vision of the world they want to bring into being, but if they have any awareness they know that the world they’re currently inhabiting is one of grinding misery and futility. For people who are cynical and disaffected, the sadistic pleasure you get from knowing you’ve managed to upset a defender of the corrupt system that’s made your life hell might be the only joy in your day before you strap on your Deliveroo backpack.
These people are full-on for free speech because it allows them that small rebellion. The problem with this position, of course, is that they’re at least aesthetically compatible with actual neo-nazis, and their social groups can, and do, end up mixing without any obvious conflict. The difference is that fascists actually DO have a vision of a different future, one that involves ethnic cleansing, mass murder, war and brutality.
We saw this very clearly nine months ago in Charlottesville. Kekhimmler1488 and his chums descended on a little town in Virginia for a fun march alongside some actual fascists, they chanted together about gassing the jews, and then the fash proceeded to beat the shit out of random passers by with pipes and crash into crowds of counter-protestors with their SUVs. They killed someone and injured dozens. It was a monstrous fiasco.
In the aftermath, the kekistani youtube chortlers in America recoiled from the alt-right movement. They just want to trigger the libs; they never imagined they’d have to answer for actual murder, and so they jumped off the wagon. They still talk shit online but they have revealed they lack any kind of real beliefs beyond self-interest, and that they are utter cowards in a very middle-class way.
That was, of course, in the United States. Here in Britain there’s just been a rally in London among the alt-right jokesters, pranksters and gaffsters because one of their own got a fine for releasing a video where he went off on one about gassing the jews. I don’t doubt that most of them feel emboldened to speak out for liberal values against a tyranical state, but among their number I am sure were actual fascists. I can see the same process that ended in Charlottesville playing out here. I hope it doesn’t take one of their fellow travellers killing someone to knock some sense into these fuckwits.
That being said, I’m not in favour of government regulation on free expression. If being an unfunny asshole was a crime, half the country would be behind bars. I’m opposed to people making imminent threats of violence or encouraging it, and I’m opposed to free expression for billionaires, but then I’m opposed to any individual being able to control a billion pounds so there you go.
You can say this is a hypocritical position, and I agree. Hypocrisy is useful because it lets you see what people’s beliefs really are, behind any fancy words that they may be using to try and sell their worldview to you. I am a hypocrite, it means I believe in something! I have a vision of the world that I’d like to bring into being, one that I think could bring us peace and plenty and self-determination, one where bigotry is seen as alien and pointless. But I recognize that this vision sometimes clashes with other people.
For liberal elites, of course, they talk a fine line about freedom of speech, and they even pretend that they are post-ideological and that they arrived at their positions solely by calmly considering all sides. I’m sorry to say – this is not true.
In spite of a liberal judge fining someone for offending them with overt antisemitism, their beliefs don’t clash in a meaningful way with the far right. This is evidenced by their repeatedly interviewing far-right leaders like Tommy Robinson who have the restraint to be polite yet provocative on camera, when at the same time they go out of their way to deplatform and attack leftists.
This is because the belief that really lurks in the heart of well-off liberals is that capitalism is good. We live in a new gilded age, but if that gilded age still allows you, a fat oaf who has never been good at anything, to have a job at the Guardian farting out a column every week, well it must be great; it must even be a meritocracy! And people who challenge this idea from the left are the real enemies for such people.
Sure, liberals also believe in politeness, which is why they oppose the alt-right guys to the point of fining them for being offensive. But if the leader of the EDL practices the designated etiquette, then why not invite him onto a talk show the day after one of his followers was convicted for murdering someone outside the Finsbury Park mosque? Even if you’re lambasting him, you’re still legitimizing him – and the far right know how to play liberals, and often look reasonable in comparison. The ethnic cleansing proposed by such people would preserve capitalist power structures, and to editors and producers that’s all that matters.
For me personally I’m a hypocrite in that I want my side to win and the other side to lose. For example, I’ve opposed fascist rallies in the midlands by blockading them with my friends to prevent them being able to march through town. This is because in doing so they are announcing their intention to commit a genocide in our country. I consider organised displays of fascism as an imminent threat of violence; their right to free speech in a public square (a right that I take advantage of myself!) is trumped by my desire to prevent them putting together a movement that might be able to achieve their goals. I’m using my will and that of my friends to try limit their free speech. I’m not asking the government to pass a law doing so, but I’m still acting hypocritically in a sense.
The important thing to remember of course is that unlike the internet trolls, the actual far right don’t believe in free speech at all, and they will use liberal institutions and ideas as a shield so they can build their movement until they have the power to take it away from everyone.
Well, they can do their worst, and my friends and I will do our best.