Elon Musk, l’entrepreneur multimilliardaire, just snapped up Twitter for $44 billion.
Many rejoice openly: in our time crossed by the temptation of censorship, Twitter will be reconquered by the camp of freedom of expression. Elon Musk sees himself as its defender, its ardent promoter.
Others are sorry: for them, freedom of expression is the mask behind which hate speech and disinformation are hidden. They affirm that public debate implies validation and control of the information that circulates, and must be accompanied by a banishment of those who make comments deemed inappropriate.
Clothes
And it is the position of the partisans of censorship that I am interested in here.
We must come back to the two concepts that they mobilize to justify their call for an ever greater tightening of the rules governing freedom of expression: hate speech and disinformation.
Thus, the concept of “hate speech” serves today to disqualify any criticism of the dominant ideology.
Do you criticize mass immigration? Do you criticize multiculturalism? Do you criticize gender theory and consider that it goes too far? You can be accused of hate speech at any time.
The war against hate speech is thus instrumentalized to put on trial political positions that our time disapproves of.
Now let’s take seriously the real hate speech, the ones that are objectively reprehensible. We are told today that they are exclusive to majorities, but impossible in the mouths of minorities.
I summarize: if you explain that you hate black people or Asian people, or trans people, you will be accused (with good reason!) of making hateful remarks. But if you explain that you hate men or white people, or better yet, that you spit on white men, you won’t be accused of hate speech.
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This is the logic of double standards.
The same is true when we talk about the fight against misinformation.
Let’s take a concrete example.
Much is said about Roxham Road in the news. For some, it is clearly illegal immigration. For others, the concept of illegal immigration simply does not hold water, and border crossings are only “irregular”.
It’s a political dispute. But supporters of the second camp explain that talking about illegal immigration is misinformation, which is absurd. And they thus seek to banish their opponents from public debate.
A disagreement turns into an accusation of misinformation.
Disinformation
Let’s understand each other well.
Libel, insults and slander are universally condemnable. But there are already laws against them. We should avoid using this call for respect and common sense to seek to censor the politically incorrect.
Similarly, there is real misinformation on social media. But it is by the free examination of ideas and theories that one can best sort out those which are worth something and those which are not.
In other words, it is better to bet on freedom.