Free Speech

free speech – a history from socrates to social media i'm franz, i'm a senior editor at summarybook.org and to me this is a super important topic.

a couple of years ago i wrote a book about scientific freedom, the freedom of scientists to conduct and publish without being censored.

this freedom is crucial for enabling scientific discovery because you can't search for the truth if you're not allowed to express certain thoughts.

but that in itself is only a small part of the larger concept of free speech that this chapter is about.

one thing i've found in my own research is that every freedom comes with a responsibility attached.

the freedom of speech is no exception.

jacob mchangama's free speech can teach us a great deal about this responsibility, because our right to free speech is far less secure than it may seem.

around the globe censorship is on the rise.

outside of democracies, free speech is being eroded by a mixture of authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism and high-tech censorship.

and even within western democracies, faith in free speech is waning.

but let's start at the beginning.

ancient beginnings for most of human history, speaking truth to power was, well, not advisable to say the least.

but judging from the records of ancient law codes that have managed to survive, most ancient civilizations protected the ruling elite from the speech of their inferiors, rather than the other way around.

from ancient egypt to ancient china, surviving moral codes explicitly prohibit speaking out against those of a higher station.

such prohibitions on speech were designed to preserve the rigid social hierarchies that existed in ancient societies, where those on top were often seen to rule by divine right.

all the more remarkable, then, that one society was able to buck the trend.

a small city-state in ancient greece called athens.

by the 5th century bce, athens shined like a beacon of free speech through the tyrannical fog of history.

free speech was baked into the city's mode of government at its core.

it was a democratic system where the citizens themselves, that is, freeborn men, were expected to propose, debate and vote on the laws that governed them.

while the athenians' concept of democracy suffered from several major shortcomings by modern standards, with the exclusion of women and slaves, it was still exceptionally egalitarian for its time.

athenians enjoyed extensive protections for free speech.

in political debates, citizens were free to criticize the state and even democracy itself.

and in athens' famous theater culture, no one, not even the gods, was spared from satire, as aristophanes proved when he made dionysus out to be a fool in his famous play the frogs.

the athenian leniency towards speech was responsible for its cultural success.

the free discussion of ideas in athens' public agora allowed for a vibrant intellectual spirit to blossom.

this period saw great advancements in philosophy, science and medicine that would likely have been impossible under a more oppressive system.

however, even athens had its limits.

the charge of impiety, that is, profaning the sacred religious rites of the eleusinian mysteries, was a serious crime, punishable by death.

that's something that athens' most audacious thinker would discover the hard way.

if you were to wander the marketplace in athens in the late 5th century, chances are you'd find yourself accosted by a man with a peculiar limp, bulging, frog-like eyes and an upturned nose.

he'd likely be barefoot and wearing the same robes you wore every day and used as a blanket at night.

this bedraggled figure is socrates, and he's widely considered the founder of western philosophy.

socrates was notoriously annoying.

he spent most of every day dragging prominent athenians into verbal sparring matches, where he would lead them down logical dead-ends and reveal their ignorance.

even tolerant athenians became tired of this act.

at the ripe old age of 70, socrates was indicted for the crime of impiety, for profaning the gods and corrupting the youth of athens with his ideas.

he was found guilty and sentenced to death by drinking poisonous hemlock.

historians have often debated why athenians decided to execute socrates so late in life, when he'd been speaking freely for decades.

we may never know for sure, but it seems likely that a couple of coup attempts that had briefly overturned athens' democratic system in the preceding years had put its citizens on edge.

it's quite possible that the fear of a resurgent anti-democratic movement rendered athens' citizens far less tolerant of dissent and spurred them to finally silence socrates, who could sometimes be critical of democracy.

if this is true, then the trial of socrates reveals a valuable lesson about democracy – that in the name of protecting democratic values, the most important one of all, free speech is often the first one to be sacrificed.

the inquisition the ideals of free speech and democracy would wither in the following centuries and wouldn't be rediscovered for another two thousand years.

with the rise of rome and its subsequent christianization, the spirit of free thought that had blossomed in parts of the ancient world was replaced by rigid religious orthodoxy in the medieval period.

astoundingly, as much as 90% of ancient literary works have been lost over the intervening years.

some of them were actively censored and burned by the church, but most perished due to neglect and lack of interest caused by the overly dogmatic climate.

it's not for nothing that this period is called the dark ages.

but the medieval period was not a blank space in history as many imagine.

despite widespread intolerance of heterodox ideas, important intellectual developments took place that would pave the way for centuries to come.

most importantly, new centers of inquiry and learning in the form of universities began to spring up across the islamic world and europe.

nourished on the ideas of ancient thinkers, these newly established houses of reason became hubs for ideas that would eventually challenge prevailing religious orthodoxy.

the catholic church was surprisingly tolerant of these developments.

while heresy laws existed as far back as the roman empire, the church's main strategy to combat it was persuasion, not persecution.

but this changed by the late 11th century.

with universities bringing pagan ideas into vogue, the church's quest to eradicate heretical ideas turned militant.

starting from the 12th century, the main tool the church used to tackle heresy was the inquisition.

a vast network of independent tribunals tasked with rooting out and punishing false belief, with the inquisition's magistrates serving as prosecutors, judges, and jury all rolled into one, these tribunals didn't exactly live up to modern legal standards.

while the church insisted the inquisition was undertaken out of love for erring brothers, those found guilty were burned at the stake.

the swift eradication of heresy required an efficient procedure.

inquisitors therefore found it more productive to focus on entire communities rather than just individuals.

once the inquisitors rolled into town, they would first announce a grace period where people in the community were encouraged to come forward to confess their sins or denounce others in exchange for leniency.

of course, the real consequence of this policy was to spread fear, causing people to confess to crimes they hadn't committed or to denounce neighbors who they had a grudge against.

another interesting side effect of keeping tabs on such a huge number of people was that the inquisitors had to invent new ways of storing and searching through that information.

over time, the medieval inquisition produced an enormous network of archives along with indexes to sift through the records.

the inquisition was effectively the first pan-european surveillance network.

so while the inquisition didn't invent persecution, what it did do was systematize it through a bureaucratic structure.

this machinery of persecution should sound familiar because it's been revamped and recycled many times over the centuries by both religious and political regimes, seeking to enforce their worldview.

it's interesting to note that in the islamic world during the same period, nothing like the inquisition ever took place, and it's not because the islamic world was particularly tolerant, rather there was simply no central religious authority comparable to the catholic church that was capable of enforcing orthodoxy.

the lesson to draw here then is that the real threat to freedom of speech and thought is not orthodoxy per se, but rather a single orthodoxy gaining too much power, because when power accumulates in the hands of a single authority, then the authority is able to control information and enforce its view of the truth.

the great disruption in the mid-15th century, something happened, something that would eventually dislodge the catholic church's grip over europe.

it all started when an industrious goldsmith by the name of johannes gutenberg developed the printing press.

few individuals have had so large an impact on world history as gutenberg.

from his workshop in mainz, the printing press spread like wildfire.

by the end of the century, there were 1700 printing presses operating in cities across europe from lisbon to krakow.

in the span of only 50 years, these printers would produce more books than all the scribes of europe had written in a millennium, and they were just warming up.

as book production skyrocketed, the price of books plummeted.

a manuscript that had once cost the same as a vineyard could go be picked up for the price of a loaf of bread.

the upshot of this new affordability was that it rapidly increased access to the written word for huge swaths of the population.

as a result, literacy rates began to shoot up, and economic growth and innovation soon followed.

but new technologies also bring new problems.

initially, western rulers like the habsburgs and tudors embraced this new technology.

the church even went so far as to christen it as a divine art, but they soon changed their tune when it became painfully apparent that printing had the potential to seriously disrupt the established order.

it wouldn't take long before the revolutionary power of the press would be showcased to its fullest when an opinionated monk called martin luther stepped onto the world stage.

in 1517, luther sent a letter to the archbishop of mainz containing his now famous list of 95 theses critical of the catholic church.

the letter mainly criticized the practice of promising people a shorter stay in purgatory in exchange for a fee, a practice that luther felt quite reasonably to be a scam, but he also went further, questioning the church's legitimacy.

luther was certainly not the first person to take aim at the church.

but being born on the right side of the printing revolution, luther had a leg up on the rest.

the press picked up luther's ideas, and pretty soon they spread like a 16th century meme throughout christendom, and so the reformation began.

luther and the press were a match made in heaven or, if you side with the church, in hell.

it can actually be shown that the more printing presses a city had, the more likely they were to break from the catholic church and turn protestant.

both the church and state authorities attempted to push back, banning luther's works, but it was too little, too late.

not even luther himself could have stopped the reformation, which had a mind of its own.

but luther could hardly have predicted the full consequences of what he had unleashed.

by encouraging ordinary people to search out the truth for themselves, he inspired a slew of new religious sects.

the improved literacy rates among people who read the bible also empowered them to read texts beyond scripture, laying the foundations for even more heterodox thinking.

in the end, even luther himself tried to put the brakes on what he'd started.

he stressed that good christians ought to heed those sections of the bible that emphasize respect for authority.

he even ironically advocated for censorship of divergent protestant sects.

of course, in retrospect, it was kind of naive of luther to expect that, after empowering citizens to read, everyone would get in line.

after all, if the pope doesn't have the singular authority to determine the truth, why should this constipated german monk?

but luther was certainly not the only person in history to transition from champion of free speech to persecutor of religious dissent once he had achieved power and influence.

you could say luther's situation speaks to the almost universal temptation to view free speech as a right for oneself, but not for others.

it's a temptation that is perhaps embedded in human psychology, and it's one we would do well to resist.

seeds of enlightenment the aftermath of the reformation was one of violent upheaval, because once-established authorities were suddenly in turmoil.

the chaos did not exactly create a fertile environment for tolerance and free speech.

yet despite this, by the 7th century, the first signs of a budding liberal society had taken root on a small patch of land in northern europe called the dutch republic.

the dutch republic came into existence in 1581, when the predominantly protestant region of the netherlands revolted against the catholic habsburg empire and declared independence.

over the following centuries, the republic would create a name for itself as a safe haven of free thought and freedom of the press, and establish itself as europe's printing house.

the reason tolerance took such a hold here had to do with the decentralized nature of the republic and the large diversity of religious sects living within its borders.

after decades of book burnings and human emulations by the catholic-led inquisition, the dutch were naturally suspicious of centralized authority, and each dutch province was allowed to operate autonomously.

as a result, any coordinated attempt to enforce censorship would have been impractical.

its location on the sea and contact with foreign places through trade contributed to a vibrant cosmopolitan culture where heterodox ideas flourished side by side.

among those who sought refuge from persecution in the dutch republic were a great many free thinkers, scientists, and philosophers.

these included winnie descartes, who is recognized as the founder of the modern philosophical tradition, and john locke, whose work helped influence the writing of the american declaration of independence.

both descartes and locke were avowed christians.

nevertheless, both of them, in their philosophies, did much to advance a purely mechanical picture of the world, which would later define the scientific worldview.

in the 1660s, the leader of a group of radical free thinkers by the name of baruch spinoza was ready to take this idea to the next level.

spinoza had already been excommunicated from amsterdam's jewish community for his, quote unquote, abominable and monstrous heresies.

judging from his published work, it's not hard to see why.

in one work, he wrote a rebuke of religious fanaticism, and in others, he denied the mortality of the soul and claimed scripture to be the mere work of humans.

aside from his obvious atheism, spinoza also penned a large number of other ideas that should sound familiar to us moderns.

he argued that free speech is actually a precondition for peace and social harmony.

but not a threat to it.

he distinguished between speech and action and argued that only action should be regulated by the state, and he claimed that the purpose of the state should be the liberty of its subjects.

spinoza's ideas, and especially his unapologetic rejection of religious dogma, earned him notoriety as a dangerous radical.

his books became some of the most hated and prohibited works of his time, both in the dutch republic and across europe.

but this couldn't stop the spread of his materialist way of thinking.

despite strict censorship, an underground network of printing presses kept his works in circulation, kind of like the dark web of the 17th century.

this black market for prohibited texts helped to nourish a growing number of european free thinkers.

the gradual rise of a secular, materialist worldview offered by spinoza and others helped to usher in a more religiously tolerant society in the 18th century.

by this time, the age of enlightenment was in full swing, and in most european countries, the project of eradicating heresy fell out of favor.

in the enlightenment period, the question was no longer which orthodoxy was the right one, but whether to believe in any orthodoxy at all.

historians of the enlightenment have never been able to agree exactly on how to define it.

but one thing they can agree on is that all enlightenment thinking was animated by a spirit of free and open discussion.

so that previously unquestioned dogmas could be held up to the skeptical light of reason.

weimar republic the legacy of the enlightenment can still be felt today.

we've inherited its spirit of curiosity and reason in the form of the scientific method.

and that's the idea mentioned earlier, that the freedom of speech in general and the freedom of science in particular are very closely related historically.

now we've institutionalized this sense of freedom and tolerance to foreign ideas that's so important for science in the political realm as well.

it's part of the constitutions of our liberal democracies.

yet history shows that progress doesn't always take a direct path.

there is more than one liberal democracy that has fallen back into tyranny at some point.

a century ago, my home country, germany, witnessed exactly that.

wedged between an authoritarian monarchy on one side and a totalitarian dictatorship on the other, the weimar period of german history was a short-lived, nevertheless remarkable interlude of freedom and democracy.

but it was a democracy built on shaky foundations.

rising out of the ashes of defeat in the first world war, it was a period plagued by economic instability and political violence.

between 1918 and 1923, it experienced no less than five coup attempts and over 350 assassinations by right-wing extremists.

but despite this, it was also a relative golden age of free thought and liberty, and proved fertile ground for great advances in science and culture.

the weimar period produced nine nobel prize winners including the jewish albert einstein, and it was also a period of major gains for women's equality, with women being granted the vote and equal rights.

but it wasn't to last.

some people have argued that the weimar republic's tolerance of free speech was partly responsible for its demise.

according to the argument, if only the republic had done more to silence right-wing speech and propaganda than its usurpation by the nazis and all the horrors they inflicted could have been avoided.

many commentators today still appeal to this logic to justify censorship of radical ideas.

but as we'll see, this reasoning is misguided for a number of reasons.

for one thing, the weimar authorities actually did try to silence hitler and his supporters.

they banned him from making speeches and they censored newspapers that carried his messages.

but all that managed to achieve was to increase interest and sympathy for hitler because he could present himself as the innocent victim of state repression.

in the end, hitler himself concluded that the prohibitions on him boosted his popularity overall.

even though free speech was enshrined in the weimar constitution, it was able to censor hitler and other groups it deemed too radical, thanks to a fatal loophole.

article 48 of the constitution stipulated that citizens' fundamental rights could be suspended in the event of a serious threat to public order.

this emergency law was intended to protect the democratic government, but what it actually did once the nazis came to power was hand them legal recourse to silence all dissent and strangle the very system it was supposed to uphold.

the first voices to be shut down were the communists and liberal left, who were banned from publishing their newspapers and holding assemblies.

initially, the political right was on board, but they soon regretted their support when the nazis turned on them too.

one by one, every other political party was forced to dissolve.

in just six months, hitler transformed germany from a vibrant democracy into a one-party dictatorship.

now, it would be too reductionist to say that germany's collapse into totalitarianism was caused solely by the weimar republic's policy of censorship, but it's nevertheless important to consider that it seems to have been counterproductive to censor dangerous ideas, because it actually paved the way for someone to come along and abolish free speech entirely.

the failure of the weimar republic to prevent the rise of fascism through censorship should give pause to us today.

those voices that demand limits to free speech, to suppress dangerous ideas and organized hate may be doing more to support them than they think.

present controversies in the weimar period, the only way you could really get your voice out there was by speaking on the radio or publishing a newspaper, which obviously wasn't accessible to everyone.

nowadays, thanks to the internet, even the most marginalized members of society are empowered to speak.

just as the printing press made information accessible to new groups of people, so too has the internet connected people and ideas like never before.

and like the printing press, the internet has been just as disruptive.

the internet is able to bypass traditional forms of censorship.

it has helped to penetrate oppressive regimes and provide information and power to people previously left in the dark.

all over the world, citizens were suddenly unmuted, no longer merely passive recipients of propaganda.

in short, the internet promised to bring about a new golden age of free speech, with the internet serving as a sort of cybernetic version of the greek agora.

nothing captured this optimism better than the arab spring.

in 2010, when a tunisian street vendor called mohamed bouazizi set himself on fire in protest against his government, the horrific image was caught on camera and soon went viral across the internet.

this sparked mass protests, and within a month, tunisia's dictator fled the country.

shortly after, several other north african and middle eastern states were aflame with public protests, all fueled by social media, which spread ideas and served as a highly effective platform for organizing.

yet the arab spring was not an unequivocal success, as it provoked corner dictators to fight back.

of all the countries that participated in the arab spring, only tunisia had a happy ending.

the others either declined into civil war or suffered even more stifling repression.

what's more, the arab spring prompted other authoritarian regimes, such as china and russia, to ramp up censorship on the web.

it might have been inevitable that regimes whose power was threatened by the internet would invest in ways of controlling it.

but what's more surprising is that even within liberal democracies, calls for censorship are growing.

now that the internet's honeymoon period is over, its dark side has become far more visible.

hate speech, online abuse and conspiracy theories are just some of the ills that politicians and journalists have been sounding the alarm about.

some have gone so far as to declare an epistemic crisis, a crisis of truth.

social media companies like facebook and twitter are already deleting disinformation by using algorithms that automatically target sensitive words and images.

although these steps to eradicate harmful speech may be well-intentioned, they nevertheless represent a worrying trend.

for one thing, it gives states and tech companies the power to determine what's true and what isn't, what's more, it's not clear that censorship is an effective remedy to the problem.

one 2017 study showed that extremism is exacerbated by intense public repression, which provokes greater hostility and polarization.

censoring people online also prevents the possibility of offering reasoned counterpoints in discussion, which some studies suggest can be effective at tempering radical viewpoints.

it just goes to show that the solution to intolerant free speech may just be even more free speech.

you know, the idea here is not to allow the dark side of free speech to obscure the many positives it can bring.

still even the inventor of the world wide web, tim berners-lee, has admitted that the status quo is untenable.

he's working on a solution to democratize the web again and take it back from the tech companies that have commercialized it.

now if history has anything to say, berners-lee's probably on the right track, because a less centralized internet is likely to be one that's much harder to censor.

and that means it's more friendly to free speech.