Free Speech Hypocrites?

Commentator Owen Jones criticises the Freedom Movement (in his eyes, 'The Right').

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Are the people who were opposed to the Covid restrictions and the censorship surrounding the experimental-vaccination programme guilty of hypocrisy on the war in Gaza and the repressions being seen on college campuses across America?

The clear line around the freedom of speech issue that existed during the two years of restrictions from 2020 to 2022 has been blurred and almost rubbed out as political events have served to expel members of a minority, yet ever widening coalition, into other warring camps. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine was the first great convulsion that created a fault line in which people who were completely sane and reasonable about the Covid-hoax suddenly started to parrot the line about Putin as a new Hitler intending to conquer Europe.

Now, aside from leaving it a bit late to be a conqueror - Putin is seventy years old – the context of the war is far more nuanced and complicated than these simple-minded exclamations, and it is possible to be sympathetic towards Ukraine and, by the light of history, appreciating the centuries long struggle for recognition and an undominated statehood by Ukrainians, while at the same time being able to understand Russia’s security concerns and their perception of, and resistance to, the (known) attempts by powerful unknown actors to fragment the Russian state over recent decades.

However, what manifested on social media when the open fighting began, all too quickly, was the marking of a new set of boundaries, uninformed and lacking a grasp of the multiple forces and disseminations at work, that pushed people into choosing a side, and very often they did, forgetting previous alliances.

People who had underwent the most traumatic and oppressive action ever committed by government in peacetime were suddenly attacking each other for their allegiance – the shared humanity and common interest of the Oppressed had evaporated just like the restrictions. (As a historical footnote, the Covid Bill expired and disappeared without murmur or recognition, like the bubbling froth on a stream.)

Yet, the ill will and disillusion generated by this split in the freedom movement was a mere tremor compared to the seismic quake which is the war between Israel and Hamas, incorporating the people of Gaza. Perhaps nothing encapsulates the bitter acrimony between people who once were allies and who now hold only a bilious animus towards one another is the reporting of Bob Moran, opponent of lockdowns, the ancillary fear-propaganda and of mass experimental-vaccination, by Laura Dodsworth, also a reasonable voice in opposition to the very same abuses, to the police for a cartoon he drew depicting Israel’s prime minister as a bloodied cannibalist.

As with the conflict in Europe, there are an array of pressures, subterranean, subcutaneous and overt that are involved which legitimises the moral claims of either side. (Although, how Hamas managed to penetrate the most highly surveilled border in the world, for the first part, without precipitating a full-military response immediately, for the second, still, to me, remains a mystery and this singular fact may lead impartial but rational thinkers to conclude that there is either an extremely high penetration of Hamas-sympathisers in Israeli security; or the Israeli state has decisive influence with both Hamas and its Arab backers to the extent that it can execute a false flag operation with known terrible consequences for the Gazan population; or that there is a degree of co-operation between factions of powerful extremists on either side who have decided that their interests and goals can be realised through such violence. But that’s a conspiracy theory!) Given the information available, and the amount of time it takes to arrive at an informed opinion that balances the demand for justice, it is simply not possible to believe in the absolute purity and unquestionable rightness of either of the opposed parties, and therefore, our first step should be to withhold an opinion and our support – which should apply to all facilitating states and involved actors.

Obviously, that is far too idealistic a position for the current situation where the sentiments of people are being relentlessly provoked by criminality, brutality, war crimes, disingenuous bureaucratic-speak, deliberate misdirection and conflation, and nefarious larger purposes of which we can only glean from the contradictions inherent in the panorama of destruction. Since few people seem to be prepared to be engaged, influential and argue to their supporters for restraint, then the next best thing is to allow all sides to speak freely. In this way, the public arena becomes akin to a machine effecting an inexorable mechanical process where attitudes and assumptions from multifarious standpoints are entered in to be hulled, crushed, ground before being washed, boiled, and, then finally, producing the golden oil of nutritious truth at the operation’s extreme point. 

Is it a perfect process? Who knows? If we look at history with a jaundiced gaze, we would have to be honest and say that a true freedom of discourse, particularly one free from the toxicity sprayed by determinant interests, via the taps of government organs and captured media, which blights the mind of masses of individuals, has never been tried fully. Yet even with the limited free speech that has been achieved, the world has become a better place, materially, for more of its inhabitants. There are still massive issues, it goes without saying – although, at their root, there lies, usually, not only a lack of free speech but its vital concomitant, the willingness to listen to other views, whereby a human empathy can be germinated to help grow the process of accommodation and, hopefully, a bloom of resolution results.

This is why the freedom movement, who should know the utmost importance of it after the tribulations of the past few years, should defend free speech in every form. Many of us who support free speech as the best means to secure human freedom in other areas, have found themselves alienated from the menu of policies that the Left has been offering these past few years, given that the bill is to be paid in genuine human rights, no matter how idealistic the platter served, and so have found themselves more aligned with the Right and its more sanguine, uncompromising pro-freedom message. None of this means necessarily subscribing to many of the leitmotifs of the traditional Right, however. And it definitely does not mean an unlicensed support for any group wishing to suppress free speech, regardless of what wing they sit on, and who are themselves undistinguished in their own recent history of tolerance of others’ right to speak without censure.

The students and academics, indeed, many of the Left wing voices that are vigorously at odds with the actions of Israel and its supporters were the ones who were involved in a unconscionable betrayal of humanity during Covid. We can exempt the majority of students for their youth, but not the adults. Their sanctimony, piousness, naivety and patronising stupidity were as difficult and as painful to pass as a kidney stone. Their ‘do-good’ assumptions, hiding a base and all-consuming fear, was one of the most abject displays of human weakness ever to be witnessed in this country. It was a shame and a humiliation. The damage wreaked by such a mindset has, at best estimates, been equivalent to five or six hundred Gazas, and, doubtless, there is more tragedy to come.

Nevertheless, I believe, whether the people in the freedom movement agree with their objectives or not – at the least, peace is on their radar – their right to object, protest, speak and be admitted to as many platforms as they wish should be considered sacrosanct. Yes, the protestors are blind to western provocation in Ukraine. Yes, they consider ‘My Body, My Choice’ axiomatic until it’s your body and the medical authorities are telling them your autonomy might threaten them. Yes, they are dupes for tribalism and name-calling and identity politics, and they will believe, probably most of them, that a man can be a woman with no evidence or protocol, as they pursue ‘human rights’ for a minority, even if it means abusing and vilifying their opponents who belong to the one demographic of society that has demonstrably been the victim of the greatest and ongoing holocaust of rights and life in all of human history, women.

Trying to win these never-ending arguments, fomented and fed by a strata of society that hates the ordinary man and woman, is futile. It is time to pragmatically make friends, where we can. Let’s live in the present and seek justice, but avoid revenge and the coruscating bitterness of past wrongs that cannot now be changed.  We do not have to fulsomely back Palestinian self-determination or assuage the fears of Israel. We just have to uphold the right to have the discussion, to maintain the discussion and to protect the discussion, to allow it to bear its fruit.

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