Trigger Warning: Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?

Trigger Warning: Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech?
Mick Hume

Concise and Abridged EditionIn this blistering polemic, veteran journalist Mick Hume presents an uncompromising defence of freedom of expression, which he argues is threatened in the West, not by jackbooted censorship but by a creeping culture of conformism and You-Can’t-Say-That.In a fierce defence of free speech – in all its forms – Mick Hume’s blistering polemic exposes the new threats facing us today in the historic fight for freedom of expression. Ours is an age when sensitive students must be sheltered from potentially offensive material in ‘safe spaces’, Twitter vigilantes police those expressing the ‘wrong’ opinion online, and many even insist that the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists showed the need to restrict offensive ideas and opinions.But the fundamental freedom being attacked – the right to be offensive, despite the problems it might create – is vital to a free and civilised society. Without unfettered freedom of expression, other liberties will not be possible.

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Copyright (#ue9fd4c07-d1ba-5f39-9778-c8d16f04b4df)

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2015

Copyright © Mick Hume 2015

Mick Hume asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is

available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008125455

Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780008126384

Version: 2015-05-11

Dedication (#ue9fd4c07-d1ba-5f39-9778-c8d16f04b4df)

For Stella and Isabel, may they always think what they like and say what they think

Contents

Cover (#uefe4b499-c9d4-569a-8a18-b7d76ad130ba)

Title Page (#ulink_b351ac15-53d5-5422-8626-8bb1f03102da)

Copyright (#ulink_62759efe-f0aa-5153-86e5-320567be0a91)

Dedication (#ulink_eb02d315-ba1d-50dd-94b6-872a2d60e666)

Epigraph (#ulink_9d77792f-afa3-5bc4-b08b-ed8dc4644b5c)

Author’s note (#ulink_04530ebc-15ea-58b3-87d2-36820e81f748)

Prologue: ‘Je Suis Charlie’ and the free-speech fraud (#ulink_3bde38dd-9ccc-51d0-ae50-084c9a3e37a9)

SECTION ONE: The silent war on free speech (#ulink_95c53fc2-3633-50e7-9c80-8546b03f1e12)

1 A few things we forgot about free speech (#ulink_03cae3f4-f6fc-567d-9c70-cf15588c48e5)

2 The age of the reverse-Voltaires (#ulink_bb5bba99-fba1-5ce1-911a-884fffb46b9c)

3 A short history of free-speech heretics (#litres_trial_promo)

4 The Internet Front: hunting for trolls down ‘memory holes’ (#litres_trial_promo)

5 The University Front: students fight for ‘freedom from speech’ (#litres_trial_promo)

6 The Entertainment Front: football – kicking free speech with impunity; comedy – no laughing matter (#litres_trial_promo)

SECTION TWO: Five good excuses for restricting free speech – and why they’re all wrong (#litres_trial_promo)

7 ‘There is no right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theatre’ (#litres_trial_promo)

8 ‘… but words will always hurt me’ (#litres_trial_promo)

9 ‘Mind your Ps, Qs, Ns and Ys’ (#litres_trial_promo)

10 ‘Liars and Holocaust deniers do not deserve to be heard’ (#litres_trial_promo)

11 ‘Free speech is just a licence for the mass media to brainwash the public’ (#litres_trial_promo)

A short summation for the defence (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue: The Trigger Warnings we need (#litres_trial_promo)

Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Epigraph (#ue9fd4c07-d1ba-5f39-9778-c8d16f04b4df)

Trigger Warning (noun): a statement at the start of any piece of writing, video, etc, alerting the reader or viewer to the fact that it contains material they might find upsetting or offensive.

Author’s note (#ue9fd4c07-d1ba-5f39-9778-c8d16f04b4df)

This is not a book about the Charlie Hebdo massacre. When I began to write Trigger Warning in late 2014, Charlie was a small French satirical magazine known by relatively few and read by far fewer, particularly in the Anglo-American world. The murderous attack at the magazine’s Paris offices in January 2015 did not really alter the argument about the urgent need to defend free speech, but that massacre and the reactions to it certainly brought the issues into focus.