Miriam Cates: We should not defend extreme online discourses in the name of freedom of expression

Miriam Cates is a former MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge.

Freedom of speech is under attack in Keir Starmer’s Britain, according to headlines. The Labour government has blamed “online disinformation” for fueling recent riots, and the courts have cracked down on those accused of using social media to incite violence. For the political class, blaming “hate speech” for widespread unrest is a useful distraction as they struggle to deal with immigration, an issue that highlights a serious failure of our democracy.

Fears that the government will amend the Online Safety Act to restrict freedoms are justified. In opposition, Labour backed plans to ban material that was “lawful but harmful”, a clause that was eventually scrapped by the Conservatives.

Under the ‘protection’ of Labour and big tech, it is reasonable to assume that new restrictions will fall much more heavily on those on the right of the political spectrum: we need only compare the treatment of those who have recently incited online violence against immigrants with those who incite violence against gender-critical women or Jews.

Freedom of speech may be under attack. But there is a tendency among some conservatives to wrongly equate freedom of speech with an unregulated internet and to label calls to address the negative aspects of social media as “censorship.” By defending the indefensible, we not only misunderstand the nature of freedom of speech but, in my view, hasten its demise.

If we want to defend freedom of speech, we must first define it. So, what exactly is “freedom of speech”? As some seem to believe, is it the anonymous right to say whatever you want to an unlimited number of people anywhere in the world, without legal or social repercussions? If so, then it follows that we have freedom of speech as long as those terms exist online.

But there are serious problems with this definition. Firstly, this is not the kind of ‘free speech’ we had in the pre-internet era, and free speech certainly existed in Britain long before Twitter and Meta were invented.

Before the Internet, people in free countries could say more or less whatever they wanted. But very few people had any ‘reach’. You could stand in your local pub and say whatever you wanted or write a letter to a friend, but your opinion wouldn’t travel very far. There were clear disincentives to say anything particularly stupid, offensive or untrue. You could lose your social status, be stigmatised and even physically assaulted if you offended the wrong person.

For those few individuals with a wider audience—politicians, preachers, and writers—with greater influence came greater responsibility. Printing untruths could and still can land journalists and editors in jail, and misreading public sentiment can and will cost politicians their jobs. Legislation prohibiting libel, slander, libel, and fraud has broad support, but all such laws could be seen by absolutists as impeding “free” speech.

Before the Internet, anonymous communication was seen as cowardly and devious. Poison pen letters and even the famous anonymous pamphlets of the 18and century were illegal. Today, all official political communications must carry a registered ‘imprint’; this accountability is not seen as a threat to freedom of expression, but as a safeguard for democracy.

Of course, there has always been a role for journalists and courts to conceal the identities of those whistleblowers whose stories need to be told but who cannot be securely identified. But the absolute right to speak anonymously has not previously been seen as a pillar of freedom of expression, and certainly not as a social good.

There is and always will be a social and even financial cost to challenging the prevailing worldview, but it is individual acts of courage, not anonymity, that bring about real change. As Jordan Peterson points out in this fascinating lecture For the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, it is always best to tell the truth. But we should not fool ourselves into thinking that we do not have to pay a price for it.

There has never been a time in history when free speech was defined as the right to say anything to anyone without consequence. This view of free speech is incompatible with functional human relationships and therefore antithetical to a safe and functional society.

Digital “speech” is neither inherently good nor bad. Rather, the problem with the Internet is that we have not yet found a way to translate the age-old framework of social and legal boundaries that govern offline communication into the online world. Key social cues like body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice that naturally moderate speech in real life do not exist online, where the targets of our communication are just as human, but often remote and invisible.

What we see all too often on social media is a pre-civilizational anarchist haven where liars, psychopaths, and general assholes operate freely and without punishment, and where individuals are not faced with the normal consequences of expressions that make it socially and financially costly – offline at least – to be offensive, predatory, and antisocial. We are not talking about an environment that tolerates the occasional giving and taking of offense, but one that actively glorifies the gratuitous humiliation of other people.

The Internet has many benefits. But it has also led to disturbing increases in violence against women and girls, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim prejudice, crime, terrorism, sexual exploitation and the indoctrination of children. It is no exaggeration to say that the toxic and dysfunctional nature of political ‘discourse’ on social media is undermining democracy.

If we continue to defend this extreme, destructive and divisive environment in the name of ‘free speech’, the consequences of an online Wild West will become unbearable. If social media cannot be ‘civilised’, governments will take increasingly draconian measures (probably with public support) in a way that inevitably favours their political interests.

If we are to defend freedom of speech, we need a better definition. A truer and more historically accurate description of freedom of speech is the freedom to express one’s beliefs about politics, philosophy, and religion without fear of legal action or physical harm. This kind of freedom is of infinite value and the best protection against vicious authoritarianism, but it is not a “stand-alone” right.

Societies, governments, and civilizations do not simply decide that the right to free speech exists, like the right to free health care or education. Rather, the existence and extent of free speech at any given time is the result of various societal conditions, conditions that, to our great advantage, Western democracies have developed better than any other historical civilization.

One of these conditions is a state of peace. For governments, national security will always be more important than freedom of expression. In times of war, even democracies in good faith suspend ordinary freedom of expression, because the preservation of state secrets becomes an existential undertaking.

Domestic peace is also a prerequisite for free speech. In feverish situations like those in British cities this month, authorities cannot afford to allow words to incite physical violence, and – rightly or wrongly – they crack down hard.

Freedom of expression also requires a degree of social cohesion and support for democracy. We need to agree on enough – we need to have a strong enough shared identity, history and common purpose – and be willing to grant legitimacy to our opponents to be able to tolerate strong disagreements on political issues without falling into unrest.

It is like the difference between conflict in a healthy marriage and a dysfunctional one. If the foundation of the relationship is good, opinions can be freely expressed without the threat of violence or divorce. The same is true for society. It remains to be seen whether true freedom of speech can be maintained in an increasingly multicultural and polarized country.

But perhaps the most underrated prerequisite for free speech is a culture of personal responsibility, or “virtue.” For free speech to be widely supported, most people must behave well most of the time. Political opponents must be treated with dignity; we must ridicule ideas but not individuals; people must exercise a degree of restraint and certainty before sharing rumors; and as individuals we must embrace a duty to the broader society that asks—before we tweet—whether the motivation for a given intervention is self-interest or a desire to advance the common good.

Strikingly, freedom of speech is least supported by young people. This generation has been hit hardest by the vicious and ugly nature of many social media ‘debates’ and the now ubiquitous but devastating online public outrages that bear more than a passing resemblance to the witch trials of the Middle Ages.

Freedom of speech is the fruit of a successful civilization, not its foundation. The foundation of our successful and freedom-loving Western democratic tradition is the Judeo-Christian concept of ‘imago dei’: the remarkable belief that every individual is created in the image of God and therefore of infinite value, and the instruction to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, form the basis of the fairness, freedom and wealth we still enjoy. Yet many ‘users’ in their online interactions have completely abandoned these principles and the restraint and self-denial to which they call us.

If we turn our backs on one of the fundamental values ​​of Western culture—the obligation to be honest and virtuous in our interactions with others—we will sooner or later lose the benefits of that culture, including many of our freedoms. If we want to avoid censorship and authoritarianism online, we must find a way to translate the offline conventions that have so successfully promoted Western freedoms into the online world.

This means questioning the use of anonymity, regulating the internet like any other technology, and tackling online crime as harshly as offline. Online expression can and should be free, but this freedom will only survive if individuals are fully responsible for what they say and write, just as they are in the real world.

Technology may have “moved on,” but the optimal conditions for human flourishing have not. The best response to online chaos is a deeply conservative one: the rediscovery of personal responsibility. The future of online freedom of expression depends not on an absence of regulation, but on our collective willingness to embrace the traditional virtues of kindness, honesty, and self-restraint in our new—virtual—public sphere.