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My favorite part about this is there is zero discussion of whether is it true; just whether they dislike the content.
Where possible there is a push to create laws about speech that causes offense as a means of sidestepping the truth as a defense. They wish to make speaking 'offensive' truth a crime.
I’m reminded of the Cathy Newman Jordan Peterson interview where she asks why should his right to speech be more important than her right not to be offended.
And to me that is the core conflict between Europe and the New World captured in a single exchange.
Jordan Peterson is Canadian and Cathy Newman is a resident of the planet Idiot - it's too pat to boil it down to New and Old Worlds.
Especially since free speech is defended by law in both England and apparently Brussels, as it says in the article. The defendant wins most of their cases if they actually get to court.
The issue is informal sanctions and discrimination producing a chilling effect, something which is at least as prevalent in the US as it is in the 'Old World'.
If free speech is protected in the UK, why are there literally thousands of arrests for tweets?
Easy: the UK defines free speech as the ability to say X but not Y. Suffice to say a dog is not a cat even if the government says it is a cat. Likewise, Europe lacks free speech even if they claim they have it.
If free speech is protected in America, why do people get fired and blacklisted for the things they say?
Come on, be serious. There are compromises made in every country on Earth
In practice, the UK has more legal protections against being fired or discriminated against for your views, even when those views are right-wing. That is why people who go to employment tribunals tend to win their cases. It doesn't usually give them their jobs back.
The UK has less protections for tweeting in a way that makes the government worried. This is not good.
Broadly, in the US you are more likely to be ruined, in the UK you are more likely to get arrested. Neither of these are good.
I am in fact being serious. The US has a concept of negative rights. That is, here are things the government will not force you to do. Included in them is the government will not compel speech or forbid speech. Another negative right is that of freedom of association. Imbedded within freedom of association is at will employment.
Sadly, the U.S. government has stupidly (and I would argue unconstitutionally) limited freedom of association with so called civil right laws.
However, the conceptual point remains: the government will not forbid you from making speech it dislikes nor will the government forbid you or require you to associate with something you don’t like. So there is no conflict with being fired for speech since the right itself has nothing to do with other private persons. That is, it is internally consistent.
Europe takes a different approach. They broadly believe in positive rights. These include the right to dignity (ie not to be offended), worker rights, and so called free speech.
But the problem with positive rights is that they conflict so you have to pick which one is more important. And the UK has picked which one is more important and it isn’t speech. Thus your right to speech (as understood as a positive right) is and must be curtailed.
In the U.S., you can have media types speak out against the current trend of the day and can hopefully self correct. We did correct somewhat (though not enough). In the UK, you have police accosting journalists over their tweets. https://freespeechunion.org/archive/telegraph-journalist-allison-pearson-faces-investigation-over-reported-non-crime-hate-incident.
Also, im far from certain UK even has robust worker protections in practice even if in law. https://www.gbnews.com/news/free-speech-row-home-office-reform-richard-tice-gb-news
Yes, but the US is the only country where they believe that "free speech" == "a negative right not to have the government specifically compel or forbid your speech". And that works, kind of, except when it doesn't. But from where I'm standing it seems super, super limited. My employers and my social groups have far more influence over my daily life.
If I define "liberty" as "a negative right to never have the government interfere with your person" then it's totally internally consistent to say that a man has his liberty while he's locked up in Josef Fritzl's basement. But most would consider that a pretty anaemic version of liberty.
If you had said that the US has "protection from speech-related legislation" and the UK has "protection from being fired for your speech" then I'd be with you. But to blithely say 'the US believes in free speech and Europe doesn't' is to my mind frankly ridiculous.
Ultimately my conception of free speech comes down to this: can somebody speak their sincere mind without fear?
Note:
In practical terms, it seems to me that both countries regularly fall short of their concept of free speech.
The US' conception of free speech does not permit the government to harass social networks to censor political opponents, but it does. It does not permit the government to make laws that require employees don't hear things that make them feel uncomfortable (a hostile environment) but it does. And so on.
The UK likewise falls short: arresting journalists for non-violent tweets does not in any way fit in the tradition of UK free speech, and I'm old enough to know. Personally, my experience of the UK's free speech problems is that they came in the wake of Twitter rows and race taboos imported from the US in the latter half of the 2010s, but I won't insist on the point.
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