Free speech is supposed to be facilitate human progress. In its ideal form, it enables debate and causes us to iterate better political policies, better cultural outputs and a better society.
In reality, the marketplace of ideas, if it exists at all, is corrupt and monopolised by those with money and power.
One aspect of freedom of expression I think about a lot is the way in which disagreements happen. I’ve expressed dismay at how some free speech advocates seem remarkably uninterested in listening to other points of view, and only really care about their own right to offend. And I’ve noted how many spats seem to disintegrate into a competition over who can first reach a place of unassailable piety. Continue reading
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Writing in the New Statesman about how useless and selfish Boris Johnson has been as Foreign Secretary, John Elledge says this:
There’s no evidence he cares about the public good, nor matters of policy, nor even ideology: he treats politics as a game, and his goal has only ever been to reach the next square on the board. This was how politics worked in the latter part of the Roman Republic, where the entire point was to complete the cursus honorum quicker than your peers
Not a classicist myself, I needed Wikipedia to tell me that cursus honorum is a set of public offices that aspiring politicians sought to hold. Ostensibly as a means of securing well rounded training in matters civic and military, but (by the end) a means of self-aggrandisement. Continue reading
Nine days ago, the authoritarian president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prevailed in a surprise election. He is now expected to consolidate his power and further erode civil liberties.
My friend Mehmet, who is an avid reader of science fiction, just sent me a brilliant description of what it feels like to be a Turkish citizen right now, Reproduced with his permission.
We were really disappointed with the election results last week. It felt like crossing the event horizon to be sucked into the center of a black hole where reality is irreversibly bent and there is no way of going back. We both felt tired, depleted, lost for a couple of days but I guess we are adjusting now. For a split second hope was very vivid and then it went away again. We’re grasping for straws right now, but we know we have to find ways to be optimistic again. Some say black holes are beginnings of new universes, right?
PEN Transmissions is English PEN’s new online magazine dedicated to international writing. The latest issue is on the theme ‘Writing the Past’ and features my interview with the Kenyan novelist Peter Kimani, whose most recent book Dance of the Jakaranda was published by Telegram in March 2018.
Peter was a fascinating interviewee. We discussed the idiosyncratic structure of his novel, the challenges of ‘writing the other’, the need for Kenya to invest more in developing Swahili and Gikuyu literature, and the perilous state of freedom of expression in Kenya.
The past and the present side by side: a conversation with Peter Kimani
Oh dear. The Home Office have had to point out to the City of York council that anti-fracking groups are not ‘extremists’ and should not be funnelled into the PREVENT programme.
This is an excellent example of the ‘slippery slope’ or ‘boiling the frog’ problem that is so eloquently expressed in Pastor Martin Neimöller’s famous poem which begins ‘First they came for the socialists…’
Laws enacted for a narrow purpose are often deployed more widely in ways that are illiberal and a threat to our civil liberties. For example, the UK law that criminalises ‘grossly offensive’ messages sent online were enacted in 2003 (before the rise of social media) and intended to stop people sending hate mail via email or fax. But now it is being used to criminalise offensive comedians and harass outspoken student activists. Continue reading