Everyone’s in favour of the right to free speech. Until, that is, ordinary people open their mouths – then things quickly get much more complicated, with exceptions to the rule cropping up all over the place like cracks in a bursting dam. Liberals in particular will claim that their commitment to freedom of expression is total and boundless, but we’ve seen over the last couple of years, from college campuses to the Internet, that their dedication to the cause involves more reservations than the Wild West. Instead of a full-on no-holds-barred debate, they want their safe spaces, where only certain kinds of opinions can be voiced by certain kinds of people.
Well, proponents of the kinds of views that liberals find unacceptable are fighting back. Ordinary people are rejecting the whole specious discourse of political correctness, and refusing to conform to the standard narratives, to the attractively packaged and artificially sweetened versions of reality which they’ve been force-fed for far too long. Opinions rarely expressed in the lamestream media are finding outlets and appreciative audiences online, free of regulation and admonishment by the self-appointed guardians and gatekeepers of good taste.
But who am I to tell you what to think? The video I’m going to show you will make my case far more articulately than any number of #MAGA tweets, Breitbart editorials or impassioned rants by Alex Jones. You’ll certainly never hear these views on a Ted Talk! The video shows a young woman, an innocent yet passionate embodiment of the desire for total human liberty, expressing herself as loudly and as freely as her heart and lungs will allow. It’s a moving lesson – as The Bible says, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings – that teaches us where the full realisation of ‘free speech’ will lead us. Watch it and then tell me you would ever restrict the right of such human beings to share their views in public, regardless of how unpopular the opinion or how unwelcoming the context.
(The point of this obviously tongue-in-cheek post is to ridicule the new global far-right’s hypocritical and cynical pretence of being attached to ‘free speech’, and to make the point to fellow progressives that we must not let them get away with it. You may find it poorly executed – fair enough – but if you think my point is mistaken, please complete the following challenge: find me one social media fascist screeching about the inviolability of free speech (a liberal value in any case) who has also spoken up for the rights of those who don’t subscribe to the alt-right worldview. If you can find one such example, I will send you $10 by PayPal and edit the post accordingly. I’m off out for a pizza.)
Infinite Coincidence 