↓ Freedom of speech: the western weapon of mass destruction

[tweetmeme]It’s more than famous that Western civilization longs for universal equality, freedom a perfect world in the end… according to its own conceptions. Those conceptions have been spread all across the glob e, updated, resculpted in order to fit every single different culture…… at least in theory.

Freedom of speech has entered most of western countries’ constitutions. It’s now an established right and for many of those countries it even is a fundamental right when not the main one. Basically, this legislation is absolute : it affects everyone of us, on every single subject…. like it or not. Once again, this is in theory… and it can pertinently be proved.

Instructions for a sharp use of freedom of speech.

Several examples of totalitarian governments used propaganda and its corollary censorship to control people and legitimate their power this way. This memory of totalitarian ideologies and all the damages they brought are still alive all over Europe. In America, this memory only exist through migrants who lived and witnessed this type of situation. After a long processes, it resulted that the US reinforced a very strong idea about the importance of freedom of speech, that they opposed to what they considered being their enemies. This reinforcement kept them in a dualist vision : good side versus bad side. At the national scale, there was a need to keep it alive. We can state now how a few decades later, binarity got re-used to simplify a more and more complex reality. Concretely, how many American people consider they live in the only free country in the world and that other human beings live in dictatorships where they can’t express themselves. And this conviction gives the orientation we know to U.S politics and international relations.

The European case is different. If duality exists there, heritage of the manicheist religious conceptions, freedom of speech is used sometimes to put into perspective the consequences of colonisation and how guilty westerners can feel about it. For instance, French president Nicolas Sarkozy didn’t really make friends with Senegal officials during a visit over there : he used his freedom of speech to get rid of his obligation to submit to repentance. For him, if Africa is down and suffering, it’s because of their wars, not because of colonisation. How could he be blamed for saying that?….he was acting according to his freedom of speech. In this particular case, and if we skip the notion of repentance and its purpose, freedom of speech is a very practical tool to create cohesion around the past and suppress at the same time a lot of debates that could become annoying/ bothering/ dangerous. And particularly, analysing one’s own behaviour and its consequences.

Freedom of speech creates then a new speech, free by definition, that leaves a clear message to any kind of opposition «we have the right to do it, even better : we are right in doing it, and act according to the principle of freedom of speech.» It is a very powerful weapon within western countries to attack others : «we tell the truth, we are acting according to the sacred and saint Freedom of Speech.» The best example we can find is about the Caricatures of Muhammed in 2005-2006 when Danish and Norwegian newspapers published caricatures of the prophet. They did it in the name of freedom of speech against what they called «the Muslim invasion/ tyranny». They decided to ignorthe pain caused to the Muslim community, cancelled out to serve the freedom of speech. On this level, they acted just like the religious extremists they were condemning for their non-tolerant beliefs.

But freedom of speech in its most interesting (and vicious) form works best on the international level. More and more in our current world, remains of colonialism and past wars create new conflicts, even more complex and hard to deal with. Those conflicts are the results of community frustration and disturbing historical realities. In this very particular case, freedom of speech is used to suppress feelings of guiltiness and keep on with neo-colonialism. A clear example can be found within Africa : western intellectuals recently decided that «us» (western countries) didn’t have to apologize for the past century wars in Africa.  Once again, freedom of speech helps “us” to avoid the real matters, on the right level, with the right people.

To finish off, let’s remind an important thing : if you state your neighbour is a Martian, you might end up in mental hospital; but if you have  racist or xenophobic word towards your neighbour, this (fortunately) will lead you to jail… freedom of speech is an interesting concept in this sense but as everything, if put in the wrong hands, it can be dangerous. Here is another debate : we can wonder who it is dangerous for, general safety, social cohesion or elite well-being…?

So, finally, are we able to express ourselves freely or are we moving towards a clever way of concentrating everyone in a single way of thinking ?