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BBC Sounds. Music, Radio, Podcasts.

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Hello, I'm Tom Sutcliffe and

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this is Start the Week from

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BBC Radio 4. Hope you enjoy

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the programme. As I came into

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broadcasting house this morning, I walked

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past the statue of George Orwell

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that is located just outside and

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passed the Orwell quotation on the

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wall beside it. If liberty means

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anything at all, it reads, it

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means the right to tell people

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what they do not want to

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hear. That remark puts speech at

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the very centre of its definition

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of what freedom is, but what

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is the history of that now

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familiar association between expression and liberty?

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And how meaningful is it when

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speech is limited and hedged in

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every day, both by authoritarian power

0:44

and social nicety? That's what we're

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talking about today and with us

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to do it are Fara da

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Boivola, Professor of History at Princeton

0:52

and the author of What is

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Free Speech, the history of a

0:56

dangerous idea. The novelist Lionel Shriver,

0:58

whose most recent book Mania, imagines

1:00

a world in which some people

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are smarter than others, has become

1:04

unmentionable and you can lose your

1:07

job for suggesting otherwise. And finally,

1:09

the artist Grayson Perry, spiking the

1:11

decorous forms of ceramics and tapestry

1:14

and embroidery and embroidery. with what

1:16

might be considered by some to

1:18

be unspeakable details or discomforting at

1:21

least. You may hear things you

1:23

do not want to hear in

1:25

the next three quarters of an

1:27

hour. Grace and Perry if I

1:30

can start with you, your show

1:32

is at the Wallace Collection in

1:34

London. You've called it Delusions

1:37

of grandeur. Why that title?

1:39

It's got several levels. My

1:41

own delusions of grandeur of

1:43

the show. is that I've

1:45

invented an artist who had a

1:47

sort of an episode, a mental health

1:49

episode that's say when she was

1:51

a teenage and found herself prostrate

1:54

on the floor of the Wallace

1:56

Collection and thought she'd woken up

1:58

in heaven and then... thought she

2:00

was actually the honourable Millicent Wallace,

2:02

the arrest to Hartford House and

2:04

all its treasures and so then

2:06

I've made her art. So it's

2:09

a kind of collaboration, the exhibition

2:11

between me, my invented artist Shirley

2:13

Smith and the Wallace Collection. Yes,

2:15

I mean as you go in

2:17

through the first room you get

2:19

the letters that she wrote to

2:21

a former director saying when can

2:23

I get my... property back, you

2:25

get pictures of her from a

2:27

notional evening standard article about her,

2:29

this figure that haunted the Wallace

2:32

Connection. When did she come to

2:34

you? Did she come as a

2:36

rescue? Well, when I first sort

2:38

of took on the project about

2:40

three years ago, I sort of

2:42

walked around and around and around

2:44

the Wallace looking and looking and

2:46

I came to the conclusion that

2:48

though I liked the Wallace and

2:50

sort of enjoyed the whole sort

2:52

of treasure house thing, I didn't

2:54

love a lot of the work.

2:57

It wasn't getting my juices flowing

2:59

sort of thing. So then I

3:01

found out this sort of obscure

3:03

fact that an outsider artist that

3:05

I've known for years and liked

3:07

very much called Madge Gil had

3:09

exhibited there during the war in

3:11

a charity exhibition and I thought

3:13

that's such a strange coincidence and

3:15

the idea immediately came to me

3:17

almost fully formed that I would

3:20

invent an artist and that would

3:22

allow me to sort of play

3:24

with the Wallace Collection really. And

3:26

what's it like to make Shirley

3:28

Smith's art? much more fun. As

3:30

opposed to your own. I was

3:32

having fun. I'm 65 now and

3:34

I thought, right, I'm going to

3:36

have fun. And I always had

3:38

this fantasy that when you got

3:40

older you would kind of all

3:42

of the kind of angst and

3:45

politics of sort of the angry

3:47

young artists would sort of dissipate

3:49

and I would be this enjoying

3:51

texture and form and composition and

3:53

just enjoy making things. So I've

3:55

kind of deluded myself into doing

3:57

that. You have one vase here,

3:59

which you describe in the catalogue

4:01

as a grumpy outburst in pottery

4:03

form, and it contains various exclamations

4:05

on it. a poor person's idea

4:08

of a rich person's taste is

4:10

one of them and another. It's

4:12

all just overfed women and hunting.

4:14

I mean we're talking about free

4:16

speech, I've taken out the Anglo-Saxon

4:18

epithet that's in the middle of

4:20

that. It's a very grumpy. What

4:22

was the cause of the grumpiness

4:24

there? It's the Wallace Collections kind

4:26

of... Yeah, I mean it was

4:28

my frustration at the beginning of

4:31

the project. in that I was

4:33

struggling to get my juices flowing

4:35

and then also seeing the space

4:37

empty of a year or two

4:39

ago and feel it realizing there's

4:41

a lot of man hours in

4:43

this show you know I had

4:45

to fill this space and I

4:47

and and serve reporcelain is a

4:49

particular bug bear of mine you

4:51

know there's so many people love

4:53

it but for me whenever I

4:56

look at server I just think

4:58

of Eastbourne charity shops you know

5:00

there's something grandma's dressing table about

5:02

it that I can't bear and

5:04

that perfection. Well, that same vase

5:06

has also has on it as

5:08

my grand loved Rococo. Yeah. So

5:10

it's her taste as well. Yeah,

5:12

I suppose there is that, you

5:14

know, my grandma's knickknacks in many

5:16

ways where the sort of great-great-great-grandchildren

5:19

of the collection at the Wallace.

5:21

You do. use a lot of

5:23

language in your art. You use

5:25

a lot of words in your

5:27

art and there's a very interesting

5:29

piece you've got called Sissy's Helmut.

5:31

It's an amazing piece. It's kind

5:33

of made for you by Bill

5:35

Radford, an amazing armorer and it's

5:37

a full head helmet, you know,

5:39

it looks like some of the

5:41

armour that's in the Wallace Connection,

5:44

but it's etched with insults like

5:46

crybabybaby and mummy's boy. and so

5:48

on. I was interested in that

5:50

piece because as you were making

5:52

it, there's all sorts of insults

5:54

available to you. Presumably you are

5:56

slightly policing your own speech. There's

5:58

sort of discriminatory language that you

6:00

could have used there that would

6:02

be difficult. They were all ones

6:04

that you might... sort of level

6:07

at a male for not being

6:09

manly enough, I suppose. And that

6:11

was the sort of, because if

6:13

you look at the Wallace collection,

6:15

it's very gendered, you know, it

6:17

has half of it, it's sort

6:19

of frilly, Rococo, Boudwars, and the

6:21

other half is death machines. You

6:23

know, it's so, it's very gendered,

6:25

and I wanted to kind of

6:27

play on that, and also for

6:29

me... But as it were the

6:32

words, there are words that you

6:34

could have used that you could

6:36

have used there, I mean, I

6:38

mean, I mean, I mean, I

6:40

won't say them, I mean, I

6:42

won't say them. But you would

6:44

not have put those words on

6:46

that helmet. You were kind of...

6:48

No. And I think self policing

6:50

is really useful because I've been

6:52

working on a musical recently and

6:55

you put in a joke and

6:57

it's very funny and it's very

6:59

shocking, but it kind of arrests.

7:01

the whole thing everybody everybody it

7:03

sort of resonates for the next

7:05

10 seconds and people haven't heard

7:07

the next five lines of a

7:09

song because it's you know you

7:11

put in this brilliant funny line

7:13

now I think there's a thing

7:15

sometimes where you don't want the

7:18

center of the attention to be

7:20

oh you've said the shocking thing

7:22

and yes you know it might

7:24

be appropriate and I might think

7:26

it but you just it's like

7:28

may I've got other fish to

7:30

fry rather than, you know, that

7:32

one. So that's an aesthetic constraint

7:34

because you don't want to kind

7:36

of interrupt the flow, particularly in

7:38

a musical. You've got another piece

7:40

here, Shirley Smith, is responding to

7:43

the work in the Wallace Collection,

7:45

and she responds to, you know,

7:47

one of its most famous pieces,

7:49

which is, Faginar's The Swing, which

7:51

is this elaborate, eroticic work of

7:53

a man's mistress swinging. her shoe

7:55

is flying off, the swain is

7:57

lying in front of her looking

7:59

up her skirt, literally upskirting her.

8:01

Shirley Smith has done a version

8:03

of this and she's put the

8:06

word fascist right in the middle

8:08

of the canvas. Yeah, I think

8:10

you know there's various interpretations of

8:12

that one. It could be that

8:14

she was sort of like that's

8:16

her sort of, this is just

8:18

immediately post-war and she's getting very

8:20

crosset, the kind of authorities for

8:22

not giving back her rightful inherited.

8:24

Or there might be that the

8:26

Grace and Perry the artist was

8:28

thinking, oh, it's got to be

8:31

political these days, hasn't it? And

8:33

that seems like the lamest thing

8:35

that I could put on was

8:37

the word fascist. There's a kind

8:39

of, oh, look at me being

8:41

political. Well, you've got another piece,

8:43

haven't you? Modern, beautiful, and good,

8:45

which is a sort of Madame

8:47

Pompadour figure, again, an 18th century

8:49

French painting, which has got charities,

8:51

logosos, all across what we wanting

8:54

that to do. I'm sort of

8:56

thinking, you know those logo boards

8:58

when you go to a celebrity

9:00

event that you get photographed in

9:02

front of and I was imagining

9:04

the collector standing in front of

9:06

the tapestry thinking, you know, aren't

9:08

I good? You know, that had

9:10

all this, it's basically virtue signaling

9:12

in kind of decorative form. But

9:14

do you think that's a problem

9:16

for... contemporary art at the moment,

9:19

particularly you said something about the

9:21

tendency to think of art as

9:23

a stage set for good opinions

9:25

at the opening the other day.

9:27

Yeah, and I think that is

9:29

a problem. It's sort of like

9:31

great politics. bad art, you know,

9:33

and I think that people think

9:35

that... They go together. Yeah, and

9:37

I look at the kind of

9:39

art that people, you know, make

9:42

nowadays, like young people, I say,

9:44

what sort of artists do you,

9:46

and they go, oh, I'm an

9:48

activist artist, and I always say,

9:50

well, left-wing artists then, and it's

9:52

sort of, because you're making art

9:54

that, I bet that 95, 99%

9:56

of the people coming to the

9:58

gallery, agree with your political opinions.

10:00

and you're not convincing anyone. Further,

10:02

though, it's very attractive stops for

10:05

an artist to take it. I

10:07

take it your, you said in

10:09

the catalogue, my business is making

10:11

luxury interior design, your commercial artist.

10:13

I wanted to ask about how...

10:15

what Marxists critics and Eastern European

10:17

artists used to call the censorship

10:19

of the market comes into your

10:21

thinking. We were talking earlier about

10:23

the politics of language and so

10:25

on. There are various ways in

10:27

which clearly artists have to think

10:30

about self-policing. I think that people

10:32

often sort of call the soup...

10:34

as if they were sort of

10:36

some inert force. But actually, I

10:38

mean, I did a whole show

10:40

called Super Rich Interior Design, which

10:42

was mocking the tax avoiding money

10:44

laundering people who I imagine, buying

10:46

oligarchs who parked my sculptures in

10:48

their hallway. And it was the

10:50

most successful show I ever did.

10:53

I had a woman at the

10:55

opening. I'd done a piece about

10:57

the kind of privileges of the

10:59

super rich. And she said, that

11:01

tapestry over there with all those

11:03

labels on. She said, everyone applies

11:05

to me. So I bought it.

11:07

Grayson, when you say it was

11:09

the most successful show, commercially. Yeah,

11:11

they sold well to oligarchs. Yeah,

11:13

they love being part of the

11:15

conversation, you know, these quite often,

11:18

they're very intelligent. Yeah. Even if

11:20

the conversation is hostile. Yeah. I

11:22

want to bring in the boyvaler.

11:24

You've subtitled your book The History

11:26

of a Dangerous idea. Now obviously

11:28

many governments and authorities and powers

11:30

have found it to be dangerous.

11:32

Do you think it's dangerous? No,

11:34

it's not dangerous. It's not dangerous.

11:36

It's a very valuable concept. It's

11:38

an ideal. I mean, it's dangerous

11:41

in the sense that as we

11:43

all know and celebrate free speech

11:45

is a way of undermining unjust

11:47

authority. It's a way of making

11:49

people think anew about things that

11:51

take for granted. But I wrote

11:53

the book because it's also in

11:55

our common discourse a really flat

11:57

and simplistic slogan that is continually

11:59

weaponised without people really understanding all

12:01

the different... very rich ways in

12:04

which people have thought about it

12:06

in the past and we could

12:08

think about it in the present.

12:10

So... And now it's a term

12:12

that is mobilised by very very

12:14

different kind of ends of the

12:16

political spectrum in very different ways.

12:18

The popular understanding I think would

12:20

associate free speech with the Enlightenment,

12:22

you know, that rising sense that

12:24

reason and rationality have some kind

12:26

of play in society. Can you

12:29

just quickly sketch in what was

12:31

the... idea of free speech before

12:33

that was did the medieval period

12:35

have an idea of speaking truth

12:37

to power as well absolutely I

12:39

mean there's always been ideas of

12:41

free speech but our modern concept

12:43

of it is that people have

12:45

a general right to speak out

12:47

on matters of public concern about

12:49

politics to put it bluntly and

12:52

that's really a new thing that

12:54

emerges around 1700 the ideas of

12:56

free speech that exist before then

12:58

are always exceptional kind of mode

13:00

of speech because the norm is

13:02

that speech is very heavily regulated

13:04

and policed. People know that speech

13:06

in the premodern world, people know

13:08

that speech is an action, that

13:10

it can cause harm to individuals,

13:12

if you lie about them, if

13:14

you slander them, can cause political

13:17

chaos if people go around spreading

13:19

misinformation. The first English law against

13:21

false news dates from the 13th

13:23

century. So there's an obsession with

13:25

the fact that words are powerful,

13:27

there's wonderful... texts about this in

13:29

the Old Testament. It says, the

13:31

stroke of the whip makeeth marks

13:33

in the flesh, but the stroke

13:35

of the tongue breaketh the bones.

13:37

So the exact reverse of sticks

13:40

and stones. What we now take

13:42

for granted concerns that are very

13:44

very recent 19th century reversal of

13:46

that. So everyone knows that words

13:48

and speech are powerful and potentially

13:50

dangerous. Then... in around 1700 they

13:52

start to think differently and that

13:54

happens first in England because of

13:56

the media revolution of its time.

13:58

One of the extraordinary things I

14:00

found when researching the book is

14:02

how resonant the history of free

14:05

speech is immediately to our current

14:07

concerns. So what happens is in

14:09

England suddenly they do away for

14:11

contingent reasons with the licensing, the

14:13

pre-censorship of all different text. What's

14:15

fascinating is that it just fades

14:17

away. Nobody can quite... decide what

14:19

to replace it with and the

14:21

law runs out, this idea of

14:23

censoring in advance of public action.

14:25

a controversial text you need to

14:28

take it to a clergyman or

14:30

a government sensor to get it

14:32

cleared and that that breaks down

14:34

because of the politics of the

14:36

glorious revolution it's very boring and

14:38

tedious to go into the details

14:40

so but what you then get

14:42

is a new kind of media

14:44

world in which print is free

14:46

to do things it hasn't never

14:48

done before so you get this

14:51

explosion in particular of political print

14:53

tell us about Cato's letters because

14:55

they are very important and totally

14:57

yes so At first, people take

14:59

up liberty of the press as

15:01

a slogan and everyone can see

15:03

that the world of print has

15:05

not made any difference to misinformation,

15:07

defoe, swift, all the great journalists

15:09

of the time know this is

15:11

a very corrupt world. People are

15:13

spreading lies all the time, just

15:16

quicker now. And then in 1721,

15:18

someone puts forward a new, absolute

15:20

model of free speech as the

15:22

foundation of all liberty and as

15:24

the two journalists called... Thomas Gordon

15:26

and John Trenchard write this text

15:28

for catered letters. And that is

15:30

a statement that freedom of speech

15:32

is the foundation of all liberty,

15:34

the moment governments try to restrict

15:36

it you know that they're out

15:39

to tyrannize and oppress the people.

15:41

And the funny thing is everyone's

15:43

known about this text. It leads

15:45

straight into the first amendment of

15:47

the American Constitution. No one ever

15:49

figured out who these people were,

15:51

why they were writing this text.

15:53

And one of the rabbit holes

15:55

I fell down was to figure

15:57

out. why they wrote this and

15:59

what their own motives were. Kate

16:01

has letters. It was a sort

16:04

of regular column, wasn't it? And

16:06

they were jobbing journalists. They're hacked

16:08

journalists on a deadline. They're repagaging,

16:10

conventional, wig truths to attack the

16:12

government of the day. And so

16:14

the first thing I found out

16:16

is that their... ostensibly neutral theory

16:18

of free speech is nothing like

16:20

that it's leaving out all the

16:22

things that people understand about the

16:24

media for example being corrupt and

16:27

political journalism being for sale they're

16:29

just talking as if it's a

16:31

neutral marketplace of ideas but the

16:33

more even more interesting thing is

16:35

that they are themselves deeply corrupt.

16:37

They're writing to attack the government

16:39

in order to get noticed by

16:41

the government, in order to be

16:43

paid off by the government. And

16:45

the man who pens these wonderful

16:47

lines, Thomas Gordon, ends up at

16:49

one stage writing simultaneously attacking the

16:52

government, saying freedom of speech is

16:54

the people's rights. You can never

16:56

abridge it and at the same

16:58

time anonymously for the government writing

17:00

the opposite. It's very dangerous for

17:02

the mob to go and get

17:04

out of control. We can't allow

17:06

this. We need some rules and

17:08

regulations. And in the end, he

17:10

jumps ship, becomes the chief propagandist

17:12

of the Prime Minister or Walpole,

17:15

never writes in favour of free

17:17

speech again, ends up being... on

17:19

the establishment side. It works this

17:21

for them, doesn't it? I mean,

17:23

there's a quote you have, in

17:25

every alehouse people have the London

17:27

Journal in their hands, the London

17:29

Journal was where Cato's letters were

17:31

published, showing to each other with

17:33

a kind of joy, the most

17:35

audacious reflections contained therein. That is

17:38

sort of social media at work,

17:40

isn't it? It absolutely is very,

17:42

very resonant, with the present day,

17:44

and people... Back when it really

17:46

was social. Yes. I mean, scrolling

17:48

forward, I mean, is there something

17:50

about the algorithms of today's social

17:52

media that kind of, we talk

17:54

about extremism, is there something about

17:56

the way that these ideas are

17:58

communicated now that is so divisive?

18:00

It's exactly the same. And people

18:03

in the early 18th century are...

18:05

shouting across partisan divide. It's also

18:07

the first age of partisan politics.

18:09

That's very important to how the

18:11

media landscape evolves. And so the

18:13

fact that language is constantly being

18:15

misused and abused is a major

18:17

theme for partisan writers on both

18:19

sides. It's always the other side

18:21

that is abusing the language. Farah,

18:23

when were the first explicit laws

18:26

defending free speech? Past. When does

18:28

that happen? Because this is a

18:30

sort of experiment, you know, an

18:32

unfolding experiment in free speech, but

18:34

then it becomes... They're not passed

18:36

in England. They're passed in Scandinavia

18:38

in the 1760s, long before the

18:40

Americans pass their laws, long before

18:42

the French do. And that is

18:44

very curious, because those are places

18:46

where speech and even writing has

18:48

been... very strictly controlled until then

18:51

print above all and suddenly they

18:53

throw off the shackles and proclaim

18:55

freedom of speech to be a

18:57

good thing and that comes out

18:59

of a different tradition of thinking

19:01

about free speech there are lots

19:03

of different ways of thinking about

19:05

free speech that comes out of

19:07

the idea that if you have

19:09

it's scholarly idea really if you

19:11

have the free exchange of ideas

19:14

within certain limits that are not

19:16

leading to chaos and danger then

19:18

you will advance truth you will

19:20

progressual society, it's a modernizing tool

19:22

by the absolutist rulers of Scandinavia.

19:24

And it comes out of the

19:26

academy at that point, out of

19:28

scholarship. It does, it's a very

19:30

old idea of freedom expression that

19:32

liberties, the liberty to philosophise, which

19:34

has always been a restricted idea

19:36

in the sense that you may

19:39

not libel, you may not slander,

19:41

you must speak the truth. And

19:43

the way it's implemented in Scandinavia

19:45

and other countries that take this

19:47

model is also that it restricts

19:49

people from, say, debating religion, because

19:51

that's seen as beyond the pale.

19:53

So that's just excluded? That's just

19:55

excluded. It's also an idea which

19:57

is not entirely democratic. That is,

19:59

there's an elite that is entitled

20:02

to do this. Freedom of speech

20:04

always has a shape, has a

20:06

shape in the present, has a

20:08

shape in the past. It's never

20:10

just about the words, it's always

20:12

about who is about who is

20:14

about who is speaking, who is

20:16

speaking. who is amplified, who is

20:18

silenced, who the audiences, and so

20:20

on and so forth. And so

20:22

the earliest free speech theories are

20:25

explicitly gendered. For example, they have

20:27

a model of the public sphere

20:29

and public voices which excludes explicitly

20:31

women, which is not because women

20:33

don't have any voice in the

20:35

real public sphere. It's an attempt

20:37

to exclude them. at a time

20:39

when they are very everywhere. There

20:41

are female voices as poets, philosophers,

20:43

journalists, and so it's a kind

20:45

of patriarchal backlash when you theorize

20:47

free speech to say actually this

20:50

is all about men talking about

20:52

politics and women don't do that.

20:54

You write this when you're writing

20:56

about the ironic conjunction of zeal

20:58

for free speech. and zeal for

21:00

slavery which occurs in the same

21:02

place and you say the free

21:04

speech of some is established through

21:06

the silencing of others. That's a

21:08

reasonable amount of the the moment

21:10

you're describing historically isn't it but

21:13

it's not a necessary condition of

21:15

free speech is it? Well if

21:17

you look at free speech today

21:19

if you look at what used

21:21

to be called Twitter X. I

21:23

mean the way that algorithms work

21:25

is precisely in that way. They

21:27

amplify certain speech and therefore by

21:29

definition they are demoting other speech.

21:31

I mean if you want to...

21:33

have a good example of that,

21:35

look at Mr. Musk's tweets, I

21:38

mean they drown out everything else.

21:40

The argument to that would be

21:42

that's actually not really free speech,

21:44

that is controlled speech. Well I

21:46

would I would make that argument,

21:48

you would make that argument, but

21:50

he himself would claim that this

21:52

is the greatest forum of free

21:54

speech the world has ever seen,

21:56

that's bunkum. He cites, as many

21:58

do, the First Amendment. Can we

22:01

get on to that? Because your

22:03

chapter on the First Amendment is

22:05

titled The Accidental Exceptionism of the

22:07

First Amendment. Can you explain? Well,

22:09

this is an extraordinary thing I

22:11

found. So Americans are obsessed with

22:13

their First Amendment. They always write

22:15

about it as if it was

22:17

legislated in 1789, and then there's

22:19

a straight line forward to the

22:21

greatness of American Free Speech now.

22:23

And that's absolutely the opposite of...

22:26

of the truth. What I found

22:28

is in 1789 there are two

22:30

major attempts to legislate to describe

22:32

the theorise free speech going on

22:34

in the world at the same

22:36

time. In New York the First

22:38

Amendment had been drafted in Paris,

22:40

the French Republic, revolutionaries are drawing

22:42

up their declaration of the rights

22:44

of man. And almost instantaneously, after

22:46

the Americans pass their law, they

22:49

receive news of the French law.

22:51

And what no one has noticed

22:53

before is that Americans, having adopted

22:55

this very strange, clumsy, absolutist notion

22:57

that you should just not have

22:59

laws about free speech, which is

23:01

not how they actually go about

23:03

things anyway. They read the French

23:05

text which says, everyone has a

23:07

right to the freedom of expression,

23:09

but they should exercise that responsibility.

23:12

It's a balancing model of rights

23:14

against duties. And the Americans read

23:16

this in the newspapers and they

23:18

say, yes, this is a much

23:20

better way of describing it. And

23:22

then every single American state that

23:24

then passes or reconceives its declaration

23:26

of rights. imports literally the French

23:28

model into its law. So the

23:30

First Amendment is a complete dead

23:32

letter until the 20th century. So

23:34

it's an accident of sailing times

23:37

that they don't get the news

23:39

in times. Six weeks is what

23:41

it takes for a letter to

23:43

cross the Atlantic. Now what happens?

23:45

What happens to the First Amendment

23:47

then? Why does it then become,

23:49

as you say, it's a dead

23:51

letter for some time? And it's

23:53

quite limited. It only binds Congress's

23:55

hands. Exactly. So, you know, if

23:57

you're a company or a state,

24:00

you can carry on as you

24:02

want. Well, the great, largely untold

24:04

story of the reawakening of the

24:06

First Amendment is a story of

24:08

socialists and communists and abolitionists and

24:10

feminists. It starts with the abolitionists

24:12

who say, hang on, we have

24:14

a right. to state our case,

24:16

that abolitionists to begin with are

24:18

faced with immense violence and claims

24:20

that their speech is not actually

24:22

free. It's rabble rousing. And so

24:25

they look at the constitution and

24:27

say, actually we think this should

24:29

apply to all citizens. And then

24:31

through the pressure, especially of socialists

24:33

and... communists who are agitating for

24:35

free speech for strikers and labor

24:37

agitators in the late 19th and

24:39

early 20th centuries, the Supreme Court

24:41

finally has to take up this

24:43

case in 1919 and they do

24:45

agree that it should be a

24:48

national citizen's rights. In other words,

24:50

sort of binding on all of

24:52

the states and indeed the ACLU

24:54

which starts as a sort of

24:56

socialist organization to kind of promote

24:58

the interests of unions. eventually finds

25:00

itself defending the right of the

25:02

Ku Klux Klan to march. Which

25:04

they would no longer do today.

25:06

That's interesting. Yeah. When the ACLU

25:08

has changed fantastically. And many organizations

25:11

have changed, haven't they? Yes. The

25:13

Anti-Defamation League, the kind of Jewish

25:15

organization, has changed in the other

25:17

direction. Indeed. And we'll no longer...

25:19

you know, defend freedom of speech

25:21

and other respects. The problem with

25:23

defending the right of someone to

25:25

say something even if you were

25:27

poor it is as the ACLU

25:29

used to and still largely does,

25:31

including the right of Mr Trump,

25:33

they say his language has harmed

25:36

the Republic and yet we defend

25:38

his First Amendment right to speak.

25:40

The difficulty with that is that,

25:42

you are automatically amplifying their claim.

25:44

You're saying something like this is

25:46

speech that deserves to be heard

25:48

and that's a very difficult problem

25:50

that the ACO, ACO, you partly

25:52

is grappled with partly hasn't. So

25:54

Lionel Shriver, do you have a

25:56

view on this? Because you all

25:59

have grown up presumably with a

26:01

notion of the First Amendment, which

26:03

is that it is at the

26:05

core of American freedoms. I don't

26:07

know. I'm speculating. Yes, I did

26:09

grow up with that. I am

26:11

attached to the absolutist model as

26:13

it were. Well, Farah would take

26:15

exception to that word. Well, I'm

26:17

not sure I do it. I

26:19

mean, the absolute is model is

26:21

a very recent invention in American

26:24

Jewish students. That's what I think

26:26

that people don't really. I should

26:28

rephrase. I got the impression that

26:30

you found people who self-identified as

26:32

free speech absolutists that that was

26:34

an absurdity. There were there are

26:36

always some constraints on speech. Is

26:38

that a fair enough? In moments

26:40

of sloppiness, I have probably described

26:42

myself as a free speech absolutist.

26:44

And that's because I'm, I mean,

26:47

as you said, rights and responsibilities,

26:49

it's a balancing act. Well, that

26:51

balance often gets out of whack.

26:53

I think it's completely out of

26:55

whack in modern Britain. And therefore,

26:57

I'm putting my foot as hard

26:59

as I can. on the right

27:01

side of the scale because it's

27:03

gone wonky. And I was struck

27:05

by one of the lines that

27:07

I think it concludes the chapter

27:09

of when you say about the

27:12

US First Amendment, we're stuck with

27:14

it. That's an interesting academic reading

27:16

of it, but I'm personally very

27:18

grateful to the First Amendment and

27:20

the existence of the First Amendment

27:22

as it is currently interpreted. is

27:24

one of the reasons that the

27:26

US and the UK are diverging

27:28

so radically on what it is

27:30

understood you are able to say

27:32

in public. It's very interesting after

27:35

reading your book for the first

27:37

time I understood why JD Vance

27:39

thinks that Europe is threatening free

27:41

speech because he does come from

27:43

this absolutist model. The argument there

27:45

for the absolutist is that as

27:47

it were free speech will. cure

27:49

the sins of free speech, that

27:51

you might have offensive, racist, abusive

27:53

language, but the best cure for

27:55

it is... According to the Supreme

27:58

Court. But also according to theorists

28:00

of free speech, isn't it? It's

28:02

based on two ideas. One is

28:04

that the harms are outweighed by

28:06

the good and frankly that's a

28:08

questionable supposition if you look even

28:10

at our own society, the harms

28:12

that are being caused by unregulated

28:14

social media, the spreading of hate

28:16

in countries around the world that

28:18

leads to real violence and other

28:20

social problems. But it's also based

28:23

on the idea that the truth

28:25

will automatically prevail. And there's a

28:27

great line in John Stewart Mills

28:29

on liberty where he says the

28:31

always prevails over falsehood is quote

28:33

one of those pleasant falsehoods which

28:35

men repeat after one another until

28:37

they pass into common places but

28:39

which all experience refutes it's simply

28:41

not true if you allow it's

28:43

magical thinking isn't it Grace and

28:46

you've got a big you've got

28:48

a piece in your show which

28:50

is a lot of that goes

28:52

on people you know they wish

28:54

they wish things to be true

28:56

and and cuzam they are and

28:58

Yeah, and I mean on that

29:00

kind of balance of sort of,

29:02

you know, people being offended by

29:04

things, I think there is a

29:06

kind of tendency of the internet

29:08

to privilege victim status. and you

29:11

know that seems to be a

29:13

thing in all sort of different

29:15

sort of issues on the internet

29:17

is that there's this sort of

29:19

like that in psychotherapy there's a

29:21

thing called the the the kind

29:23

of victim persecutor rescue a triangle

29:25

and there's a place on it

29:27

called persecuting from a victim standpoint

29:29

which is very popular on the

29:31

internet. I mean offense is absolutely

29:34

the wrong standard to use when

29:36

judging anything you should be thinking

29:38

about harm and serious harm. difficult

29:40

to say where one stops and

29:42

the other begins, isn't it? I

29:44

mean, for example, how do you

29:46

prevent a balanced view of free

29:48

speech, that notion that it is

29:50

accompanied by responsibilities and responsibilities to

29:52

the vulnerable, how do you prevent

29:54

that from becoming a kind of

29:56

pre-licensed licensing of speech? that we

29:59

all conduct. You know, that we

30:01

all think, oh, I better not

30:03

publish that opinion. I think

30:05

we all in the normal course

30:07

of our lives are constantly calibrating

30:09

what we say according to the

30:11

context. That's a normal part of

30:14

communication. It's exquisitely context-dependent. That's one

30:16

reason why it's hard to make

30:18

laws about it, because laws are

30:20

predicated on the opposite, that everyone should

30:22

be treated the same, and there should

30:25

be consistency. That's not how

30:27

speech works. I mean to quote

30:29

Kelly Ann Conway which is Trump's

30:31

director of communications at one time

30:33

people have got to learn to

30:36

differentiate between what offends them and

30:38

what affects them she says I

30:40

mean she might not be the

30:43

greatest source of wisdom in this

30:45

situation but I quite like it. Lionel

30:47

your book mania is absolutely about

30:49

this about this moment when as

30:52

it were kindness becomes profoundly inhibiting.

30:54

It begins with a mother being

30:56

told that her son has been

30:59

sent home from school for bullying

31:01

and for using the S-word. Just

31:03

explain what the S-word is and

31:05

how you've tweaked the world your

31:08

book is set in. Well I'm

31:10

hopeful that it is still legal

31:12

for me to pronounce this word on

31:14

the airways. Of course the S-word

31:16

is stupid. It has recently become

31:19

social gospel, that there

31:21

is no such thing

31:24

as variable human intelligence,

31:26

that everyone is equally

31:28

smart. Any differences in

31:30

behavior or knowledge are

31:33

just so-called processing issues,

31:35

and all brains are

31:37

the same. So to

31:40

suggest otherwise is heresy.

31:42

That is coming from kindness. It

31:44

is connecting up with this whole

31:46

idea of offense as harm. And

31:49

so in some ways it comes

31:51

out of my sensitivity about the

31:53

current situation in the UK

31:55

in particular where I have

31:57

lived for a long time.

32:00

Do you not think there are

32:02

some occasions when offense is harm,

32:04

when it's extreme, when it might

32:06

lead to, maybe this is not

32:08

the same thing, but when it

32:11

might lead to actions in the

32:13

real world, to violence? Well, of

32:15

course, that's the big exception even

32:17

in the United States, incitement to

32:20

violence. In fact, there's a case

32:22

right now with the Trump administration

32:24

trying to go after at least

32:26

a couple. I think it's going

32:29

to be any number of people

32:31

who have been protesting what's happening

32:33

in Gaza, and the question really

32:35

is whether or not they're backing

32:37

Hamas, which is a terrorist organization,

32:40

and therefore that is incitement to

32:42

violence. And it's... In these cases,

32:44

it makes it very clear how

32:46

blurry that line is. It's a

32:49

little bit arbitrary. Do you think

32:51

this is, I mean, Farah's book

32:53

is very much about the ways

32:55

in which power can be involved

32:57

in the definition of free speech,

33:00

do you think there's an exercise

33:02

of power in what you see

33:04

as this kind of freezing of

33:06

freedom of speech, or has it

33:09

just arisen out of a social

33:11

consensus that kindness has sort of,

33:13

you know, got out of hand

33:15

in a way? Yes, well, I

33:18

mean, I'm very interested in the

33:20

difference between... just being a nice

33:22

person and therefore policing your own

33:24

speech because you don't want to

33:26

insult people or hurt their feelings.

33:29

And that's just normal social interaction

33:31

and the legislation of niceness. And

33:33

that's what we're suffering from in

33:35

the UK. It is now the

33:38

government's business and the police's business

33:40

to make sure that we are

33:42

decent to each other and what

33:44

kind of language we use. And

33:47

that is classically Orwellian. And that

33:49

is not... society I wish to

33:51

live in. Your character in the

33:53

novel, the character who gets into

33:55

all sorts of trouble because she

33:58

won't, she won't tear the line,

34:00

she's called Pearson, I take it

34:02

that's a nod to a kind

34:04

of well-known British columnist who's occasionally

34:07

got into trouble for the same

34:09

reasons. We're friends. Do you think

34:11

there's a value in the contradictory

34:13

voice, whatever the content of the

34:16

contradiction? Because she thinks of herself

34:18

as always facing into the prevailing

34:20

wind, you know. Yes. Now is

34:22

there a value in that? Because

34:24

that can easily mislead, you can't

34:27

it? Yes, there is a value.

34:29

What we initially understand to be

34:31

misinformation. often turns out to be

34:33

the truth that finally does emerge

34:36

once in a while. I mean

34:38

a good example of that is

34:40

the lab leak theory in relation

34:42

to COVID which was supposedly racist

34:45

and and appalling and was actively

34:47

repressed by multiple governments and then

34:49

it turns out to be the

34:51

most credible theory for where the

34:53

virus came from. So your book

34:56

is a wonderful satire of what

34:58

we might call left-wing policing over-policing

35:00

of language taken to ridiculous extremes.

35:02

I'm not sure it's possible to

35:05

get more ridiculous than we've got

35:07

now. I'm absolutely not here to

35:09

defend or comment on English laws

35:11

which I've always been a mess

35:14

in various ways. But let me

35:16

go back to your book. That

35:18

leads to the destruction of truth

35:20

and facts and science and so

35:22

on in your book. So I

35:25

wonder how you feel about the

35:27

fact that it's now in America

35:29

a right wing government that is

35:31

doing exactly those things, that is

35:34

censoring people ideologically is shutting down

35:36

discourse on difficult subjects, is telling

35:38

historians that they must only write

35:40

about American greatness and so on.

35:43

It's a very real assault on

35:45

truth and science and scholarship. What

35:47

was missing from your book? for

35:49

me was the sense that these

35:51

things are always weaponized, they're always

35:54

partisan. in your book it's only

35:56

really the left that you're doing

35:58

this. That's not really true of

36:00

the end of the book, right?

36:03

I'm hopeful you got there. I

36:05

did get there. Okay, so that's

36:07

meant to indicate that we have

36:09

these pendulum swings the other way.

36:12

And that's exactly what's going on

36:14

in the United States. And I

36:16

believe that the Trump administration is

36:18

imitating the left. There's the recent

36:20

behavior of the left and is

36:23

equally illiberal. You think Trump is

36:25

a consequence of work, not a

36:27

reaction to it as it were.

36:29

You have this line. We blithely

36:32

assume that whoever is elected president

36:34

will surround him or herself with

36:36

mediocrities or worse and purposefully appoint

36:38

a cabinet whose leading credentials are

36:41

having no credentials. Nobody will read

36:43

that without thinking of the current

36:45

American administration. Yes, I wrote that

36:47

before the current cabinet was appointed.

36:49

Yeah, I will, I, you used

36:52

earlier the, the, the, the word

36:54

prescient in relation to that, this

36:56

book, and yes, I think that

36:58

line is prescient. I mean, I

37:01

think that pendulum idea is, you

37:03

know, I see, the first Trump

37:05

presidency was a reaction, and then

37:07

we had a reaction, and then

37:10

we've had a reaction, and then

37:12

we've had a reaction, and it

37:14

worries me, you know, now, that

37:16

is Keastama, are Joe Biden, you

37:18

know, It's you often underestimate that

37:21

politics of resentment, you know, like

37:23

being lectured by the good, you

37:25

know, good meaning kind people. Well,

37:27

I think piety is an interesting

37:30

thing at play here. You mentioned

37:32

the word heresy before and I

37:34

wondered whether... We do need some

37:36

notion of the heretical. I mean,

37:39

I, you know, if I say

37:41

that the blood of Christ doesn't

37:43

turn, literally turn into the blood

37:45

of Christ, I'm not likely to

37:47

have my earlobes cut off. But

37:50

we have our own versions, don't

37:52

we? of heresies of things that

37:54

are unsayable. Well we've been living

37:56

through a period where the number

37:59

of heresies we have to deal

38:01

with is uncountable and my impulse

38:03

with any heresy because I did

38:05

grow up in a religious household

38:08

and and rejected my upbringing. It's

38:10

also true of your character isn't

38:12

it Pearson is a Jehovah's Witness.

38:14

Yes, the poor woman. My instinct

38:16

is always to say the unsayable.

38:19

And I think that performs a

38:21

useful social function. What check on

38:23

saying the unsayable do you perform

38:25

yourself? Because you've acknowledged that we

38:28

all do. We all check what

38:30

we're going to say before we

38:32

say it. We are our own

38:34

senses in that way. Yes, well,

38:37

I mean, I'm a normal person.

38:39

So to a degree, I check

38:41

what I say. out of self-interest.

38:43

Do you think you would have

38:45

said, in that quote I just

38:48

did about the Trump cabinet, you

38:50

use this phrase, him or herself.

38:52

That's a very common phrase now

38:54

because of a kind of change

38:57

of attitude to language, which wouldn't

38:59

have been the case 30 years

39:01

ago. That's true, and I will

39:03

sometimes use that phrase, but if

39:06

I can manage to not, just

39:08

because it's clumsy, yeah, I will

39:10

rewrite in the plural. Farrow. We're

39:12

all sitting always. No one likes

39:14

to be told that they can't

39:17

say something that they've grown up

39:19

saying. But language changes all the

39:21

time. You can get head up

39:23

about it or not. I used

39:26

to take my students to the

39:28

pub when I was young Dawn.

39:30

And once I was in the

39:32

pub and I was in the

39:35

pub and one of them came

39:37

in from the gym and I

39:39

said to her because she was

39:41

dressed in gym clothes. Are you

39:43

looking really fit? giggled. I stopped

39:46

taking students off to back to.

39:48

Nowadays you're getting to trouble for

39:50

even mentioning what one of the

39:52

students was wearing. Farah, is there

39:55

a danger to the to the

39:57

balancing notion, I noticed one review

39:59

of your book by a former

40:01

chairman of the Index on the

40:04

Censorship, which is kind of, I

40:06

suppose, as an absolutist notion of

40:08

freedom of speech, sort of implied

40:10

that you had written a kind

40:12

of handbook for tyrants, essentially, by

40:15

giving them arguments that they could

40:17

use. Do you think there is

40:19

a danger in those? No one...

40:21

likes the fact that judgments about

40:24

speech are always subjective and contingent

40:26

and context-dependent. But as I said

40:28

before, that's because speech itself always

40:30

is. It's never just about the

40:33

words. You can't just have clear

40:35

rules unless you do away, as

40:37

the Americans have done, with any

40:39

notion of truth or harm or

40:41

any bad consequences of speech. And

40:44

then you end up, I'm afraid

40:46

with... sewer as a form of

40:48

public discourse? I think where people

40:50

divide, and we may divide on

40:53

this, is on whether you're one

40:55

of those people who says, I

40:57

believe in free speech, or you

40:59

say, I believe in free speech,

41:02

but. And you're a but, and

41:04

I'm not. No, no, no, no,

41:06

not at all. No, what I'm

41:08

trying to show is that there

41:10

are many, many, many guys. I'm

41:13

really sorry. Sorry, I'm going to

41:15

have to curb your free speech.

41:17

Farah Dubois Wallas, what is free

41:19

speech is out now as is

41:22

the paperback of Lionel Shriver's novel

41:24

mania and free speech is also

41:26

the subject of today tonight's front

41:28

row on BBC Radio 4. You

41:31

can see Grayson Perry's exhibition Delusions

41:33

of grandeur at the Wallace Collection

41:35

in London until the end of

41:37

October. It's great fun. Next week

41:39

Adam Rutherford on what happens when

41:42

satire feeds conspiracy theories for now.

41:44

Thanks for listening to this edition

41:46

of Start the Week on BBC

41:48

Radio 4 produced by Katie Hickman.

41:51

And if you're after more conversations,

41:53

art, science, history and politics, you

41:55

can find many, many more on

41:57

the BBC Sounds website.