Some time ago, I wrote an essay in which I stated: “Unrestricted free speech is not a right, it is a threat.” Now, more than ever, my words have been proven correct.
Just yesterday, a mosque in Quebec City was attacked by a white nationalist, a man whose racist ideology drove him to murderous terrorism. In fact, he didn’t even hold an interest in these thoughts until the far-right leader of France’s National Front Party, Marine Le Pen, visited Quebec City. The spread of hateful rhetoric directly led to him murdering Muslims.
But there were plenty of people who believed I was wrong, some even taking great offense to it. “Words are not violence,” one said. “Ideas which justify oppression have been repeatedly challenged and defeated by free speech,” said another. There were also those who made less-than-intelligent remarks, but I will not respect them by republishing them here.
The first argument, “Words are not violence,” fails to address the very real fact that violence begins with words. Words have power, carrying ideas with them. Did people irrationally start advocating for hate-based violence? Do people become bigoted by nature? No, the spread of such ideas is to blame. Protecting the people who are targeted by Nazis, for example, means eliminating the spread of Nazi ideology.
The second argument, “Ideas which justify oppression have been repeatedly challenged and defeated by free speech,” is demonstrably false, as evidenced by the election of Donald Trump. Speech did not defeat him. Speech also did not defeat Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Castro, etc. No tyrant has ever been defeated by free speech. Tyrant are felled by revolution.
Unrestricted free speech remains a threat. The marketplace of ideas does not allow for equal access, as some would argue, but rather, it permits the existence of ideologies that seek to repress, terrorize, and even exterminate marginalized peoples. It turns a blind eye to these violent ideologies in order to remain on its false moral high ground of “liberty” and “equality.” “Protecting free speech means protecting unpopular ideas,” its proponents claim. Meanwhile, in protecting “free speech,” the very ideas that led to the Quebec City terrorist attack are also sheltered. “Free speech,” in this way, permits terrorist rhetoric.
There are some ideas that must not be allowed to spread. Censorship has become a necessity because lives are clearly at risk without it. In order to eliminate harmful ideologies, we must permanently eradicate them. If this means eradicating the people who spread them, so be it. There is nothing morally wrong with killing a would-be terrorist, as any right-winger would agree.