William Tyler
The Burning of Books: Freedom of Speech
William Tyler | The Burning of Books Freedom of Speech | 05.09.22
- Well, it’s my very great pleasure to introduce my very good friend, the brilliant historian William Tyler. The genesis of this presentation, tomorrow is the 10th of May, and of course in 1933, that was the day when the books were burnt, where Goebbels threw into the fire, beginning with the works of Freud, 25,000 of the most important books that had appeared in the Western world. And this event is in conjunction with Jewish Book Week. So we welcome your participants as well. And discussing it with Claudia, and with William, we felt very strongly that this particular time, where again, the whole notion of freedom of speech is under threat, not just in the world of Eastern Europe, the world of totalitarianism, but is to an extent under threat in the so-called liberal democracies. So William has actually agreed to rise to the challenge to discuss this whole issue of freedom of speech. And then I will chair him with questions. So William, over to you, and thank you so much for doing this.
- Thank you, Trudy, thank you very much indeed. And hello to everyone who’s joined us in this Zoom. As Trudy just said, tomorrow, the 10th of May, is the anniversary of the Nazi book burning in 1933 Berlin. It spread right across Germany, but as Richard Evans describes in his book “The Coming of the Third Reich,” it actually began four days earlier on the 6th of May. This is Evans’ book, “The Coming of the Third Reich.” And in that book, he writes this, “On the morning of the 6th of May, 1933, a group of vans pulled up outside Dr. Magnus Hirschfield’s Institute for Sexual Science in the Tiergarten District of Berlin. Out of them leapt students from the Berlin School for Physical Education, members of the National Socialist German Student’s League, Nazis. They drew up in military formation, and while some of them took out their trumpets and tubas and started to play patriotic music, the others marched into the building. Their intentions were clearly unfriendly. Hirschfield’s Institute was well known in Berlin, not only for its champion of causes such as the legalisation of homosexuality and abortion, and for its popular evening classes in sexual education, but also for its comprehensive collections of books and manuscripts on sexual topics built up by the director since before the turn of the century.
By 1933, it housed between 12,000 and 20,000 books. Estimates vary. And an even larger collection of photographs on sexual subjects. The Nazi students who stormed into the Institute on the 6th of May, 1933, proceeded to pour red ink over books and manuscripts, played football with framed photographs, leaving the floor covered in shards of broken glass, and ransacked the cupboards and drawers throwing their contents onto the floor. Four days later, 10th of May, more vans arrived. This time, it’s storm troopers carrying baskets in which they piled as many books and manuscripts as they could. And they took them out into the Opera Square. Here, they stacked them up in a gigantic heap, and set light to them. About 10,000 books are said to have been consumed in this conflagration. As the fire burned on into the evening, the students carried a bust of the institute’s director towards the square, and threw it into the flames. Told that the 65-year-old Hirschfield was abroad recovering from an illness, the storm troopers said ‘Then hopefully he’ll snuff it without us. Then we won’t need to string him up or beat him to death.’”
On that occasion, on the 10th of May, 1933 in Opera Square, Goebbels addressed the crowd that were there, and his speech was broadcast over German radio. Part of the speech, read this in English, “The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path. The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is this end that we want to educate you. As a young person, you already have the courage to face the pitiless glare, to overcome the fear of death, and to regain respect for death. This is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great, and symbolic deed. A deed which should document the following for the world to know. Here, the intellectual foundation of the November Republic,” that is to say the Weimar Republic, “is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly arise.”
Not only books by Jewish authors were targeted, but books by communist, socialist, anarchist, liberal, pacifist, and sexologist authors were also targeted. One of the books targeted were books written by Helen Keller and she wrote an open letter to the students of Germany. And in that letter she wrote, “History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do this often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them. You can burn my books, and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds.” That’s a marvellous statement. Cultural genocide is a phrase that subsequently entered into the English language to describe such acts of book burning, which the Nazis took with them as they rampaged through Europe. And among the excesses that Nazis exacted out of Poland was a campaign of cultural genocide that included the burning of millions of books, resulting in the destruction of an estimated 80% of all Polish school libraries, ¾ of all scientific libraries in Poland. And of course, as many of you know, they seized many books from the Jewish communities in occupied eastern Europe. And rather chillingly, they intended to keep and display some of these Jewish books in a museum on Judaism after the final solution was successfully completed.
We know that story of the Nazi book burning very well. It shows us how thin the layer of civilization actually is, but we obviously deplore the action. We’re horrified by the action, and in our heads and in our books, we file it as one of the first acts of barbarism committed by Hitler’s regime. You all know that, you all understand the story I’ve just told. A factual story. And of course, as Helen Keller said, “Nazi ideas were left in the dust, or so we had hoped in 1945.” In 1946, the Allied occupation forces drew up a list of over 30,000 book titles ranging from Nazi school books to poetry, and including works by people such as the great military theorist von Clausewitz. Millions of copies of these books were confiscated and destroyed by the Allies. The representative of the military directorate said the order in principle was no different from the Nazi book burnings. Artworks were under the same censorship as the books. And that brings us up against the great philosophical, political, and moral problem. Are there limits to freedom of speech? The Allies thought so in 1946, and more importantly, who decides what those limits should be?
In 1946, the Allied military occupation leaders. Why are there book burnings and book destructions? They can be for cultural reasons, they can be for religious reasons, they can be for political reasons, or they can be for a combination of all those three, cultural, religious, and political. And why is this important? Why is it, I’ve written on my notes in front of me, why is this so, underlined, why is this so important? Well over a hundred years before the Berlin book burnings, Heinrich Heine, a Jewish writer as you know, a poet, wrote this, “Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people. Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.” Why, well, as Helen Keller said, books contain ideas. You can destroy books I’ve written, articles I’ve written, but it’s in there. So you need to destroy me as well to ensure in your twisted sense of logic that the ideas are really dead. If I’m dead, and anything I’ve written is burnt, then the ideas are dead. But of course, as Helen Keller said, you can’t do that. You can’t do it, because once the ideas are out there, they’re out there. You really cannot stop ideas. We need to remind ourselves that book burning is as old as books, even pre-books, papyruses for example.
And why do people do this? Because the ideas contained in books can represent a threat to people in power. Whether it’s a cultural threat they see, a political threat, or a religious threat. If we go back in the book of the prophet Jeremiah, we read how Jehoiakim King of Judah, threw a book, or in his case a papyrus, onto an open fire. That papyrus contained all Jeremiah’s prophecies. And we can read of this in chapter 36 of the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah 36:1, “And it came to pass in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, King of Judah, that this word came unto Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, ‘Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel and against Judah and against all the nations from the day I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day.’” And some of his courtiers took a copy of this papyrus to the king. “Now the king sat in the winter house in the ninth month, and there was a fire on the hearth burning before him. And it came to pass that when Yahudi had read three or four leaves, he cut it with the pen knife, and cast it into the fire. And that was on the hearth until all the wrong was consumed in the fire that was on the hearth.”
But Helen Keller said, you can’t kill ideas. Verse 32, “Then took Jeremiah another roll and gave it to Baruch the scribe, who wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah, all the words of the book, which Jehoiakim, King of Judah had burned in the fire. And they were added beside unto them many light words.” So not only were the words recovered, but they were added to. And after the fall of Nazi Germany, and actually during Nazi rule, France, America, for example, there were established freedom libraries or libraries of lost books. Those books that the Nazis had destroyed. Civilization survives, good overcomes evil. But as Trudy indicated in the introduction, this isn’t simply a matter of history, it’s a matter of contemporary concern. Civilization survives, good overcomes evil. That’s how we saw 1945. But I’ve written here, only for the cycle to be repeated in future years. Churchill had a phrase, the sunlit uplands. Well, we can strive to reach the sunlit uplands, we can even reach them. But the truth of the matter is that we fall into the valley of desolation as well.
So from sunlit uplands to valleys of desolation, and valleys of desolation to sunlit uplands, we seem ever as human beings to be condemned to this merry-go-round. We should, in the 21st century, I suggest you do better than that. We know what Nazi Germany did in 1933, and at least in the liberal democracies, both sides at the Atlantic and further away, we need to take on board the fact that book burnings are something we do not and should never engage in. But the problem is this is, is free speech without limits? Can we ever justify censorship? We often say, don’t we, about freedom of speech. I don’t agree with what you say, but I’ll defend your right to say it. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Would you defend the right of Putin to utter the nonsense that he’s been spouting today and on earlier occasions? Would you defend the right of those who want to deny the Holocaust? Would you defend the right of those who believe that some human beings are inferior to others because of the colour of their skin? What are the limits? The great American lawyer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, very crisply said that there are, and this is what Holmes wrote a long time ago now. “Freedom of speech should not include,” he said, “the freedom to shout fire in a crowded theatre.”
There are limits to the freedom of speech says the great lawyer Oliver Wendell Holmes. But who decides what those limits are? This is a book, I published on my blog, www.talkhistorian, one word, www dot talk historian.com. On my blog there you will find four books listed. A very, very short book list about free speech. This is in the Oxford very short introductory series by Nigel Warburton. I think this is a brilliant, I think the whole series is brilliant. I think this is a very, very good book. And I wanted to read from his book, right at the beginning, he writes this, “The difficulty is framing the exceptions to the presumption of free speech in such a way that consistent application of a principle doesn’t permit less desirable censorship.” So we all agree that there should be censorship of those who wish to deny the Holocaust, but what about other things? It’s called the slippery slope argument. We all agree with that, but others might take it further on other issues, which we would not be so happy.
So Warburton says, “The difficulty here is framing the exceptions to the presumption of free speech in such a way that consistent application of the principle doesn’t permit less desirable censorship. There’s also a reasonable fear that every act of censorship tolerated makes further censorship easier to achieve. This fear of gradual erosion is one reason why seemingly minor restrictions of liberty can evoke such strong responses in those who value free speech.” And then we have a division in liberal democracies. William, look, you’re being ridiculous over this issue. It’s not important. And my counter-argument is, if you allow this to happen, what else would you allow to happen? Over a decade ago, Warburton wrote in this book the following, this is the slippery slope argument I’m talking about. Allow one thing and then land yourself in far other things. “Perhaps almost any curtailment of freedom of speech,” he writes, “should be contested on the grounds that to allow a government to restrict such a basic freedom is to take a step down a slippery slope that all almost inevitably end in totalitarianism.”
And that is one of the issues for 2022 in liberal democracies. “Almost any curtailment of freedom of speech should be contested on the grounds that to allow a government to restrict such a basic freedom is to take a step down a slippery slope that all almost inevitably end in totalitarianism. Without a Bill of Rights, the United Kingdom may be vulnerable in this respect when compared to the United States. Indeed distrust of governments, and their ability to censor on reasonable grounds is an important motivation for defending some kind of free speech principle. Yet the presence of a principle such as the First Amendment in the States has its own associated difficulties, like almost any principle. It’s as open to a wide range of interpretations as the history of First Amendment jurisprudence in the States has demonstrated with fierce debates about the application and limits on the principle of free expression that this constitutional clause protects.”
It’s difficult, we know what freedom of speech is in its pure form, but we cannot allow that even in liberal democracies. But where do you draw the line? And can we trust governments to draw the line objectively, and maybe only for a short time? Or do we risk, which is a serious risk. Some of you have heard me speak before on the challenges, the crisis, in liberal democracy in the West. Is this a crisis? It’s one of the points of crisis, it seems to me. In the governments of the liberal West, I’m not sure that such a positive view of the American Constitution is ever justified. In the same way I don’t believe that the unwritten constitution of the United Kingdom can be justified either. I don’t think either provide full protection of freedom of speech. And in both cases it’s usually governments rather than legal systems which have made exceptions to freedom of speech. It’s usually the lawyers and the courts that have defended freedom of speech, certainly in the common law areas of the world like America, Canada, Australia, and Britain.
This is a book called “First Freedom.” It’s a history of the First Amendment of the United States. It’s by an American Constitutionalist called Nat Hentoff. And Hentoff writes this, “In the New World,” he’s comparing America and England, he’s right back in the 17th century. “In the New World, meanwhile, colonists concerned with freedom of speech and press were well aware of the English history of suppression.” That’s why many of them came across the Atlantic to America to a new land where they could start afresh without governments exercising censorship. “In the New World, colonists concerned with freedom of speech and press were well aware of the English history of suppression. They also knew their own. The first burning of a book in America, for instance, took place in 1650. When Thomas Pynchon’s emit, ‘Meritorious Price of Our Redemption’ was ignited in the marketplace of Boston by the common executioner. The author’s religious ideas declared the authority’s differ from the colony’s established religion, and so had to be obliterated.”
So much for the Puritan English who’d arrived in North America full of concepts of freedom. And there they are in 1650 burning a book because it doesn’t agree with the religious views of Bostonians of the day. Hentoff goes on to say, “Practically from the beginning in America, prosecutions for solicitous libel had been taking place. As American Constitutional historian Leonard Levy points out quote, ‘each community outside the few cities tended to be a tight little island clutching its own orthodoxy, and willing to banish unwelcome dissidents or punish them.’” They took attack on freedom of speech with them across the Atlantic, but they are now in the driving seat in places like Boston in a way that they were not in the driving seat in places like Boston, in England. There it was the government, it was the Stewart government. In America, it’s the small communities, often with a strong religious leader, charismatic, it’s worrying. J.S. Mill also explained why it is necessary to have limits to freedom of speech.
This is J.S. Mill in his book “On Liberty,” “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do, because it will make him happier. Because in the opinions of others to do so would be wise or even right.” In other words, communities have to act on behalf of the community, and that’s what the Bostonians would’ve argued in the 17th century. So the community decides. But what do we mean by the community? The religious leadership in Boston, the political leadership in London, later the political leadership in Washington. Today in Western society, we live what’s been called a cultural war. And I’ve spoken to some of you about that before, and it’s difficult, it’s very difficult.
Let me read you a piece from Warburton. “There are today visible manifestations of intolerance to other people’s views and calls for censorship.” So there is a view that if a group of people have one view, and one person stands up against them, that one person has to back down. And that’s bluntly what Mill said. The community overrides the individual, but the individual and the individual’s freedom is central to Western beliefs of liberal democracy. These are not easy questions, but I believe answer them we must, if we are to shore up what appears to be a crisis in Western democracy. After all, freedom of speech is at the very core of our democracy. Helena Kennedy, the British lawyer, has written “Free speech is one of the core values in a democracy, and it should be championed with a vengeance.” I could go on for days, but what I’m trying to do in a moment is to hand it over to you for your comments. I would very much welcome from my American friends, their comments on those States which are censoring books. I’m interested wherever you live, in a democracy, listening tonight, how you think the internet should be policed.
There was an article in “The Times” of London on Friday, and its headline was “This is the slow road to state censorship.” It’s writing about Britain, and a potential law which is being introduced in parliament in the next session of parliament. And James Forsythe, who is political editor of the magazine, “The Spectator,” wrote this in the “Times,” “What is the most consequential piece of legislation the British government will ever pass? The obvious answer is the Brexit negotiation and deal. But you could make a good case for the online safety bill, which will be working its way through the commons. It could affect what you read, how you read it, and whether you can even find it. It’s bold ambition is to regulate the internet. It will determine whether social media remains a Wild West saloon, or whether it becomes a more curated space with government directing the curating. Tweets, blogs and videos will be reviewed and scanned for harmful content, usually by bots. Ministers like to stress that no other democracy has attempted this. So we are in Britain, either trailblazers or guinea pigs. This bill is well-intentioned, but we all know which road is paved with good intentions.”
So I’m going to stop there Trudy, and open the floor to all the people that want to join in the debate. And I’m hoping that you will say things, and we can have other people saying things back to you. And Trudy and I will try and say things back to you, rather than questions, because this is a matter of, this is a matter of debate. There isn’t a right or wrong answer. This is not like me teaching history, and somebody says, was it in the 17th or the 18th century? I can answer that. I can’t answer this. You all have your individual views, and all our societies, ‘cause a number of people are from different countries, our societies differ, not hugely, because on a broad scale we’re talking about liberal democracy. And although the actual infrastructure may differ, the fundamentals of liberal democracy remain. So let’s see, oh wait, I’ve got quite a lot of questions and comments already.
Okay, William, the first point I want to bring to your attention is from Louise Sweet. She says, “In your last lecture you referred to censorship in the American South. Unfortunately, Pennsylvania currently has the most significant censorship next to Texas. Throughout the McCarthy period, censorship was not restricted to the southern states. Current censorship in America of sexual subjects is not unlike section 28, clause 28 in the UK. Censorship involves more than book burning. It involves what publishers fail to publish, and what children are not permitted to read, although legally available.” That’s an interesting point.
It’s very good points. Very good points. I don’t disagree with any of that. I think that’s very important. So could you tell us, if looking at Pennsylvania and Texas, very different places, why their approach to this should be the same?
Okay, so we’re waiting France.
Because it’s not religion. If we’re looking at.
I think we should.
Pennsylvania and Texas, we can’t put it under evangelical Christianity, for example.
And this is, Irene has pointed out, “There’s a very good book 'To Kill the Truth’ by Jonathan Friedland portraying the desire to eliminate history by destroying libraries.” Rombik thinks that in America, the issue of book banning such as by boards of education, which control public schools, is a cultural issue very similar to what occurred in Germany. And he thinks it’s the first stage of a pushback against liberalisation of attitudes, gender, sexuality, immigrants, political liberalism, et cetera. And he’s comparing it, saying not very different from the Nazis or other autocracies.
And that’s the worry, and that’s the worry Trudy, between how liberal democracy can slide, towards, on a continuum, towards fascism.
Yes, I totally agree with you.
Or democracy, whatever words you want to use.
William, you know that, I think you said, I do not believe in what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it. Would you be absolutely, can you be absolutely clear in this? What do you think is totally not unacceptable? Is there anything in your world that you would say is totally unacceptable?
I think that’s a difficult question.
Yeah, I agree. That’s why I’m throwing it.
As a lawyer, I would want to look at a principle, but I can’t extract a principle. I can tell you in concrete examples, what I feel is not acceptable. And the obvious example where the debate starts off is Holocaust denial. But I cannot put Holocaust denial into a bigger principle. That’s my problem. I find twisting of school history curriculums unacceptable. It’s something that we see Putin has done, but we also see the British government is doing. And we see the same in America. We see the same across the Western world. And that worries me as an educator, but that’s of a different order than the denial of the Holocaust.
That’s a different order.
So I find it really difficult to discover a principle upon which, and if you read all the stuff, there is very little principle. It’s interesting that Wendell Holmes, a really top, one of the best common lawyers we’ve ever had, couldn’t give an example other than you can’t cry fire in a crowded theatre. Well, that’s not a legal principle.
But we do have laws to stop incitement to race hatred. And you could make the case that Holocaust denial is on the slippery slope to race hatred. I think there are certain things that can be covered under law, which are, I don’t think it’s enforced properly.
The seditious libel, which we don’t use, but America uses is an example of that. You know, we have laws against racism, we have laws on gender, on disability, interestingly, we have no laws about ageism, although some countries do, Britain does not. I don’t know what the position is in the states ‘cause that will be a state issue, not a federal issue.
Would that satisfy you, William? Because I know how passionately you believe in freedom of speech. Would that satisfy you if the law could make that step as to what is incitement? Because I know quite often, and we’ve had debates in the Jewish community as to what is acceptable and what isn’t. And I take the view, and I know that Claudia, Book Week takes the view as well that we will allow performances. We would, like for example, on Lockdown University, we never censor anybody, our trusted lecturers. We never, ever would dream of telling them what to say. Where’s the line though, between if somebody says something that’s offensive to a large number of people, do you still let it go ahead? That’s, I think on a basic level is something very much interests me because I believe passionately in freedom of speech, and even.
Well, the problem is what is offensive? What is offensive to you?
Even when they’re speaking, I can’t bear what they’re saying.
Well, the problem is what is offensive to you may not be offensive to me.
Yeah.
And that, and it’s really difficult. What might be offensive to say in Britain might not be offensive to say in Canada. What might not be offensive in Australia might be offensive in America. And to it has to be contextualised, I think.
Yes.
You see the problem.
Oh, now it seems obvious, you’re saying.
With Nazi Germany it’s so black and white, and I think the real world is very grey in this area. And what worries me most is the greyness which governments interfere in, and state. And the worry at the moment is that many governments in the Western world, are populous governments moving towards the right, and therefore their view of freedom of speech is actually quite different. They’re coming from a different standpoint. Freedom of speech, this is very crudely put, but those who are going to defend freedom of speech, let’s go back to 17th century England, and those who left England for America. It’s the left, if crudely put, it’s the Puritans, who had a real view about freedom because they based it on their biblical interpretations and took it into the political sphere. But then it meant that the right in Europe took a different view about freedoms. It was about trying to stop, the whole history for example in England of the trade union movement is one where the trade union movement or the left have to fight to become legalised against a right establishment who sought to keep them in their place. So it’s really tricky. And today, today our politics has often become very fractured, very divisive. And so there is not such an agreement on what is, on what is acceptable as a constraint on freedom of speech.
So you don’t, so yes, we do have certain laws. You don’t think that’s enough, do you?
I don’t trust the people who pass the laws. I trust in all the common law countries, I trust the judiciary. But one of the problems of the crisis of democracy is the attack upon the judiciary and the undermining of the judiciary. And we’ve seen that, I mean the most blatant examples are in Britain and the States. We’ve seen that, and it’s worrying. We have to come back to the division of powers, separation of power, and we’ve got confusion now. And the executive has taken far too much control in all our democracies over the judiciary and the legislature. And that that’s worrying, because that’s the path towards autocracy, totalitarianism.
And presumably, and the skewing of the Supreme Court is a phenomenally interesting debate on this, isn’t it? What’s happening in the States.
Of course, because it’s going to make, it’s going to make judgments on what is or isn’t offensive, but it’s not making those judge, that is my problem. It’s not making it against the legal principle. It’s making it, even if it’s lawyers making it, it’s making it subjectively, and may be influenced by politics, may be influenced by religion, may be influenced by culture. But if there was a legal principle, we would be happier. And I can’t find one. There’s lots of lawyers, I’m sure, tuned in tonight. Maybe somebody can answer that question for us.
Well, let’s see what Susan’s saying in the United States. She’s saying the Republicans who follow Trump are censoring. And a lot of the comments from America, this is wrong. “Unfortunately, it may be in essence possible to stop ideas. If suppression is severe enough with control of access to information, books, internet, then although the ideas will not be in people’s minds, those ideas will not be expressed. The endless cycles.” Harriet’s saying, could we burn Twitter? And Ron says, “I don’t think it matters that we know about the horrors of the past. After several generations, people think they can impose controls to improve society while thinking they can do so much better than was done in the past.”
Absolutely right. Whoever said that, I agree hugely with that statement.
And Martin is asking a specifically a question about Jewish history. Would one ban the selling of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and “Mein Kampf”? That’s an interesting one, isn’t it? I think although.
Oh, no, could you not, Trudy, since he is a non-Jew, make a distinction between the two. For the protocol.
Oh, the “Protocols of Elders of Zion” “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” were a forgery that came out of Russia.
Exactly.
That basically talked about the Jewish plot to take over the world. You know, communists are Jews, and capitalists are Jews.
Well, that is nonsense. And it’s incites and it incites hatred. Stop.
That has incited hatred. So that’s covered by law.
Yes, but “Mein Kampf” is different, isn’t it? That’s a political statement.
Well, “Mein Kampf,” “Mein Kampf.”
None of us would agree with it, but should we ban it?
“Mein Kampf” also talks about the protocols. I’ve actually, I’m one of those strange rather sad creatures. I’ve actually read “Mein Kampf” in translation, and there are parts of it that are so evil that they do incite.
So that would also come under legislation.
I think it would come under law.
But, but hang on a moment. Trudy, “Mein Kampf” is publishable in Britain, isn’t it?
Let me get this right. I bought.
Can you buy the book here?
I’m not quite sure. There was a case recently, and it’s out of my head now, but maybe somebody knows on this.
Somebody will know. Somebody will know.
And this is Harriet, “Censorship and freedom of speech. If you allow this, then you’ll get this. That is comparable with if you overlook a parking infraction, you’re opening the door to vehicular manslaughter. Or alternatively, if you disallow vehicular manslaughter, then you must also permit roundabouts and parking.” Okay, this is Irene. “The UK position has been that incitement to harm a person or group of people should be where the line is drawn. We have never had complete freedom to say anything we like libel laws, incitement laws, yes. But we think it’s becoming much more dangerous now, don’t we, that’s the problem.” Any comments on that? Irene seems to think that the laws are strong enough. Elliot, it seems that you’re speaking about.
Take Irene, Irene take the issue about this new legislation going through parliament, which will give the government control of the internet. So they might, maybe not this government, maybe another government, might then use that to stifle a genuine debate.
Okay, now Irene’s come back. “The problem in today’s world of liberal democracies like the UK lies not with the words only, but with the words only, but with the definition of harm. The concept now includes offending others, not just physical harm. So it’s becoming subjective, not objective. Employment tribunals are having to wrestle with the definition of what is offensive to the complainants and therefore causing the complainant harm.” It’s a very interesting point, Irene.
Yes, and that’s part of the metoo movement argument.
Yes. Yes.
The sort of comment, Trudy, I might have made to you in the past as a colleague, as a joke, you could now take me to court, and I would be found guilty of a sexual.
Harassment.
Assault of words on you. Fo you remember the conversation we had about fur coats in LJC?
Oh yes, I remember.
[William] Yes, well.
William, unfortunately you and I, you and I, come from the same generation.
I couldn’t do that now.
I know, you see this is the point, my daughters totally disagree with me on this, by the way, but I totally agree. You and I know the line, and we know when the line is crossed. I wish, look, sometimes.
But the line has changed.
What is said in the workplace, it’s very complex.
The problem is, Trudy, the line has changed.
Yes.
What was acceptable 40 years ago to you or I, or longer ago when we were students, that line no longer exists, there’s a different line. I don’t know how any man at university ever invites a girl out now.
You know, for me the line has always been does this person have power over me?
Yeah.
I think, and this is.
Yes, and that’s true.
You see that is in itself. we could have a debate on that, couldn’t we? On Irene’s point, this is Susan. Hi Susan. I’m coming down to Cornwall soon. “Another modern example of free speech that is potentially harmful to others is the spread of misinformation about COVID and vaccines.” That’s an interesting point. And Susan’s gone on to say, “Perhaps as well as incitement to hate, we should also include incitement to harm. Or is that going down the slippery slope?” I think on that one, Susan, what’s the definition of harm? What is going to offend, I’m not talking about physical harm, but what is going to offend you might not offend me, ah. This is from Elaine Fruitment. “Where does truth against disinformation fall into freedom of speech issue?” This is from Michigan. “Disinformation and freedom of speech. What do you do about completely wrong information?” And Susan, on that point.
Hold it there. Wrong information, Trudy is a real issue politically in our liberal democracies. And we’ve had political parties in the States and in Britain who have campaigned on misinformation. There’s been a huge debate about misinformation over Brexit, and the misinformation in the States from Trump, some of which has gone to court. So misinformation is a major problem. Misinformation is a bigger problem because they have the opportunity to spread it through the internet. So who controls, if it was governments controlling, that would mean the British government and Trump, if reelected, for example, would be able to allow things that were misinformed to remain on the internet whilst removing those that show why the information is misinformation. That’s the problem, who monitors it?
And we don’t have philosopher kings, this is from Susan. “The uncensored social media allows lies to be broadcast that convinces listeners that lies are truth.” This is Frieda, “So consequently, that is actually undermining democracy,” she goes on to say. And Monique, “Today in America, cancel culture has gained considerable strength. It has appeared as a political mob movement of the left. It seeks no debate, only to silence its viewpoint. This began on campuses and universities. It seeks to excise all of history that it considers evil for any reason, such as past racism. This has entered the body politic, and is causing much self-censorship by implied or actual threat. This is above and beyond the censoring of books by any school board, state, or federal government.” That’s from Monique Council.
Just to interject though, I have a friend who is a retired prof from Princeton. I think it’s extraordinary. He was always very proud of Woodrow Wilson’s relationship with Princeton. And now Princeton renamed I think library, which was called Woodrow Wilson, because Woodrow Wilson is accused of racism. Now this is difficult, because you’ve got to take Woodrow Wilson in the context of his time. We’ve had had similar problems in my university at Oxford with Cecil Rhodes. And I think you simply have to explain that this was a different time. We do not approve of what happened in the past, but that is what was the past. I mean, it’s not the same as naming a library, the Adolph Hitler Memorial Library, by naming something the Cecil Rhodes Institute or naming something the Woodrow Wilson Library. There are differences here, and we’ve got to be careful what we do. Maybe a Princeton graduate.
I think we’re lumping far too many things together.
Listening who can answer.
I mean, it is absolutely, it is absolutely extraordinary, the length, I mean if you really, because I’m going to be Jewish and ironic, there’s a statue of Richard I outside parliament, the worst pogrom in English history was in his reign. Did all of a sudden I get a petition up to have that put down, I think not. So there comes a time when that terribly old-fashioned virtue of common sense should set in, don’t you think? But we can’t anymore, can we? Oh, and this is a very nice one.
We can’t define common sense. Common sense is what you and I believe Trudy.
And we’re old, I know William.
That doesn’t help.
Oh, this is a lovely line from Victor, re Holmes, what if there is a fire? Yeah, I think that’s legal.
Yes, I mean, I actually find Wendell Holmes’ comment really very unacceptable. If he’d said it in a university seminar, a lawyer seminar, he would’ve been absolutely torn apart with that. Because I was always taught, to go back when I read law at Oxford, you went back to principles. In fact, there was a story of one undergraduate who got a first in law without mentioning one single legal case. Whereas most of us learnt thousands and thousands of cases and forgot them the moment the exam was over. But one person got a first without, because he took everything back to basic principles. And that’s my problem, I go back to my point. I cannot find a principle which covers everything, which allows exceptions to freedom of speech. I suppose the answer will be in all our countries, it’s what our legislature agrees and that’s it. And in our democracies, the next legislature, the next parliament, the next congress, whatever, can change the law. And they would argue that, but I’m not happy anymore because of the power of the executive everywhere over the legislature.
Yeah, and we saw it happening in the ‘60s. I don’t know whether we all were sleepwalking, this is from Sonya, “I’m ashamed to live in Florida where the governor to burnish his fundamentalist credentials has made the most nonsensical pronouncements on which books are dangerous.” And then John has said, “Counterculture, part of the problem.” And Neil, “The woke generation appears to be attempting to suppress all contrary opinions in academe with considerable success. Lectures, lecturers, professors and writers have their careers terminated or seriously damaged.” “I think that hate speech that incites harm to others must be restricted.” I think that hate speech that incites harm to other, it is, that’s covered by, that is actually, certainly in England.
In Britain, it’s covered by law.
That is covered by law. Whether it is used enough is another issue. Arlene, “I think that freedom of speech must include responsibility.” Yes, how can it be combated? Suzanne, “There has to be some sort of protected, as a protection, as a fundamental freedom by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It permits the government to enforce reasonable limits, hate speech, obscenity, and defamation are common categories of restricted speech in Canada. Freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression, including freedom of press and other media communication.” That’s interesting.
And you immediately get into the problem.
What is reasonable.
What is obscenity? What evangelical Christians in the southern states think is obscene, is not regarded, is as obscene in London, for example. And what is obscene.
And who’s going to, and who’s going to, yeah.
Don’t you think, what is obscene in Israel might not be obscene in Britain or vice versa. Obscenity is in the mind of the, come on, obscenity is in the mind of, we have a phrase for it. What a filthy mind you’ve got, to think that. This was just a simple joke. It’s your mind that’s made it filthy and obscene. And so, it’s difficult. These are really, really fundamental questions to a democracy.
And Susan also pointed out the word reasonable. “What on earth does that mean?” And this is Anne, “I can no longer say what I think as I’m bound to offend one group or another, and be scathingly attacked verbally.” Judy, “I have a friend who’s dean of social work.”
That’s frightening, that people can’t say what they think. That is a terrible, terrible thing.
And Judy’s very much saying the same thing. “She’s terrified of saying something. You might offend someone. She’s smart and liberal, much loved by her students. Sad to think that she has to live in fear. Didn’t Philip Roth write a novel with this theme?” Let me see if there are any more. What about hate speech? “Does not free street, does not free speech curbed at all protect that hate speech.” Hate speech if it leads to incitement is a crime in England. You see, I’m afraid we have to, if we believe in freedom of speech, we do have to live sometimes with the unpalatable. If we want this sort of, if we want reasonableness to creep back into our universities, for example, we’re going to have to allow opinions even if we disagree with them. But they have to allow ours as well.
And that’s the rub.
This is Jones saying, “A bus driver was speaking about Obama. He told me they aren’t allowed to lie on the radio. If the public is fed lies, should it be allowed? How do we educate the public?” This is from Sylvia.
Well, I think educators would say that one of the problems is in our liberal democracies, the failure to educate our young and our adults on democracy. I was horrified during the Brexit debate that there was no objective educational input. And I think there should be. Denmark do that. In every referendum Denmark has, there has to be, the public money is given to education to run all sorts of events to inform the public, not to put one opinion, but to have people from both sides. So two people speaking, a chair who would be an educator, who would bring it together and summarise and all the rest of it. And we don’t do that. One of the problems is I think that in our election systems, our politicians can say what they like without being pulled back in terms of whether what they’re saying is right or wrong, true or false. And I think maybe in the modern world, we have to have a system whereby what politicians say has to be like advertisers, say if they’re selling soup, you can’t sell tomato soup when it isn’t tomato soup. So why can you sell an economic policy that’s going to work, when everybody knows it isn’t going to work? Or large proportion know it isn’t going to work.
How on earth are you going to legislate for that? Now this is a nice comment. This is from Sarah about a comment by, this is a phrase of Sylvia Clarke’s, “There should be freedom of speech, but with one additive warning, unless this idea brings harm, death to any other human being.” now death to any other human being, harm, again, you’ve got a problem with words, haven’t you? What does the word harm mean?
Harm is a difficult word to define. You see one person’s definition is as valid as another’s.
And this is from Alfie. It’s so complicated, isn’t it?
If you have a definition of reasonable, and you leave it to the courts to decide, provided the court’s independent of the executive is probably your best bet. But in the States, we know what the situation is with the Supreme Court, and in Britain we know the attacks that are being made by our present government on the legal system and on lawyers. It’s a nasty, insidious attack, which is very difficult for lawyers to answer. Those of you who are not British, the present government had basically labelled all lawyers lefties, which is so far from the truth. The truth is that they’re objecting to some actions of the government, which they see as breaking British law or even breaking international law. But they’re accused of being basically traitors to the country. And we’ve got to get back to a situation where lawyers can speak as objectively as they can. Now, America’s system is different, and for those of us who are not American, the Supreme Court seems extremely worrying in terms of how people are selected and how long they can go on serving. That’s another problem. There’s an age issue.
You’re going to have a debate on that now. This is Diane, “I live in Florida where the present governor is engaged in supporting, encouraging censorship of textbooks, encouraging parents to scrutinise libraries, et cetera.” Elie Strauss, “The governor is protecting parents and children from insanity, like teaching five year olds about sexual practises and woke ideas.” There you have a lovely debate between two of our participants. I don’t think we’ve better comment on that. Faith, “Total freedom is a must. Providing equal space is given to the opposite view.” Interesting one. Ralph. You know we’ve got so many, I’m skipping now, because we’ve got a hundred questions. Everyone saying hate speech is totally unacceptable. I’d love to know what is the definition of hate speech? This is from Kell, “Should it, the consequence of any messaging, especially if it prompts actions to be considered a criterion? What are the divisive message that can’t be adequately counted if the opposition has no platform or ability?” Okay.
Well if the opposition has no platform or ability.
In America, publishers. Oh, this is a good one.
We’re a long way from democracy.
Yeah, this is from Gela, “In America, publishers are aware that authors views may cause offence and ultimately end up with costly legal bills.”
[William] Yeah.
Shouldn’t, oh, this is from Philip. “Shouldn’t freedom of speech include the freedom to lie in public, speeches, and writings?” Oh, oh, Philip, are you being ironic? Peters, “Is not banning President Trump from Twitter the most blatant assault on freedom of speech? It cuts both ways. The left often talk about freedom of speech, but only when it goes their way.” Then Goldie says, “The banning of Trump is the best thing that’s happened in American discourse for a long time.” You see how divided we’ve become.
We’ve become very divided. And what is one of the problems about that? If you try and take a middle ground, to take the middle ground in this culture war at the moment is a very difficult place to be. But a middle ground is an important ground to hold. It doesn’t mean you’re wishy-washy. It simply means that you’re tolerant of other people’s views even if you disagree with them. We have to find in our politics, it seems to me, as well as in our social communities, middle ground.
You know, it’s interesting my friend Robert Wistrich, who was such a brilliant historian, he always, and he died quite a few years ago, and he said basically liberalism has got to become militant to stand up to the onslaught. This is from Bernard, “Speech which is threat to public health should be banned.” And I suppose that covers the issue of COVID, which is interesting. Now this.
Then that attacks the right of people not to have jabs.
No, it’s not saying you can’t have jabs. You are saying that they, I think what the previous character, the previous participant didn’t say that, what they said was they didn’t want misinformation about inoculations.
Right, no, no.
You see, we don’t. And that’s a complicated.
I don’t accept that, and there was a lot of misinformation, wrong information over the internet, that’s true. But if people have an objection to having it, I think they’re entitled to have it. But then you get to the problem. If sufficient people refuse to have the jab, then the health of other people is put at risk. And that undermines John Stewart Mill’s belief about the greater good of the community rather than in the individual. If Trudy, you were the only one in a group of, I don’t know, in any sort of situation, in a large organisation, in perhaps in a synagogue. If you were the one who said, I’m not going to be jabbed, I don’t believe in it for whatever reason, you’re putting the other people attending at risk. So is it not them right to say either you’ve got to be jabbed or you can’t come.
You see that’s where the, in any same liberal democracy, what we’ve been, what what we should be spending our time on is the freedom of the individual as opposed to the good of the majority. To me that was the wonderful debate. This is, we’re so far along the line. Now Eli Strauss has come back on this, and he said, he was talking about censorship of children’s books. “Do you want your kids to learn about various aspects of sexuality at five or six? I don’t believe in censorship, but there should be limits.” I think this is a very interesting point actually.
Well, I think the point there is that children of five or six do not have the intellectual capacity or the experience to be able to take that sort of information. It’s nonsense that we should be doing that. And I think that’s, to me it’s very clear that is nonsense and we shouldn’t be doing it, that’s different.
I agree.
That’s different than universities being anti-transgender people. That’s a different issue. But children, children of all groups in society have the right to be protected. To be protected in all sorts of ways, but certainly against sexual. I mean the idea that you can allow children, which is happening in Britain, to choose when they’re in their primary school, whether they want to be boy or girl, seems to me to be frighteningly. I think it’s actually evil to do that. And there, I’ve been outspoken. You’ve been trying to get me to be outspoken Trudy. So I have, I think it’s just wrong.
And I respect your right to that view, which I actually share. Now this is Catherine, a lovely plea. “You could make a case for decency in a civilised country. It’s not a principle, but it’s desirable in a stable community.” Yes, that lovely old-fashioned word decency. Jeff, “Can we look at the issue of fact checking as a test for censorship. If we use the courts to test facts and then disallow publishing of proven falsehoods, would that be acceptable? Of course, really dictates, reality decay against, because the courts were being undated.” And this is from Yasmin, “Even in India, they’re now trying to rewrite history, which includes the Taj Mahal.” Modi wants to erase the Muslim history of India there unfortunately. Even in the West, even in the West, should we say that this was applicable at that time? You see that’s interesting Yasmin, talking about India.
Ruth, “How about a starting point of speech or writing should be do no harm. Think of advice on suicide.” That’s very interesting point. Evelyn, “Anything that incites hatred or violence, whether physical or emotional, whether individual or communal should not be allowed.” Oh this is Rebecca, “Have a look at Canadian charter. Section two protects freedom of expression, but permits government to enforce reasonable limits. Hate speech is a category of restricted speech.” “In America, there used to be the concept of fighting words, which were not considered free speech. These were ethnic religious family slurs.” Sherry’s saying, “Tremendous damage done by unbridled free speech on Facebook and Twitter.” And she says Brexit and Trump’s Trumpism in her view are two painful examples.
This is from Shocket, “I’ve entered to disagree. Even Holocaust denial is acceptable. The line is surely encouragement to violence. Even offensive language is deplorable but should be allowed. May I point out that Talmud very often quotes minority opinions and even derogatory epithets are mentioned, I would suggest this discussion is similar to art pornography divide.” That’s a very interesting point, is it not? Shocker is obviously going way along the line on allowing freedom even though he completely dislikes what is said. And pointing to Judaism. I’m going to have to go on and on. I’m just looking. And Louise has pointed out legal principles are also open to interpretation. Oh, Monica’s suggesting the protocols in “Mein Kampf” should not be banned, but labelled as poisonous documents only be to be taken with an antidote. Unfortunately though, kids pick these things up. This is Romi.
Well that’s like putting notes on, that’s like putting notes on cigarette packets. People who are addicted are not going, are not going to take any notice at all.
Oh, this is from Romi. “The South African constitutional court recently grappled whether violent speech against Zionists constituted hate speech. Very interesting analysis. Read Masuku judgement .” Thank you, Romi, what is that? Let us know. This is Dina, “Book burning at Ontario Francophone Schools’ gesture of reconciliation denounced. More than 4,700 books removed from library shelves at 30 schools, and they have since been destroyed, or in the process of being recycled.” I don’t know about this. This is Mitzi pointing to anti-Judaism in the New Testament. And should we ban the Bible? I think we’re on a, I think we’re there. I think let’s keep this within the realms of.
Trudy there’s big news, isn’t there in the British press today about the Church of England looking at antisemitism? Not in terms of people making speeches, but in terms of the, as it were, the theology of the Church of England.
Do you know what it’s about, William,
And I’ll take it to 1222 as a beginning, and saying there should be a new start. It’s an interesting, there’s a very interesting debate starting.
I agree, I mean see as you said, it’s the 800 anniversary of the Council of Oxford. England was the first country to start the wearing of the Jew badge. You know, it’s interesting. I don’t know if that, anyway, I think you and I should just, we perhaps we should debate that at another time, William, I think it’s very interesting. I’m just, this is Monty Golden who said “The limit of your world is the limit of your language, and the limit of your language is the limit of your world.” And Rachelli said, “What about the annual hate fest of Al Kuntz?” Gerald’s talking about QAnon. We have so many questions. Oh, Alan, “Why on earth should we trust non-elected lawyers more than elected politicians?” Eli, misinformation, any disinformation, right?
That’s bad. Alan, listen to him. Look, look, you can trust us. You can trust us.
And Faye is saying, “What about debate? Is it a lost art, a forbidden art?” This is Morrison.
That’s interesting. That is interesting about debate. That’s a very interesting point. Because I think, I think that is something that’s been dying in our cultures. It’s certainly, it’s certainly, if you look at legislatures, the quality of debate is appalling if you compare it to 50 years ago. I think that’s.
Well on my favourite.
Pretty well said.
I’m sorry, if you read some of Churchill’s speeches, or if you want to go further back and look at the speeches of Disraeli and Gladstone, I mean that was debate. I don’t know.
Yes, that’s what I mean.
Yeah, it’s crazy, isn’t it? This is from Morris “In the education arena, do you agree that the principles of debate, which emphasise the ability to listen to alternate ideas and the ability to argue both sides of an idea, should be part of the curriculum in the hope that students learn what should constitute thoughtful speech?”
I agree.
[Trudy] Love that.
I think there’s a lot more we could do to strengthen democracy in not only what we teach in schools, but how we run schools. Most of our schools are run by autocratic head teachers, or autocratic, well actually now, and very much autocratic administrators.
Careful.
Children should, children should be allowed to involve, children should be involved in the running of their school because that is a way to teach them democracy. Now that’s another controversial statement.
Yeah, well, I think we’re going to have to continue this debate. I think I’m only going to take one more point. I’m sorry, it’s just that we’ve got over a hundred, and I know that we are running late, it’s quarter to, it’s quarter to 11 in South Africa. But I’ve got a, Peter Bries following the, hello, Peter, “the recent prorogation of Parliament, the ‘Daily Mail’ headline read enemies of the people, about three judges, a total representation, which could have incited unrest. Should this be allowed? Misinformation in the extreme.” “Who will watch the watchers?” asked Sally Gold. And we go on and on.
Who watches the watchers, is a really interesting question. That’s why we have a separation of powers. And that’s why some of us are concerned about the weakening of the separation of powers in all our democratic states of the West.
Look, I think this has been, look, William, I want to thank you so much for doing this. I think this should really be the beginning, because we must have more debates on these kind of issues. I’m sorry, those of you whose questions we haven’t answered, it’s just that we had so many tonight. So again, William, thank you so much. And Claudia, thank you for bringing book week in, and actually it was your idea. So thank you so much for that. And I’ll see all of you tomorrow. And William, you are back on next Monday. Thanks for doing a double tonight. You have huge stamina. Am I allowed to say that, William? Can I say that? Is that a compliment?
I will take it in the spirit that it was given, it makes me feel like a horse, but other than that, thank you. Thank you Trudy for chairing that. And thank you everyone for sharing your views. It’s been really interesting, and I hope other people have found it equally interesting.
What I thought was marvellous. We’ve had so many people from different countries giving different perspectives. I sometimes think we learn as much as, yeah, we learn a lot from this group.
Always. Always.
[Trudy] Fantastic. God bless.
Bye, bye-bye everyone, bye-bye.
[Trudy] Bye.