The death of free speech in the West

Gabri?l A Moens AM and Augusto Zimmermann

Preserving free speech is essential to protect democracy. Indeed, no society can be authentically democratic if only a few privileged individuals are allowed to determine how others must participate in public discourse. Democracy is not an elitist competition between the ruling classes, with the average citizen serving only as a convenient tool to produce government by means of the occasional vote.

Unfortunately, however, democracy is dying in the West because its ruling classes want to make it all about a handful of people. In our society, the right to free speech is constantly denigrated, and this practice of denigration has contributed to the emergence of troubling times.

The evidence for this view is easy to find and consequences of the deleterious effects of speech-unfriendly policies and laws are clearly visible: attempts to restrict free speech with ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation’ law, censorship of online materials by the e-Safety Commissioner, the adoption of ever stringent anti-discrimination laws, elimination of ‘harmful ideas’ which the ruling elites equate with domestic terrorism, discretionary use of defamation laws and practices, prohibiting criticism of the harmful effects of sex and gender identification laws, among others.

In this context, Pavel Durov, the co-founder and CEO of social media app Telegram, has just been arbitrarily detained by the French state authorities. On Sunday night, a French judge extended his detention order. Under French law, Durov can remain in custody for questioning for up to four days. After that, judges must decide to either charge him or release him .

Given the potential charges against him, the Telegram’s CEO could be facing up to 20 years in prison. His arrest has been characterised as a ‘crackdown against free speech’. Indeed, the Telegram CEO has told US journalist Tucker Carlson that ‘Western intelligence agencies were after him, apparently seeking to use his platform to spy on others .’ In his X account, Carlson stated a remarkable irony about this whole situation:

‘Pavel Durov left Russia when the government tried to control his social media company, Telegram. But in the end, it wasn’t Putin who arrested him for allowing the public to exercise free speech. It was a Western country, a Biden administration ally and enthusiastic Nato member.’

Ironically, Durov, who was born in Russia and left the country after he refused to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his VKontakte social media platform, which he has since sold. He sold his stake in that social media outlet after pressure from Russian authorities in 2014. Today, Telegram is based in Dubai and its CEO, not incorrectly, describes it as ‘the best place for a neutral platform like ours to be in if we want to make sure we can defend our users’ privacy and freedom of speech’.

In our opinion, the CEO of Telegram is now a political prisoner and his arrest means that free speech in ‘Western democracies’ is dying. Mario Nawfal , named an ‘omnipotent Twitter celebrity’ by NBC, says that ‘the US wanted to control Telegram better’. He cited an excerpt from Durov’s interview with Carlson, in which he describes how US cyber-security offices approached a Telegram engineer seeking a backdoor to the messenger. ‘Whenever I would go to the US, I would have two FBI agents greet me at the airport, asking questions,’ Durov said at that interview.

The tech entrepreneur’s arrest is clearly politically motivated as it has broad implications for other social media. Almost a billion people around the world use Telegram as a means of communication and as a source of vital information. It is well-known for being highly secure as it provides end-to-end encryption and is widely used by the common population. Of course, it is the relatively unfettered nature of some media outlets that truly horrifies the totalitarian woke elites. The question now is who is next to be targeted. Writing from a British perspective, Brendan O’Neill, a regular writer for The Spectator, comments :

‘They cannot believe there exists a platform on which anyone – even people who didn’t go to Oxford, who didn’t vote Remain, and who don’t’ think people with penises can be a woman – can say things… It isn’t Musk they fear so much as what he has facilitated – a world in which one can speak even when one’s ideas offend the ruling class.’

The next in line may be the CEO of Rumble, an online video platform that focuses on free speech and content diversity, while YouTube has much stricter policies on alleged ‘hate speech’ and ‘misinformation’; that is, the sort of information not accepted by the ruling classes.

Rumble CEO, Chris Pavlovski, has vowed to make his platform entirely free speech unlike other social media outlets that do not allow conservative voices a voice on the platform without severe restrictions. As a consequence, Rumble is constantly under attack by the globalist left.

In 2023, for example, Rumble left communist Brazil rather than obey an unconstitutional judicial order to censor conservative voices. And France has now also threatened Rumble for not censoring speech. The French authorities want to gain full access to the personal information of Telegram users, which its CEO has bravely refused. On August 25, Pavlovski announced that he actually had to escape France and depart Europe. Pavlovski wrote on X :

‘I’ve just safely departed from Europe. France has threatened Rumble, and now they have crossed a red line by arresting Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, reportedly for not censoring speech. Rumble will not stand for this behaviour and will use every legal means available to fight for freedom of expression, a universal human right. We are currently fighting in the courts of France, and we hope for Pavel Durov’s immediate release.’

The Woke ruling classes controlling the West want you to focus solely on the likes of Musk, Pavel, and Pavlovski. They do not want you to finally realise that the real threat they want to neutralise is your dissenting voices, particularly if you happen to be a conservative, libertarian, or independent. We can add Tulsi Gabbard, Julian Assange, Scott Ritter, and many others who have been harassed, arrested, imprisoned by the state authorities in the US, UK, EU, and Canada for daring to practice the disappearing profession of journalism. They are the great dangers to their totalitarian globalist agenda.

The beneficial aspect of free speech for the maintenance of a healthy democracy is neglected by those who want to impose their postmodernist version of ‘truth’ on other people. For example, the UK has a myriad of draconian laws criminalising speech with vague terms for arbitrary enforcement. For instance, the UK Home Secretary, Yvette Coop, has vowed to further crack down on people ‘pushing harmful and hateful beliefs’. That includes what she calls ‘misogyny’.

The crackdown on free speech is now almost complete in the United Kingdom. Section 18 of the Public Order Act 1986 prohibits any speech that is ‘threatening, abusive, or insulting’. Of course, this includes ‘abusive’ speech that threatens the elites’ dominant discourse and approved range of opinions. In this context, writes Eugene Voloch, a UCLA law professor, ‘All it takes to be called a racist is to express scepticism about immigration or to express plausible concerns about, for example, the spread of Islam throughout the world and the like.’

In fact, much speech that is deemed ‘hate speech’ is basically a fair response to the protected speech by others. Labels such as ‘racist’, ‘sexist’, and ‘homophobe’ are routinely applied to demonise and punish those who dare to utter a word that does not faithfully support the ideological agenda of the ruling elites.

This is about people being denied their basic democratic right to express different opinions due to their moral views contradicting the ‘progressive’ views of the intolerant Western elites (politicians, the mainstream media, big corporation bosses, and leading academics).

As a result, many people are now reasonably afraid to express opinions in public, especially if they are dissenting in nature to the prevailing orthodoxy. This censoring of different opinions is profoundly undemocratic. Democracy needs robustness of discussion. In this context, Salman Rushdie, the eminent English writer said:

‘The idea that any kind of free society can be constructed in which people will never be offended or insulted is absurd. So too is the notion that people should have the right to call on the law to defend them against being offended or insulted. A fundamental decision needs to be made: Do we want to live in a free society or not? Democracy is not a tea party where people sit around making polite conversation. In democracies people get extremely upset with each other. They argue vehemently against each other’s positions.’

Naturally, absolute free speech under all circumstances can never be a possibility. There are easily demonstrable exceptions whereby reasonable limits to free speech can be created. Within the boundaries of speech that should enjoy protection, certain limited categories have lower value, most notably sexually explicit speech that falls short of obscenity. Moreover, violence is never acceptable and direct attacks on the physical integrity of another person can never be tolerated.

Democracy naturally implies that both good and bad ideas ought to be allowed and encouraged in the marketplace of ideas. There is nothing more undemocratic than preventing someone from expressing their opinions. An authentic democracy requires freedom of political speech for all. By contrast, of course, every totalitarian endeavour must restrict speech as a?matter of course.

Free speech ensures that everyone has the capacity to voice their opinion. This principle is essential to the functioning of a truly pluralistic and diverse society. Hence, speakers at the recently held Democracy and Free Speech telethon, held on Tuesday, August 20, vividly demonstrated the link between democracy and free speech. It confirmed that democracy is based on the robust exchange of ideas of all kinds, even though the speech might offend most people. They pointed out that it is the only way to empower powerless people to hold the government to account.

Free speech reduces the concentration of power into the hands of the self-appointed elites. If viewpoints and speech are censored, they will go underground to fester and infect, and the danger exist that, like an active volcano, they might erupt and destroy society, ending whatever is left of our civilisation.

There is also a close link between moral virtue and democracy, and if the link is broken, democracy only exists in name and not in reality. Moral virtue refers to the willingness of political parties to respect the rules of democracy, especially the expectation that our leaders are directly, or indirectly, elected by the people – a problematic expectation currently when vote rigging practices are alleged to be practiced widely.

In this context, Frank Meyer coined the word ‘fusionism’ to argue that freedom is a prerequisite for the existence of a virtuous society. The importance of moral virtue to the maintenance of a healthy democracy is also a key notion in National Conservatism’s A Statement of Principles :

‘We are citizens of Western nations who have watched with alarm as the traditional beliefs, institutions, and liberties underpinning life in the countries we love have been progressively undermined and overthrown. We see the tradition of independent, self-governed nations as the foundation for restoring a proper public orientation toward patriotism and courage, honour and loyalty, religion and wisdom, congregation and family, man and woman, the sabbath and the sacred, and reason and justice.’

This American conservative movement thus sees ‘moral virtue’ ‘as essential to sustaining our civilisation’ and ‘such a restoration as the prerequisite for recovering and maintaining our freedom, security, and prosperity’.

However, we have witnessed the decline of ‘moral virtue’ in the alarming destruction of democracy before and during the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, when Kamala Harris was anointed the Party’s nominee for the November election. She was nominated even though she never gained any primary vote (thereby snubbing the primary votes cast by members of her Party). If she had participated in the primary contests, she might not have been successfully nominated.

Although Harris has been the presumptive nominee and now the nominee for six weeks, she never submitted to an unscripted interview or debate; this completely disregards the democratic process guaranteeing that people would have an expectation to be able to assess a candidate in action. Perhaps, people cannot be trusted to approve her candidacy or her non-existing policies? Or she might be afraid of the electorate’s suspicion of her as a thoroughly undeserving and unpopular nominee? After all, Harris is widely held responsible for allowing the greatest incursions of unlawful non-citizens in the United States by dismantling the border policies of former President Donald Trump.

It is fair to say that, at least in a major Western democracy, we cannot recall such disdain of people’s views. Surely, democracy must mean that people be given a say in the democratic process, but in this case, they were spectacularly denied the opportunity – evidence of a lack of ‘moral virtue’. And yet, the Democratic Party effectively used disguised authoritarian methods to ramrod through a decision, which deprived Party members of an opportunity to vote for Harris during the primaries.

We cannot assume that the Harris’ ‘honeymoon’ could last once the deception in the way in which the Democratic Party snubbed the people is fully revealed. Perhaps, the authoritarian installation of Harris is a practice that Winston Churchill had in mind when he said that, ‘Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. Of course, no one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’

RFK Jr. Kennedy, writing in Quadrant Online , when endorsing Trump, characterised the Democratic Party as follows:

‘In the name of saving democracy, the Democratic Party set itself to dismantling it. Lacking confidence that its candidate could win at the voting booth, the DNC waged continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself. Each time our volunteers turned in those towering boxes of signatures needed to get on the ballot, the DNC dragged us into court state by state attempting to erase their work and to subvert the will of the voters who had signed. It deployed DNC-aligned judges to throw me – and other candidates – off the ballot and to throw President Trump in jail. It ran a sham of a primary, rigged to prevent any serious challenge to President Biden.’

So, not only is there a close link between free speech and democracy, but there is also an obvious link between virtue and democracy. Hence, there is a link between free speech and virtue. In this sense, we certainly agree with the sentiment expressed by John Fonte of the Hudson Institute that freedom of speech is necessary for the existence of a virtuous society.

Unfortunately, however, Western governments are now actively suppressing speech that is critical of their left-globalist agendas. Their favourite narrative is that free speech (and probably Russia) is the root of all evil behind civil unrest in Western countries. The notion of thought crime is making its way to the forefront of the established toolbox and this suggests we are witnessing the next stage of authoritarianism – open criminalisation of speech. This concept, however, stems not from the ideal of civil rights but from the well of socialism, the foundational model of the far-left.

The result is a remarkable totalitarian expansion of governmental power, from the protection of selected groups to the protection of specific activities. People can now be seriously punished for simply voicing opinions perceived as ‘offensive’ by the intolerant ruling classes, with laws tending to foster an environment of fear and intimidation on those who manifest their dissenting views. As such, people are increasingly finding themselves punished for simply expressing opinions that are no longer accepted by the woke elitists.

We, therefore, no longer have free speech in the West. What we have is ‘official propaganda’ that supports the Woke elitist agenda and prevailing narrative of the ruling classes that control our ‘democratic’ societies. As Paul Craig Roberts correctly points out, ‘The notion that the West is free is a joke. When there is no free expression there is only tyranny. And that is what the Western world is. A tyranny.’ We have no choice but to agree.

Gabri?l A. Moens AM is an emeritus professor of law at the University of Queensland and served as pro vice-chancellor and dean at Murdoch University.?

Augusto Zimmermann is professor and head of law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education and served as associate dean at Murdoch University. He is also a former commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia.

Zimmermann & Moens are the authors of The Unlucky Country (Locke Press, 2024).