How Double Standards Erode Free Speech10/11/2025
Mises Wire
Wanjiru Njoya
Free speech is not dead—it has just been parceled out among favored groups. This explains why the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer insisted that there is free speech in the UK, despite the fact that thousands have been arrested for social media posts that are offensive to the left. Even in the most despotic regimes there are surely pockets of free speech to be found, among those whose speech may, for the moment, be deemed unthreatening to the regime. The right to free speech in the UK is enjoyed by designated groups who are certainly free to express their perfectly acceptable opinions—or “lawful opinions” as they call it—without fear of arrest, while others, under various pretexts such as stamping out hate or preventing disorder, are thrown in jail for expressing unpopular or “legal but harmful” opinions.
Although most people claim to agree that “free speech includes hate speech,” they are quick to make exceptions for words that, in their view, violate public order legislation. Double standards in the public discourse on free speech became increasingly apparent when police in the UK—who have arrested comedians for posts that were offensive to various “protected groups”—declined to intervene when someone ghoulishly celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination on social media, even though the ghoul added, in reference to conservatives, that people should “kill them all.” Under the public order laws, it now seems that “the litmus test for ‘disorder’ is not disruption or violence, but rather whether you offend leftists.” Offending the left is seen as a greater threat to public order than calling for the killing of conservatives or erupting in celebration when this happens.
In a similar example, cancelling one of the favored comedians of the left was regarded by many on the left as a greater outrage than the assassination of Charlie Kirk because, after all, Kirk offended the left. After being briefly cancelled for his comments on the assassination, Jimmy Kimmel returned to his show to declare his unwavering support for free speech. So Mr. Kimmel gets his show back, which is being hailed as a victory by everyone. Even those who are not on the left, who are not fans of his show, highlight the danger that cancelling the left could easily be turned against the right. For example, Joe Rogan said,
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From a principled perspective, it is not enough to say that free speech on the left should be defended for strategic reasons, because one day the left might return to power and turn the tables on the right. It should be clear to everyone by now that the left will always violate free speech rights of conservatives, whether or not conservatives do the same to them, because tyranny and attacks on individual liberty are hallmarks of socialistic ideologies. The more important question is, does it make sense to declare a principled belief in absolute free speech while ignoring the fact that free speech is subject to these brazen double standards?
Absolutist defenders of free speech argue that double standards in enforcement of an ideal standard are not relevant to the principle being defended. After all, the validity of a principle does not depend on how it applies to different cases, and the fact that the left violates free speech protection with impunity does not mean we should all abandon the defense of free speech. Opponents of this view, in particular conservatives who are not prepared to ignore the double standards, wish to fight fire with fire by enforcing the same “consequences” on the left as the left, when in power, invariably imposes on conservatives. Thus, we see the methods of cancel culture swinging from left to right, which further erodes free speech to everyone’s ultimate detriment.
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Source:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/how-double-standards-erode-free-speech
