American Freedom?

The American Library of Congress has an engraving entitled: “Pulling Down the Statue of George III by the Sons of Freedom” which commemorates part of the battle to win freedom from Britain in the War of Independence. What that engraving, or the earlier painting do not show is that the statue was actually pulled down by African slaves who were certainly not free and were acting under instructions from the ‘sons of freedom’. (Listen to BBC podcast How to Invent a Country).

Freedom for the Rich

When America’s Founding Fathers sought freedom from Britain back in 1775, they were certainly not seeking freedom for everyone – slaves were not freed until 90 years later in 1865 and all Native Americans were only granted USA citizenship in 1924. Even poor whites were denied voting rights until the 1820s because the rights and freedoms that the USA valued were the rights of those with property, and particularly the right not to be taxed. The Founding Fathers were not poor men and the USA was not set up to meet the needs of the poor; much of the focus of the freedom they sought was freedom from taxes.

Romantic quotes about freedom can cover up appalling abuses of other people’s liberty. Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers, was happy to adapt a quote from Rousseau ‘I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery’ while shaping the USA constitution, even though he continued to own several hundred slaves.

Restrictions on Freedom

Today is different and we believe in ‘freedom’ for everyone and the idea of restricting freedom gets a bad press. However, unless a person lives in complete isolation from all other people, their actions will impinge on the freedoms of others and some restrictions on absolute freedom will be needed. We might like the idea of freedom on the open road, but all of us agree on the need to restrict speed, behaviour and the use of drugs on our roads to protect the safety of other road users. This has been best expressed by Alfred Gardner and JS Mills as ‘one person’s freedom ends where another person’s freedom begins’.

USA Malign Influence on the UK

Britain has always been affected by the USA but recently, right-wing politicians in the UK, devoid of ideas, have sought to import help from the political right in America. Remember Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and our own DUP celebrating Trump’s election, with Liz Truss going on speaking tours and Rishi Sunak obsessing about getting USA tech companies involved in the UK.

Now that the UK has elected a left of centre government it seems the USA right wing are intent on using the issue of freedom of speech to attack it.

Legal actions against those using social media to inflame tensions and spread misinformation during the recent anti-Muslim riots have attracted criticism from our own right-wing politicians and from the USA. However, neither the USA nor the UK have ever had completely uncontrolled free speech. There have always been situations where speech can legitimately be restricted such as when it violates the rights of others, or, advocates hatred and incites discrimination or violence.

A complete absence of rules on social media does not produce freedom – it creates an environment where fear is used by the strong to control the weak. There have been examples of horrendous online bullying with some platforms being used to encourage young people to commit suicide.

Women and girls are particularly vulnerable to online threats. In 2018, Amnesty International published research that found that Twitter was a platform where abuse & threats of violence against women flourished. Rather than being a place where women could express themselves freely, women were forced to limit their interactions to protect themselves.

One of the peculiarities of those advocating freedom of speech without restrictions is that they sometimes use their enormous wealth to silence their critics with one example being Elon Musk’s legal action against the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The CCDH allege that Musk himself has posted 50 false election claims on Twitter so far this year without any “community note” from X’s supposed fact-checking system. During our recent riots he even posted on Twitter that “civil war is inevitable” under a video of violent riots in Liverpool.

We all value freedom of speech but I suggest that we should be cautious when we find very rich men like Musk or Farage talking to us about freedom. They are certainly interested in their own freedom, possibly they are interested in our freedom, but as the slaves owned by Thomas Jefferson found out, fine words do not always lead to virtuous actions.

https://counterhate.com/our-work/

Arnold is a retired teacher from Belfast.